Off-the-Record Messaging | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

In this post-Snowden era of mass surveillance, being out-of-reach from the spying eyes really doesn't mean they can not get you. So, if you are concerned about your data privacy and are actually searching for a peer-to-peer encrypted messaging service, then it's time to get one. " Otr.to " — an open-source peer-to-peer browser-based messaging application that offers secure communication by making use of "Off-the-Record" (OTR) Messaging , a cryptographic protocol for encrypting instant messaging applications. OTR (Off-the-Record) is one of the most secure cryptographic protocol that offers strong encryption for real time communications i.e. Chatting and Messaging services. Off-the-Record simply means that there is nothing on the record, so nobody can prove that two parties had an Internet chat conversation or said anything specific. ORT.to uses WebRTC to exchange messages via decentralized peer-to-peer communication , which means chat logs bet...

Cryptocat , an open source encrypted web-based chat client, is now available for iOS Devices from the  Apple's App store , which was initially rejected by the Apple last December. It is not clear why it was rejected previously, but the good news is that, now ' Cryptocat ' is available for all iOS Devices. So far Cryptocat was only available for Linux and Mac OS X, and as an extension for web browsers Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome 3, Apple Safari and Opera . Cryptocat has become quite popular in the wake of the NSA Controversy, because of its end-to-end encryption that doesn't allow anyone in the middle to read your messages. Cryptocat for iPhone uses the OTR protocol for private conversations, a cryptographic protocol for secure instant messaging, and perfect forward secrecy, a system that constantly generates new user keys. So, snoops cannot decrypt older messages. It doesn't require any username or account rather just one time nickname makes the...

The latest Palo Alto Networks Unit 42 Cloud Threat Report found that sensitive data is found in 66% of cloud storage buckets. This data is vulnerable to ransomware attacks. The SANS Institute recently reported that these attacks can be performed by abusing the cloud provider's storage security controls and default settings. "In just the past few months, I have witnessed two different methods for executing a ransomware attack using nothing but legitimate cloud security features," warns Brandon Evans, security consultant and SANS Certified Instructor. Halcyon disclosed an attack campaign that leveraged one of Amazon S3's native encryption mechanisms, SSE-C, to encrypt each of the target buckets. A few months prior, security consultant Chris Farris demonstrated how attackers could perform a similar attack using a different AWS security feature, KMS keys with external key material, using simple scripts generated by ChatGPT. "Clearly, this topic is top-of-mind for both threat actors and ...