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Rejoice for Privacy Lovers! Facebook today took a surprising move by announcing that it is bringing the free anonymizing software TOR support to its Android app , almost two years after the social network planned to make Facebook available directly over Tor network. Yes. Believe it or not, the Android version of the popular Facebook application now supports the Tor anonymity network. In October 2014, Facebook launched a .onion website on TOR in order to let its users around the world access its service more securely. Access Facebook over TOR via Orbot This latest move to expand that access to the Android app opens up the option to millions more users to maintain their privacy when they visit the world's most popular social network. Facebook says "a sizeable community of people" are already accessing the site over TOR, so the company is bringing this feature to Android via the free Orbot proxy app , which is available on the Google's Play

Despite the French Ministry of Interior's demands, France will not ban the TOR anonymity network or Free public Wi-Fi as a way to help the law enforcement fight terrorism. French Prime Minister Manual Valls has gone on record saying that a ban on Free public Wi-Fi is " not a course of action envisaged ," and he is not in favor of banning the TOR anonymity network, either. Following the deadly terror attacks on Paris last month, an internal document obtained by Le Monde indicated that French government wanted to block communications of TOR as well as ban the use of Free Public Wi-Fi during states of emergency in an effort to fight terrorism more efficiently. However, according to France PM, banning Encrypted Communications could affect the country's economy and security. Must Read:  FBI Director Asks Tech Companies to At least Don't Offer End-to-End Encryption TOR and Free Wi-Fi Safe in France, PM Says  " A ban of [free public] W

As a vCISO, you are responsible for your client's cybersecurity strategy and risk governance. This incorporates multiple disciplines, from research to execution to reporting. Recently, we published a comprehensive playbook for vCISOs, "Your First 100 Days as a vCISO – 5 Steps to Success" , which covers all the phases entailed in launching a successful vCISO engagement, along with recommended actions to take, and step-by-step examples.  Following the success of the playbook and the requests that have come in from the MSP/MSSP community, we decided to drill down into specific parts of vCISO reporting and provide more color and examples. In this article, we focus on how to create compelling narratives within a report, which has a significant impact on the overall MSP/MSSP value proposition.  This article brings the highlights of a recent guided workshop we held, covering what makes a successful report and how it can be used to enhance engagement with your cyber security clients.

T he O nion R outer (Tor) is weeping Badly! Yes, Tor browser is in danger of being caught once again by the people commonly known as " Spies ," who's one and only intention is to intrude into others' network and gather information. A team of security researchers from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have developed digital attacks that can be used to unmask Tor hidden services in the Deep Web with a high degree of accuracy. The Tor network is being used by journalists, hackers, citizens living under repressive regimes as well as criminals to surf the Internet anonymously. A plethora of nodes and relays in Tor network is used to mask its users and make tracking very difficult. Any user when connects to Tor, the connection gets encrypted and routed through a path called a "circuit ." The request first reaches an entry node, also known as a ' Guard ' that knows the actual IP address of the user, and then goes through every ho

I think you'll agree with me when I say: It's quite hard to maintain anonymity on the Internet using the slow Tor network. Or is it? Well, it turns out, you may soon boost your online anonymity dramatically with the help of a new high-speed anonymity network. A group of six academics have developed a Tor network alternative for users that allows high-speed anonymous web surfing, reinforcing the privacy of Internet users worldwide. The network is dubbed: HORNET: High-speed Onion Routing at the Network Layer Many anonymising networks, including The Onion Router (or TOR) network, are often slow because the data passing through the networks is encrypted a many numbers of times. However, the high-speed onion routing network HORNET is capable of handling anonymous traffic at speeds of more than 93 Gbps  while maintaining privacy. The new anonymous network is built by researcher Chen Chen of Carnegie Mellon University , along with Daniele Enri

The huge cache of internal files recently leaked from the controversial Italian surveillance software company Hacking Team has now revealed that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) purchased surveillance software from the company. The leaked documents contains more than 1 Million internal emails, including emails from FBI agent who wanted to unmask the identity of a user of Tor , the encrypted anonymizing network widely used by activists to keep their identities safe, but also used to host criminal activities. Unmasking Tor User In September last year, an FBI agent asked Hacking Team if the latest version of its Remote Control System (RCS), also known as Galileo - for which the company is famous for, would be capable to reveal the True IP address of a Tor user. The FBI agent only had the proxy IP address of the target, as according to FBI, the target may be using Tor Browser Bundle (TBB) or some other variant. So, the agent wanted to infect the target

Ross Ulbricht , the alleged founder and mastermind of the infamous online black marketplace Silk Road, has been sentenced to life in prison after being found guilty of narcotics conspiracy, money laundering and other criminal charges. This means the 31-year-old San Francisco man will die behind bars . With all the seven charges stemming from the creation and operation of the once the Internet's largest online illegal-drug marketplace, Ulbricht was facing 20 years at a minimum sentence, but making life in prison is the harshest possible sentence. Ulbricht's Life in Prison without any possibility of Parole: The sentence was made by Judge Katherine B. Forrest in a Federal District Court in Manhattan, though Forrest admitted it was a "very, very difficult" call to make , leaving Ulbricht without any hope of parole. Operating online as " Dread Pirate Roberts ," Ulbricht ran the $1.2 billion Empire from the year 2011 to 2013, armed just

In response to the threat of intelligence agencies like NSA and GCHQ, Security researchers from American and Israeli academics have developed a new advanced Tor client called Astoria specially designed to make eavesdropping harder . Tor (The Onion Router) is the most popular anonymity network that is intended to allow a user to browse the Internet anonymously via a volunteer network of more than 6000 relays/nodes. The encrypted traffic of a user is being routed through multiple relays in the network. The user-relay connection is known as a circuit. Tor does not share your identifying information like your IP address and physical location with websites or service providers on the receiving end because they don't know who is visiting. Timing Attacks yet a major issue: However, Tor isn't as safe from the prying eyes of network level attackers as we once thought. Big spying agencies like the United States intelligence agency NSA and the British Governmen

Why Tor Cloud Project Shuts Down? Yes, you heard that right. The Tor project has announced that it's closing down its Tor Cloud service that allowed users to donate bandwidth for browsing the web anonymously. The Tor Project is a non-profit organization behind the Tor anonymizing network that allows any online user to browse the Internet without the fear of being tracked. And one of its lesser known projects was the Amazon-powered Tor Cloud service. Tor Cloud Project provided a user-friendly way for users to create a "bridge" node on Amazone's Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) for the Tor network, essentially donating bandwidth to the Tor network in order to help users access an uncensored Internet faster and securely. Launched back in 2011, Tor Cloud Project was a pretty good idea then… ...Why Tor is closing Tor Cloud Service? What could be the reason for the shutdown of Tor Cloud Project? Tor developers were unable to get enough help to maintain the so

The administrator of the popular Darknet email service , SIGAINT , is warning its users that the email service has become a target of a suspected law enforcement agency who tried to compromise it. About a week ago, SIGAINT has been targeted by an attacker who tried to hack the service by using nearly 70 bad Tor exit nodes , one of the service's administrator informed its users via the tor-talk mailing list on Thursday. Before jumping on the news, Let's first understand what are Exit Nodes? As I said, SIGAINT uses TOR anonymization network which means when an email sent from one user to any destination, the email routed through multiple relays/nodes that actually aren't aware of the sender's identity. The last machine that processes the email known as a Tor exit relay or Tor exit node. The end user who receives that email can see the IP of the exit node instead of the IP address of the original sender. And this is how, SIGAINT allows you to send

Security researcher has discovered some new features in the most dangerous Vawtrak , aka Neverquest , malware that allow it to send and receive data through encrypted favicons distributed over the secured Tor network . The researcher, Jakub Kroustek from AVG anti-virus firm, has provided an in-depth analysis ( PDF ) on the new and complex set of features of the malware which is considered to be one of the most dangerous threats in existence. Vawtrak is a sophisticated piece of malware in terms of supported features. It is capable of stealing financial information and executing transactions from the compromised computer remotely without leaving traces. The features include videos and screenshots capturing and launching man-in-the-middle attacks. HOW VAWTRAK SPREADS ? AVG anti-virus firm is warning users that it has discovered an ongoing campaign delivering Vawtrak to gain access to bank accounts visited by the victim and using the infamous Pony module in order to ste

Are you aware of everything that your users are accessing from your environment? While most of the time, non-work-related Internet browsing is harmless (looking at pictures of cats, online shopping, social media, etc.) there are some instances where you could be an unknowing and unwilling participant in criminal activity. That is, when users hide that activity via the Tor network , or the Dark Net . The Onion Router , better known as " Tor ", an open source project, launched in 2002, is designed to allow a user to browse the Internet anonymously via a volunteer network of more than 5000 relays. It doesn't share your identifying information like your IP address and physical location with websites or service providers. A user that navigate Internet using Tor , it's quite difficult to trace its activities ensuring his online privacy. There are arguably legitimate uses for this technology, such as providing Internet access in repressively regulated countri

There is an entire section of the Internet that you probably don't see on daily basis, it's called the " Darknet " or " Deep Web ", where all browsing is done anonymously. About a week ago, we reported about the 'Memex' Deep Web Search Engine , a Defense Advance Research Projects Agency (DARPA) project to create a powerful new search engine that could find things on the deep web that isn't indexed by Google and other commercial search engines, but it isn't available to you and me. Now, there is another search engine that will let anyone easily search the Deep Web for large swaths of information for free, and without an application; you only need is an Internet connection. Onion.City , a new search engine for online underground markets that makes it more easier to find and buy drugs, guns, stolen credit cards directly from your Chrome, Internet Explorer or Firefox browser without installing and browsing via Tor Browser . Just two

Back in November, Mozilla teamed-up with Tor Project under a new initiative called Polaris , in order to help reduce finite number of Tor connections occurring at the same time by adding high-capacity Tor middle relays to the Tor network , and now the company is ready with its first Tor Middle relays. The Firefox maker has given the Tor network a high-capacity middle relays with the launch of 12 relays , all located in the United States, that will help distribute user traffic; the Tor browser is a great way to keep prying eyes from tracking you. Mozilla is one of the most trusted companies on the internet, particularly when it comes to user privacy. The partnership of Mozilla and Tor aimed at providing more privacy features to Firefox browser, and increased Tor network support. The Polaris Privacy Initiative was an effort of Mozilla, the Tor Project and the Center of Democracy and Technology — an advocacy group for digital rights, in order to help build more privacy

We have seen a series of Ransomware tended to be simple with dogged determinations to extort money from victims. But with the exponential rise in the samples of Ransomware last year, we saw more subtle in design, including " Cryptolocker " that was taken down along with the " Gameover ZeuS " botnet last June. As a result, another improved ransomware packages have sprung up to replace it — CryptoWall . Ransomware is an emerging threat in the evolution of cybercriminals techniques to part you from your money. Typically, the malicious software either lock victim's computer system or encrypt the documents and files on it, in order to extort money from the victims. Since last year, criminals have generated an estimated US$1 million profits. Now, the infamous Cryptowall ransomware is back with the newest and improved version of the file-encrypting ransomware program, which has been spotted compromising victims by researchers early this week, security research

It was the sad Christmas day for gamers all around the world!! A lot of people get new PlayStations and Xboxes on Christmas, but this Christmas they bought the game, popped it into the console for online gaming, and what they found? Oh Crap! I can't log on . It was the notorious hacker group " Lizard Squad " who claimed the responsibility for taking down PlayStation Network, saying it has made unavailable both networks with apparent Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks — intentionally overloading servers by sending a flood of bogus web traffic, which made logging into the PlayStation Network and Xbox Live difficult for most users. Now Anonymous has declared war against Lizard Group, warning that " now you are all going down. " Recently, in response to Lizard Squad launching DDoS attacks on the Tor network , the international activist group Anonymous has leaked the personal details of one of the group's alleged members, warning the hacke

Tor has been targeted once again, but this time at a much larger scale. A new attack on Tor network reportedly would either completely shut it down worldwide or turn it into evil network. This time Tor – an internet browser which allows people to maintain their anonymity online by protecting their location – is warning its users of a cyber attack that quietly seized some of its network specialized servers called Directory Authorities (DA) , the servers that help Tor clients to find Tor relays in the anonymous network service. Tor network architecture relies on ten Directory Authorities whose information is hardcoded into Tor clients. These directory authorities are located in the Europe and United States, and maintain the signed list of all the verified exit relays of the Tor network, and according to experts, attack on these backbone servers can "incapacitate" the overall architecture of Tor. " The Tor Project has learned that there may be an attempt to incapacit

The malicious Russian Tor exit node , which was claimed to be patching binary files, is actually distributing a malware program to launch cyber-espionage attacks against European government agencies. The group behind the rogue Tor exit node had likely been infecting files for more than a year, causing victims to download and install a backdoor file that gave hackers full control of their systems. Last month Josh Pitts of Leviathan Security Group uncovered a malicious Tor exit node that wraps Windows executable files inside a second, malicious Windows executable. But when Artturi Lehtiö of F-Secure carried out an in-depth research, he found that the exit node was actually linked to the notorious Russian APT family MiniDuke . " MiniDuke " previously infected government agencies and organizations in more than 20 countries via a modified Adobe PDF email attachment . MiniDuke malware is written in assembly language with its tiny file size (20KB), and uses hijacke