hardware encryption | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

Hundreds of millions of devices, especially Android smartphones and tablets, using Qualcomm chipsets, are vulnerable to a new set of potentially serious vulnerabilities. According to a report cybersecurity firm CheckPoint shared with The Hacker News, the flaws could allow attackers to steal sensitive data stored in a secure area that is otherwise supposed to be the most protected part of a mobile device. The vulnerabilities reside in Qualcomm's Secure Execution Environment (QSEE), an implementation of Trusted Execution Environment (TEE) based on ARM TrustZone technology. Also known as Qualcomm's Secure World, QSEE is a hardware-isolated secure area on the main processor that aims to protect sensitive information and provides a separate secure environment (REE) for executing Trusted Applications. Along with other personal information, QSEE usually contains private encryption keys, passwords, credit, and debit card credentials. Since it is based on the principle of l

In April this year, a software update from Google overnight turned all Android phones , running Android 7.0 Nougat and up, into a FIDO-certified hardware security key as part of a push to encourage two-step verification. The feature made it possible for users to confirm their identity when logging into a Google account more effortless and secure, without separately managing and plugging-in a Yubico's YubiKey or Google's Titan key . "FIDO security keys provide the strongest protection against automated bots, bulk phishing, and targeted attacks by leveraging public key cryptography to verify your identity and URL of the login page, so that an attacker can't access your account even if you are tricked into providing your username and password," Google said . Android's security key feature until now was only compatible with Bluetooth-enabled Chrome OS, macOS, or Windows 10 devices over the Chrome browser. However, the latest update from Google now allow

Identities now transcend human boundaries. Within each line of code and every API call lies a non-human identity. These entities act as programmatic access keys, enabling authentication and facilitating interactions among systems and services, which are essential for every API call, database query, or storage account access. As we depend on multi-factor authentication and passwords to safeguard human identities, a pressing question arises: How do we guarantee the security and integrity of these non-human counterparts? How do we authenticate, authorize, and regulate access for entities devoid of life but crucial for the functioning of critical systems? Let's break it down. The challenge Imagine a cloud-native application as a bustling metropolis of tiny neighborhoods known as microservices, all neatly packed into containers. These microservices function akin to diligent worker bees, each diligently performing its designated task, be it processing data, verifying credentials, or

We all have something to hide, something to protect. But if you are also relying on self-encrypting drives for that, then you should read this news carefully. Security researchers have discovered multiple critical vulnerabilities in some of the popular self-encrypting solid state drives (SSD) that could allow an attacker to decrypt disk encryption and recover protected data without knowing the password for the disk. The researchers—Carlo Meijer and Bernard van Gastel—at Radboud University in the Netherlands reverse engineered the firmware several SSDs that offer hardware full-disk encryption to identify several issues and detailed their findings in a new paper ( PDF ) published Monday. "The analysis uncovers a pattern of critical issues across vendors. For multiple models, it is possible to bypass the encryption entirely, allowing for a complete recovery of the data without any knowledge of passwords or keys," the researchers say. The duo successfully tested their