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How to Start Secret Conversations on Facebook Messenger

How to Start Secret Conversations on Facebook Messenger
Oct 06, 2016
If you are looking for ways to start a secret conversation on Facebook Messenger with your friends, then you are at the right place. In this article, I am going to tell you about Facebook Messenger's new end-to-end encrypted chat feature, dubbed " Secret Conversations ," but before that, know why do you need your chats to be end-to-end encrypted? Your online privacy is under threat not only from online marketers and hackers but also from governments. Just yesterday, it was revealed that Yahoo secretly built hacking tool to scan all of its customers' incoming emails for US intelligence officials. So, to hide your personal life online from prying eyes, you need end-to-end encryption that allows you to send and receive messages in a way that no one, including the feds with a warrant, hackers and not even the company itself, can intercept or read them. Last year, WhatsApp became the largest end-to-end encrypted messaging network in history by rolling out anoth

Signal is Most Secure Messenger, 'Useless Data' Obtained by FBI Proves It All

Signal is Most Secure Messenger, 'Useless Data' Obtained by FBI Proves It All
Oct 04, 2016
Do you trust your messaging app even though it uses end-to-end encryption? As I previously said end-to-end encryption doesn't mean that your messages are secure enough to hide your trace. It's because most of the messaging apps still record and store a lot of metadata on your calls and messages that could reveal some of your personal information including dates and durations of communication, as well as the participants' phone numbers. Apple's iMessage app is the most recent and best example of this scenario. Just recently it was reported that the company stores a lot of information about its end-to-end encrypted iMessage, that could reveal your contacts and location, and even share this data with law enforcement via court orders. But if you are using open source end-to-end encrypted Signal   app, you are on the safer side. Trust me! As we previously reported that the Signal app, which is widely considered the most secure of all other encrypted messaging a

Making Sense of Operational Technology Attacks: The Past, Present, and Future

Making Sense of Operational Technology Attacks: The Past, Present, and Future
Mar 21, 2024Operational Technology / SCADA Security
When you read reports about cyber-attacks affecting operational technology (OT), it's easy to get caught up in the hype and assume every single one is sophisticated. But are OT environments all over the world really besieged by a constant barrage of complex cyber-attacks? Answering that would require breaking down the different types of OT cyber-attacks and then looking back on all the historical attacks to see how those types compare.  The Types of OT Cyber-Attacks Over the past few decades, there has been a growing awareness of the need for improved cybersecurity practices in IT's lesser-known counterpart, OT. In fact, the lines of what constitutes a cyber-attack on OT have never been well defined, and if anything, they have further blurred over time. Therefore, we'd like to begin this post with a discussion around the ways in which cyber-attacks can either target or just simply impact OT, and why it might be important for us to make the distinction going forward. Figure 1 The Pu

Telegram — Secret Messaging app — Shuts Down 78 ISIS Channels

Telegram — Secret Messaging app — Shuts Down 78 ISIS Channels
Nov 19, 2015
The terrorist groups affiliated with the Islamic State have an extensive presence not only on social media accounts but also on the popular end-to-end encrypted messaging app Telegram through which they communicate with their followers and spread terror propaganda materials. Telegram has always been terrorist's favorite, but ISIS had been using the app since October, when Telegram introduced an end-to-end encrypted Secret Chat feature that lets users broadcast messages to an unlimited number of subscribers. Moreover, Telegram also provides self-destructing message feature that allows users to set their messages to self-destruct itself after a certain period of time. But, the Good News is: The nonprofit organization that runs Telegram has blocked around 78 ISIS-affiliated channels that the terrorists used to: Communicate with their members Spread propaganda Recruit foreign supporters Plan operations Radicalize young people "We were disturbed to learn that Telegram

Automated remediation solutions are crucial for security

cyber security
websiteWing SecurityShadow IT / SaaS Security
Especially when it comes to securing employees' SaaS usage, don't settle for a longer to-do list. Auto-remediation is key to achieving SaaS security.

This Computer Chip Self-Destructs in 10 Seconds (On Command) to keep Secrets Safe

This Computer Chip Self-Destructs in 10 Seconds (On Command) to keep Secrets Safe
Sep 16, 2015
The Secret Messages are often designed to be destroyed without a trace. In Spy thriller movie " Mission Impossible ", every time Tom Cruise receives a secret message, the last words state - " This Tape message will self-destruct in 5 seconds "...and BOOM ! There's a sudden explosion, and smoke comes out of the device; containing sensitive information few seconds ago. This Self-destructing thing has become a reality now. Palo Alto Research Center Incorporated (PARC) a Xerox company, involved in R&D in IT and hardware has under Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's (DARPA'S) Vanishing Programmable Resources (VAPR) achieved success in developing Self-Destructing computer chips capable of destruction in 10 seconds. The phenomenon is quite familiar….isn't it? Now, with DARPA's initiative this is soon going to become a reality intended mainly for the military personnel. With the idea of- "Protection of data that once existed." PARC showcased thi

SkypeHide to Send secret messages into silence of Skype Calls

SkypeHide to Send secret messages into silence of Skype Calls
Jan 07, 2013
Polish Researchers have discovered a clever way to send secret messages during a phone call on Skype. We know that, by default skype calls use 256-bit advanced encryption, but researchers find that is not enough. So they find out this new way to communicate messages more secretly by using silence. Mazurczyk, Maciej Karaś and Krzysztof Szczypiorski analysed Skype data traffic during calls and discovered that there is a way in Skype silence, where rather than sending no data between spoken words, Skype sends 70-bit-long data packets instead of the 130-bit ones that carry speech. So by taking advantage of this they hijacks these silence packets and then inject encrypted message data into some of them. The Skype receiver on other end will always simply ignores the secret-message data, but it can be decoded back to receive that secret message. Team decide to present this at Steganography conference  by creating a POC tool called SkypeHide that will be able to hijacks some of the silenc
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