spying | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

After the revelation of former NSA contractor Edward Snowden , we all very well knew the impact of it on the world, but nobody would have estimated that the impact will be so worst. The revelation, not only defaced NSA, but also its counterpart GCHQ , and various other governments which were serving them in the world's spying scandal. Now, after various allegations on NSA , Chaos Computer Club (CCC) , one of the oldest and Europe's largest association of hackers, along with the International League for Human Rights (ILMR), has filed a criminal complaint with the Federal Prosecutor General's office on Monday. The Chaos Computer club accuses the German government of capitulating to UK, US and other government intelligence agencies and their communications surveillance whims. In a press release they said: " We accuse US, British and German secret agents, their supervisors, the German Minister of the Interior as well as the German Chancellor of illegal and prohibi

Last Friday at the 50th Munich Security Conference , Microsoft announced to launch ' Transparency centers ' around the World, where government customers will be able to verify the source code of Microsoft's products and can confirm that there are no backdoors. The recent chain of scandals over US global snooping has seriously damaged the trust in U.S. Government and top U.S. Tech companies, that could cost them billions of dollars over the next several years if international clients take their business elsewhere. German Chancellor Angela Merkel , whose private mobile phone was also allegedly bugged by the NSA , warned earlier that U.S. Spying operations are unacceptable. In an effort to re-gain the trust of its customers and Governments around the world, Microsoft has announced that it will expand encryption across its services, reinforce legal protections for customers' data and will also enhance the transparency of its software code. Encryption proced

In today's digital world, where connectivity is rules all, endpoints serve as the gateway to a business's digital kingdom. And because of this, endpoints are one of hackers' favorite targets.  According to the IDC,  70% of successful breaches start at the endpoint . Unprotected endpoints provide vulnerable entry points to launch devastating cyberattacks. With IT teams needing to protect more endpoints—and more kinds of endpoints—than ever before, that perimeter has become more challenging to defend. You need to improve your endpoint security, but where do you start? That's where this guide comes in.  We've curated the top 10 must-know endpoint security tips that every IT and security professional should have in their arsenal. From identifying entry points to implementing EDR solutions, we'll dive into the insights you need to defend your endpoints with confidence.  1. Know Thy Endpoints: Identifying and Understanding Your Entry Points Understanding your network's

Turn your face in any direction, someone is always trying to spy on you; doesn't matter who and what you are? Just yesterday we reported that Communications Security Establishment Canada (CSEC) in Canada and NSA are together, running a spying program called ' game-changer '. It was revealed that the agencies are tracking all the travelers who passed through the airport terminal, and could be tracked throughout the country by referencing it with the intercepted information from Wi-Fi in cafes, libraries and other public places. Today XDA Senior Recognized Developer ' Chainfire ' has released a new Android app called Pry-Fi , that allow a user to disable Wi-Fi completely, including the background network scanning.  Pry-Fi will prevent your device from announcing all the networks it knows to the outside world, but it will still allow background scanning and automatically connecting to Wi-Fi networks. ' Retailers, crooks, the government, and other

It is very clear that when we talk about Intelligence and Surveillance, the first name comes to our mind is the U.S National Security Agency (NSA) and, the second is Gen. Keith Alexander , the Director of NSA..GEEK behind the massive surveillance Programs. Many documents revealed by the former NSA's contractor Edward Snowden exposed the extend level of worldwide spying scandals projected by U.S Government in the supervision of Gen. Keith Alexander. The Obama Administration has confirmed that they are replacing Gen. Keith Alexander and giving the command of NSA in the hand of a military officer, rather than a civilian who is experienced in Cryptography and Electronic Eavesdropping . Michael S. Rogers , presently the U.S Navy's Cyber Security Chief, will be the new Director of the National Security Agency (NSA) and head of the US military cyber command. He has been involved in cyberdefense and offense policy issues as head of the Fleet Cyber Command. Neither Ro

Again a top secret revelation from the Snowden's Desk! A new document retrieved by the whistleblower Edward Snowden shows that the Canadian spy agency is tracking airline travelers even days after they left the terminal, just by capturing their device identification from the free Wi-Fi service at a major Canadian airport. CBC News reported that the US Intelligence agency worked with its counterpart Communications Security Establishment Canada (CSEC) in Canada, and slurped information from the free Internet hotspots to track anyone who passed through the airport terminal, and could be tracked throughout the country by cross-referencing it with the intercepted information from Wifi at cafes, libraries and other public places, although it is not clear that they were tracking only the users who logged-in to the WiFi services or not. But It is also possible that one can capture the MAC addresses of all the available devices within the range of a Wi-Fi device (using some special tools

Downfall in the monopoly of propriety software like Microsoft and Apple accelerated after the Snowden revelations of NSA spying, where technology giants like Microsoft, Google, Apple are sharing a bed with the NSA. The UK government is again planning to ditch Microsoft for Open Source and Free alternatives. Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude announced yesterday that they are move away from Microsoft Office, towards open source softwares like  OpenOffice & LibreOffice suites, in an effort to drive down costs and foster greater innovation. UK has spent about £200 million in the last three years for Microsoft's ubiquitous software suite, but now this migration will save large revenue of the kingdom, according to The Guardian . The cabinet Office minister said, " We know the best technology and digital ideas often come from small businesses, but too often in the past they were excluded from government work. In the civil service there was a sense that if you hired a

Now there is really great news for all the supporters of Former National Security Agency ( NSA ) contractor Edward Snowden , as he is nominated for the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize by two Norwegian lawmakers. Snorre Valen and Baard Vegar Solhjell , parliamentarians from Norway's Socialist Left Party said, " He has contributed to revealing the extreme level of surveillance by nations against other nations and of citizens ," Edward Snowden revealed various widely extended NSA spying projects and responsible for handing over the material from one of the world's most secretive organizations the NSA. He faces charges of theft and espionage and is in Russia on temporary asylum. " Snowden contributed to people knowing about what has happened and spurring public debate " on trust in government, which he said was " a fundamental requirement for peace ". Snorre Valen also added that, " There's no doubt that the actions of Edward Snowden may have damaged the security interes

Are you fond of playing games on your Smartphone like Angry Birds or Subway Surfer ?? You should now stop wasting your time, because NSA is utilizing your gaming energy in the best possible way. According to the latest documents leaked by former U.S. Government contractor Edward Snowden , Some of the world's most popular Smartphone applications are telling British (GCHQ) and American intelligence agencies ( NSA ) everything about you. NSA is tapping communication across the Internet of all " leaky " apps ( Unencrypted app, without SSL connection ) to peek into the tremendous amounts of very personal data, including your age, location, sex and even sexual preferences. This is really unacceptable! The Guardian claims that the NSA and its UK counterpart GCHQ have been developing capabilities to take advantage of these 'leaky' apps, collecting most sensitive information such as sexual orientation and " even sends specific sexual preferences such a

Tor is one of the best and freely available privacy software that lets people communicate anonymously online through a series of nodes that is designed to provide anonymity for users and bypass Internet censorship. When you use the Tor software, your IP address remains hidden and it appears that your connection is coming from the IP address of a Tor exit relay or nodes , which can be anywhere in the world. An exit relay is the final relay that Tor traffic passes through before it reaches its destination. According to a recent report ' Spoiled Onions: Exposing Malicious Tor Exit Relays ', published by security researchers Phillip Winter and Stefan Lindskog revealed that almost 20 exit relays in the Tor anonymity network that attempted to spy on users' encrypted traffic using man-in-the-middle techniques. Both Researchers spent more than four months studying on the Tor exit nodes using their own scanning software called " exitmap " and detected su

How many of you use Google Chrome for surfing the Internet and feel safe while working on it? I think many of you. Chrome is one of the most trusted Web Browsers that provide a user friendly environment and cyber security, but this we all know that every product has its negative side too, and so has Google's Chrome. Chrome has a 'Voice Recognition' feature, that use your system's microphone and allows you to speak instead of typing into any text box, to make hands-free web searches, quick conversions, and audio translator also work with them. Google's browser is also not immune to bugs and this time the new bug discovered in Chrome is capable to listen and record your whole private conversations without your knowledge, by abusing the voice recognition feature. While working on ' Annyang ', a voice to text software for websites, the web developer ' Tal Ater ' discovered a vulnerability that can be exploited and lets malicious sites to turn your Go

Mobile security may not be secure as you think. In September we have reported that the National Security Agency has the ability to access data on iOS, Android and even BlackBerry devices. Everyday a new revelation of NSA Surveillance Program makes Security and Privacy a major concern for all of us. Today we feel the need of highly secured Networks and Encrypted Devices to safeguard our privacy from Cyber Criminals as well as Government. Phil Zimmerman , Inventor of the email encryption tool PGP and Silent Circle's Co-founder (company specializes in mobile privacy and peer-to-peer encryption ) has announced ' BLACKPHONE ', a Smartphone that's been designed to enable secure, encrypted communications, private browsing and secure file-sharing. The company will launch BLACKPHONE in the ' Mobile World Congress ', Spain next month, offers ' PrivatOS ', an Android based operating system which will allow users to make and receive secure phone calls, exchange secure te

After the revelations from NSA internal documents leaked by Edward Snowden, the world knows the NSA as the Real Techie Gangster of this 21st Century, with the ability to brutally infiltrate every kind of electronic device, the Internet, and global communications.  " It is becoming increasingly difficult to trust the privacy properties of software and services we rely on to use the Internet. Governments, companies, groups and individuals may be surveilling us without our knowledge. " The Inventor of JavaScript & current CTO of Mozilla, Mr. Brendan Eich said in a blog post NSA is not just focused on high-tech exploits, but also specialize in inserting secret backdoor to legitimate products. Its Tailored Access Operations (TAO) unit works with the CIA and FBI to intercept shipments of hardware to insert spyware into the devices. This way NSA is able to keep an eye on all levels of our digital lives, from computing centers to individual computers, and from laptops to mobi

After the release of NSA Secret spying over Internet communications, I am expecting from all tech companies to make surveillance significantly harder. Yahoo has HTTPS encryption support since late 2012, but users had to opt in to use the feature. Documents revealed by the Edward Snowden shows that the NSA secretly accessed data from several tech giants, including Yahoo, by intercepting unencrypted Internet traffic in a program called Muscular. As promised back in October 2013,  Yahoo  has finally enabled the HTTPS connections by default for their users, that will now automatically encrypts the connections between users and its email service. Jeff Bonforte , senior vice-president of communication products at Yahoo announced  in a blog post: It is 100% encrypted by default and protected with 2,048 bit certificates. This encryption extends to your emails, attachments, contacts, as well as Calendar and Messenger in Mail. HTTPS by default is really a good news for Yahoo users, that will

Now that we have enough details about how the NSA's Surveillance program, running for a long time against almost each country of this planet.  Hundreds of top-secret NSA documents provided by whistleblower Edward Snowden already exposed that Spying projects like PRISM and MUSCULAR are tapping directly into Google and Yahoo internal networks to access our Emails. NSA's tactics are even capable to defeat the SSL encryption, so unsecured email can easily be monitored and even altered as it travels through the Internet. One major point on which all of us are worrying is about the privacy of communication among each other and If you're looking for a little personal privacy in your communications you will need to encrypt your messages. To avoid privacy breaches; rather I should say to make it more difficult for the NSA or British GCHQ surveillance program to read our communication, we should use PGP encryption (Pretty Good Privacy). Why we should Encrypt ou

I am sure that you all have been familiar with the above shown annoying Window Operating System error messages that many times pop ups on your screen while working on the system in case of process failure i.e. " The system has recovered from a serious error. A log of this error has been created. Please tell Microsoft about this problem " The message that prompts ask the user to report the problem to Microsoft followed by the options to Send an error report or Not send . Most of the time Gentle users like you and me used to submit these error reports to aware the Microsoft about the problem. But What if these crash reports can be abused to identify the vulnerabilities of your system for Spying? NSA is intercepting wide range of Internet Traffic including many Encrypted connections and naturally unencrypted also and surprisingly, by default Microsoft encrypts its reports, but the messages are transmitted unencrypted or over standard HTTP connections to watson.microsoft.com .

According to media reports in September, documents released by whistleblower Edward Snowden have confirmed the existence of backdoor in some technologies RSA . Last Friday, The Reuters News Agency accused the Security firm RSA for taking a $10 million ' bribe ' from the National Security Agency ( NSA ) in order promote a flawed encryption by including it in its BSAFE product to facilitate NSA spying . Today In a blog post , RSA has categorically denied accusation about any secret partnership with the National Security Agency to insert backdoor. " Recent press coverage has asserted that RSA entered into a "secret contract" with the NSA to incorporate a known flawed random number generator into its BSAFE encryption libraries. We categorically deny this allegation. " " We have never entered into any contract or engaged in any project with the intention of weakening RSA's products " the company said. The company gave the following reasons for choosing and promoting

If you own a world-renowned Security Product or a Service, National Security Agency (NSA) is ready to pay you 10 Million or more bribe for keeping intentional backdoor for them. According to an exclusive report published by Reuters , there is a secret deal between the NSA and respected encryption company RSA to implement a flawed security standard as the default protocol in its products. Earlier Edward Snowden leaks had revealed that the NSA created a flawed random number generation system (Dual_EC_DRBG), Dual Elliptic Curve , which RSA used in its Bsafe security tool and now Snowden has revealed that RSA received $10 million from NSA for keeping Encryption Weak. So, anyone who knows the right numbers used in Random number generator program, can decipher the resulting cryptotext easily. Recommending bad cryptographic standard is one thing, but accepting 10 million to deliberately implement is something very shameful for a respected Security company. The new revelation is impor

If you own Apple's MacBook, you should cover up it's webcam, because there's a possibility someone could be watching you. Like most webcams, the MacBook also has a tiny green light lets you know that the webcam is active, but it's possible for malware to disable this important privacy feature on older Mac computers ( models released before 2008 ). Matthew Brocker and Stephen Checkoway , students from Johns Hopkins University created a proof-of-concept app called " iSeeYou " that confirmed that MacBook iSight webcams can spy on their users without the warning light being activated. A young man recently pleaded guilty in court to extortion after he performed a remote hack on Miss Teen USA's webcam to secretly collect nude photos. It was revealed through court papers that the FBI has the ability to do the same thing with a variety of current laptops including Apple products. To make it possible, they created a modified version of the iSight firmware and t