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So far we have heard that using privacy tools by every individual and offering encrypted communication by every company is the only solution to Mass Surveillance conducted by the government and law enforcement authorities. But, Germany says the only solution to guard against surveillance is - Stop using Computers!! Ohh Please!! Is it a joke? No, it does not mean that they are going to completely throw out all of their computer systems, but rather they would use it preposterous. A year ago, when it came to light that German Chancellor Angela Merkel's own personal mobile phone had been spied by the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) for years, Surveillance has become a big issue for Germany. Such a big that prominent politicians are seriously considering using manual typewriters for sensitive documents instead of computers. The head of the Germany's NSA Inquiry Committee, Patrick Sensburg said in an interview with the Morgenmagazin TV show on Monday night, th

It's the age of surveillance what made the Use of Encryption so widely that it has become a need of law enforcement agencies, cyber criminals as well as every individual. But, encryption is not so easy. To solve this problem, a 23-year old Cryptocat developer Nadim Kobeissi is ready to release a simple solution to deliver strong encryption at the HOPE hacker conference in New York later this month, which may soon come as an extension for Google Chrome web browser, Wired reported . The encryption program is dubbed as miniLock , which is a free and open-source browser plugin designed to let anyone encrypt and decrypt files in seconds using a drag-and-drop interface with practically unbreakable cryptographic protection. " The tagline is that this is file encryption that does more with less, " says Kobeissi, activist and security consultant. " It's super simple, approachable, and it's almost impossible to be confused using it. " Drag-and-drop interface here means, miniL

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

If a whistleblower discloses an activity to the public, then there should be a trust-based mechanism that ensure the protection of truth-tellers on an international level by hiding their identities. In an effort to provide this kind of service and security, Security experts grouped together to create a stealthy Internet Messenger (IM) and file transfer client, which is especially designed for whistleblowers. Dubbed as " ‪invisible.im " is an anonymous Instant Messenger (IM) that leaves no trace‬. The team behind the project called itself " The Infosec A-Team " which includes Metasploit Founder HD Moore , noted infosec and opsec experts The Grugq , an Australian security analyst Patrick Gray , and Richo . Invisible.im aims to serve the rigid anonymity needs of whistleblowers. The project website states: invisible.im was established to develop an instant messenger and file transfer tool that leaves virtually no evidence of conversations or transfers having occurred. Th

Purchasing malware to victimize people is illegal by laws but if the same thing any government official do, then its not!! Yes, the police forces around the World are following the footsteps of U.S. National Security Agency ( NSA ) and FBI. Researchers from the Citizen Lab at the Munk School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto and computer security firm Kaspersky Lab have unearthed a broad network of controversial spyware which is specially designed to give law enforcement agencies complete access to a suspect's phone for the purpose of surveillance. MALWARE FOR DESKTOPS AND ALL MOBILE DEVICES The malware , dubbed as Remote Control System (RCS) , also known as Da Vinci and Galileo, is developed by an Italian company known as Hacking Team, available for desktop computers, laptops, and mobile devices. The latest version of the malware works for all phone including Android, iOS, Windows Mobile, Symbian and BlackBerry devices, but best on Android devices , and can also b

Vodafone , the world's second-largest mobile carrier with more than 400 million customers around the world has issued its first " Law Enforcement Disclosure Report ", reveals that the governments in some of the countries it operates, have direct access to its network allowing them to listen to all conversations. The Company has broken its silence on government surveillance and after Snowden's revelations about NSA , this is the only most comprehensive transparency report ever published by an International company detailing that how some Governments are taking advantage of their laws to infiltrate citizens privacy. Vodafone operates in 29 countries, where the government agencies need legal notices to tap into customers' communications, but some of those countries are actually tapping directly into their network, without any need for a warrant or any explanation. There are many countries like Albania, Egypt, Hungary, India , Malta, Qatar, Romania, South Africa and Turk

Privacy of Internet users is dead somewhere as the Intelligence agencies can watch our every move, hear our every conversation and read our every email and find out anything related to our personal and private life.  Last year, Edward Snowden revealed about the mass surveillance carried out by NSA and other countries intelligence agencies on every citizen of their country. The US Government has allotted a large share of its ' Black Budget ' for secret surveillance programs and to make this happen, NSA has used a number of unethical ways and labelled as legal solutions, harvesting hundreds of millions of Metadata from emails, web activity, chats, social networks, and everything else around the world. The revelations encouraged Internet users think about their privacy and digital rights, and the time came when different organisations started several campaigns to block mass surveillance and fight back against the U.S. National Security Agency ( NSA ). RESET YOU

The Iranian hackers may have spent years in running a creative and most dedicated cyber espionage campaign to steal government credentials with the help of Social Media including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, YouTube and Blogger. A Dallas-based computer-security firm, iSIGHT Partners, has exposed today a three-year old cyber espionage campaign which they believe to have originated in Iran, targeting a number of military and political leaders in the United States, Israel and other countries by creating false social networking accounts and a fake news website. The security firm dubbed the cyber espionage operation as ' Newscaster ', under which the iranian hackers are using more than a dozen social-media accounts of fake personas on social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn and targeted at least 2,000 people. Since 2011, the Iranian hackers group has targeted current and former senior U.S. military officials, including a four-star U.S. Navy ad

Two weeks ago, it was revealed that NSA has been reportedly intercepting and accessing routers , servers, and other computer networking hardware to plant data gathering " backdoors " and other spywares before they were exported and delivered to the international customers.  Now, the journalist Glenn Greenwald is set to publish a list of names of those U.S citizens who have been illegally spied on by the NSA. Glenn Greenwald is the journalist from the Guardian newspaper who helped former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden reveal confidential documents about the widely spread surveillance programs conducted by the government intelligence agency such as NSA and GCHQ. Greenwald is promoting his latest forthcoming book, " No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA, and the U.S. Surveillance State " that underlines the interest of NSA in conducting massive Internet surveillance program. He said the about to release list will be the biggest revelation out of the

While US government is always prohibiting the purchase of Huawei products due to suspected backdoors from the Chinese government, China also keep itself totally apart from the US productions. China is a bit famous for using its own operating systems, smartphone application services and lots more, rather than using the US developed Operating Systems, and now China has reportedly banned the installation of Microsoft Corporation's latest operating system, Windows 8 on any of its government computers. The Central Government Procurement Center issued a notice that was posted on its website last week prohibiting the use of Microsoft's latest operating system and the reason behind it is to support the use of energy-saving products, the report said. But the state news agency ' Xinhua ' pointed out a different reason for the ban saying the country wants to avoid any further losing of the support for an operating system like it did recently by pulling out its support from t

The United States has filed criminal charges against Chinese military officials for hacking and cyber espionage against several American companies. This case is first of its own kind in which the prosecutors have formally accused members of a foreign government with economic espionage charges. Attorney General Eric Holder and FBI are expected to reveal the new indictment later this afternoon, in which five officials of China's People's Liberation Army will be named, who are believed to be the current members of Beijing's military establishment. Accused chinese officials allegedly worked for the People's Liberation Army and have spied on U.S companies and stolen trade secrets. The alleged hackers are said to work for the PLA's Unit 61398 in Shanghai. Among the trade secrets, they are also accused for stealing information about a nuclear power plant design and a solar panel company's cost and pricing data, " They used military and intelligence faci

We All now know about the existence of the extensive metadata collection program by U.S National Security Agency ( NSA ), which creates an intimate repository of our lives -- whom we love, whom we're friends with, where we work, whom we call, when we you, how long we talk over the calls, and how often calls between the two parties are made and even the your interactions on social networking sites. Although U.S Government always argues that Metadata doesn't record the actual content ( of your call ) and it is used for NSA's automated analysis, but should we be worried? You are unique in the world and therefore your metadata too. So anyone with knowledge of the subject knows that analyzing terabytes of metadata can easily reveal far more details about a person's life than ever before. Worldwide debate on mass surveillance still was not finished yet, but today is a new alarming report revealed that US government murdering people around the world based solely on the

Despite the contrary regarding NSA's DROPOUTJEEP program, Apple had always denied working with the NSA in the creation of any backdoors used to spy on its users and also claimed that the NSA doesn't have backdoor access to its data. But, Apple could legally share your phone data with the law enforcement agencies if asked for. Being a secretive company, Apple is very clear at its point of sharing its users' data with the government when U.S. law enforcement agencies request data relating to the company's users. With the release of a set of new guidelines late Wednesday regarding requests for customer data from the U.S. law enforcement agencies, Apple specifies what information can and cannot be lifted from its users devices upon the receipt of disclosure requests, search warrants, or legal orders. " These guidelines are provided for use by law enforcement or other government entities in the U.S. when seeking information from Apple Inc. about users of Apple

Edward Snowden 's leaks last year questioned the integrity of several big and reputed companies such as Apple, Google and Microsoft that were found in relation with the NSA in its surveillance programs.  Thereafter they maintained distance with the Agency and claimed to be unaware of such government spying activities. Now, email exchanges between Google executives Sergey Brin and Eric Schmidt and former NSA director Gen. Keith Alexander , obtained through the Freedom of Information Act that in real do not reveal anything ridiculously outrageous but suggest that the tech companies behind the services you use are very closely in relationship with the NSA and have worked with them over the years. The series of emails obtained by Al Jazeera clearly indicate that the relationship between Google and the National Security Agency (NSA) was far cozier than anyone thought. This revelation questions not only the reputation of the largest Internet giant, but also the privac

Just imagine, you are sitting in front of your laptop and your laptop is listening to your nearby conversations. What if the recorded audio from the system's microphone is being instantly uploaded to a malicious website? Google has created a speech-recognition Application Programming Interface (API) that allows websites to interact with Google Chrome and the computer's microphone 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. In January, a flaw was discovered in Google Chrome that enabled malicious websites with speech recognition software to eavesdrop on users' conversations from background without their knowledge using an outdated Google speech API. CHROME IS LISTENING YOU A new similar vulnerability in Google Chrome has been discovered by Israeli security researcher, Guy Aharonovsky, claimed that the Chrome's speech-recognition API has a vulnerability that allo

We are already aware about the fact that most probably every mobile app is collecting our data in one or the other form. Thanks to Edward Snowden, who provided the secret documents that revealed that the world's most popular Smartphone applications, including gaming apps such as Angry Birds , are telling the government intelligence agencies (NSA) everything about us. We  reported earlier  that how the government intelligence agencies, such as British intelligence agency GCHQ and U.S. intelligence firm NSA, use popular games to collect users' personal data including their GPS location. Yes, the popular game Angry Bird , which is the top-selling paid mobile application in the United States and Europe for the iPhones, Android and has been downloaded more than a billion times by the devoted game players worldwide, who often spend hours squawking and playing the game.  In fact earlier this month,  CBS 60 Minutes  shows that how Rovio shares users' locations. Recently, t

Earlier this week, Microsoft admitted that they have accessed a French Blogger's private Hotmail account to identify a former Microsoft employee who had leaked the company's trade secrets in 2012. Microsoft defined this private investigation as part of " Protecting our customers and the security and integrity of our products ", mentioned in the Microsoft's terms of service, which says that the action was within the boundaries of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act. U.S. Authorities arrest Alex Kibkalo , ex-Microsoft employee. The indictment states , Kibkalo " uploaded proprietary software and pre-release software updates for Windows 8 RT as well as the Microsoft Activation Server Software Development Kit (SDK) to his personal SkyDrive account in August 2012. " Kibkalo not only leaked the secret screenshots of Windows 8 , but also provided the information about ' activation of Windows ' that helped the crackers to create a keygen for