surveillance | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

So far, we all are well aware of the fact that Chinese have had a past filled with cases of Cyber Crime. China is the world's largest exporter of IT goods, but it has been criticized by many countries due to suspected backdoors in its products, including United States which has banned its several major government departments, including NASA, Justice and Commerce Departments, from purchasing Chinese products and computer technology. The new exposure indicates the same. Chinese Government is running a man-in-the-middle (MitM) cyber attack campaign on SSL encrypted traffic between the country's education network and Google. In an effort to monitor its users of China Education and Research Network (CERNET) , Chinese authorities has started intercepting encrypted traffic to and from Google's servers, the non-profit organization GreatFire reported on Thursday. However, just like many other foreign websites, Google is blocked in China. Because Google is one of the vast and v

The United States National Security Agency ( NSA ) is using a massive information sharing platform that allows multiple law enforcement agencies to infiltrate more than 850 billion communications records detailing e-mails, phone calls, instant messages, and phone geolocation, according to the classified documents disclosed by former intelligence contractor Edward Snowden. The NSA has built ICREACH, a Google-like search engine that secretly provides data — metadata of both foreigners and citizens on US soil — to nearly two dozen U.S. government agencies, including the DEA, FBI, and CIA, The Intercept reported . Many of those surveilled data had not been accused of any illegal activity as well. But until now, it is unclear that exact what mechanism was used by the US intelligence agency to share the massive amounts of surveillance data, as well as number of government agencies it was sharing information with. Although, the classified documents show that the FBI and the D

It comes as no surprise that today's cyber threats are orders of magnitude more complex than those of the past. And the ever-evolving tactics that attackers use demand the adoption of better, more holistic and consolidated ways to meet this non-stop challenge. Security teams constantly look for ways to reduce risk while improving security posture, but many approaches offer piecemeal solutions – zeroing in on one particular element of the evolving threat landscape challenge – missing the forest for the trees.  In the last few years, Exposure Management has become known as a comprehensive way of reigning in the chaos, giving organizations a true fighting chance to reduce risk and improve posture. In this article I'll cover what Exposure Management is, how it stacks up against some alternative approaches and why building an Exposure Management program should be on  your 2024 to-do list. What is Exposure Management?  Exposure Management is the systematic identification, evaluation,

The United States National Intelligence Agency ( NSA ) or the largest Internet giant Google - According to you, which one is the worse? NSA? But, according to the popular Media tycoon Rupert Murdoch ( @rupertmurdoch ), Google is worse than the NSA. Murdoch, founder of global media holding company News Corporation - the world's second-largest media conglomerate, currently lives in Australia and is once more making the sort of news he'd prefer to be remembered for. The 83-year old tweeted on Sunday, in which he labeled Google worse than the National Security Agency (NSA). The missive was as follows: " NSA privacy invasion bad, but nothing compared to Google. " NSA privacy invasion bad, but nothing compared to Google. — Rupert Murdoch (@rupertmurdoch) August 17, 2014 In past, Murdoch accused Google of stealing the content of his newspapers (yet never putting in place a robots.txt file that would prevent search engines crawling it) and has always criticis

After the allegations that the U.S. National Security Agency ( NSA ) not only conducted mass surveillance on German citizens, but also spied on German Chancellor Angela Merkel's own personal mobile phone for years, surveillance has become a big issue for Germany. So big, that Germany itself started spying on U.S. According to the reports came from the German media on Friday, the German foreign intelligence agency known as Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND) hacked into at least one call during Hillary Clinton's time in office as US Secretary of State. However, the time and location have not been disclosed, but Clinton's phone calls were interrupted during her phone conversations, according to the joint investigation done by German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung and German regional public broadcasters NDR and WDR. Although, after the story broke, some sources from the German government have denied the allegations of Clinton's phone calls interception and said that t

Majority of my articles are related to government spying, privacy and security issues of your online stuffs and also measures that you can adopt in protecting yourself from being spied on. But, your all efforts will soon be of no use - someone is about to secretly track your every footstep. Google will soon get an eye in the space that will be enough powerful to see your face, thanks to the new satellite, WorldView-3 satellite, which is scheduled to launch later today (11:30 a.m. PST) from California's Vandenberg Air Force Base atop an Atlas 5 rocket by Lockheed Martin Commercial Launch Services, according to Motherboard . DIGITAL EYE IN SPACE WorldView-3 satellite is developed by a US-based company DigitalGlobe , one of the world's leading global content providers of high-resolution earth imagery, supplying most online mapping services to the US government and NASA. The satellite contains : Exelis-built 1.1 meter aperture telescope  Primary visible/SWIR sensor B

The ultra secure NSA-Proof Blackphone titled as, " world's first Smartphone which places privacy and control directly in the hands of its users, " has been rooted within 5 minutes at the BlackHat security conference in Las Vegas this weekend. Blackphone , a joint venture between encrypted communications firm Silent Circle and Spanish Smartphone maker Geeksphone , has a fully customized version of Android known as PrivatOS and pre-installed with lots of privacy-enabled applications, which claims to offer its users a high-end security at consumer level. A security researcher with twitter handle @TeamAndIRC took only 5 minutes to achieve root access on the Blackphone without having the need to unlock the device' bootloader. The hacker even mocked Blackphone's team by saying that "It is apparent no one ran CTS [ compatibility test suite ] on this device." The so-called " secure " Android phone that was promising security given the fact that its basically a suite of secure

FinFisher spyware, a spyware application used by government and law enforcement agencies for the purpose of surveillance, appears to have been hacked earlier this week and a string of files has been dumped on the Internet. The highly secret surveillance software called " FinFisher " sold by British company Gamma International can secretly monitors computers by turning ON webcams, recording everything the user types with a keylogger, and intercepting Skype calls, copying files, and much more. A hacker has claimed on Reddit and Twitter that they'd infiltrated the network of one of the world's top surveillance & motoring technology company Gamma International, creator of FinFisher spyware, and has exposed 40GB of internal data detailing the operations and effectiveness of the FinFisher suite of surveillance platforms. The leaked information was published both on a parody Gamma Group Twitter account ( @GammaGroupPR ) and Reditt by the hacker that began publishi

Just few days after the announcement that Russian government will pay almost 4 million ruble (approximately equal to $111,000) to the one who can devise a reliable technology to decrypt data sent over the Tor , now the government wants something which is really tough. APPLE & SAP, HAND OVER YOUR SOURCE CODES Russian government has asked Apple to provide the access to the company's source code in an effort to assure its iOS devices and Macintoshes aren't vulnerable to spying. Not just this, the government has demanded the same from SAP as well, which is an enterprise software that manages business operations and customer relationships. Russia proposed this idea last Tuesday when Communications Minister Nikolai Nikiforov met SAP's Russian managing director Vyacheslav Orekhov , and Apple's Russian general manager Peter Engrob Nielsen, and suggested that both the companies give Russian government access to their source code. APPLE iOS BACKDOOR CONTROVERSIES The idea

A well known iPhone hacker and forensic scientist has unearthed a range of undocumented and hidden functions in Apple iOS mobile operating system that make it possible for a hacker to completely bypass the backup encryption on iOS devices and can steal large amounts of users' personal data without entering passwords or personal identification numbers. Data forensics expert named Jonathan Zdziarski has posted the slides ( PDF ) titled " Identifying Backdoors, Attack Points, and Surveillance Mechanisms in iOS Devices " showing his findings, from his talk at the Hackers On Planet Earth (HOPE X) conference held in New York on Friday. Jonathan Zdziarski, better identified as the hacker " NerveGas " in the iPhone development community, worked as dev-team member on many of the early iOS jailbreaks and is also the author of five iOS-related O'Reilly books including " Hacking and Securing iOS Applications ." The results of his overall research on the iOS

The 31-year-old former US National Security Agency (NSA) contractor Edward Snowden has warned that during surveillance, among other things, NSA system administrators also intercepted and routinely passed the photos of people in "sexually compromising" situations among other NSA employees. In a video interview, NSA whistleblower speaks with the Guardian editor-in-chief Alan Rusbridger and reporter Ewen MacAskill in Moscow, which was then published by the Guardian on Thursday. WOOOH!! ATTRACTIVE NUDIE PICS - PASS IT ON TO BILL TOO " You've got young enlisted guys, 18 to 22 years old. They've suddenly been thrust into a position of extraordinary responsibility where they now have access to all of your private records, " he said in the video interview. " During the course of their daily work they stumble upon something that is completely unrelated to their work in any sort of necessary sense – for example, an intimate photo of someone o

Botnets - a secretly compromised networks of ordinary home and office computers with rogue software or "malware" that are controlled by an individual criminal or a group - has dramatically increased over the past several years and are considered to pose the biggest threat to the Internet. Cyber criminals have brushed-up their hacking skills and are using Botnets as a cyber weapon to carry out multiple crimes like DDoS attacks (distributed denial of service), mass spamming, page rank and advertising revenue manipulation, mining bitcoins, cyber espionage and surveillance etc. 18 BOTNET INFECTIONS PER SECOND According to the director of FBI's cyber division, Joseph Demarest, Botnet has become one of the biggest enemies of the Internet today, and therefore its impact has been significant. Yesterday during a hearing before a U.S. Senate committee, he says that every second 18 computers worldwide are part of botnet armies, which amounts to over 500 million comp

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

If anybody says that NSA is watching you, nobody surprises. But, a large scale investigation published by Washington Post indicates that the scope of surveillance carried out by US National Security Agency was massive even than the expectation of you and me. Just because you are an ordinary person doesn't mean that you are safe, as 90 percent of messages intercepted by the NSA were not foreign targets but ordinary users , like you and me, from the United States and abroad. Interestingly, your all those " startingly intimate " data and personal photographs had been left in plain view on NSA databases for someone else, according to a new report in The Washington Post published Sunday detailing a four-month review of about 160,000 intercepted e-mail and text message conversations involving 11,000 online accounts provided by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden . The National Security Agency has gathered nearly half of the files which contains names, email addresses or other details be

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

We all are aware of the National Security Agency's (NSA) mass surveillance program to track non-Americans. Thanks to former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, who provided confidential documents about the widely spread surveillance programs conducted by the government intelligence agency such as NSA and GCHQ. A recent story about NSA surveillance broke when a German public broadcaster ARD published that the Agency is using its surveillance program XKeyScore to target users who use encryption and traffic anonymizing software, including Tor Network for anonymous Web browsing and Linux-based Tails operating system in an effort to keep tracks of people outside the US. XKeyScore is a powerful NSA surveillance program that collects and sorts intercepted data, which came to limelight in documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden last summer, but the greater detail in an investigation conducted by American security expert and Tor Project member Jacob Appelbaum , Aaron Gibsom, and

After the wide chain of scandals over US global snooping that seriously damaged the trust on the top U.S. Tech companies, Google and Yahoo! came forward and took initiative to provide more secure, encrypted and NSA-proofed service in an effort to gain their reputation again among its users. Now, Microsoft has also announced several improvements to the encryption used in its online cloud services in order to protect them from cyber criminals, bad actors and prying eyes. The company effort detailed in a blog entry by Matt Thomlinson, Microsoft's Vice President of Trustworthy Computing Security. MICROSOFT'S COMMITMENT Last December, Microsoft promised to protect its users data from government snooping by expanding encryption across its services, reinforcing legal protections for its customers' data and enhancing the transparency of its software code, making it easier for the customers to reassure themselves that its products contain no backdoors. Yesterday's announc