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Are you safe from the critical bug Heartbleed?? OpenSSL- the encryption technology used by millions of websites to encrypt the communication and is also used to protect our sensitive data such as e-mails, passwords or banking information.  But a tiny, but most critical flaw called " Heartbleed " in the widely used OpenSSL opened doors for the cyber criminals to extract sensitive data from the system memory. WHAT IS HEARTBLEED? SSL and TLS are known to provide communication security and privacy over the Internet for applications such as websites, email, instant messaging (IM), including some virtual private networks (VPNs). Heartbleed is a critical bug ( CVE-2014-0160 ) is in the popular OpenSSL cryptographic software library, that actually resides in the OpenSSL's implementation of the TLS (transport layer security protocols) and DTLS ( Datagram TLS ) heartbeat extension (RFC6520). This bug was independently discovered by a team of security enginee...

Passwords are the first line of defense against cyber criminals. It is the most vital secret of every activity we do over the internet and also a final check to get into any of your user account, whether it is your bank account, email account, shopping cart account or any other account you have. We all know storing passwords in clear text in your database is ridiculous. Many desktop applications and almost every web service including, blogs, forums eventually need to store a collection of user data and the passwords, that has to be stored using a hashing algorithm. Cryptographic hash algorithms MD5, SHA1, SHA256, SHA512, SHA-3 are general purpose hash functions, designed to calculate a digest of huge amounts of data in as short a time as possible. Hashing is the greatest way for protecting passwords and considered to be pretty safe for ensuring the integrity of data or password. The benefit of hashing is that if someone steals the database with hashed passwords, they o...

It is advised to those who are running their web server with OpenSSL 1.0.1 through 1.0, then it is significantly important that you update to OpenSSL 1.0.1g immediately or as soon as possible.  As this afternoon, an extremely critical programming flaw in the OpenSSL has been discovered that apparently exposed the cryptographic keys and private data from some of the most important sites and services on the Internet. The bug was independently discovered by security firm Codenomicon along with a Google Security engineer. The flaw is in the popular OpenSSL cryptographic software library and its weakness allows cyber criminals to steal the information protected, under normal conditions, by the SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) or TLS (Transport Security Layer) encryption used to secure the Internet. OpenSSL is an open-source implementation of the SSL and TLS protocols. The core library implements the basic cryptographic functions that enable SSL and TLS encryption. Mostly eve...

Yahoo! The one who enabled the HTTPS connections by default from the beginning of this year, the one who encrypts traffic moving between its data centers from 31st March , now has been accused of harming every  Mailing List  across the world. Experts from the Internet Engineering Council John R. Levine , specialized in email infrastructure and spam filtering claimed this in the post titled “ Yahoo breaks every mailing list in the world including the IETF's. ” on Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). Yahoo has established a new rule to automatically exclude Yahoo users from the mailing list, because Mailing List server does not comply with DMARC requirements and they strongly modifies each email. He talks about an “ emerging e-mail security scheme ” known as Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting and Conformance (DMARC) that has been implemented by almost every largest email service providers, including Gmail, Hotmail, Comcast, and Yahoo. DMARC helps to reduce ...

When we talk about security, only one thing cames to our mind – ENCRYPTION . Encryption of our online messages, encryption of our emails, encryption of our voice call, encryption of our every personal data and communication that we have to keep away from cybercriminals and, if I am not wrong, also from government intelligence agencies, such as NSA and GCHQ. Eventually, secure encryption is mandatory need of our modern Internet, Mobile communication, financial transactions, network sensors, car keys, and many more. But, government agencies like NSA are trying hard to break every effort that we adopt to secure our personal and confidential data.  NSA is trying to develop a futuristic super computer called ' Quantum computer ' that could be capable of breaking almost every kind of Encryption used to protect banks, medical, business including top-secret information held by government around the world. NEARLY UNBREAKABLE ENCRYPTION So, need for new encryption schem...

Well, we all are very conscious, when it comes to the security of our personal information, security of our financial data and security of everything related to us. In the world of Smart devices where our Smartphones knows more than we know ourselves. To keep our device protected from harmful viruses, malware or spyware, we totally depend on various security products such as antivirus, firewall and privacy guard apps, that we typically install from some trusted sources, Google Play Store. Most Antivirus apps are available to download for free, but some of them are paid with extra premium features like advance firewall protection, anti theft, App Locker or Cloud Backup etc. But do you believe that just because you're downloading an application from an official app store and also if its a premium paid version, you're safe from malicious software? Think twice. PAID, BUT FAKE ANTIVIRUS APP In Past, Mobile Security Researchers had spotted numerous fake mobile anti...

Tomorrow, 8th April could be a sad day for all those who are still using Windows XP, as it is an official assassination day of it, but there is also a good news that Microsoft is going to stop charging for its Windows Operating System on on the devices with screens smaller than nine inches. Yes, Free a Windows OS for the  Internet of Things (IoTs) ,  such as Mobile Devices, Smart thermostats, Smart TVs, wearable devices etc., that was announced by Microsoft at Build 2014 conference on Wednesday. “ To accelerate the creation of great mobile devices running Windows and grow our number of users, we announced today that Windows will be available for $0 to hardware partners for Windows Phones and tablets smaller than 9” in size, ” said Terry Myerson, executive vice president, OS Group at Microsoft and he also added that it will include a one-year subscription to Office 365. FREE, BUT NOT OPEN SOURCE Free Windows , means the manufacturers of small tablets, phones ...