Search results for encrypted | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

Twitter has been adopting new trends at a snail's pace. But it's better to be late than never. Since 2013 people were speculating that Twitter will bring end-to-end encryption to its direct messages, and finally almost 5 years after the encryption era began, the company is now testing an end-to-end encrypted messaging on Twitter. Dubbed " Secret Conversation ," the feature has been spotted in the latest version of Android application package (APK) for Twitter by Jane Manchun Wong, a computer science student at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. End-to-end encryption allows users to send and receive messages in a way that no one, be it an FBI agent with a warrant, hacker or even the service itself, can intercept them. However, it seems like the Secret Conversation feature has currently been available only to a small number of users for testing. So, if you are one of those lucky ones, you will be able to send end-to-end encrypted Secret Conversation thro

The Dutch police arrested four suspects on Tuesday on suspicion of money laundering and involvement in selling custom encrypted BlackBerry and Android smartphones to criminals. The Dutch National High Tech Crime Unit (NHTCU), dedicated team within the Dutch National Police Agency aims to investigate advanced forms of cyber crimes, carried out investigation and found that the phone brand "PGPsafe" was selling customized BlackBerry and Android smartphones with the secure PGP-encrypted network to the "possible criminal end users." PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) is an open source end-to-end encryption standard that can be used to cryptographically sign emails, documents, files, or entire disk partitions in order to protect them from being spied on. Selling custom security-focused encrypted phones does not involve any crime itself, but Dutch police have discovered evidence, which indicates over the years such phones had been sold to organized criminals involved in

Super Low RPO with Continuous Data Protection: Dial Back to Just Seconds Before an Attack Zerto , a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company, can help you detect and recover from ransomware in near real-time. This solution leverages continuous data protection (CDP) to ensure all workloads have the lowest recovery point objective (RPO) possible. The most valuable thing about CDP is that it does not use snapshots, agents, or any other periodic data protection methodology. Zerto has no impact on production workloads and can achieve RPOs in the region of 5-15 seconds across thousands of virtual machines simultaneously. For example, the environment in the image below has nearly 1,000 VMs being protected with an average RPO of just six seconds! Application-Centric Protection: Group Your VMs to Gain Application-Level Control   You can protect your VMs with the Zerto application-centric approach using Virtual Protection Groups (VPGs). This logical grouping of VMs ensures that your whole applica

The Dutch police have managed to decrypt a number of PGP-encrypted messages sent by criminals using their custom security-focused PGP BlackBerry phones and identified several criminals in an ongoing investigation. PGP, or Pretty Good Privacy, an open source end-to-end encryption standard that can be used to cryptographically sign emails, files, documents, or entire disk partitions in order to protect them from being spied on. You'll be surprised to know how the police actually decrypted those PGP messages. In April last year, the Dutch Police arrested a 36-year-old man on suspicion of money laundering and involvement in selling customized BlackBerry Phones with the secure PGP-encrypted network to criminals that were involved in organized crimes. At the time, the police also seized a server belonging to Ennetcom, the company owned by Danny Manupassa, which contains data of end-to-end encrypted communications belong to a large number of criminal groups. Later, in Januar

On Tuesday, the Dutch Police arrested a 36-year-old man, Danny Manupassa , on suspicion of money laundering and involvement in selling encrypted smartphones to criminals. Manupassa owns a company called Ennetcom , which provides customized Blackberry Phones with the secure PGP-encrypted network. Reportedly, Ennetcom sold nearly 19,000 encrypted cell phones at 1500 euros each in last few years. Police have seized Ennetcom servers based in the Netherlands and Canada and pulled them offline. The seized servers contain data of encrypted communications belong to a large number of criminals. According to a press release , the investigation is ongoing and seized data from the servers will be analyzed soon. Police believe this operation would result in collecting evidence required for solving numerous ongoing investigations involving drug trafficking, assassinations, and other serious crimes. Moreover, Canadian Police is also involved in this investigation and surprisingly, i

The Edward Snowden revelations triggered a large-scale movement worldwide towards deploying encryption across the Internet for secure services, which is something the government agencies like NSA and GCHQ have targeted repeatedly, as exemplified by abruptly shutting down Lavabit , a Texas-based Encrypted Email Service. In response, a group of young developers at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) has launched a new email service which offers end-to-end encryption and securing communications that could put an end to government snooping and will keep away our personal data from prying eyes. PROTONMAIL - AN END-to-END ENCRYPTED EMAIL This new encrypted email service, called ProtonMail is a super-secure email service created in collaboration with the scientists from Harvard, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the European research lab CERN. ProtonMail offers a user-friendly experience with full "end-to-end" encryption . It encrypts the data on the browser

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

Today, most Network Detection and Response (NDR) solutions rely on traffic mirroring and Deep Packet Inspection (DPI). Traffic mirroring is typically deployed on a single-core switch to provide a copy of the network traffic to a sensor that uses DPI to thoroughly analyze the payload. While this approach provides detailed analysis, it requires large amounts of processing power and is blind when it comes to encrypted network traffic. Metadata Analysis has been specifically developed to overcome these limitations. By utilizing metadata for analysis, network communications can be observed at any collection point and be enriched by the information providing insights about encrypted communication. Network Detection and Response (NDR) solutions have become crucial to reliably monitor and protect network operations. However, as network traffic becomes encrypted and data volumes continue to increase, most traditional NDR solutions are reaching their limits. This begs the question: What detect

Matrix—the organization behind an open source project that offers a protocol for secure and decentralized real-time communication—has suffered a massive cyber attack after unknown attackers gained access to the servers hosting its official website and data. Hackers defaced Matrix's website, and also stole unencrypted private messages, password hashes, access tokens, as well as GPG keys the project maintainers used for signing packages. The cyber attack eventually forced the organization to shut down its entire production infrastructure for several hours and log all users out of Matrix.org. So, if you have an account with Matrix.org service and do not have backups of your encryption keys or were not using server-side encryption key backup, unfortunately, you will not be able to read your entire encrypted conversation history. Matrix is an open source end-to-end encrypted messaging protocol that allows anyone to self-host a messaging service on their own servers, powering

In a joint operation, European and British law enforcement agencies recently arrested hundreds of alleged drug dealers and other criminals after infiltrating into a global network of an encrypted chatting app that was used to plot drug deals, money laundering, extortions, and even murders. Dubbed EncroChat , the top-secret encrypted communication app comes pre-installed on a customized Android-based handset with GPS, camera, and microphone functionality removed for anonymity and security. EncroChat phones aim to securely exchange data and messages with pre-loaded apps for secure instant messaging, VOIP calling, self destruct messages, and includes a 'kill code' functionality to let users remotely wipe complete data in times of trouble. The handset and its services, which cost around £1,500 for a six-month subscription, had 60,000 users worldwide and approximately 10,000 users in the United Kingdom. "EncroChat phones were presented to customers as guaranteeing pe

In last few years, we saw an innumerable rise in ransomware threats ranging from Cryptowall to Locky ransomware discovered last week. Now, another genre of ransomware had been branched out from the family of CTB-Locker Ransomware with an update to infect Websites. The newly transformed ransomware dubbed " CTB-Locker for Websites " exclusively hijacks the websites by locking out its data, which would only be decrypted after making a payment of 0.4 BTC. This seems to be the very first time when any ransomware has actually defaced a website in an attempt to convince its administrator to comply with the ransom demand. However, the infected website admins can unlock any 2 files by the random generator for free as a proof of decryption key works. Here's How CTB-Locker for Websites Ransomware Works Lawrence explained that CTB-Locker ransomware replaces the index page ( the original index.php or index.html ) of the servers hosting websites with the

The terrible terrorist attacks in France forced the British Prime Minister David Cameron to consider banning the popular encrypted online messaging apps like Snapchat , CryptoCat ,  WhatsApp and Apple's iMessage unless the companies don't give the UK government backdoor access to their encrypted communications. Speaking at a public event in the UK this morning, Cameron said that if he wins the next election and re-elected, he would seek to ban the encrypted communication apps as part of his plans for new surveillance powers in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo shootings in Paris . The British Prime Minister said the Paris terror attacks, including the one last week on satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo, outlined the need for greater access on the encrypted communications. In his remarks, the attacks were aimed at messaging apps that encrypt messages to secure users' communications. " The attacks in Paris demonstrated the scale of the threat that we face and th

Simple Mail Transfer Protocol or SMTP has easily exploitable security loopholes. Email routing protocols were designed in a time when cryptographic technology was at a nascent stage (e.g., the de-facto protocol for email transfer, SMTP, is nearly 40 years old now), and therefore security was not an important consideration.  As a result, in most email systems encryption is still opportunistic, which implies that if the opposite connection does not support TLS, it gets rolled back to an unencrypted one delivering messages in plaintext.  To mitigate SMTP security problems,  MTA-STS  (Mail Transfer Agent Strict Transport Security) is the recommended email authentication standard. It enforces TLS in order to allow MTAs to send emails securely. This means that it will only allow mail from MTAs that support TLS encryption, and it will only allow mail to go to MX hosts that support TLS encryption. In case an encrypted connection cannot be negotiated between communicating SMTP servers, the

Encryption is one of the major steps to be taken by every big technology giant in order to protect its users over the Internet, and, among those, Google has set an admirable example by gradually moving all of its online services to use strong HTTPS encryption. So far, Google encrypted email by switching its Gmail service to HTTPS, Google encrypted data communicating between its servers, Google gives priority to encrypted websites in its search results, as well as Google search also uses HTTPS . Now: To help protect privacy and security of its users, the search engine giant is moving its advertising platforms to HTTPS , as well. Google has already moved its YouTube advertisements to HTTPS as of the end of last year, but Google has a widely spread ad network that serves ads to Hundreds of Millions of users across the Globe every day. However, the content of those ads are mainly controlled by the advertisers, and we cannot predict their intention. To better comba

In this era of Global surveillance, we all are worried about the privacy of our communication and sensitive data. There is no guarantee that our data is not being snooped on, but there is a solution — PGP (Pretty Good Privacy). PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) is more than 20 years old technology but is yet not widely adopted. PGP is an open source end-to-end encryption standard to encrypt e-mails, protecting you against companies, governments, or criminals spying on your Internet connection. But... ...the tool is too complicated for most of the people to implement and use. However, Facebook is now encouraging its users to use PGP and communicate by sending encrypted emails, adding the popular OpenPGP email encryption standard as an extra layer of security for the cautious. According to the latest announcement , you can now upload your Public PGP key to your Facebook profile so that anyone with your public key can send you encrypted emails. By giving such option to

WhatsApp and Facebook have so far the largest end-to-end encrypted video calling network of all, but now another popular end-to-end encrypted messaging app recommended by whistleblower Edward Snowden is ready to give them a really tough competition. The Signal app, which is widely considered the most secure of all other encrypted messaging apps, released video calling feature on Tuesday for both Android and iOS in a new update. Developed by open source software group Open Whisper System, Signal is a free and open source messaging application specially designed for Android and iOS users to make secure and encrypted messages and voice calls. Even the Signal Protocol powers the end-to-end encryption built into WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and Google Allo's Incognito mode as well. Signal has already been providing fully end-to-end encrypted chat and voice calling features, but the newly added feature will make it even easier for privacy conscious people to convey their inf

When you're online, you expose your vulnerability to malicious virus that have been growing in virulence and ferocity over the last few years.  Among home PC users, you may think that you protected from malicious software by Installing an effective, trusted antivirus solution, but most if the Antivirus solutions still it merely finds and removes any known threats. But what if someday you turn on your system and you will find a pop up window with a warning that says " Your system is Locked and Important drives are encrypted and there is no way out unless you will not Pay fine ". This is what Ransomware malware does to your system. Ransomware is the most serious emerging threat in the virtual world of computing devices. Ransomware is a kind of malware which is designed to Block access to the computing system or can lock your system until an amount of money is paid through Internet banking. Ransomware is usually installed when you open a malicious atta