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A more dramatic revelation of 2018—an outsider can secretly eavesdrop on your private end-to-end encrypted group chats on WhatsApp and Signal messaging apps. Considering protection against three types of attackers—malicious user, network attacker, and malicious server—an end-to-end encryption protocol plays a vital role in securing instant messaging services. The primary purpose of having end-to-end encryption is to stop trusting the intermediate servers in such a way that no one, not even the company or the server that transmits the data, can decrypt your messages or abuse its centralized position to manipulate the service. In order words—assuming the worst-case scenario—a corrupt company employee should not be able to eavesdrop on the end-to-end encrypted communication by any mean. However, so far even the popular end-to-end encrypted messaging services, like WhatsApp, Threema and Signal, have not entirely achieved zero-knowledge system. Researchers from Ruhr-Universität

In cryptography, Block ciphers such as AES or DES are a symmetric key cipher operating on fixed-length groups of bits, called blocks, and typically operate on large input data blocks i.e. 64 or more than 128, 256 bits. Block cipher encrypts Plain-text to Cipher-text by applying cryptographic key and algorithm to a block of data at once as a group rather than to one bit at a time, so that identical blocks of text do not get encrypted the same way. However, some applications need smaller blocks, and possibly non-binary blocks. So, to fulfil this need Cisco is providing a  small block cipher , what it calls "FNR" (Flexible Naor and Reingold), but currently it is an experimental block cipher rather a production software. Sashank Dara , software engineer at the security technology group Cisco , says in a detailed explanation that FNR is a flexible length small domain block cipher for encrypting objects that works without the need for padding, as happens in the traditional

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

Two Researchers have discovered a couple of vulnerabilities in Signal , the popular end-to-end encrypted messaging app recommended by whistleblower Edward Snowden. One of those vulnerabilities could allow potential attackers to add random data to the attachments of encrypted messages sent by Android users, while another bug could allow hackers to remotely crash vulnerable devices. The vulnerabilities have just been patched, but the updated version of Signal is yet available on the Github open source repository, and not on the Google's official Play Store for Android apps, leaving millions of privacy conscious people vulnerable to attacks. That means, if you have installed Signal messaging app via Google Play Store, like other millions of Android users, you are still vulnerable to hackers. Developed by open source software group Open Whisper System, Signal is a free and open source messaging application specifically designed for Android and iOS users to make secure and e

German security researchers claim to have found a new practical attack against virtual machines (VMs) protected using AMD's Secure Encrypted Virtualization (SEV) technology that could allow attackers to recover plaintext memory data from guest VMs. AMD's Secure Encrypted Virtualization (SEV) technology, which comes with EPYC line of processors, is a hardware feature that encrypts the memory of each VM in a way that only the guest itself can access the data, protecting it from other VMs/containers and even from an untrusted hypervisor. Discovered by researchers from the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied and Integrated Security in Munich, the page-fault side channel attack, dubbed SEVered, takes advantage of lack in the integrity protection of the page-wise encryption of the main memory, allowing a malicious hypervisor to extract the full content of the main memory in plaintext from SEV-encrypted VMs. Here's the outline of the SEVered attack, as briefed in the paper :

Three design and multiple implementation flaws have been disclosed in IEEE 802.11 technical standard that undergirds Wi-Fi, potentially enabling an adversary to take control over a system and plunder confidential data. Called  FragAttacks  (short for FRgmentation and AGgregation Attacks), the weaknesses impact all Wi-Fi security protocols, from Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP) all the way to Wi-Fi Protected Access 3 (WPA3), thus virtually putting almost every wireless-enabled device at risk of attack. "An adversary that is within radio range of a victim can abuse these vulnerabilities to steal user information or attack devices," Mathy Vanhoef, a security academic at New York University Abu Dhabi, said. "Experiments indicate that every Wi-Fi product is affected by at least one vulnerability and that most products are affected by several vulnerabilities." IEEE 802.11 provides the basis for all modern devices using the Wi-Fi family of network protocols, allowing lap

There is a good news for all Security researchers, Penetration testers and Hackers. The developers of one of the most advance open source operating system for penetration testing, ' KALI Linux ' have announced yesterday the release of its latest version of Kali Linux 1.0.7 with some interesting features. Kali Linux is an open source Debian-based distribution for penetration testing and forensics that is maintained and funded by Offensive Security, a provider of world-class information security training and penetration testing services. In the beginning of this year, Offensive Security released Kali Linux 1.0.6 with Kernel version 3.12, and also added the Self Destruct feature that allows Kali users to encrypt the full hard disk to make the data inaccessible in an emergency case by entering a secret password at boot time. This latest Kali Linux 1.0.7 version added some more features to the last version, along with many new penetration testing and hacking too

I think you haven't forgotten the massive data breach occurred at TARGET , the third-largest U.S. Retailer during last Christmas Holidays. People shop during Black Friday sales in which over 40 million Credit & Debit cards were stolen, used to pay for purchases at its 1500 stores nationwide in the U.S. TARGET officially confirmed that the encrypted PINs (personal identification numbers) of payment cards were stolen in the breach, since the stolen pin data were in encrypted form so they were confident that the information was " Safe and Secure ", because PIN cannot be decrypted without the right key. The Breach was caused by a malware attack, that allowed the criminals to manipulate Point of Sale (PoS) systems without raising red flags and the card numbers compromised in the breach are now flooding underground forums for sale. Possibly a group of Eastern European cyber criminals who specializes in attacks on merchants and Point-of-Sale terminals either attached a physical device

Facebook on Friday said it's extending end-to-end encryption (E2EE) for voice and video calls in Messenger, along with testing a new opt-in setting that will turn on end-to-end encryption for Instagram DMs. "The content of your messages and calls in an end-to-end encrypted conversation is protected from the moment it leaves your device to the moment it reaches the receiver's device," Messenger's Ruth Kricheli  said  in a post. "This means that nobody else, including Facebook, can see or listen to what's sent or said. Keep in mind, you can report an end-to-end encrypted message to us if something's wrong." The social media behemoth said E2EE is becoming the industry standard for improved privacy and security. It's worth noting that the company's flagship messaging service gained support for E2EE in text chats in 2016, when it added a " secret conversation " option to its app, while communications on its sister platform What

New research has disclosed what's being called a security vulnerability in Microsoft 365 that could be exploited to infer message contents due to the use of a broken cryptographic algorithm. "The [Office 365 Message Encryption] messages are encrypted in insecure Electronic Codebook ( ECB ) mode of operation," Finnish cybersecurity company WithSecure  said  in a report published last week. Office 365 Message Encryption (OME) is a security mechanism used to send and receive encrypted email messages between users inside and outside an organization without revealing anything about the communications themselves. A consequence of the newly disclosed issue is that rogue third-parties gaining access to the encrypted email messages may be able to decipher the messages, effectively breaking confidentiality protections. Electronic Codebook is one of the simplest modes of encryption wherein each message block is encoded separately by a key, meaning identical plaintext blocks wi

There's an extraordinary malware making rock-n-roll over the Internet and if you are one of the unlucky folks to cross its path, then it could make your computer unusable and you have to pay a few hundred Dollars to retrieve your important data back. We have warned our readers in many  previous articles about a nasty piece of Ransomware malware called ' CryptoLocker ', which is targeting computers running the Microsoft Windows operating system. The CryptoLocker  Ransomware encrypts the files on a victim's computer and issues an ultimatum - Pay up or lose your data . Users who are getting infected with CryptoLocker can see a message informing them that their computer is locked up and their files encrypted. It then asks them to make a ransom payment, which typically ranges between $100 and $700 or 2 Bitcoins , to get their files back. Just yesterday I noticed on a forum that the criminals behind the CryptoLocker malware has recently launched a dedicated  Cry

In this post-Snowden era of mass surveillance, being out-of-reach from the spying eyes really doesn't mean they can not get you. So, if you are concerned about your data privacy and are actually searching for a peer-to-peer encrypted messaging service, then it's time to get one. " Otr.to " — an open-source peer-to-peer browser-based messaging application that offers secure communication by making use of "Off-the-Record" (OTR) Messaging , a cryptographic protocol for encrypting instant messaging applications. OTR (Off-the-Record) is one of the most secure cryptographic protocol that offers strong encryption for real time communications i.e. Chatting and Messaging services. Off-the-Record simply means that there is nothing on the record, so nobody can prove that two parties had an Internet chat conversation or said anything specific. ORT.to uses WebRTC to exchange messages via decentralized peer-to-peer communication , which means chat logs bet

Meta Platforms on Monday announced that it has started to expand global testing of end-to-end encryption ( E2EE ) in Messenger chats by default. "Over the next few months, more people will continue to see some of their chats gradually being upgraded with an extra layer of protection provided by end-to-end encryption," Meta's Melissa Miranda  said . The social media behemoth said it intends to notify users in select individual chat threads as the security feature is enabled, while emphasizing that the process of choosing and upgrading the conversations to support E2EE is random. "It's designed to be random so that there isn't a negative impact on our infrastructure and people's chat experience," Miranda further explained. Along with flipping the switch on E2EE, Meta has also added more features into its encrypted chat experience, including support for themes, custom emojis and reactions, group profile photos, link previews, and active status. T

A security researcher has discovered a critical vulnerability in some of the world's most popular and widely used email encryption clients that use OpenPGP standard and rely on GnuPG for encrypting and digitally signing messages. The disclosure comes almost a month after researchers revealed a series of flaws, dubbed eFail , in PGP and S/Mime encryption tools that could allow attackers to reveal encrypted emails in plaintext , affecting a variety of email programs, including Thunderbird, Apple Mail, and Outlook. Software developer Marcus Brinkmann discovered that an input sanitization vulnerability, which he dubbed SigSpoof , makes it possible for attackers to fake digital signatures with someone's public key or key ID, without requiring any of the private or public keys involved. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2018-12020 , affects popular email applications including GnuPG, Enigmail, GPGTools and python-gnupg, and have now been patched in their latest available so

Yet another war on Encryption! France and Germany are asking the European Union for new laws that would require mobile messaging services to decrypt secure communications on demand and make them available to law enforcement agencies. French and German interior ministers this week said their governments should be able to access content on encrypted services in order to fight terrorism , the Wall Street Journal reported . French interior minister Bernard Cazeneuve went on to say that the encrypted messaging apps like Telegram and WhatsApp " constitute a challenge during investigations, " making it difficult for law enforcement to conduct surveillance on suspected terrorists. Also Read:  How to Send and Receive End-to-End Encrypted Emails The proposal calls on the European Commission to draft a law that would " impose obligations on operators who show themselves to be non-cooperative, in particular when it comes to withdrawing illegal content or decrypting me

We all have Internet-connected smartphones in our pockets, but it's very hard to find a place on Internet to feel secure and private. No doubt, there is data Encryption on cell phones, but what's the use if it is cracked by hackers or law enforcement? What if the encrypted files don't exist in the first place for law enforcement to decrypt it? That's the motive behind DroidStealth , a new Android encryption tool that not only protects sensitive data with obfuscation, but ​also hides its existence on your phone as if it has nothing to hide. DroidStealth Android app has been developed by security researchers from Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands and would come as a windfall to both the privacy lovers and the cyber criminals. STEALTH LOGIN MECHANISM DroidStealth Android encryption tool creates a hidden folder in your phone in which it stores your all encrypted files. The app itself can be opened by simply dialing a phone number of any length which is

The government has once again started asking for backdoor in encrypted services, arguing that it can not give enough security to its citizens because the terrorists are using encrypted apps to communicate and plot an attack. Following last week's terrorist attack in London, the UK government is accusing technology firms to give terrorists "a place to hide," saying Intelligence agencies must have access to encrypted messaging applications such as WhatsApp to prevent such attacks. According to authorities , the killer, Khalid Masood, 52, was active on WhatsApp messaging app just two minutes before he attacked Britain's Houses of Parliament in Westminster that killed four people. Here's what Amber Rudd, Britain's Home Secretary said while speaking at BBC's Andrew Marr Show on Sunday: "We need to make sure that organizations like WhatsApp, and there are plenty of others like that, don't provide a secret place for terrorists to communicate

WARNING: If you are Turkish and using or have installed ByLock —a little-known encrypted messaging app—you could be detained by Turkish authorities. You might be thinking why??? Because using this app in Turkish is illegal since last year. The background story begins here... Remember the deadliest Turkey's failed coup attempt? In July 2016, a section of the Turkish military launched a coordinated operation—by deploying soldiers, tanks on the streets of major Turkish cities—to topple the government and unseat President Recep Tayyip Erdogan . The Turkish government blamed Muhammed Fethullah Gülen, a Turkish preacher who lives in the United States, for leading the July 15-16 attempted coup , though Gülen denied any involvement. In the aftermath of the coup attempt, Milli İstihbarat Teşkilatı (MİT), the Turkish intelligence agency investigated and found that the ByLock messaging app was used as a communication tool by tens of thousands of Gülen movement followers to c