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U.S. Prosecutors decided not to pursue crucial criminal charges against journalist and activist Barrett Brown , and dismiss a majority of charges related to sharing a link to a dump of credit card numbers connected to the breach of intelligence firm Stratfor. Supporters say Brown just copied the hyperlink from an the Internet chat room and then reposted the link on his own internet chat room, Project PM , that linked to stolen documents from the US government contractor, Stratfor Global Intelligence , included 860,000 e-mail addresses for Stratfor subscribers and 60,000 credit card details. Just hours after Brown's lawyers filed their comprehensive argument, the DOJ has filed a motion to dismiss all 11 charges, on Thursday.  Apart from computer fraud charges, Brown is also facing prosecution for allegedly threatening an FBI agent and for alleged obstruction of justice. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) , a non-profit organization defending civil libertie

' Satoshi Nakamoto ', the mysterious founder and creator of the biggest digital cryptocurrency ' Bitcoin ' has reportedly been unmasked as a 64-year-old father of six living in Temple City, Southern California. Satoshi Nakamoto introduced Bitcoin to the world in 2008, but his identity has remained unknown. Till now, there was speculation that he might be a rebellious young programmer based in Tokyo, who took up the Nakamoto moniker as an alias. B ut t he most astonishing thing about this Japanese-American man is that, his real name is Satoshi Nakamoto , who has been finally identified by Newsweek magazine . Newsweek journalist, Leah McGrath Goodman also had a face-to-face meeting with Satoshi Nakamoto, and during an interview he said, " I am no longer involved in that [Bitcoin] and I cannot discuss it, " he said. " It's been turned over to other people. They are in charge of it now. I no longer have any connection. " and even he kep

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

Explosive revelations of massive surveillance programs conducted by government agencies by the former contractor Edward Snowden triggered new debate about the security and privacy of each individual who is connected somehow to the Internet and after the Snowden's disclosures they think that by adopting encrypted communications, i.e. SSL enabled websites, over the Internet, they'll be secure. People do care of their privacy and many have already changed some of their online habits, like by using HTTPS instead of HTTP while they are surfing the Internet. However, HTTPS may be secured to run an online store or the eCommerce Web site, but it fails as a privacy tool. The US researchers have found a traffic analysis of ten widely used HTTPS-secured Web sites " exposing personal details, including medical conditions, financial and legal affairs and sexual orientation. " The UC Berkeley researchers Brad Miller, A. D. Joseph and J. D. Tygar and Intel Labs' researchers, Li

Android platform is becoming vulnerable day by day and hackers always try to manipulate android by applying novel techniques. In this regard, Symantec researchers have found a new android malware toolkit named " Dendroid ". Previously Symantec found an Android Remote admin tool named AndroRAT is believed to be the first malware APK binder. However, Dendroid runs on HTTP with many malicious features. Dendroid toolkit is able to generate a malicious apk file that offers amazing features like: Can delete call logs Open web pages Dial any number Record calls SMS intercepting Upload images, video Open an application Able to perform DoS attack Can change the command and control server The author of Dendroid also offers 24/7 customer support for this RAT and Android users can buy this toolkit at $300 by paying Bitcoin , Lifecoin. Experts at Symantec said that Dendroid has some connection with the previous AndroRAT toolkit . Dendroid being an HTTP RAT offers PHP

The Continuous Growth of spyware, their existence, and the criminals who produce & spread them are increasing tremendously. It's difficult to recognize spyware as it is becoming more complex and sophisticated with time, so is spreading most rapidly as an Internet threat. Recently, The security researchers have unearthed a very complex and sophisticated piece of malware that was designed to steal confidential data and has ability able to capture network traffic. The Researchers at the German security company G Data Software , refer the malware as Uroburos , named after an ancient symbol depicting a serpent or dragon eating its own tail, and in correspondence with a string ( Ur0bUr()sGotyOu# ) lurking deep in the malware's code.  The researchers claimed that the malware may have been active for as long as three years before being discovered and appears to have been created by Russian developers. Uroburos is a rootkit designed to steal data from secure facilit

Cryptocat , an open source encrypted web-based chat client, is now available for iOS Devices from the  Apple's App store , which was initially rejected by the Apple last December. It is not clear why it was rejected previously, but the good news is that, now ' Cryptocat ' is available for all iOS Devices. So far Cryptocat was only available for Linux and Mac OS X, and as an extension for web browsers Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome 3, Apple Safari and Opera . Cryptocat has become quite popular in the wake of the NSA Controversy, because of its end-to-end encryption that doesn't allow anyone in the middle to read your messages. Cryptocat for iPhone uses the OTR protocol for private conversations, a cryptographic protocol for secure instant messaging, and perfect forward secrecy, a system that constantly generates new user keys. So, snoops cannot decrypt older messages. It doesn't require any username or account rather just one time nickname makes the

With revelations of NSA spying and some of the most jaw-dropping surveillance leaks, many people feel unencrypted and central-server service is bad in most of the cases, but end-to-end encryption can be used to reduce this problem. Worldwide Government surveillance raises privacy concerns and acquisition of WhatsApp by Facebook also made us think about the security concern with chat applications as well; though it was not so secure previously. People who care about having their SMS and Instant messages protected from prying eyes, now they can use end-to-end encrypted services, like  TextSecure .  It is a free Android-based messaging app, completly open-source , easy to use and designed with privacy in mind. Encrypting the stored data on the servers is as important as transferring data over an encrypted connection, but the most important factor of the encryption is that ' who has the decryption key '. If the company has the keys, then Government could snoop through your fi

Since, we are living in the era where nothing could be possible without the help of the Internet. From every unimportant to every major and important data are stored in our computers and servers, and there is a massive growth in the volume of data all around us. But, computer drives can fail, and usually they give no advance warning. One minute they're working fine, and the next minute they're toasted. Data loss can be very costly, and due to the increase in cyber threat these days, all computer data is at risk from threats or damage. Even with the most reliable equipment and the most secure operating environment, there is always the possibility of something going wrong. So, a solution to all problems is to have a backup of entire data stored on your computer, and for that it is important for you to have a right choice. Want to know - How to backup the server/workstation? Well, there are many options, some are reliable and some are not. Now, at this point, you won

The Mozilla Firefox web browser is used by roughly 30% of all Internet users and the company is seriously concerned about the Security of its users for many years. To Improve the Stability, Security and performance of Firefox web browser , Mozilla announced back in  2013 that it planned to enable ' Click to Play ' feature in upcoming Firefox versions, which will block most vulnerable plugins like Java by default. " Plugins are a significant source of poor performance, crashes and security vulnerabilities ", Mozilla said . The Feature ' Click to play ' blocks the execution of all plugins automatically, though this feature was annoying to the users, so to prevent all plugins from default blocking, Mozilla announced to maintain a whitelist of approved plugins. "By allowing users to decide which sites need to use plugins, Firefox will help protect them and keep their browser running smoothly." ~Benjamin Smedberg, Engineering Manager. Plugin authors ca

In the last few years, this emerging domain for the  Internet of Things  has been attracting the significant interest, and will continue for the years to come. It would be a $20 Trillion Market over the next several years, but Security and privacy are the key issues for such applications, and still face some enormous challenges. Cisco has announced a global and industry-wide initiative to bring the Security community and Researchers together to contribute in securing the Internet of Things (IoT) and launched a contest called the " Internet of Things Grand Security Challenge ", offering prizes of up to $300,000  for winners. Since Smart devices are growing at an exponential pace with increase in connecting devices embedded in cars, retail systems, refrigerators, televisions and countless other things people use in everyday life and is expected to grow to 50 billion by 2020. So, in an effort to deliver the security solutions necessary to protect the increasing range of

' Russia Today ', Moscow based Russia's biggest news channel website ( RT.com ) has been hacked and defaced by an unknown group of hackers. Hackers have replaced " Russia " or " Russians " with " Nazi " or " Nazis "  word from the headlines, as shown. " RT website has been hacked, we are working to resolve the problem, "  Russia Today tweeted from  the official Twitter account. Modified headline, i.e. i.e.   Russian Senators Vote To Use Stabilizing Nazi Forces on Ukrainian territory. Another modified headline stated: " Up to 143,000 Nazis requested asylum in Russia in two weeks ,"   The changes to the ' Russia Today '  website remained in place for nearly 30 minutes and  at the time of reporting, the hack was restored.  " Hackers deface https://RT.com website, crack admin access, place "Nazi" in every headline. Back to normal now. "  RT acknowledged the issue. Recently the   Anonymous group has also announced '

Yahoo! The 4th most visited website on the Internet has been found vulnerable multiple times, and this time a hacker has claimed to spot a critical vulnerability in the Yahoo! sub-domain ' suggestions.yahoo.com ', which could allow an attacker to delete the all the posted thread and comments on Yahoo's Suggestion Board website. Egyptian Cyber Security Analyst, ' Ibrahim Raafat ', found and demonstrated 'Insecure Direct Object Reference Vulnerability' in Yahoo's website on his blog . Exploiting the flaw escalates the user privileges that allow a hacker to delete more than 365,000 posts and 1,155,000 comments from Yahoo! Database . Technical details of the vulnerability are as explained below: Deleting  Comments: While deleting his own comment, Ibrahim noticed the  HTTP Header of POST request, i.e. prop=addressbook& fid=367443 &crumb=Q4 . PSLBfBe . & cid=1236547890 &cmd=delete_comment Where parameter ' fid ' is the