The Hacker News | #1 Trusted Cybersecurity News Site — Index Page

No doubt, You must be aware that Google tracks you, but what you probably did not realize is how precisely and till what extent it tracks you. Well, Google knows which movies I watched where, when, at what time and with how many of my friends , and knows it so well — even my eyebrows raised slightly in surprise! Yes, you heard right. If you are using your Gmail account like I do, receiving all movie booking and tickets, Google can easily track your movie flavors and frequent hangout places without access to GPS. GOOGLE READ MY EMAILS FOR EVENT INFORMATION I was feeling bored last night, so I decided to watch a movie and moved towards Google to search newly released films. As I googled " Movies 2015 "... Holy Crap! What I saw on the monitor was unbelievable. In Google search results, I was able to see the list of all my past movie booking event activities and even my future bookings ( shown below ), and it was so, so accurate. If you have Google acc

Google, Apple, Microsoft , and Mozilla have joined hands to create code for use in the future web browsers that promises up to 20 times faster performance. Dubbed WebAssembly (or wasm for short), a project to create a new portable bytecode for the Web that will be more efficient for both desktop as well as mobile web browsers to parse than the complete source code of a Web page or an application. Bytecode is actually a machine-readable instruction set that is faster for web browsers to load than high-level languages. WebAssembly — A New File Format to Compile Code At the moment, browsers use JavaScript to interpret the code and allow functionality on websites such as dynamic content and forms. By default, JavaScript files are downloaded from the server and then compiled by the JavaScript engine in the web browser. However, improvements have been made to load times via Asm.js — the stripped-down JavaScript dialect described as an "assembly language for

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,

Do you actually read the list of permissions that Android apps are asking for before you install them? I know most of us treat those permissions like terms and conditions, blindly tapping our way through. But if you actually do, you would be aware of their reach. Some of your apps can make phone calls Some can track your location Some can read your browsing history, contacts, SMS, photos, calendar And… Even share this personal information with third parties without your knowledge. But, do they need all those permissions? No doubt, Google's Android mobile operating system has a powerful app permission system that forces app developers to mention the exact permissions they require. But, there is one major issue for Android users: By default, it is a Take-it-or-Leave-it situation, which means you can choose to install the app, granting all those permissions or simply, not install it. It appears like every app developer wants access to much of my phon

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has released its annual report card of tech companies for 2015 based upon how much they keep your personal data secure from government snoops. And the Worst Companies Award goes to… At&T WhatsApp Verizon Yes, you heard right! WhatsApp is one of the three worst companies at protecting its users' data so if you are concerned about your data privacy, you should think twice before using WhatsApp. The EFF released its latest Who Has Your Back report based on 5 basic criteria that included: Follows Industry Accepted Best Practices Tells Users About Government Data Demands Discloses Policies on Data Retention Discloses Government Content Removal Requests Pro-user Public Policy: opposes backdoors The prominent privacy advocacy group analysed 24 companies in total, and among them AT&T, Verizon and WhatsApp came out to be the worst companies at protecting its users' data. Where Verizon met two criteria of the EFF&#

We all have been receiving spam phone calls and messages on almost daily basis from scammers who want to pilfer your money and personal information, but a new type of social engineering hack that makes use of just your mobile number to trick you is a little scarier. Security firm Symantec is warning people about a new password recovery scam that tricks users into handing over their webmail account access to the attackers. In order to get into your email account, an attacker does not need any coding or technical skills. All an attacker needs your email address in question and your cell phone number. Since the process to reset the password is almost similar to all mail services, this new password recovery scam affects all popular webmail services including Gmail, Yahoo, and Outlook among others. Symantec has provided a video explanation of how this new hack attack works. The trick is as simple as it sounds: if you want to reset someone's email account password, all y