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Whistleblower and ex-NSA employee Edward Snowden has criticized a new anti-terror law introduced on Thursday by Russian President Vladimir Putin, referring it as "repressive" and noting that it is a " dark day for Russia ." The new legislation signed by Putin would compel the country's telephone carriers and Internet providers to record and store the private communications of each and every one of their customers for six months – and turn them over to the government if requested. The data collected on customers would include phone calls, text messages, photographs, and Internet activities that would be stored for six months, and "metadata" would be stored up to 3 years. Moreover, Instant messaging services that make use of encryption, including WhatsApp, Telegram, and Viber, could face heavy fines of thousands of pounds if these services continue to operate in Russia without handing over their encryption keys to the government. "Putin

Facebook has begun rolling out end-to-end encryption for its Messenger app, thus making its users' conversations completely private. The end-to-end encryption feature, dubbed " Secret Conversations ," will allow Messenger users to send and receive messages in a way that no one, including the FBI with a warrant, hackers and not even Facebook itself, can intercept them. But, this new feature will currently be available only to a small number of users for testing. So if you are one of those lucky users, you will be able to send end-to-end encrypted Secret Conversations through your Messenger app. Rest of the Messenger users will get Secret Conversations feature later this summer or in early fall, the company wrote in a Facebook newsroom post published today. Sounds exciting, right? But, there's a catch: Your conversations on Messenger will not be end-to-end encrypted by default, like what WhatsApp and Apple are offering. Instead, Facebook will require

In today's digital world, where connectivity is rules all, endpoints serve as the gateway to a business's digital kingdom. And because of this, endpoints are one of hackers' favorite targets.  According to the IDC,  70% of successful breaches start at the endpoint . Unprotected endpoints provide vulnerable entry points to launch devastating cyberattacks. With IT teams needing to protect more endpoints—and more kinds of endpoints—than ever before, that perimeter has become more challenging to defend. You need to improve your endpoint security, but where do you start? That's where this guide comes in.  We've curated the top 10 must-know endpoint security tips that every IT and security professional should have in their arsenal. From identifying entry points to implementing EDR solutions, we'll dive into the insights you need to defend your endpoints with confidence.  1. Know Thy Endpoints: Identifying and Understanding Your Entry Points Understanding your network's

The Popular fast-food restaurant chain Wendy's on Thursday admitted that a massive cyber attack had hit more than 1,000 of its restaurants across the country. The burger chain did not speculate how many people may have been affected, though it did confirm that the hackers were able to steal its customers' credit and debit card information. The data breach is more than three times bigger than initially thought. The original data breach was believed to have affected " fewer than 300 " of its 5,144 franchised locations in the United States when the malware was discovered in May. The Malware had been installed on Point-of-Sale (PoS) systems in the affected restaurants and was able to obtain cardholder's name, payment card number, expiration date, service code, cardholder verification value, among other data. The data breach began in fall 2015 and discovered in February this year, and the company went public with in May. Just last month, Wendy's s

As your day-to-day apparel and accessories are turning into networked mobile electronic devices that attach to your body like smartwatch or fitness band, the threat to our personal data these devices collect has risen exponentially. A recent study from Binghamton University also suggests your smartwatch or fitness tracker is not as secure as you think – and it could be used to steal your ATM PIN code. The risk lies in the motion sensors used by these wearable devices. The sensors also collect information about your hand movements among other data, making it possible for "attackers to reproduce the trajectories" of your hand and "recover secret key entries." In the paper, titled " Friend or Foe?: Your Wearable Devices Reveal Your Personal PIN," computer scientists from the Stevens Institute of Technology and Binghamton University used a computer algorithm that can guess your password and PIN with about 80% success rate on the first attempt, and

The Internet of things or connected devices are the next big concerns, as more Internet connectivity means more access points which mean more opportunities for hackers. When it comes to the threat to Internet of Things, Car Hacking is a hot topic. Since many automobiles companies are offering cars that run mostly on the drive-by-wire system, a majority of functions are electronically controlled, like instrument cluster, steering, brakes, and accelerator. No doubt these auto-control systems in vehicles improve your driving experience, but at the same time increase the risk of getting hacked. Recently, security researcher Benjamin Kunz Mejri  have disclosed zero-day vulnerabilities that reside the official BMW web domain and ConnectedDrive portal and the worst part: the vulnerabilities remain unpatched and open for hackers. Benjamin from Vulnerability-Labs has discovered both the vulnerabilities. The first one is a VIN ( Vehicle Identification Number ) session vulnerabil