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

Another Edward Snowden? The FBI has secretly busted another National Security Agency (NSA) contractor over a massive secret data theft. The United States Justice Department charged Harold Thomas Martin , 51, with theft of highly classified government material, including " source codes " developed by the NSA to hack foreign government, according to a court complaint ( PDF ) unsealed on Wednesday. According to the DoJ's chief national security prosecutor John Carlin, Martin was employed by Booz Allen Hamilton , the same consulting firm that employed whistleblower Edward J. Snowden when he disclosed the global surveillance conducted by the NSA. Currently, the FBI is investigating whether Martin stole and leaked highly classified computer source codes developed to hack into the networks of Russia, China, Iran, North Korea and other United States adversaries, the New York Times reports . If stolen, this would be the second time in last 3 years when someone with

TalkTalk, one of the biggest UK-based Telecoms company with 4 million customers, has been issued with a record £400,000 ($510,000) fine for failings to implement the most basic security measures to prevent the hack that made global headlines last year. The penalty has been imposed by the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) over the high-profile cyber attack occurred in the company last October, which allowed hackers to steal the personal data of its 156,959 customers "with ease." The ICO said on Wednesday that TalkTalk, which offers TV, phone and broadband services, could have prevented the cyber attack if the company had implemented even basic security measures to protect its customers' data. The hacked data of 156,959 customers included full names, postal addresses, dates of birth, telephone numbers, email addresses and TalkTalk accounts information. The hacker also had even access to bank account details and sort codes in almost 16,000 cases. "When i

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

Are you experiencing slow Internet speed on your MacBook today? — It's not just you! Here's Why: Following in Microsoft's footsteps , Apple has started " pre-downloading " the latest version of its desktop operating system, macOS 10.12 Sierra, in the background, if you are still running OS X El Capitan. If you have automatic downloads enabled on your Mac, a large file of around 5GB will mysteriously be downloaded to your computer in the background, using your Internet bandwidth for unrequested files. Apple justifies this move by saying that the automatic download would make it easier for users to get the newest operating system, encouraging them to update their Macs. The good news, however, is that the update will not install automatically without your permission. Once downloaded automatically in the background, users who are running OS X El Capitan version 10.11.5 or later will receive a notification that says macOS Sierra is ready to be installed.

Users are still dealing with the Yahoo's massive data breach that exposed over 1 Billion Yahoo accounts and there's another shocking news about the company that, I bet, will blow your mind. Yahoo might have provided your personal data to United States intelligence agency when required. Yahoo reportedly built a custom software programmed to secretly scan all of its users' emails for specific information provided by US intelligence officials, according to a report by Reuters . The tool was built in 2015 after company complied with a secret court order to scan hundreds of millions of Yahoo Mail account at the behest of either the NSA or the FBI, according to the report that cites three separate sources who are familiar with the matter. According to some experts, this is the first time when an American Internet company has agreed to such an extensive demand by a spy agency's demand by searching all incoming emails, examining stored emails or scanning a small number

Do you trust your messaging app even though it uses end-to-end encryption? As I previously said end-to-end encryption doesn't mean that your messages are secure enough to hide your trace. It's because most of the messaging apps still record and store a lot of metadata on your calls and messages that could reveal some of your personal information including dates and durations of communication, as well as the participants' phone numbers. Apple's iMessage app is the most recent and best example of this scenario. Just recently it was reported that the company stores a lot of information about its end-to-end encrypted iMessage, that could reveal your contacts and location, and even share this data with law enforcement via court orders. But if you are using open source end-to-end encrypted Signal   app, you are on the safer side. Trust me! As we previously reported that the Signal app, which is widely considered the most secure of all other encrypted messaging a