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How to botch TLS forward secrecy
There's been some discussion about forward secret TLS recently, spurred, I think, by this piece from Declan McCullagh on CNET.
Opera breached, has code cert stolen, possibly spreads malware
The Sophos Blog
EFF Sues FBI For Access to Facial-Recognition Records
San Francisco - As the FBI is rushing to build a "bigger, faster and better" biometrics database, it's also dragging its feet in releasing information related to the program's impact on the American public. In response, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) today filed a lawsuit to compel the...
Can Apple read your iMessages?
About a year ago I wrote a short post urging Apple to publish the technical details of iMessage encryption. I’d love tell you that Apple saw my influential crypto blogging and fell all over t…
SSL: Intercepted today, decrypted tomorrow
Explore thought leadership, industry insights, and other resources related to cybercrime detection, disruption, and takedowns.
How secure is HTTPS today? How often is it attacked? (2011)
This is part 1 of a series on the security of HTTPS and TLS/SSL HTTPS is a lot more secure than HTTP! If a site uses accounts, or publishes material that people might prefer to read in private, the site should be protected with HTTPS. Unfortunately, is still feasible for some attackers to break...
EFF: Help Us Protect Mesh Networking From Overbroad Patents
Earlier this year, we announced that along with the Cyberlaw Clinic at Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society, we were challenging six patent applications that, if granted, could threaten the development of 3D printing technology. We asked you—the community—for help, and your input was...
How Browsers Store Your Passwords (and Why You Shouldn't Let Them)
Introduction In a previous post , I introduced a Twitter bot called dumpmon which monitors paste sites for account dumps, configuration fi...
Edward Snowden: Saving Us from the United Stasi of America
In my estimation, there has not been in American history a more important leak than Edward Snowden’s release of NSA material – and that definitely includes the Pentagon Papers 40 years ago. Snowden’s whistleblowing gives us the possibility to roll back a key part of what has amounted to an “executive coup” against the…
Finding Sociopaths on Facebook
On his blog, Scott Adams suggests that it might be possible to identify sociopaths based on their interactions on social media. My hypothesis is that science will someday be able to identify sociopaths and terrorists by their patterns of Facebook and Internet use. I’ll bet normal people interact with Facebook in ways…
Blowback from the NSA surveillance.
There’s one piece of blowback that isn’t being discussed—aside from the fact that Snowden has killed the chances of any liberal arts major getting a DoD job for at least a decade—and that’s how the massive NSA surveillance of the Internet affects the US’s role in Internet governance. Ron Deibert makes this point: But…
Creative usernames and Spotify account hijacking
Spotify supports unicode usernames which we are a bit proud of (not many services allow you to have ☃, the unicode snowman, as a username). However, it has also been a reliable source of pain over the years. This is the story of one time when it bit us pretty badly and how we spent Easter dealing with it.
Facebook Is Not Blocking Tor Deliberately
A number of users have noticed that Facebook is blocking connections from the Tor network....
Evidence that the NSA Is Storing Voice Content, Not Just Metadata
Interesting speculation that the NSA is storing everyone’s phone calls, and not just metadata. Definitely worth reading. I expressed skepticism about this just a month ago. My assumption had always been that everyone’s compressed voice calls is just too much data to move around and store. Now, I don’t know. There’s a…
Cryptography is a science, not engineering
If we were still in the 1990s, I would agree with Thomas. 1990s cryptography was full of holes, and the best you could hope for was to know how your tools were broken so you could try to work around their deficiencies. This was a time when DES and RC4 were widely used, despite having well-known flaws. This was a time…
Dear Mozilla, stop watching me
I have signed the StopWatching.Us letter today. I am not a US citizen, so even if the letter succeeds, I don’t think my privacy will improve substantially. But at least I did something.
Licenses Over Data: A Case Study with Github v BitBucket
Our Commercial Lawyers deliver legal solutions to businesses in Brisbane and across Australia to meet their commercial targets.
The Snowden Principle
At the heart of Edward Snowden's decision to expose the NSA's massive phone and Internet spying programs was a fundamental belief in the people's right-to-know. "My sole motive is to inform the public as to that which is done in their name and that which is done against them," he …
Watch 2013 Barack Obama Debate 2006 Joe Biden Over NSA Surveillance [video]
After a leaked FISA court document revealed that the National Security Agency (NSA) is vacuuming up private data on millions of innocent Americans by collecting all the phone records of Verizon customers, President Obama responded by saying "let's have a debate" about the scope of US surveillance...
Facebook Releases Data, Including All National Security Requests
We’re pleased that we can now include in a transparency report all U.S. national security-related requests including FISA as well as National Security Letters.
57% Fear Government Will Use NSA Data to Harass Political Opponents
There is little public support for the sweeping and unaccountable nature of the National Security Agency surveillance program along with concerns about how the data will be used.Fifty-seven percent (57%) of voters nationwide believe it is likely the NSA data will be used by other government agencies to harass…