Category: Security

Hacking Politics Security

Documents Reveal How the NSA Cracked the Kryptos Sculpture Years Before the CIA

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As reported on Wired. BY KIM ZETTER The Kryptos Sculpture. Photo: Wikimedia Commons   It took more than eight years for a CIA analyst and a California computer scientist to crack three of the four coded messages on the CIA’s famed Kryptos sculpture in the late ’90s. Little did either of them know that a small group of cryptanalysts inside the NSA had beat them to it, and deciphered the same three sections of Kryptos years earlier —…

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Politics Security

Brazil allegedly targeted by NSA spying, demands explanation from United States

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As reported on The Verge. By Chris Welch Earlier today, a report in Brazil’s daily Globo newspaper claimed that the National Security Agency has been spying on electronic communications and telephone calls originating from the country for the past decade. The Globo story was co-authored byThe Guardian’s Glenn Greenwald — the journalist who first broke news of sophisticated (and highly classified) US surveillance programs with the help of former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. Today’s report is allegedly substantiated by further documentation…

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Security Story

NSA spies on Germany as much as it does China and Saudi Arabia: Der Spiegel

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As reported on The Verge. By Jeff Blagdon Since details of the NSA’s massive phone and internet spying programs first came to light, America’s allies in the EU have been demanding for Washington to explain what it’s doing with Europeans’ data. Now, a new report from German news weekly Der Spiegel provides some more insight into the size of Washington’s telecommunications dragnet, claiming that US intelligence compiles metadata on half a billion German data connections (including phone calls, emails,…

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Politics Security

If The Government Can Access Our Facebook Data, What Happens When We Have Computers On Our Faces?

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As reported on TechCrunch. by SARAH PEREZ Wearables will follow a similar path as the smartphone market, Forrester analysts predicted in April 2012. ”Wearables will move mainstream,” they said. But will they? Do you believe this? Do I? Maybe? From fitness trackers to smartwatches to computers you wear on your face, this emerging market, enabled by the increasing miniaturization of hardware components and lightweight materials, has increasingly been piquing the interest of investors and early adopters alike. Futurist, artificial intelligence expert…

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Google Security

Hackers Who Breached Google in 2010 Accessed Company’s Surveillance Database

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As reported on Wired. BY KIM ZETTER   Hackers who breached Google’s network in 2010 obtained access to the company’s system for tracking surveillance requests from law enforcement, according to a news report. The hackers gained access to a database that Google used to process court orders from law enforcement agencies seeking information about customer accounts, including classified FISA orders that are used in foreign intelligence surveillance investigations, according to the Washington Post. The database contained years’ worth…

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Culture Government Military Security

They’re watching: why city-wide surveillance failed to stop the Boston bombing

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As reported on The Verge. By Matt Stroud “If everyone becomes a suspect, then nobody is a suspect.”   All day Sunday, police directed traffic around a blocked-off section of Boylston Street in downtown Boston where bombs had gone off nearly a week earlier, killing three and wounding hundreds. A makeshift memorial had been set up to honor the dead with personal messages and flowers, and old running shoes hung from metal barricades. Similar makeshift memorials…

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Government Military Security

Drones over US soil: the calm before the swarm

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As reported on The Verge. By Ben Popper An explosion of advanced flying vehicles is about to hit the skies, but regulation lags way behind technology It was a muggy spring morning in South Texas almost one year ago when Gene Robinson arrived at the swampy waters near Sam Houston Lake Estates. All that week the area had been a hive of activity, as authorities searched along the banks, diving underwater with scuba gear, and flying…

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Mobile Security SmartPhone

BlackBerry 10 ‘not secure enough’ for UK government workers Mobile

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As reported on Engadget. By Mat Smith Hitting one of Blackberry’s key markets in the British Isles, its new smartphone platform (and the Balance software that divides work and personal profiles on the Z10) hasn’t passed the security rigors of the UK’s Communications Electronics Security Group. According to The Guardian, handset contracts with the government and NHS total in the tens of thousands, while the older BB 7.1 passed the ‘restricted’ security level — two levels below the presumably agent-friendly ‘secret’ level…

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Culture Security Tech

The Implications Of The Interface That Watches You

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As reported on TechCrunch. by DARRELL ETHERINGTON This coming week, we’re likely to get a peek at Samsung’s next generation Galaxy flagship smartphone, and by most accounts, it’ll have an auto-scrolling feature that can use head movement cues to detect when you’re paying attention to what’s on the small screen, and when you look away. There’s no word on just how specific it will be, but others are prepping tech that detects eye movement with a high level of…

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Cloud Security

Data Centers Eye Second Raid on Your Cellphone

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As reported on Wired. BY ROBERT MCMILLAN Is this the future of the data center? Photo by Ariel Zambelich/Wired   A few years ago, Christos Kozyrakis was looking for something new. He’d been teaching computer science at Stanford for nearly a decade, and he thought that spending some time as a visiting professor at Microsoft might be fun. In 2010, he spent a few weeks at Microsoft’s campus in Redmond, Washington, and he continued to collaborated with…

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