To stop terrorists and other criminals, cell phones should have encryption backdoors to enable US government surveillance, argues FBI Director. After one year on the job, Comey outlined his vision for the future of the FBI, including a bigger focus on cyber and the creation of a new intelligence office within the bureau.
Cell phone encryption will prevent the federal government from stopping terrorists and child molesters unless the government is given special access. FBI Director called out the default encryption in Apple's iOS 8, and the optional Android encryption that will become the default for that operating system when Android 5.0 Lollipop is released next month.
Read moreTo infiltrate foreign networks and gain access to sensitive systems, the NSA has been using the tactics of “physical subversion” – deploying undercover agents in Chinese, German, South Korean and possibly even American companies.
Past reports on the National Security Agency have typically depicted a government organ that hacks other systems or works with private corporations to bypass their own encryption protections, but the latest report based on files leaked by Edward Snowden suggests the agency could be embedding operatives into foreign, as well as domestic, “commercial entities.”
Read moreTwitter just sued the federal government over restrictions the government places on how much the company can disclose about surveillance requests it receives. For months, Twitter has tried to negotiate with the government to expand the kind of information that it and other companies are allowed to disclose. But it failed.
Twitter asserts in its suit that preventing the company from telling users how often the government submits national security requests for user data is a violation of the First Amendment. The move goes a step beyond a challenge filed by Google and other companies last year that also sought permission on First Amendment grounds to disclose how often it receives national security requests for data.
Read moreThe creation of Next Generation Identification system took a lot of years and money, but now it can change the old automated fingerprint identification, which was used by FBI. At the beginning the identification system was designed as multifactorial, because the data will be collected from different biometric indicators, and its functionality will be extended in future.
The NGI system will have more data, than any systems have had before. In addition to fingerprints, tattoos and scars photos, images of the iris, the identification system will contain the pictures of people, namely the person identification as a form of available information source on biometric identification.
Read moreNot so long ago these news were marked by an internet-wide newsbreak: anonymous hackers somehow obtained explicit photos of various Hollywood celebrities, including many A-listers, like Jennifer Lawrence, and publicized this material on the Internet.
Such leaks are not new, however, this one was on a massive scale. From the very beginning there was an assumption that perhaps some photos were stolen directly from celebrities’ accounts in the Apple’s iCloud. Is this possible? If so, what can be done to avoid the theft? At this time, there is no hard evidence in this case. Apple and the FBI are currently investigating and we look forward to reading the results.
Read moreApple says that the mass theft of nude celebrity photos that were released over the weekend did not occur because of a breach in any Apple systems, including iCloud.
Apple says, however, that certain celebrities were the subject of targeted hacking attempts that focused on compromising their usernames, passwords, and security questions. Though Apple's statement doesn't make it entirely clear, it sounds as though iCloud may still have been involved in the thefts in some capacity: that is, Apple's customers may have had their iCloud usernames and passwords stolen, giving another party access to their account.
Read moreThe FBI has issued a warning to police and other emergency response personnel about a lethal new tool which ‘malicious actors’ have been using to deadly effect against American government institutions – Google dorks.
The warning refers specifically to ‘Google dorks’ or “Google dorking” – ie the use of specialized search syntax, using terms such as “filetype:sql”. ‘Google dorks’ refers to search syntax which allow users to search within a specific website (using the term in:url) or for specific file types, and can thus be used to search databases. Such search terms are widely known, and legal – the warning alerts units who may not be aware of the technique to secure databases properly.
Read moreFBI can legally hack into suspects' computers for criminal evidence according to changes in the law on criminal liability in the United States.
The USA Justice Department (DOJ) is seeking a transition in the criminal rules that would make the authorities to have more leeway to secretly hack into the suspected criminals’ computer during criminal investigations at any times. According to the proposed change in the rules would make FBI to easily obtain warrants to secretly access suspects’ computers for the evidence when the physical location of the computer is not known to them.
Read moreResearchers have uncovered Android-based malware that disables infected handsets until end users pay a hefty cash payment to settle trumped-up criminal charges involving the viewing of illegal pornography.
To stoke maximum fear, Android-Trojan.Koler.A uses geolocation functions to tailor the warnings to whatever country a victim happens to reside in. The screenshot to the right invoking the FBI, for instance, is the notice that's displayed on infected phones connecting from a US-based IP address. People in Romania and other countries will see slightly different warnings. The malware prevents users from accessing the home screen of their phones, making it impossible to use most other apps installed on the phone.
Read moreThe FBI is planning to build out a facial recognition system that can query a huge database of photos to identify someone based on his or her appearance regardless of criminal history, reports the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
This is part of the FBI’s NGI system — Next Generation Identification — which could hold data on as much as one-third of all Americans. Privacy advocates are up in arms, of course. You only need to consider the overwhelming backlash we saw when facial recognition apps became available for Google Glass — they were summarily banned. This new arm of the NGI database will build off of the FBI’s already impressive collection of fingerprints of approximately 100 million total records, some of which include retina scans and palm prints.
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