The huge cache of internal files recently leaked from the controversial Italian surveillance software company Hacking Team has now revealed that the Federal Bureau of Investigation purchased surveillance software from the company.
The leaked documents contain internal emails, including emails from FBI agent who wanted to unmask the identity of a user of Tor, the encrypted anonymizing network widely used by activists to keep their identities safe, but also used to host criminal activities. An FBI agent asked Hacking Team if the latest version of its Remote Control System would be capable to reveal the True IP address of a Tor user.
Read moreThe director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation has warned US senators that the threat from the Islamic State merits a debate about limiting commercial encryption.
In a twin pair of appearances before the Senate’s judiciary and intelligence committees, Comey testified that Isis’s use of end-to-end encryption, whereby the messaging service being used to send information does not have access to the decryption keys of those who receive it, helped the group place a devil on the shoulders of potential recruits. Comey said that while the FBI is thus far disrupting Isis plots, “I cannot see me stopping these indefinitely”.
Read moreKhairullozhon Matanov is a former cab driver from Quincy, Massachusetts. The night of the Boston Marathon bombings, he ate dinner with Tamerlan and Dhzokhar Tsarnaev at a kebob restaurant in Somerville. Four days later Matanov saw photographs of his friends listed as suspects in the bombings.
Later that day he went to the local police. He told them that he knew the Tsarnaev brothers and that they’d had dinner together that week, but he lied about whose idea it was to have dinner, lied about when exactly he had looked at the Tsarnaevs’ photos on the Internet. Then Matanov went home and cleared his Internet browser history.
Read moreScores of low-flying planes circling American cities are part of a civilian air force operated by the FBI and obscured behind fictitious companies.
Experts traced at least 50 aircraft back to the FBI, and identified more than 100 flights in 11 states over a 30-day period since late April, orbiting both major cities and rural areas. For decades, the planes have provided support to FBI surveillance operations on the ground. But now the aircraft are equipped with high-tech cameras, and in rare circumstances, technology capable of tracking thousands of cellphones, raising questions about how these surveillance flights affect Americans' privacy.
Read moreMajor tech companies have urged President Obama not to give the FBI backdoor access to smartphone data. Security specialists and privacy groups stating that strong encryption is the cornerstone of the modern information economy's security.
All of the players feel that it's impossible to build a backdoor for governments in email, cellphone encryption and other communications without creating vulnerabilities that can be exploited by hackers or hostile nations. Obama previously said that while he's in favor of stronger encryption, the only concern is our law enforcement is expected to stop every (terrorist) plot.
Read moreA computer security expert, who was recently detained and questioned by the FBI over his hack-a-plane joke on Twitter, had earlier revealed to the agency that he accessed aircraft control systems on up to 20 occasions.
The founder of One World Labs was detained for questioning and had his hardware confiscated in April by federal agents after exiting a United flight from Chicago to Syracuse, New York following his tweet suggesting he might attempt to hack into a flight’s entertainment system. The FBI addressed the tweet urgently and with great seriousness.
Read moreThe House overwhelmingly approved legislation to end the federal government’s bulk collection of phone records, exerting enormous pressure on the Senate majority leader, who insists that dragnet sweeps continue in defiance of many of those in his Republican Party.
Under the bipartisan bill, the Patriot Act would be changed to prohibit bulk collection by the National Security Agency of metadata charting telephone calls made by Americans. However, while the House version of the bill would take the government out of the collection business, it would not deny it access to the information.
Read moreThe US FBI just released a public service announcement to the public about a large number of websites being exploited and compromised through WordPress plugin vulnerabilities.
The defacements have affected Web site operations and the communication platforms and a variety of other domestic and international Web sites. Although the defacements demonstrate low-level hacking sophistication, they are disruptive and often costly in terms of lost business revenue and expenditures on technical services to repair infected computer systems. The FBI explained what happens when a site gets compromised.
Read moreThe US Justice Department has been covertly gathering and storing hundreds of millions of records about American motorists for a national database. The database can track the movements of vehicles across the country.
Government documents, as well as former and current government officials, confirmed to the Journal that the license plate-tracking program was initially used by the Drug Enforcement Administration to seize cars, money, and other assets associated with drug trafficking. Use of the database has grown, however, to include hunting for vehicles linked to other possible crimes, including kidnapping, killings, and rape.
Read moreGoogle took almost three years to disclose to the open information group WikiLeaks that it had handed over emails and other digital data belonging to three of its staffers to the US government, under a secret search warrant issued by a federal judge.
WikiLeaks has written to Google’s executive chairman to protest that the search giant only revealed the warrants last month, having been served them in March 2012. In the letter, WikiLeaks says it is astonished and disturbed that Google waited more than two and a half years to notify its subscribers, potentially depriving them of their ability to protect their rights to privacy, association and freedom from illegal searches.
Read moreAxarhöfði 14,
110 Reykjavik, Iceland