The NSA used ‘man in the middle’ hack attacks to impersonate Google and fool web users, leaks have revealed. The technique circumvents encryption by redirecting users to a copycat site which relays all the data entered to NSA data banks.
Brazilian television network Globo News released a report based on classified data divulged by former CIA worker Edward Snowden on Sunday. The report itself blew the whistle on US government spying on Brazilian oil giant Petrobras, but hidden in amongst the data was information the NSA had impersonated Google to get its hands on user data.
Read moreGoogle Inc. founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin may have to dig deeper to operate their fleet of private jets, after the U.S.
The agreement between the Google founders and the government, which started in 2007, ended Aug. 31 after officials at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration—which sponsored the arrangement—opted not to renew it, according to a Pentagon spokeswoman. The move followed discussions earlier this year between the Pentagon and NASA over whether the Google founders may have exceeded contract terms by using fuel for non-government flights.
Read moreGoogle is stepping up efforts to toughen data encryption in an effort to limit unofficial snooping on user information in the wake of the revelations about the NSA and PRISM. Eric Grosse, vice president for security engineering at Google said "It's an arms race", as he described government hackers as "among the most skilled players in this game."
In the aftermath of leaked documents from Edward Snowden, suggesting that some US companies have made it easy for information to flow to the government, Google is keen to show it is doing its utmost to protect its users' privacy. The company, that it would still have to comply with any legally approved Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act requests and would hand over data whenever obligated to.
Read moreThe U.S. Federal Trade Commission issued a complaint on Wednesday against Internet-connected device maker Trendnet due to a security flaw in one of its webcams – a device marketed for home security and baby monitoring – that let hackers spy on people in their homes.
The complaint is the first issued by the FTC that concerns a device included in the category we know as the “Internet of Things.” But thanks to a specialized search engine for Internet-connected devices called Shodan, the FTC’s Trendnet complaint is likely only the beginning. Countless devices, ranging from webcams to electrical power plants, are insecurely connected to the Internet, making them vulnerable to hacker intrusions and other cyberattacks.
Read moreMicrosoft and Google announced Friday they are going forward with a lawsuit against the US government for the right to reveal more information about official requests for customer data by American intelligence.
The companies originally filed suits in June following revelations provided by Edward Snowden of their relationship with the National Security Agency and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which oversees the government’s requests of the companies’ systems. Microsoft’s general counsel Brad Smith announced the companies were following through with a suit, saying negotiations with the government since June have not yielded significant progress.
Read moreFacebook received about 26,000 government requests for information about 38,000 users in the first six months of 2013, with half of the orders coming from the United States government.
The social networking service published the numbers on Monday, following the release of customer information data requests from Microsoft and Google. Facebook said government agents from 74 countries demanded information about its users, but the vast majority of these requests came from the US. US federal law allows the government to demand Facebook data without a warrant, and companies must fight such requests in secret court hearings if they deny them.
Read moreIt has been revealed today, thanks to Edward Snowden, that Google and other US tech companies received millions of dollars from the NSA for their compliance with the PRISM mass surveillance system.
So just how close is Google to the US securitocracy? Back in 2011 I had a meeting with Eric Schmidt, the then Chairman of Google, who came out to see me with three other people while I was under house arrest. You might suppose that coming to see me was gesture that he and the other big boys at Google were secretly on our side: that they support what we at WikiLeaks are struggling for: justice, government transparency, and privacy for individuals. But that would be a false supposition.
Read morePeople sending email to any of Google's 425 million Gmail users have no "reasonable expectation" that their communications are confidential, the internet giant has said in a court filing.
Consumer Watchdog, the advocacy group that uncovered the filing, called the revelation a "stunning admission." It comes as Google and its peers are under pressure to explain their role in the National Security Agency's (NSA) mass surveillance of US citizens and foreign nationals. "Google has finally admitted they don't respect privacy," said John Simpson, Consumer Watchdog's privacy project director.
Read moreMichele Catalano was looking for information online about pressure cookers. Her husband, in the same time frame, was Googling backpacks. Wednesday morning, six men from a joint terrorism task force showed up at their house to see if they were terrorists. Which begs the question: How'd the government know what they were Googling?
The men identified themselves as members of the "joint terrorism task force." The composition of such task forces depends on the region of the country, but, as we outlined after the Boston bombings, includes a variety of federal agencies. Among them: the FBI and Homeland Security.
Read moreIt is possible with the help of "Back up my data" in a mobile operating system. The co-worker of the “Elecontric Frontier Foundation” Micah Lee announced that the function "Back up my data" in OS Android sends passwords from Wi-Fi and private information in plaintext to Google.
"Since backup and restore is such a useful feature, and since it's turned on by default, it's likely that the vast majority of Android users are syncing this data with their Google accounts. Because Android is so popular, it's likely that Google has plaintext Wi-Fi passwords for the majority of users,” Lee pointed out.
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