Tag Archives: security

Edward Snowden has made quite a name for himself over the last couple of years after turning into an NSA whistleblower. As you would expect, he is pretty interested in the on-goings with the US government these days so this week, Snowden took the opportunity to weigh in on the …

Once upon-a-time encrypted email service, Lavabit, has thrown its lot in to support Apple in its ongoing legal dispute with the FBI and American government over weakening iPhone security. Although not called on by the court to do so, it submitted an amicus brief, explaining just why it believes the authorities should …

Late last year Valve implemented a trade hold system for the Steam marketplace with the aim of providing better security for users and help minimize the amount of trading scams taking place. A three-day hold was placed on all trades between nonlong-term Steam friends to allow potential scam victims to …

Yesterday saw the British government publish the latest draft of the Investigatory Powers Bill and though it promised to take into consideration the three committees that have attacked it, addressing their 100+ concerns, it hasn't. In many cases it has ignored major problems raised by various parliamentary bodies and has …

A judge has ruled that the American government is not legally entitled to force Apple to unlock an iPhone in a drug case, currently taking place in New York. Although entirely unrelated to the ongoing FBI demands of Apple with regards to the San Bernardino attacker's phone, this case is …

Over the last few months, iPhone users have found their devices bricked by Error 53, which is an error when an iPhone is taken in for a third-party repair and Touch ID is not re-authorized. This month, Apple officially acknowledged the bug and has now offered a fix to those …

Google and WhatsApp have crossed party lines and stood by Apple and CEO Tim Cook's resistance to the FBI's demand for the tech firm to weaken its own security in order to make it easier for the law enforcement agency to hack a smartphone. Although that phone belonged to the …

Earlier this morning, news spread that the FBI has given Apple a court order to help them break the security on the iPhone previously owned by the deceased gunman behind the San Bernardino attacks last year. Now, Apple is formally contesting the order and has said that it will fight the …

It looks like getting your iPhone 6 fixed by a cheaper, unauthorised technician could cause you some future problems as this week, some iPhone users  have had a frustrating time thanks to a mysterious glitch known as ‘Error 53'. This error is down to Touch ID and is triggered by …

Over the past five years, 133 police officers working in New Zealand were found to have illegally looked through confidential police files, leading to criminal charges for two, and 16 to resign. While many used the police systems to look at their own profiles, others used them to check on …

Microsoft is finally going to start hiding user IP addresses by default on Skype. It has been known for years now that there is an exploit within Skype that allows you to obtain an IP address, which can then be used to launch a DDOS attack on someone and while …

Amid all the arguments about encryption ongoing in the press and government right now, it's easy to forget that it's something that GCHQ and other intelligence agencies have been railing against for some time. I turns out that in 2010, it helped to reject a smartphone encryption standard that would …

As much as you have to applaud anyone for taking digital security seriously enough to attend a conference about it, you have to wonder how much they're taking in when they willingly give away their Twitter passwords. As part of a promotional move (and perhaps as a measure of attendee …

Following its ending of the EU-U.S. Safe Harbour data exchange scheme last year, the European Union is demanding tighter controls and protections on how America requests information from EU companies. If those assurances aren't received soon, it may start taking enforcement actions against various firms. Safe Harbour previously gave U.S. companies the …

Edward Snowden has made an appearance at this year's Consumer Electronics Show. Not, as you might expect, in person, but on a display with its own locomotion, looking rather like the meeting room in Demolition Man. The technology was really important, Snowden said, because it allowed him to talk at …

Last year saw the launch of the Blackphone, a smartphone designed and built for the super security/privacy conscious. However, even a device built to be secure can run into problems as independent researchers revealed that the device had a pretty severe vulnerability that could allow hackers to send and receive …

The second largest TV and broadband provider in the U.S., Time Warner Cable, has released a statement saying that around a third of a million of its customers may have had their email and passwords copied away by hackers. At this early stage in the investigation however, it was keen …

It has taken a few days but Valve has finally explained exactly what went wrong with Steam on Christmas day, when a caching error allowed users to see someone else's account while visiting the Steam store. This meant that information like a user's address, phone number, and email address were …

Passwords are problematic for many reasons. You know that, I know that, and John McAfee certainly knows it; digital security has been a major part of his presidential campaign after all. Perhaps it shouldn't be surprising then that he wants to kill them off: with EveryKey, a BlueTooth connected device that decrypts …

Adobe's Flash Player is continuing its steady demise with another major blow to its usage: Facebook has now killed off all flash videos on its site. With more than eight billion views a day, the switchover to HTML 5 will see the number of flash videos watched every day immediatly decline …

Although the United States and China have been covertly trying to hack each other's digital systems for a long time at this point, it looks like the two cyber-super-powers are now going to be working together; a little. Following weeks of joint meetings, the countries are going to conduct what …

In the wake of the Edward Snowden revelations, obfuscating systems like encryption, the Tor browser and virtual private networks (VPN) have been championed by privacy advocates the world over as the best ways to protect your data online. However, that latter step may not be as useful as initially thought, …

Arrests are still being made as the police continue to investigate exactly what went down in the TalkTalk hack, which saw customer details accessed, presumably to then be used as part of a mass phishing scam or sold on to others. The fifth arrest was made this week in connection …

As the debate rages on whether the UK should spend upwards of £31 billion on a replacement for its current fleet of Trident-equipped nuclear submarines, ex-Defence Secretary Desmond Browne, has warned that any future solution would be vulnerable to attack by hackers, if certain “weak spots,” were not protected. It …

One of the less surprising outcomes of the Paris Attacks last week, was governments and intelligence agencies around the world citing it as a prime example of why they need more resources and better access to civilian communications and browsing histories. While in the U.K. the government has discussed bringing …

TalkTalk has been in the news a lot these past couple of weeks, after a major hack saw the details of thousands of customers stolen. So far four people have been arrested in connection to the hack and the ISP has been working on contacting every customer that had their …

Google has been running Project Zero for some time now, with the mission of seeking out bugs in software, notifying the software makers and then notifying the public should nothing be fixed in an effort to force something to be done. Previously, Google has taken on Windows and OS X …

Apple's iOS devices are generally pretty secure and difficult to hack in to, so bug bounty company, Zerodium put its money where its mouth is and offered hackers a $1 million reward if they could find a remote way to jailbreak iOS 9.1 untethered via the web browser. As luck …

Telecoms operator TalkTalk has been hit by what has been described by police as a “significant”, attack on its website, resulting in the potential leaking of banking and personal data for some or all of the company's four million customers around the UK. While police and online-crime divisions are investigating the …

Over the last 24 hours it would seem that several prominent UK tech retailers have been targeted by DDOS attacks, which may also turn out to be linked to a group demanding large Bitcoin ransoms. Affected sites include Overclockers UK, Novatech, SCAN and Aria. All of these websites have been …