Monthly Archives: July 2015

FBI and DOJ Target New Enemy In Encryption Wars: Apple and Google

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“The FBI and Department of Justice on Wednesday targeted a new set of threats to national security and law enforcement: not ISIS, or pedophiles, but Apple and Google.  Those companies and others that provide or will soon provide end-to-end encryption make it impossible to read intercepted digital messages — and without naming names, FBI Director James Comey and Deputy Attorney General Sally Quillian Yates said that they will ‘work with’ those companies to ensure access to their customers’ communications. Yates refused to provide data on the number of cases in which encryption has posed an insurmountable barrier.”

https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/07/08/fbi-doj-name-new-enemy-crypto-wars-apple-google/

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NSA: Visualize Everything

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“Do you remember those ‘Visualize World Peace’ bumper stickers? They gave the National Security Agency an idea, apparently. Now the agency that hears and reads everything wants to see everything, too. This is interesting in several ways. For one, it shows the tendency of any bureaucracy to expand however possible. The U.S. Department of Defense already has two other entities whose mission is to ‘create a much broader picture’ like Admiral Rogers wants. Why the National Reconnaissance Office and the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency would need the NSA’s help is unclear.”

http://www.thedailybell.com/news-analysis/36385/NSA-Visualize-Everything/

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Love Gov: Keeping a Close Eye on Privacy

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“Love Gov is the story of an independent, fun-loving, young woman, Alexis, and her boyfriend, Scott ‘Gov’ Govinski, who is always there to help. Always. In this episode: Alexis thinks she’s being spied on, but ‘Gov’ believes if she has done nothing wrong, she must have nothing to hide. How far will ‘Gov’ go?”

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The Ghosts of Spying Past

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“In the 1990s, the Clinton administration fought furiously against privacy and security in communication, and we’re still hurting from it today. Yet people in powerful positions are trying to commit the same mistakes all over again.  Doing business safely requires data security: If unauthorized parties can grab credit card numbers or issue fake orders, nobody is safe. However, the Clinton administration considered communication security a threat to national security.  Attorney General Janet Reno said, ‘Without encryption safeguards, all Americans will be endangered.’ She didn’t mean that we needed the safeguard of encryption, but that we had to be protected from encryption.”

http://fee.org/anythingpeaceful/detail/the-ghosts-of-spying-past

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Why an Arms Control Pact Has Security Experts Up in Arms

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“Security researchers say a proposed set of export rules meant to restrict the sale of surveillance software to repressive regimes are so broadly written that they could criminalize some research and restrict legitimate tools that professionals need to make software and computer systems more secure.  Critics liken the software rules, put forth by the US Commerce Department, to the Crypto Wars of the late ’90s, when export controls imposed against strong encryption software prevented cryptographers and mathematicians from effectively sharing their research abroad. At issue is the so-called Wassenaar Arrangement, an international agreement proposed US rules are based upon.”

http://www.wired.com/2015/06/arms-control-pact-security-experts-arms/

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Hacking Team Breach Shows a Global Spying Firm Run Amok

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“Few news events can unleash more schadenfreude within the security community than watching a notorious firm of hackers-for-hire become a hack target themselves. In the case of the freshly disemboweled Italian surveillance firm Hacking Team, the company may also serve as a dark example of a global surveillance industry that often sells to any government willing to pay, with little regard for that regime’s human rights record. On Sunday night, unidentified hackers published a massive, 400 gigabyte trove on bittorrent of internal documents from the Milan-based Hacking Team, a firm long accused of unethical sales of tools that help governments break into target computers and phones.”

http://www.wired.com/2015/07/hacking-team-breach-shows-global-spying-firm-run-amok/

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Critical OpenSSL bug allows attackers to impersonate any trusted server

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“There’s a critical vulnerability in some versions of the widely used OpenSSL code library that in some cases allows attackers to impersonate cryptographically protected websites, e-mail servers, and virtual private networks, according to an advisory issued early Thursday morning.  The bug allows attackers to force vulnerable end-user applications into treating an invalid certificate as a legitimate transport layer security (TLS) or secure sockets layer (SSL) credential. As a result, adversaries with the ability to monitor a connection between the end user and trusted server could intercept or even modify data passing between them.”

http://arstechnica.com/security/2015/07/critical-openssl-bug-allows-attackers-to-impersonate-any-trusted-server/

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Google reveals Adobe/Windows font bugs that enable system hijacking

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“A Google Project Zero researcher has publicly disclosed details on a number of patched Adobe and Microsoft vulnerabilities, including one in the Adobe Type Manager Font Driver that could enable takeover of a number of systems supporting modern font engines. ATMFD.dll has supported Type 1 and OpenType fonts in the Windows kernel dating back to NT 4.0. The researcher said that the Windows kernel module has used the same interpreter for both Type 1 and OpenType CharStrings, supporting every function in the specification, bloating it unnecessarily. The bug could enable an attacker to chain together exploits that result in full system compromise using just the one vulnerability.”

https://threatpost.com/details-available-on-patched-adobe-windows-font-vulnerabilities/113454

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Google pulls listening software from Chromium

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“Google has pulled its listening software from the open-source Chromium browser after complaints from developers and privacy campaigners.  The tool, which uses the computer’s microphone to listen out for the ‘OK, Google’ hotword to trigger voice searches, was silently downloaded with updates of Chromium by default.  Open-source advocates complained that Google was downloading a ‘black box’ on to their machines that was not open source and therefore could not be verified to be doing what it said it was meant to do. Google has now made it an optional download that will not be installed unless a user adds it from the Chrome Web Store and opts into the voice-search functionality.”

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/jun/25/google-pulls-listening-software-chromium

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China bans major shareholders from selling for next six months

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“China’s securities regulator took the drastic step of banning shareholders with stakes of more than 5% from selling shares for the next six months in a bid to halt a plunge in stock prices that is starting to roil global financial markets.  The China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) said on its website late on Wednesday that it would deal severely with any shareholders who violated the rule.  The prohibition is also seen applying to foreign investors who hold stakes in Shanghai- or Shenzhen-listed companies, although most of their holdings are below 5%. More than 500 China-listed companies announced trading halts on the Shanghai and Shenzhen exchanges on Wednesday.”

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jul/09/china-bans-major-shareholders-from-selling-their-stakes-for-next-six-months

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