TechFresh: Security

Now Chat Anonymously with Tor Instant Messenger

Shivam Patsariya 0 AppsnSoftSecure, Security 11:55 AM

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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i><b>SP's: </b>The Tor Project has announced the release of the beta version of its Tor Messenger that allows you to chat anonymously over the Tor network. Built over Mozilla’s Instantbird platform, the Tor Messenger can be used by Windows, Mac and Linux users.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">With its motto of anonymity and security by default, The Tor Project has released the beta version of its Tor Messenger after a year long of effort which saw three alpha versions distributed for testing. The Tor IM is built over Mozilla’s Instantbird, an existing open-source messenger and supports multiple transport networks like Gooogle Talk, Facebook Chat, Twitter, Yahoo and others.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Instantbird was not the only choice of the team developers, says Tor, as they had considered Pidgin and Adam Langley’s xmpp-client as well. But, as the Tor developer team had an experience working on the XUL (XML User Interface Language over which Tor Browser is built), they chose Mozilla’s Instantbird.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">The Tor messenger boasts of Off-the-Record (OTR) messaging which will protect your identity. The Tor IM will encrypt and send the data through the reliable Tor network. Read to know more about Tor and how it maintains anonymity.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">However, the developers are still working on parts of creating absolute anonymity, and therefore, had asked the users ‘not to rely heavily on the Tor Messenger’ for some time. The Tor IM developers are looking for feedbacks and have already started working on the updates.</span></div>
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Now Chat Anonymously with Tor Instant Messenger

SP's: The Tor Project has announced the release of the beta version of its Tor Messenger that allows you to chat anonymously over t...

How Innocent Copy-Paste Leaks Your Previous Embarrassing Google Searches

Shivam Patsariya 0 Security, WebNdSocial 10:56 AM

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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i><img alt="google-copy-paste" loading="lazy" src="http://d2brer6wwumtdu.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/google-copy-paste.jpg" /></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i><b>SP's: </b>Our innocent habit of copy-paste is reflected when we send the URLs of search pages as some reference to our friends. But, it comes with the risks of exposing your previous searches, if done carelessly. Read the post to know the risk involved and how to avoid it. </i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Using the Google search to solve the doubts is something we do every day and many times we send a link to a page of search results to our friends. But, before today, I never cared to look at the URL I’m sending as it’s an instantaneous action of simple copying-pasting.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">To my surprise, it’s possible that this could’ve revealed my previous searches to the receiver – and it’s something that’s horrifying.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Jeremy Rubin, the co-founder of the MIT Digital Currency Initiative, outlines a big blunder Google is committing and violating our privacy. On Medium, he explains how his friend sent him a link to a page of search results, and before he arrived at the intended page, he briefly saw another page of search results.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">So, what’s actually happening here?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Okay, let’s ask me you to do some simple steps to reproduce the issue we are discussing here:</span></div>
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<li><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Open Google Chrome or Firefox browser.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">In the address bar, search “some random search 1”.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Now from the search page, search “fossbytes”.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">With the intention of sending this search page to a friend, or us, copy the URL at the top.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Before pasting it somewhere, look at the copied URL closely, it has both the searches “some random search 1” and “SPRTech” in the URL query string.</span></li>
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https://www.google.com/search? q=some+random+search+1#q=SPRTech</div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Till now, you would have understood the risk we are trying to address. If you don’t read the entire search string before forwarding to your friends or family, you might embarrass yourself in front of them.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Jeremy also brought into the light a possible and generic phishing attack with an email asking for some specific results from a country “XYZ”.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">In such situations, it’s very harmless and easy to blame the user, calling her responsible as she copied and pasted the URL carelessly. However, she didn’t expect that simple copy-paste and a simple URL would be unsafe to share. Jeremy continues, “…nor does it meet their real-world behavior of blindly copy-pasting URLs, especially for something like search results.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">He has disclosed this issue to Google and they have chosen to NOT fix it.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">We expect Google to stop this automatic inclusion of prior search results as it’s a violation of a user’s privacy expectations.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Please double check the URLs before sending them to other people and tell the same to your friends and family.</span></div>
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How Innocent Copy-Paste Leaks Your Previous Embarrassing Google Searches

SP's: Our innocent habit of copy-paste is reflected when we send the URLs of search pages as some reference to our friends. But, it...

Germany Suspects, Will Investigate Google and Facebook Over Data Transfers

Shivam Patsariya 0 Security, tech 1:14 PM

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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i><b>SP's: </b>he European Union has many a times been apprehensive of the US-based tech companies, especially on the matters of privacy and data security. Now, Germany has raised concerns over the illegal data transfers from the EU to the US by the global companies like Facebook and Google.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">The rift between the European and American companies is not hidden. Be it the automobile sector, industry or the tech conglomeration. In a recent development, Germany has just expressed its concerns over the intercontinental data transfers and announced investigations over the US based tech companies such as Google and Facebook.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">The illegal data transfer accusation spiralled after an Austrian privacy activist Max Schrems filed a case against Facebook in Ireland on the charge of his privacy infringement due to NSA’s mass surveillance programs.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">The Court of Justice of the EU (CJEU) in its decision has given authority to the local data protection bodies to check if the data transfer flow under the 15-year-old Safe Harbour framework flouted any of the European Union laws, thus, authorized to investigate Google and Facebook. The concern of the officials is that the data from the EU isn’t safe from the US-based intelligence servers.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">While the case has been registered against the US-based tech companies in EU and probe been started, a US district court has dismissed a lawsuit against NSA’s mass surveillance programs because nobody is unable to prove such.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">The EU and USA, along with many other countries, have recently signed the Trans-Pacific Partnership deal that is considered to be the worst possible thing for the Internet with regards to proprietary rights, but the trust deficit between the two powers over the privacy violation is ever widening.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">EU announced on Monday about its principle-based agreement with the USA over a new trans-Atlantic data-transfer agreement. EU’s Justice Commissioner Vera Jourova said, “There is agreement on these matters in principle, but we are still discussing how to ensure that these commitments are binding enough to fully meet the requirements of the court”.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">The new treaty will try to ensure a transparent data transfer process and while keeping the privacy of the citizens intact.</span></div>
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Germany Suspects, Will Investigate Google and Facebook Over Data Transfers

SP's: he European Union has many a times been apprehensive of the US-based tech companies, especially on the matters of privacy an...

Which Antivirus Software Protect Themselves From Hacking Attacks?

Shivam Patsariya 0 Security 12:43 PM

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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i><img alt="-antivirus-comparison-" height="360" loading="lazy" src="http://d2brer6wwumtdu.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/antivirus-comparison-.jpg" width="640" /><b>SP's: </b>Even though the number of users aware about the basic security practices is increasing day-by-day, most of us are unaware of the fact that the antivirus software can also be hacked. Along the similar lines, AV-TEST has conducted a test and listed the consumer and business versions of the antiviruses based on their self-defense abilities.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Promptly replying to my question – why do you use an antivirus software? – you’ll state multiple reasons like the fear of hacking attacks, malware and privacy concerns. But, do you know that your antivirus programs can also be hacked?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Antivirus software are just another piece of software that comes with more security layers to protect itself and your system. But, nowadays attackers are actively targetting the antivirus software.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">The renowned IT-security institute AV-TEST has presented its results telling the antivirus software employing the self-protection measures. It should be noted that back in the year 2014, ESET Smart Security 8 was the only antivirus software for home users that came with full self-protection measures.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">From the business point of view, only Symantec Endpoint Protection fulfilled this criterion.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">This year, once again, AV-TEST has presented a list of the antivirus software that implement two techniques called CEP and ASLR to protect themselves. ASLR stands for “Address Space Layout Randomization” and DEP stands for “Data Execution Prevention.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">With these standards enabled, only authorized data can be run and protection could be ensured by randomizing the position where data is stored in memory.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">So, which antivirus products protect themselves from attacks in 2015?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">According to the AV-TEST’s 2015 tests for consumer antivirus versions, Avira Antivirus Pro, Bullguard Internet Security, Eset Smart Security, Kaspersky Internet Security, McAfee Internet Security, and Symantec Norton Security have achieved a 100% self-protection score.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">K7 Computing Total Security, Norman Security Suite Pro and Quick Heal Total Security were the worst performers scoring 25%-29% scores.</span></div>
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<img alt="self-protection-antivirus-business-version-" height="435" loading="lazy" src="http://d2brer6wwumtdu.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/self-protection-antivirus-business-version-.jpg" width="640" /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">From the business point of views, Kaspersky Lab Endpoint Security 10.2, Kaspersky Lab Small Office Security 4, and Symantec Endpoint Protection 12.1 achieved the 100% self-protection results.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">In this category, Seqrite Endpoint Security scored the lowest score of 29.8%.</span></div>
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<img alt="which-antiviruses-protect-themselves-against-attacks-495321-8" height="591" loading="lazy" src="http://d2brer6wwumtdu.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/which-antiviruses-protect-themselves-against-attacks-495321-8.jpg" style="text-align: left;" width="640" /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">AV-TEST writes about the standards and results, “DEP and ASLR are an additional precaution that a programmer or manufacturer should not do without. Implementation is so easy: it involves existing functions in the compiler that simply need to be activated.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Is your antivirus self-protecting itself with 100% scores? Tell us in the comments below.</span></div>
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Which Antivirus Software Protect Themselves From Hacking Attacks?

SP's: Even though the number of users aware about the basic security practices is increasing day-by-day, most of us are unaware of th...

FBI Advises Ransomware Victims To Pay The Ransom for Retrieving Data

Shivam Patsariya 0 Security, tech 12:41 PM

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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i><img alt="ransomware-laptop" height="384" loading="lazy" src="http://d2brer6wwumtdu.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/ransomware-laptop.jpg" width="640" /></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i><b>SP's: </b>FBI has advised ransomware victims to pay the ransom and retrieve their data as there is not much the top law enforcement agency of the USA can do in this matter. It is pretty difficult to decrypt the ransomware so users are at the hacker’s mercy.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Getting hacked is so common these days that it neither gets the headlines nor the sympathies. Recently, a dangerous “Breaking Bad” ransomware was let loose which was completely undetected by the best Antiviruses as well.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Nevertheless, FBI, the USA’s top law enforcement agency which used to be the last resort for the companies that got hacked for help, has also left the victims in dismay.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Joseph Bonavolonta, the Assistant Special Agent in Charge of the FBI’s CYBER and Counterintelligence Program in its Boston office says, “The ransomware is that good. To be honest, we often advise people just to pay the ransom”. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Ransomware is unlike any other hack and is increasingly used by the attackers to hold down the entire system by strong encryption and data of the victim is held hostage until the ransom is paid. Read the difference between viruses, trojans, spyware, ransomware, worms and bots to know more about the subject.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">FBI has admitted hands down that the task to get all of the data is next to impossible if the users are attacked with Cryptolocker, Cryptowall or any other forms of ransomware such as the Windows 10 ransomware scam without the payment.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">As the unwitting consumers are attacked by ransomware, they have to pay the ransom in the now officially accepted currency Bitcoin. This situation makes the users helpless against such attacks.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">However, there are few ways to stop the ransomware. Most of the times the ransomware goes undetected, but if you suspect of any file to be of such kind, immediately remove that before complete encryption takes place and the data is frozen. Offline back-up of the data will also be helpful, as it is the data that is held to ransom. So keep an additional copy.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Did you find the article informative? Tell us in comments below.</span></div>
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FBI Advises Ransomware Victims To Pay The Ransom for Retrieving Data

SP's: FBI has advised ransomware victims to pay the ransom and retrieve their data as there is not much the top law enforcement age...

US Freaks Out, Worries Russia Would Cut Undersea Internet cables

Shivam Patsariya 0 News, Security 12:40 PM

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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i><b>SP's: </b>Russia got the US intelligence agencies into a frenzy as its naval submarines and spy ships got too close to the global undersea Internet cables. The US officials panicked as speculations that Russia might be trying to sever the fiber-optic cables came up.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">The world experienced a déjà vu when reports of the US intelligentsia getting worried about the increasing Russian activities in the North Atlantic Ocean surfaced in the news. As the Russian Navy submarines and spy ships got too close to the undersea cables that carry about 95% of the global Internet connections, speculations that an attempt by the Russians to cut the information carrying cables got everyone on the US intelligence to panic.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Russian hackers had previously attacked the Pentagon computers, so the US agencies are expecting the worst- severing the undersea fiber-optic cables that would immediately isolate the US and the West and block the communication system and business that everyone is dependent on.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">There were reports of Russia having created a weapon that could switch off the enemy satellites which when combined with the fresh rumours could bring the whole world to a halt. However, no such proof of Russian interference with the cables has come up yet.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Russia has flexed its muscles and showed its military prowess in Crimea, eastern Ukraine and now Syria while destroying the IS forces as the world saw in wonder. This new-found aggression in the Russian military has kept the US agencies on toes and brought a reminiscence of the Cold War era.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">US defence officials are worried as the Russian fleet goes deeper into the ocean where it is tough to find and repair the damages. If incurred any damage, the global business of around $10 trillion a day that is carried out through these cable connections would receive a serious shock.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Via: NYT</span></div>
</div>

US Freaks Out, Worries Russia Would Cut Undersea Internet cables

SP's: Russia got the US intelligence agencies into a frenzy as its naval submarines and spy ships got too close to the global under...

15-year-old Boy Arrested Over the TalkTalk Hacking Attack

Shivam Patsariya 0 Security, tech 12:27 PM

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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i><img alt="talktalk-hacking-teen-boy" height="401" loading="lazy" src="http://d2brer6wwumtdu.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/talktalk-hacking-teen-boy.jpg" width="640" /></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i><b>SP's: </b>A 15-year-old has been arrested in Northern Ireland in connection with the cyber-attack on the TalkTalk’s website. This news of 15-year-old hacker’s arrest has stunned the security experts as it was assumed that a group of ISIS terrorists or Russia was behind this massive data breach.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">The UK phone and broadband provider TalkTalk has reported a recent hacking attack. The company’s website and computers have been breached 3 times in the past eight months. As a result, it’s being understood that the personal information of users and bank details are circulating on the dark web.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">In connection with the cyber-attack on the TalkTalk’s website, a 15-year-old has been arrested in Northern Ireland.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">The boy was arrested on suspicion of Computer Misuse Act offences after a house search in County Antrim. He was taken into custody at a County Antrim police station where he will be interrogated.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">The official statement from TalkTalk said: “We know this has been a worrying time for customers and we are grateful for the swift response and hard work of the police. We will continue to assist with the ongoing investigation.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">This news of 15-year-old hacker’s arrest has stunned the security experts. Earlier, it was assumed that a group of ISIS terrorists or Russia was behind this massive data breach.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">The phone and broadband provider TalkTalk has about 4 million customers and the company has been heavily criticized for its way of handling the cyber attacks. The company said that currently there’s no evidence that customers’ bank accounts have been affected.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">“In the meantime, we advise customers to visit [our website] for updates and information regarding this incident,” a TalkTalk said.</span></div>
</div>

15-year-old Boy Arrested Over the TalkTalk Hacking Attack

SP's: A 15-year-old has been arrested in Northern Ireland in connection with the cyber-attack on the TalkTalk’s website. This news ...

Here’s How This Web Page Sniffs Anyone’s Browser History Using Sniffly Attack

Shivam Patsariya 0 Security, WebNdSocial 12:26 PM

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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i><img alt="sniffly-browsing-history" height="339" loading="lazy" src="http://d2brer6wwumtdu.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/sniffly-browsing-history.jpg" width="640" /></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i><b>SP's: </b>By abusing the HTTP policies of your web browser, a security engineer has devised a new technique to sniff the browsing history. Using Sniffly and HSTS timing attack, an arbitrary website can violate the privacy of its users. Read ahead to more about how it’s done in detail.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">In this article, I’m going to tell you about Sniffly. It’s an attack that abuses the HTTP Strict Transport Security and Content Security Policy to allow a website to sniff a user’s past browser history.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Today tracking the web users is something that website owners do very often using malware injection, cookies, enforcing paywalls and malicious ad scripts. Well, there’s a new technique using the browser fingerprinting is in town. In a demonstration at <a href="https://zyan.scripts.mit.edu/presentations/toorcon2015.pdf">ToorCon </a>2015, Yan Zhu, a privacy engineer, showed how to do this and the working of Sniffly attack.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">To showcase the demo, Yan has made a web page http://zyan.scripts.mit.edu/sniffly/. You can visit it in Firefox/Chrome/Opera with HTTPS everywhere and see how Sniffly digs your browsing history in the left column.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Here’s how Sniffly works:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">When you visit the Sniffly page, your web browser tries to load the images from various HSTS domains over HTTP. Sniffly sets a CSP policy that restricts images to HTTP, so that image sources are redirected to HTTPS.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">When an image is blocked by CSP, the time taken for the image to be redirected from HTTP to HTTPS is calculated. If the time is of the order of a millisecond, it means no network request was made and it was HSTS redirect. This implies that the user had earlier visited this domain.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">However, if the time the taken to redirect the request is of the order of 100 milliseconds, it means the user hasn’t visited the domain before as a network request probably occurred.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">The Sniffly attack is allowed if you visit a site that supports HSTS, it can sniff your browsing history by measuring the redirect time.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">To know more about the Sniffly attack, visit the Yan’s <a href="https://github.com/diracdeltas/sniffly">GitHub </a>page.</span></div>
</div>

Here’s How This Web Page Sniffs Anyone’s Browser History Using Sniffly Attack

SP's: By abusing the HTTP policies of your web browser, a security engineer has devised a new technique to sniff the browsing histo...

Secure Your Password With Enigmaze Password Generating Book

Shivam Patsariya 0 Security, tech 12:24 PM

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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><img alt="Password_Monkey" height="359" loading="lazy" src="http://d2brer6wwumtdu.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Password_Monkey.jpg" width="640" /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b>SP's: </b>Enigmaze Secure Password Generating Grid System Manager has come up with the most efficient and innovative ways of generating new and strong passwords, and protecting the existing ones. It is aided with features like hardcover password journal with 176 pages, removable label, 78 different grids, an invisible ink marker, and a UV light key chain.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Today, while there are approximately 3 billion people across the world using the internet, most of us prefer using the same password for all our accounts, say, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or even for net banking, for the sake of ease in remembering them.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Hence, once the password is decoded, the results could be fatal. This is exactly where the Enigmaze Secure Password Generating Grid System Manager comes into play.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">It can be said to be the most efficient and innovative way of generating new, strong passwords and updating and protecting existing ones.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">So, how does it work? Let’s tell you more about Enigmaze Password Generating Book.</span></div>
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<img alt="password generating notebook" height="496" loading="lazy" src="http://d2brer6wwumtdu.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/password-generating-notebook.jpg" width="640" /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Amidst many ways for generation of a unique password, one can include adding different symbols to existing passwords as well.</span></div>
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<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Durable, hardcover password generating book</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">176 pages, removable label, and 78 different grids ensure that you’ll never have a problem in keeping your passwords protected and safe.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">The notebooks are aided with an invisible ink marker and a UV light key chain.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"> The plastic grid card makes it portable</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Easy to organize</span></li>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Estimated delivery is around December, 2015. So hurry up! Get one for yourself and secure your passwords!</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Do you think this will prove to be a highly efficient way of securing passwords? Tell us in the comments below.</span></div>
</div>

Secure Your Password With Enigmaze Password Generating Book

SP's: Enigmaze Secure Password Generating Grid System Manager has come up with the most efficient and innovative ways of generating...

Microsoft: Windows 10 Collects Data to Improve ‘Your’ Experience

Shivam Patsariya 0 Microsoft, Security, Software, tech 2:50 PM

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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i><img alt="Windows-10-install-without-windows-update-iso-19" height="349" loading="lazy" src="http://d2brer6wwumtdu.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/30002123/Windows-10-install-without-windows-update-iso-19.jpg" width="640" /></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i><b>SP's: </b> In another attempt to clear the confusion clouds, Microsoft said that users shouldn’t worry about the Windows 10 data collection practices. In a recent interview, talking about the data collection, Microsoft’s VP Joe Belfiore said that the company feels that there are some compulsory data collection practices that are related to the system health issue.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Since the Windows 10 launch, from time-to-time we have received new updates about the privacy concerns in the new Microsoft OS. Users have noticed that their computers are now collecting more data by default and sending it to Microsoft.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">In the past, Microsoft has tried to clear the air by trying to assure the users with some incomplete answers. Once again to clarify the issues, Microsoft’s VP Joe Belfiore said in an interview with <a href="http://www.computerworld.com/article/2996504/data-privacy/microsoft-doesnt-see-windows-10s-mandatory-data-collection-as-a-privacy-risk.html#jump">CW </a>that Windows 10 is not doing anything that should be called a privacy violation.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">While the company claims that users are having full control over the OS, there are a number of services that keep running all the time. Defending this, Microsoft VP said that these services are used to send app crash data to the Microsoft servers. He stresses on the fact that this data is encrypted, so users shouldn’t panic.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">“In the case of knowing that our system that we’ve created is crashing, or is having serious performance problems, we view that as so helpful to the ecosystem, and [therefore] not an issue of personal privacy, that today, we collect that data so that we make that experience better for everyone,” he said.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">When asked about the tracking features that can’t be turned off, Microsoft VP said that the company doesn’t consider them to be a privacy issue as the data sent via these services is just regarding system health, and no personal information is sent back to the company servers.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">“In the cases where we’ve not provided options, we feel that those things have to do with the health of the system, and are not personal information or are not related to privacy,” he added.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Well, not matter how genuine explanations Microsoft gives, the concern remains as the users must have the power to choose whether to share some info or nothing at all.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">We hope that Microsoft decides to loosen up a bit in the next updates of Windows 10 and provides us more control. What are your thoughts regarding this issue? Tell us in the comments below.</span></div>
</div>

Microsoft: Windows 10 Collects Data to Improve ‘Your’ Experience

SP's: In another attempt to clear the confusion clouds, Microsoft said that users shouldn’t worry about the Windows 10 data collec...

This Open-source Program Recognize Your Faces in Real Time

Shivam Patsariya 0 ProgrammingBooks, Science, Security, Software 2:47 PM

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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i><img alt="facial-expression-surprise-openface" height="426" loading="lazy" src="http://d2brer6wwumtdu.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/facial-expression-surprise-openface.jpg" width="640" /></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i><b>SP's: </b>penFace, the open source face recognition technology developed by the researchers at the Carnegie Mellon University, has been rolled out. The OpenFace holds ground against the much-advanced proprietary face-recognition technologies by private endeavours.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Open-source technology is usually at par with the proprietary technology but in certain cases such as the face-recognition, the open-source lags far behind.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">The intelligentsia of the open-source community has now stepped up and created an open source face recognition system. The researchers at Carnegie Mellon University feel that the accuracies of the open-source face recognition system lag behind the advancements garnered by the tech giants with their exclusive state-of-the-art.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Open source, as the name gives away, is the technology that derives its ideas from the 1970’s hacker culture defining the craze for programming and its subsequent availability to all. This philosophy was later subsumed by FOSS (Free and Open Source). The lack of resources for the projects that include hardware technology sometimes hinder the excellence in the open source community.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">OpenFace is based on Google’s FaceNet face recognition system and can recognise the faces within few seconds with 10 reference photos. The datasets that the developers have used to train this program to recognize faces falls to a fraction as compared to the huge datasets of private endeavours.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">However, the developers are quite happy with the results as the accuracy they achieved is remarkably high and exceeds in performance in comparison to the previous open source face recognition technology attempts on the standard LFW benchmark.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Watch OpenFace in action, recognizing the faces in real-time:</span></div>
<iframe width="640" height="480" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/LZJOTRkjZA4" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">If you belong to an open-source community, perhaps you should take a look at the OpenFace project.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">For more information on the OpenFace project, visit <a href="https://github.com/cmusatyalab/openface">GitHub.com</a></span></div>
</div>

This Open-source Program Recognize Your Faces in Real Time

SP's: penFace, the open source face recognition technology developed by the researchers at the Carnegie Mellon University, has been...

Case Against NSA Dismissed Because Nobody Can Prove That It is Spying

Shivam Patsariya 0 Security, WebNdSocial 10:42 AM

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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i><img alt="lawsuit-dismissed-nsa-spying-wikimedia" height="401" loading="lazy" src="http://d2brer6wwumtdu.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/lawsuit-dismissed-nsa-spying-wikimedia.jpg" width="640" /></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i><b>SP's: </b>The US District Court has dismissed a lawsuit by Wikimedia against the NSA surveillance. The District Court ruled that the lawsuit merely rested on “the subjective fear of surveillance” and it was “unpersuasive,” “incomplete,” and “riddled with assumptions.”</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">It’s a widely accepted fact that USA government is busy spending billions on its NSA surveillance programs – thanks to Mr. Edward Snowden. But, proving the whole scenario in the court and presenting concrete evidences is a whole different kind of story.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Due to this simple reason, a lawsuit by Wikimedia against the mighty NSA been thrown out of the court. The court mentioned there is no way to determine if the Wikimedia Foundation is under NSA surveillance.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">The US District Judge TS Ellis IIIt ruled against Wikimedia and stated that there isn’t enough evidence to “plausibly establish that the NSA is using upstream surveillance.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Wikimedia, supported by the likes of Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International USA, complained about NSA’s surveillance as revealed by Edward Snowden. The lawsuit suggested that the massive amount of traffic Wikipedia receives suggest that the NSA’s mass surveillance must have included spying on the activities of Wikipedia users.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Judge TS Ellis III stated that without proper context, it’s unclear whether or not Wikimedia is under the preying eyes of NSA. He rules that lawsuit merely rested on “the subjective fear of surveillance” and it was “unpersuasive,” “incomplete,” and “riddled with assumptions.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Let’s take a look at what different parties had to say about the case:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">On the Wikimedia blog,  Michelle Paulson and Geoff Brigham, Legal Director and General Counsel, wrote about the possibility of the future appeals to the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals: “We respectfully disagree with the Court’s decision to dismiss. There is no question that Upstream surveillance captures the communications of both the user community and the Wikimedia Foundation itself. We believe that our claims have merit.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">The ACLU National Security Project Staff Attorney Patrick Toomey said,“The court has wrongly insulated the NSA’s spying from meaningful judicial scrutiny. The decision turns a blind eye to the fact that the government is tapping into the Internet’s backbone to spy on millions of Americans.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">What are your thoughts on the rejected lawsuit against NSA syping? Tell us in the comments below.</span></div>
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Case Against NSA Dismissed Because Nobody Can Prove That It is Spying

SP's: The US District Court has dismissed a lawsuit by Wikimedia against the NSA surveillance. The District Court ruled that the la...

Google Hacker James Forshaw Tells Why Windows 10 Is Good As Well As Bad

Shivam Patsariya 0 AppsnSoftSecure, Security 10:35 AM

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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i><img alt="Windows-10-Google-hacker-" height="359" loading="lazy" src="http://d2brer6wwumtdu.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Windows-10-Google-hacker-.jpg" width="640" /></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i><b>SP's: </b>Accomplished Google hacker James Forshaw thinks that Microsoft has delivered a “good” operating system, but it has failed to ensure the overall user security. He praised it for some improvements and called it the “Two step forward, One step back” moment for Microsoft.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">When we talk about the features and functionalities added in Windows 10, we think of the almost harmless Microsoft Edge browser, prompt Cortana, an option of multiple desktops etc. However, on the security front, Windows 10 has been accused of spying on the operating system users.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">In the past, Microsoft tried to clear the confusion clouds by some explanations that didn’t offer anything concrete. In a recent security conference, renowned Google hacker James Forshaw gave Windows 10 a slight security approval and called it a “Two step forward, One step back” moment for Microsoft.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">For those who don’t know, James Forshaw is a security researcher in Google’s Project Team with a specialization in Windows. In the past, he has discovered some major loopholes in Windows and he did it again in his recent presentation.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">The Google hacker praised Microsoft for taking some steps to tighten the Windows security but bashed the Windows maker for the increased number of drivers and services. He pointed out that Windows 10 has 291 drivers and 196 system services enabled, which is higher that the previous iterations.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">“There are more system services and drivers which means more attack surface,” Forshaw says.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Targetting the Windows 10 user account control, he went on to say that it’s “something you just put there to annoy the user” by displaying prompts to allow or block the apps all the time. This is a feature that is clearly failing to accomplish its mission of protecting its users.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Google hacker James Forshaw hoped that Microsoft will be soon fixing some issues with Windows 10 user account control. He also gave a demo of a token-capturing tool to bypass Windows 10 security mechanisms. This tool will be publicly released after Microsoft issues a patch.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Talking about Windows 10’s Microsoft Edge web browser, he praised it for the improvements. But as a web browser in whole, he called it flawed. “Microsoft could have lead the way and said ‘I refuse to run (Adobe) Flash ever again in my web browser’ but unfortunately they did not take that inspired option,” Forshaw said.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Do agree with the Google hacker James Forshaw? Tell us in the comments.</span></div>
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Google Hacker James Forshaw Tells Why Windows 10 Is Good As Well As Bad

SP's: Accomplished Google hacker James Forshaw thinks that Microsoft has delivered a “good” operating system, but it has failed to ...

How a Codeless Hack Won $5000 at Facebook Hackathon Without a Single Line of Code

Shivam Patsariya 0 Security, tech 12:46 PM

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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i><img alt="THE-CODELESS-HACK-the-hackathon" height="392" loading="lazy" src="http://d2brer6wwumtdu.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/THE-CODELESS-HACK-the-hackathon.png" width="640" /></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i><b>SP's: </b>Driven by the open source philosophy, two Facebook interns won $5,000 at a Facebook Hackathon. They performed a codeless hack and made a tool to debug the failed Battery Backup Units (BBU). Read more to know their story.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">This is an article telling you the story of a codeless hack performed by Andrew Andrade and Derek Jouppi. They are interns at Facebook and recently won the OCP Summit Hackathon by making a new BBU debugging tool without any much-needed team size and equipment.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Writing on the <a href="http://opencompute.org/">Opencompute.org</a>, Andrew tells that they took part in the Open Compute Summit just like that and without any serious plans. They wanted to make something that could be immediately be contributed to Open Compute within 24 hours.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">At the event, Andrew and Derek decided to perform a hack for the newly released Battery Backup Unit (BBU) on the Open Rack V2 design.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Dealing with a non-functional and failed BBU unit is a very difficult and time taking tasks. It involves the use of tons of probes, wires, DMM, or oscilloscope to determine the solution. Instead, they decided to use a coupler with the help of a simple ATMEGA microcontroller and LED display to make an intelligent tool.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">As the display BBU were inaccessible, they wrote some Arduino code to simulate the BBU and some other code that would act as a digital-to-analog converter to fetch signals from the BBU. But, nothing made sense as there wasn’t much room in V2 rack to house a coupler and a microcontroller solution would be too expensive.</span></div>
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<img alt="Preparing for the codeless hack" height="359" loading="lazy" src="http://d2brer6wwumtdu.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/preparing-to-win-hackathon-codeless-hackathon.jpg" width="640" /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Preparing for the codeless hack</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Then they decided to take the much needed Open Compute approach and create a simple and minimal solution by removing anything in the data center that didn’t contribute to efficiency.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">As their codeless hack, they made a debug card that could be easily attached as a component at the back of a BBU as shown in the video below.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Explaining their pivot, they write: “We realized that, given the mapping of the pin outs, one solution would be to connect the signals to the status LED’s, which would give instant visualization to the problems with the BBU. While it would take manual diagnostics to determine issues, the cost of the device would be significantly lower, and it would be much easier to operate. For the added functionality, we included an output header.”</span><br />
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Animation of the Debug Card Derek Jouppi and I designed at the open compute summit hackathon, blog post soon to come!</div>
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Posted by <a href="https://www.facebook.com/mrandrewandrade">Andrew Andrade</a> on Saturday, February 15, 2014</div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">“This could be used in the future to connect to a microcontroller if a more automated method had to be deployed. Finally, since the BBU relied on a power supply to charge, we included a power header that could be used to connect to the power supply,” they explain further.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">After preparing the design, they put it on the breadboard before preparing the final rendering of the product using mechanical CAD software.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">This codeless debug tool would enable the techies working in the datacenter BBUs to quickly solve the problems.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">We, at SPRTEch, promote the open source philosophy and believe in sharing the knowledge with our readers. Using the same open source philosophy, Andrew and Derek performed this codeless hack and further plan to release the specifications for their BBU hack to the open source community in the next few weeks.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Did you find this codeless hack interesting? Tell us in the comments below.</span></div>
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How a Codeless Hack Won $5000 at Facebook Hackathon Without a Single Line of Code

SP's: Driven by the open source philosophy, two Facebook interns won $5,000 at a Facebook Hackathon. They performed a codeless hack...

This 11-year-old Girl is Selling Super Secure Passwords for $2 Each

Shivam Patsariya 0 Security, tech 12:41 PM

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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i><img alt="mira-modi-password-passphrase-1" height="402" loading="lazy" src="http://d2brer6wwumtdu.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/mira-modi-password-passphrase-1.jpg" width="640" /></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i><b>SP's: </b>Mira Modi, an 11-year-old girl, has started a business of selling cryptographically secure passwords for $2 each. She generated Diceware passwords, writes them by hands and sends by postal mail.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">The unprecedented speed, at which data breaches are taking place and our online passwords are being compromised, is surely alarming. If nothing else, this confirms on</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">e fact that- World needs strong passwords?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Just few weeks ago, an 11-year-old girl Mira Modi started a small business of selling six-word Diceware passwords. She operated her business online via dicewarepasswords.com.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">For those who don’t know, Diceware is a well-known technique to generate passwords. In the process, a normal six-sided dice is used to generate random numbers that are matched with the letters of English alphabet to generate words.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Now these words are combined into a string of words that doesn’t make sense. Hence, it’s very difficult to crack these passwords. But, surprisingly these passphrases are relatively easy to remember.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Talking to Ars Technica, Mira Modi says, “This whole concept of making your own passwords and being super secure and stuff, I don’t think my friends understand that, but I think it’s cool.”mira-modi-password-passphrase-1“I wanted to make it a public thing because I wasn’t getting very much money,” she said. “I thought it would be fun to have my own website.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Mira is the daughter of Julia Angwin, a privacy-focused journalist and writer of her book Dragnet Nation. During the research work for her book, Angwin was employed to generate Diceware passwords. Later, Mira decided to turn it into a small business but her in-person sales were low. So, she decided to take the business online.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Talking about the worries of people regarding the security of passwords, she says: “People are worried that I will take your passwords, but in reality I won’t be able to remember them,” she told Ars. “But I don’t store them on any computer anywhere. As far as I know there is only one copy of your password.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">She sends the passwords to the customers by the US Postal Mail, which can’t be opened by the government without a search warrant.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Did you like this story of Mira Modi? Tell us in the comments below.</span></div>
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This 11-year-old Girl is Selling Super Secure Passwords for $2 Each

SP's: Mira Modi, an 11-year-old girl, has started a business of selling cryptographically secure passwords for $2 each. She generat...

Self-driving Cars Must be Programmed to Kill, Study Says

Shivam Patsariya 0 GadgetsNdMachines, Security 10:18 AM

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<img height="360" loading="lazy" src="http://d2brer6wwumtdu.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/google-self-driving-car-kill-1.gif" style="text-align: left;" width="640" /></div>
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<i style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>SP's: </b>As we advance more and more in artificial intelligence and related technologies, we must solve some complex ethical problems. A similar dilemma is faced in the case of self-driving cars and how they should act in case of unavoidable accidents. Should they kill more people on the road to save the car occupants? Or, should they protect others on the road by sacrificing the life of occupants? </i></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Every big automobile company is preparing its artillery with the technology that will help them to produce autonomous vehicles. Even the companies like Google and Apple are hiring engineers and designers to make their ‘next big product’.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">In the future, self-driving cars will soon dominate roads and as the tests suggest, the autonomous vehicles take extra security precautions. According to the reports, very few minor accidents that took place on the road during tests, were caused due to the mistake of other vehicles or people on the road. This brings us to a very interesting scenario that deals with an event of unavoidable accidents.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">How should a car act in such scenario? Should it minimize the loss of life on the road at the cost of occupants’ life, or should it protect the car occupants at all costs?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">These ethical questions need to be answered when we talk about a future with self-driving cars.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Also read: First Apple Car Coming in 2019, According to Report</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">“Our results provide but a first foray into the thorny issues raised by moral algorithms for autonomous vehicles,” says said UAVB and Oxford University scholar and bioethics expert Ameen Bargh who advised to change the course of the car to reduce the loss of life.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">However, deontologists argue that “some values are simply categorically always true”.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">“For example, murder is always wrong, and we should never do it, even if shifting the trolley will save five lives, we shouldn’t do it because we would be actively killing one,” Bargh said.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">The members of UAB’s Ethics and Bioethics teams are doing a lot of work to deal with such type of questions. One way to tackle this problem is to act in such a way that it reduces the loss of life. The results of the tests are interesting and people are comfortable with the idea that self-driving cars should be programmed in such a manner that they reduce the death toll.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">As we advance more and more in AI and technology, we must find answers to these ethical and philosophical questions and find the ways to arrive at a worthy solution.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Source: MIT Technology Review</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">What do you think? Should self-driving cars must be programmed to kill? Tell us in the comments below.</span></div>
</div>

Self-driving Cars Must be Programmed to Kill, Study Says

SP's: As we advance more and more in artificial intelligence and related technologies, we must solve some complex ethical problems....

Facebook Exposing Trillions of Posts to Public Search, Change Your Settings Right Now

Shivam Patsariya 0 Security, WebNdSocial 7:25 AM

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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i><img alt="FEATURED-facebook-open" height="372" loading="lazy" src="http://d2brer6wwumtdu.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/FEATURED-facebook-open.jpg" width="640" /></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i><b>SP's: </b>To make its search more functional, Facebook has indexed about 2 trillion public posts. Now, you can search the pictures, news and posts of your interest by entering some phrases in the search box. However, if you want to opt out, you need to change some settings right now.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Facebook is about to change in a big way and it’s going to affect Google – and you, of course. Now Facebook is making all the public posts on the social network available to universal search.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Facebook is making it a lot easier to search the conversations and stories unfolding in real time, just like Twitter or Google search. Just the way Google indexes websites and web pages, Facebook has indexed about two trillion posts put on by the Facebook users to make them easily searchable.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">This move by Facebook will make the search function of Facebook broader and help you to search things that interest you more easily on the world’s biggest social network. Now you can search the public pictures of the Halloween in just a click and easily look for the discussions of your friends about The Martian by typing few phrases in the search box.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">But, if you are uncomfortable with sharing your life and don’t want to make a contribution to the public debate, there are just 2 simple steps to follow:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Step 1: Limit the visibility of future posts</span></h4>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">In your News Feed page, just click on the top right corner of the screen. Below the big purple dinosaur, click on the question “Who can see my stuff?” The option that you need to tick is “Friends” and avoid “Public” to restrict the visibility.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">This option will change the visibility of future posts.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Step 2: Limit the visibility of past posts</span></h4>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">To change the past posts, you need to find the “Limit Past Posts” option in “See More Settings” and do changes.</span></div>
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<img alt="how-to-stop-public-search-facebook-privacy-1" height="243" loading="lazy" src="http://d2brer6wwumtdu.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/how-to-stop-public-search-facebook-privacy-2.jpg" width="640" /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Did you like this change in Facebook search? Tell us in the comments below.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Via: Facebook</span></div>
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Facebook Exposing Trillions of Posts to Public Search, Change Your Settings Right Now

SP's: To make its search more functional, Facebook has indexed about 2 trillion public posts. Now, you can search the pictures, new...

Are You Under the Attack of CCTV Botnet?

Shivam Patsariya 0 News, Security, tech 10:51 AM

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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i><img alt="CCTV-Botnet-attack" height="334" loading="lazy" src="http://d2brer6wwumtdu.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/CCTV-Botnet-attack.jpg" width="640" /></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i><b>SP's: </b>Internet of Things are constantly being targeted by attackers to get the better off of the companies or individuals. CCTV surveillance cameras are generally preferred for the purpose. Make sure you do not come under the attack of CCTV botnet.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Botnet is a network of infected computers (fast replaced by IoTs now) that are under control of the outside attackers. Now, having understood the concept, it won’t be difficult for anyone to imagine that anything that runs codes and is connected to the Internet is hackable.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">There are a number of instances reported every day where either a big company or individuals are targeted by the black hats. But, for quite some time now, IoT or Internet of Things have become the attackers’ fetish, and in that too it is the loosely protected surveillance cameras that catch the hackers’ eye the most.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">An artist was arrested a few months back for hacking into the surveillance system of a dreary town and made an album for himself in a year!</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Now Incapsula security researchers have reported that their client was under a severe botnet attack by repeated HTTP GET flood attacks, peaking at around 20,000 RPS (request per second). As they went through the attacking IPs, they found that some of those unsecured cameras in the botnet were installed in their own backyards and the mall in front of their office!</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">The traffic originated from about 900 hacked CCTV cameras from around the world which had weak login SSH, Telnet passwords and those whose security was held ransom due to the default passwords. One thing that needs a special mention here is Shodan, a hacker search engine that stags all the IoTs in the world.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Now, as Incapsula reported that most of the compromised CCTV cameras ran on BusyBox, a version of Linux built specifically for IoT devices. And these cameras were attacked with .btce malware which is designed for the BusyBox systems. Some of the devices were even launched with HTTP Get flood DDoS attacks.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">In 2014, there were about 245 million surveillance cameras operational worldwide. And that’s just a <a href="https://www.incapsula.com/blog/cctv-ddos-botnet-back-yard.html">reported </a>number, the actual figures could be way higher than this. In fact, there are cities like Beijing that are under the Skynet of surveillance cameras which can become easy targets for hackers.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">So, if you too have any camera installed at your home or office or use connected electronic systems, then do not forget to ensure their security first so that you do not come under the attack of CCTV botnet.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Have anything to add? Tell us in comments below.</span></div>
</div>

Are You Under the Attack of CCTV Botnet?

SP's: Internet of Things are constantly being targeted by attackers to get the better off of the companies or individuals. CCTV sur...

This Hacker is Destroying Racist and Homophobic Websites One by One

Shivam Patsariya 0 Security, WebNdSocial 10:36 AM

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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i><img alt="amped-attacks-hacker" height="396" loading="lazy" src="http://d2brer6wwumtdu.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/amped-attacks-hacker.jpg" width="640" /></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i><b>SP's: </b>- A hacker that operates a Twitter handle named Amped Attacks, is taking down the websites spreading homophobia and racism one by one. Via the Twitter account, the hacker tweets the next targets and tells the world about its activities.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">There is a new vigilante hacker in town. This hacker goes by the name of Amped Attacks and is busy destroying the homophobic and racist websites one-by-one.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">The hacker is targeting these websites by deploying the specialized distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks. For those who don’t know, a DDoS attack is a common method of taking down a server and website by flooding it with tons of overloaded requests. As a result, the machine and network resource becomes unavailable and the webpage shows error.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">The hacker Amped Attacks uses #tangotown in the tweets, a hashtag that is commonly used by the Anonymous hacktivist group. But, this doesn’t confirm Amped Attacks’ association with the Anonymous.</span></div>
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<a href="https://t.co/ZdZp35ACFu">https://t.co/ZdZp35ACFu</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/TangoDown?src=hash">#TangoDown</a> <a href="https://t.co/jFuqZVxabb">pic.twitter.com/jFuqZVxabb</a></div>
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— Amped Attacks (@sgtbilko420) <a href="https://twitter.com/sgtbilko420/status/657284281602019329">October 22, 2015</a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">None of the official Twitter handlers have mentioned that Amped Attacks is working under their influence. The most recent target of the Amped Attack is website lionmakerstudios.org as shown in the tweet below (website is back online:</span></div>
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<a href="https://t.co/CHXsawD1Df">https://t.co/CHXsawD1Df</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/RealLionMaker">@RealLionMaker</a> you asked a 13 year old girl for nudes? enjoy you fucking pedophile <a href="https://t.co/rBNIgXBXyO">pic.twitter.com/rBNIgXBXyO</a></div>
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— Amped Attacks (@sgtbilko420) <a href="https://twitter.com/sgtbilko420/status/657417272680648704">October 23, 2015</a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Earlier this weekend, the hacker took down kkkknights.com and it even successfully targeted a website related to ISIS. In a recent tweet, the hacker warns another site:</span></div>
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<a href="https://t.co/9rHGua2EVN">https://t.co/9rHGua2EVN</a> you are my target for tomorrow you have been warned :)</div>
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— Amped Attacks (@sgtbilko420) <a href="https://twitter.com/sgtbilko420/status/656950444447657984">October 21, 2015</a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">It should be noted that these DDoS outages don’t last very long. So, it’s possible that the Amped Attacks is drawing our attention towards these websites and I don’t think that’s a bad thing to do.</span></div>
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i would personally like to thank all of you for the support its nice to see the people against racist and people that cyber bully</div>
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— Amped Attacks (@sgtbilko420) <a href="https://twitter.com/sgtbilko420/status/657401545055711232">October 23, 2015</a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">What do you think about these attacks? Tell us in the comments below.</span></div>
</div>

This Hacker is Destroying Racist and Homophobic Websites One by One

SP's: - A hacker that operates a Twitter handle named Amped Attacks, is taking down the websites spreading homophobia and racism one...

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