The UK’s Signals Intelligence and Cyber Security agency GCHQ has launched its first ever puzzle book, challenging researchers and cryptographers to crack codes for charity.
Dubbed “The GCHQ Puzzle Book,” the book features more than 140 pages of codes, puzzles, and challenges created by expert code breakers at the British intelligence agency.
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Ranging from easy to complex, the
Hacking of computers, smartphones and networks in the United Kingdom or abroad by the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) is LEGAL, the UK’s Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT) ruled.
So, the UK is giving clean chit to its intelligence agency to spy on its people as well as people living abroad.
Now, How is that okay?
The British spying nerve center GCHQ has won a major court
GCHQ has finally released the solution to their head spinning Xmas Puzzle, after all, the participants failed to reach the final answer.
GCHQ had released a crypto puzzle, dubbed Xmas Puzzle, on 9th December in the form of a Christmas Card that went viral online soon after its release.
Nearly 600,000 people shot a “Go” for the challenge since early December, but only 30,000 had made it
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In a joint surveillance program, the US intelligence agency NSA (National Security Agency) and the British intelligence agency GCHQ (Government Communications Headquarters) hacked into, decrypted, and tracked live video feeds of Israeli Military Drones and Fighter Jets.
This could be one of the most shocking and embarrassing
UK’s Secretive Spy Agency Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) has open-sourced one of its tools on code-sharing website GitHub for free…
A graph database called ‘Gaffer.’
Gaffer, written in Java, is a kind of database that makes it “easy to store large-scale graphs in which the nodes and edges have statistics such as counts, histograms and sketches.”
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The UK’s intelligence agency, the GCHQ, has finally admitted that it hacks into computers and other devices.
The post GCHQ confirms that it hacks computers without ‘proper warrants’ appeared first on We Live Security.
For as long as there have been governments, there have been spy agencies, and for as long as there have been spy agencies, they’ve done spying. Spy agencies are always looking for ways to get information. Information is valuable, always has been, always will be. ~Avast CEO Vince Steckler
New documents from the many that were leaked by former US intelligence analyst Edward Snowden were published this week in The Intercept. They reveal that the U.S.’s National Security Agency (NSA) and its British counterpart, Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), spied on security companies including Avast, AVG, Kaspersky Lab, and Antiy. The spy agencies seem to be targeting non-American security companies; Avast and AVG are based in Prague, Czech Republic; Kaspersky is based in Moscow, Russia; and Antiy is Chinese. Together, these companies have nearly a billion users. No U.S. or U.K. -based companies were included in the list.
“Geopolitically, it makes sense that the NSA and GCHQ are targeting products that are prevalently used by foreign governments, like Kaspersky in Russia or CheckPoint in Israel,” said Steckler in an interview with RT News. “On the flip side, Russian or Chinese spy agencies may be similarly targeting products that the American government heavily uses, for example Symantec and McAfee. We’re hearing just one side of the story.”
Reportedly, the NSA and GCHQ experts reverse engineered the antivirus software in order to exploit it and prevent detection of their own activities.
“It is difficult to tell if the NSA, the GCHQ, or other government agencies have ever tried to reverse engineer our software,” said Steckler. “Even if they did, they would only be able to do so on the client side, which includes simple pattern detection. However, they could not reverse engineer our backend, which includes our sophisticated machine-learning classification.”
The documents also say that the organizations recommended monitoring customers who reported malware “to see if they’re into more nefarious activity.”
While some companies most likely partner with the governments in their home countries, that’s not something Avast does.
“The fact that the NSA may be targeting us – while some major U.S. and British security companies are left out from their list proves that we don’t work with the NSA and GCHQ,” said Steckler. “Ones not on the list quite likely provide their source code and thus there is no need to reverse engineer. Our commitment to our customers is to provide protection from all forms of spying.”
Mr. Steckler spoke to RT News, a Russian television network, about the new revelations. Watch the interview now,
While not the main target of the operation, Avira was nonetheless mentioned together with several other antivirus and security firms as being at least a target of interest (It’s noteworthy that none of the targets were US or UK companies). Since the revelation we have received various requests vis-à-vis our position and capabilities regarding this affair. We are of course more than happy to share our thoughts with you.
“Avira has frequently seen efforts by governments to write malicious software that attempts to prevent, circumvent, or disable our software from protecting our users. The goal is always the same: installing their programs on the computer users’ systems without detection. These tactics are used by malware authors of all kinds, not just governments.
We at Avira are constantly improving our defense and detection mechanisms to avoid such manipulation. We also use various other systems and utilities to detect such efforts, outside of our own products. Whether a government-funded malware writer, mafia, friend or enemy, the exploitation of applications is something that we are determined to prevent from happening,” says Travis Witteveen, Chief Executive Officer of Avira.
Let’s also not forget that Avira is a founding member of IT Security made in Germany and we pride ourselves in committing, among other things, to:
Avira will always strive to keep those commitments, be it against your run-of-the-mill malware or attempts by governments to obtain information.
The post NSA and GCHQ Have Been Spying on Antivirus Companies appeared first on Avira Blog.
The British government has passed legislation amending the Computer Misuse Act to prevent GCHQ, the police and intelligence services from prosecution over any hacking into mobile phones and computers.
The post UK government amends hacking laws to give intelligence service immunity appeared first on We Live Security.
Law enforcement agencies shouldn’t be above the law.
Find out if the UK’s GCHQ illegally spied on you…
The post Did GCHQ illegally spy on you? Here’s how to find out appeared first on We Live Security.
