Apple is not the only technology giant battling against authorities over a court order; Facebook is also facing the same.
Brazil’s federal police arrested Facebook Latin America Vice President for failing to comply with court orders to help investigators in a drug trafficking case that involves WhatsApp, a popular messaging app owned by Facebook that has over 100 Million users in Brazil.
Utah State computer systems are experiencing a massive cyber attack on up to 300 Million Hacking attempts per day due to National Security Agency’s (NSA) data center in the state.
Yes, 300,000,000 hacking attempts in a day!
According to the statistical survey, it is evident that the computer systems in the US State of Utah began to experience the hacking attack a few years back,
Someone wants to kick Microsoft, Google and Apple off from his land, but himself uses Gmail and Mac.
The newly appointed Internet Tsar German Klemenko, who is the first internet advisor of Vladimir Putin, wants to kick off American Giants from Russia.
In a 90-minute interview conducted by Bloomberg, Klemenko expressed his interest to vanish the presence of tech biggies of foreign
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
Would you enjoy If Drones hovering outside your window or above your head, just because it is offering High-Speed Internet Service?
Most Americans may simply prefer to “Shoot Down” unwelcome items.
Well, Google is working on a similar secret project, codenamed Project Skybender, to beam faster internet service, as fast as 5G, from the air.
Google is currently testing multiple
If you are backing up your data using iCloud Backup, then you need you watch your steps NOW!
In government fight against encryption, Apple has positioned itself as a staunch defender of its user privacy by refusing the federal officials to provide encryption backdoors into its products.
When it comes to Apple’s iMessage service, the company claims that it can’t read messages sent
Following in the footsteps of Twitter, Facebook and Google, Microsoft promises to notify users of its e-mail (Outlook) and cloud storage (OneDrive) services if government hackers may have targeted their accounts.
The company already notifies users if an unauthorized person tries to access their Outlook or OneDrive accounts. But from now on, the company will also inform if it suspects
It’s summertime in the Northern Hemisphere and many people are going on or planning their vacation. Beware of fake vacation packages and beautiful rental properties that are not as they seem. These Vacation scams can ruin your holiday, so read up before you become a victim.
More than 600 million Samsung phones were reported to be at risk because of a vulnerability found in the keyboard app SwiftKey. The best way to protect yourself is to use a virtual private network (VPN) when using an unsecured Wi-Fi hotspot. If you have a Samsung S6, S5, or S4, you need to read Samsung phones vulnerable to hacker attack via keyboard update.
As we learned from the Hola VPN service revelations, any old VPN service will not do. Hola was selling their users’ bandwidth and installing and running code on their devices without their knowledge or permission. Find out the details in Hola, Hola VPN users, you may have been part of a botnet!, and please share with an Hola user.
Mobile developer Martin Banas, attended Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco. Besides spending lots of time standing in lines, he enjoyed meeting other developers and hearing the latest news about OS X El Capitan and Apple Pay. Weren’t able to attend, bit wish you could have? Martin’s conference report, Looking back at WWDC 2015, describes the event.
Remember the iCloud celebrity photo hack? There have been many theories bandied about since nude photos of female celebrities were posted on the web. We add our own two cents into the conversation. Avast security researcher Philip Chytry explains what he thinks the origin and motivation behind the hack was in iCloud celebrity photo hack: What’s happening?!
Major cybercrooks taken down
While the cybercrooks behind the iCloud hack have not been discovered, authorities had big wins this past week in other areas. The author and distributor of Blackshades malware was sentenced to nearly five years in a New York prison. A major cybercriminal organization responsible for banking Trojans Zeus and SpyEye was taken down. Read Businessman hackers brought down in USA and Europe.
More from the Edward Snowden files. It was revealed this week that U.S. and U.K. spy agencies were attempting to reverse engineer major antivirus companies software, including Avast’s. CEO Vince Steckler spoke to RT News about government spying in the computer age. You can read the article, Avast CEO speaks out about U.S. and U.K. spy agencies, and watch the interview here.
And if the real world of cybercrime is not enough, our favorite new show of the summer Mr. Robot debuted on the USA Network this past week. We excitedly watched the first episode then talked to Avast security expert, Pedram Amini, to find out Are the hacks on Mr. Robot real? or just Hollywood magic.
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.
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