Security News

Encryption Firm With NSA Roots Raises $10 Million
2020-02-18 16:43

Enveil, a Fulton, Maryland-based data security company, today announced that it has secured $10 million in Series A funding. Founded in 2016, Enveil launched ZeroReveal in July 2018, its commercial homomorphic encryption product that helps protect data while it's being used or processed.

WhatsApp Defends Encryption as It Tops 2 Billion Users
2020-02-13 13:27

The Facebook-owned messaging service WhatsApp said Wednesday it now has more than two billion users around the world as it reaffirmed its commitment to strong encryption to protect privacy. The statement said WhatsApp remained committed to its "Strong encryption" that enables users to connect privately even amid calls by law enforcement in the United States and elsewhere to provide more access.

CIA Secretly Owned Swiss Encryption Firm for Years: Reports
2020-02-12 19:18

Starting in the 1970s and continuing through the 1990s, the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency and the German BND intelligence service secretly controlled the majority of the Swiss firm Crypto AG, giving the two agencies access to the company's communication equipment, which was used around the world for top-secret government messages, according to the reports. A former Crypto AG worker told Switzerland's SRF television station that he would find two sets of encryption algorithms within the company's devices.

US, German Spies Plundered Global Secrets Via Swiss Encryption Firm: Report
2020-02-11 19:20

US and German intelligence services raked in the top secret communications of governments around the world for decades through their hidden control of a top encryption company, Crypto AG, US, German and Swiss media reported Tuesday. Together they rigged Crypto's equipment to be able to easily break the codes and read the government's messages, according to reports by the Washington Post, German television ZTE and Swiss state media SRF. - 'Coup of the century' -.

AZORult Campaign Adopts Novel Triple-Encryption Technique
2020-02-03 20:58

A recent wave of AZORult-laced spam caught the attention of researchers who warn that malicious attachments associated with the campaign are using a novel obfuscation technique, in an attempt to slip past spam gateways and avoid client-side antivirus detection. AZORult is remote access trojan popular on Russian forums and most recently spotted last month in a spam campaign perpetrated by a hacker with an affinity toward singer-songwriter Drake.

Three principles regarding encryption you need to keep in mind
2020-02-03 06:00

Encryption is a popular topic among security professionals and occasionally a polarizing one. Disk-level encryption has nothing to do with internal user visibility - it's just one component of what should be a comprehensive approach to data security to protect against database-level data loss.

Researchers develop new optical stealth encryption technology
2020-01-31 05:00

The first all optical stealth encryption technology that will be significantly more secure and private for highly sensitive cloud-computing and data center network transmission, has been introduced by BGN Technologies. "Today, information is still encrypted using digital techniques, although most data is transmitted over distance using light spectrum on fiber optic networks," says Prof. Dan Sadot, Director of the Optical Communications Research Laboratory, who heads the team that developed the technology.

LoRaWAN Encryption Keys Easy to Crack, Jeopardizing Security of IoT Networks
2020-01-28 12:02

Researchers are warning that while LoRaWAN itself is perfectly secure, poor device security and user mistakes in configuration and implementation can still lead to hacks and widespread operational disruption. The application-layer security is responsible for confidentiality, with end-to-end encryption between the device and the application server, preventing third parties from accessing the application data being transmitted.

Remember the Clipper chip? NSA's botched backdoor-for-Feds from 1993 still influences today's encryption debates
2020-01-27 23:32

More than a quarter century after its introduction, the failed rollout of hardware deliberately backdoored by the NSA is still having an impact on the modern encryption debate. Known as Clipper, the encryption chipset developed and championed by the US government only lasted a few years, from 1993 to 1996.

Apple allegedly made nice with FBI by dropping iCloud encryption plan
2020-01-23 11:05

In spite of Apple having turned over the shooter's iCloud backups in the case of the Pensacola, Florida mass shooting last month, the US government has been raking it over the coals for supposedly not helping law enforcement in investigations. Specifically, according to six sources - Reuters relied on the input of one current and three former FBI officials and one current and one former Apple employee - a few years ago, Apple, under pressure from the FBI, backed off of plans to let iPhones users have end-to-end encryption on their iCloud backups.