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American and French officials say there is still no definitive evidence to back up their presumption that the terrorists who massacred 129 people in Paris used new, difficult-to-crack encryption technologies to organize the plot. But in interviews, Obama administration officials say the Islamic State has used a range of encryption technologies over the past year and a half, many of which defy cracking by the National Security Agency. Other encryption technologies, the officials hint, are less...

As the end-of-the-year holidays are quickly approaching, people are starting to order more things (read: gifts for themselves and loved ones) online so that they can avoid the December rush and delivery problems. This is also the time of year when cyber crooks usually start to ramp up their phishing and malware delivery campaigns, which often take the form of emails made to look like legitimate ones coming from popular package delivery companies. It's no surprise, then,...

Popular Chinese Tinder clone TanTan is sending user details in cleartext and sports an API that allows users locations' to be triangulated. Developer Larry Salibra reported the flaws to TanTan, which has pledged to use encryption in future. The security slip means users' partner preferences, locations, and personal information are exposed to any man-in-the-middle attackers - for example, snoopers watching traffic on airport or cafe wireless networks. "Much to my surprise, the information sent between my phone and Tantan’s server...

A 51-year-old British man is headed to prison after being found guilty of DDoS attacks that knocked more than 300 websites offline in 2013, according to the website We Live Security, run by security company ESET. Ian Sullivan, from Merseyside, received an eight-month sentence for his attacks on the websites of British Airways, the Conservative Party, multinational banks, the Merseyside Police, as well as adoption, children's social services and social housing organisations. View full story ORIGINAL SOURCE:...

Islamist terrorists are plotting to use the internet for "evil" by launching deadly cyber-attacks which could cripple Britain, George Osborne will warn on Tuesday. The Chancellor will use a speech at GCHQ to warn that Isil poses a significant "cyber threat" amid concerns that it could kill innocent people by attacking power stations, the National Grid and hospitals. He will say: "Isil are already using the internet for hideous propaganda purposes; for radicalisation, for operational planning too. “They have not been...

Anonymous, the hactivist group that attempts to expose evil doers, has declared “total war” on Islamic State (IS) in response to the deadly attacks in Paris, the group announced on a YouTube video and on Twitter. A spokesperson wearing the iconic Guy Fawkes mask, promised to launch massive cyber attacks against IS, according to RT.com. The spokesman, speaking in French, said Anonymous will hunt IS all over the world. In a Twitter message, Anonymous said the group is at war...

T-Mobile has crushed a bug in subsidiary MetroPCS that could have allowed attackers to steal details on any of its 10 million customers, according to reports. Cinder researchers Eric Taylor and Blake Welsh say the vulnerabilities were simple to exploit up until a patch was dropped. Motherboard exploited the vulnerabilities using a Firefox plugin that sent a HTML request with the target's phone number. That spat out full names, home addresses, phone model and serial numbers,...

A telephone tower-like device (IMSI-catcher) can be used for recording phone calls from the latest versions of Samsung Galaxy, demonstrated by two German researchers. IMSI-catchers are mostly used in laboratories for testing purposes, but they can be bought by anyone who wishes to have one. So, what happens is anyone having these catchers can mimic the original mobile phone towers and can make mobile phones connect to their fake network. Researchers demonstrated this at PacSec...

Symantec has copped a bullet from Google after breaching the search engine giant’s trust in its web security certificates, not once, but twice. The first breach came to light in a Google blog two months ago, which disclosed that “Symantec’s Thawte-branded CA issued an Extended Validation (EV) pre-certificate for the domains google.com and www.google.com. This pre-certificate was neither requested nor authorized by Google.” Dr. Phil Branch, Senior Lecturer Swinburne University explains this. “As a certificate authority...

The tragi-comedy that is the extended US presidential election campaign has taken two turns into technological territory. First, the trivial. As reported by The Hill, last week's debate among Republican candidates for the presidency offered the WiFi password “StopHillary” to members of the press. The Democratic debate on Saturday raised the tone by offering the password “13MillionNewJobs”, a reference to President Obama's time in office. From a technical standpoint, the Democratic password is more secure: it's...