Top 10 Stories

The maker of Red Phone and Text Secure for Android has moved to iOS to offer encrypted calls.   Whisper Systems has developed “Signal” which allows a user to enter their phone number, put in the confirmation code and this will automatically import a contact list during the first use, so it's just a question of how many of your friends are already on the app, according to The Verge.   The app connects with RedPhone users in...

A Florida man is alleged to have scammed Apple 42 times, after tricking staff in 16 states.   According to Business Insider, Sharron Laverne Parrish Jr. allegedly tricked Apple Store employees in 16 states starting around December 2012 into accepting fake authorization codes to purchase $309,768 worth of Apple goods.   Parrish allegedly visited Apple Stores and tried to buy products with four different debit cards, which were all closed by his respective financial institutions....

Big Data dealers have been issued guidelines by the Information Commissioner’s Office to explains the ways in which it expects big data organisations to behave.   According to IT Pro Portal, one major area flagged up by the ICO is anonymisation of data, which can lead to data ceasing to be personal, the ICO warned. It also said that if done correctly, this can allow companies to research products and services, whilst at the same time...

An extremely persistent type of online tracking is shadowing visitors to thousands of top websites.   Called canvas fingerprinting, it works by instructing the visitor’s web browser to draw a hidden image and they can be used to assign each user’s device a number that uniquely identifies it. They are unusually hard to block and cannot be prevented by using standard Web browser privacy settings or using anti-tracking tools such as AdBlock Plus.   According...

A website which offers financial services to people who are serving or who have served in the US Military and their families has suffered from a watering-hole attack.   According to Jesper Jurcenoks, VP of research at Critical Watch, said in a blog that phishing websites are installed all the time on unsuspecting websites, typically through old CMS versions. He said that one ISP found 6 USAA Phishing sites last Friday and another four yesterday....

Three Israeli defense contractors, responsible for building the “Iron Dome” missile shield, were compromised by hackers and robbed of huge quantities of sensitive documents pertaining to the shield technology.   According to Brian Krebs the intrusions occurred between October 10th, 2011 and August 13th, 2012, and the attackers are thought to be operating out of China. Krebs said that they hacked into the corporate networks of three top Israeli defense technology companies, including Elisra Group, Israel Aerospace...

Despite bad publicity faced by Facebook, OKCupid published results of three experiments it recently conducted on users.   In one test, it obscured profile pictures, in another it hid profile text to see how it affected personality ratings, and in a third, it told some hopeful daters that they were a better or worse potential match with someone than the company’s software actually determined. According to the NY Times, OKCupid’s user agreement says that when...

The Russian Government is offering our million rubles ($114,000) to anyone who can decrypt data sent over the TOR anonymity network.   As part of a mounting campaign by the Kremlin against the open internet have made TOR increasingly attractive to Russian internet users seeking to circumvent state censorship, so the Kremlin has set its sights on it, reports Global Voices.   The $100,000 contract is being offered by the Interior Ministry, who are more interested...

Most firms will struggle to build on and benefit from new IT innovations, and the presence of a CIO might be to blame.   According to a guest blog at Venture Beat, the CIO is left to oversee the majority of decisions pertaining to IT in a large number of organisations, while presence of a CIO often enables the rest of the C-suite’s tech ignorance. When corporate hierarchy defines a role under which IT decisions...

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has filed a motion for partial summary judgment in the Jewel v. NSA case, which focuses on the Government's admitted seizure and search of communications from the Internet backbone.   The EFF said that it has asked the judge to rule that there are two ways in which this is unconstitutional under the US Fourth Amendment: over the admitted seizure of communications from the internet backbone, and for the Government's admitted search of...