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“For the first time in five years in PwC’s Annual Global CEO Survey, more business leaders rate the US as their most important market for overseas growth ahead of all others, including China’s. As the US recovery gains traction, it is gaining more adherents. Challenges remain, yet key measures of US economic health are improving. …
Neither Snow Nor Rain Nor MITM…An Empirical Analysis of Email Delivery Security “The SMTP protocol is responsible for carrying some of users’ most intimate communication, but like other Internet protocols, authentication and confidentiality were added only as an afterthought. In this work, we present the first report on global adoption rates of SMTP security extensions, …
“Analysis of over 1 million apps in Google’s Android operating system in 2014 shows apps can seek 235 different kinds of permissions from smartphone users. The average app asks for five permissions.” “The findings in this study pertain specifically to apps running on the Android operating system. Pew Research Center examined the Android platform because …
How to Memorize a Random 60-Bit String. Marjan Ghazvininejad, Kevin Knight – Information Sciences Institute, Department of Computer Science, University of Southern California: “User-generated passwords tend to be memorable, but not secure. A random, computer-generated 60-bit string is much more secure. However, users cannot memorize random 60- bit strings. In this paper, we investigate methods …
Victims of Identity Theft, 2014 – Erika Harrell, Ph.D., – BJS Statistician “An estimated 17.6 million persons, or about 7 percent of U.S. residents age 16 or older, were victims of at least one incident of identity theft in 2014, the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) announced today. These statistics were similar to those in …
“Some 92% of Americans now have a cellphone of some kind, and 90% of those cell owners say that their phone is frequently with them. This “always-on” mobile connectivity is changing the nature of public spaces and social gatherings. It is also rewriting social norms regarding what is rude and what is acceptable behavior when people …
Ryan Gallagher, The Intercept: “…The mass surveillance operation — code-named KARMA POLICE — was launched by British spies about seven years ago without any public debate or scrutiny. It was just one part of a giant global Internet spying apparatus built by the United Kingdom’s electronic eavesdropping agency, Government Communications Headquarters, or GCHQ…The surveillance is underpinned by …
“Today, the ACLU sent a letter to both the House and Senate, urging them to provide secure voice and text messaging capabilities to Members and their staff. (The Washington Post writes about our letter today. In recent years, computer security researchers have warned about the poor security of cellular networks, which in many cases use …
Calyx Institute: “A federal district court has ordered the FBI to lift an eleven-year- old gag order imposed on Nicholas Merrill [document is redacted] forbidding him from speaking about a National Security Letter (“NSL”) that the FBI served on him in 2004. The ruling marks the first time that an NSL gag order has been …
Statement for the Record – Worldwide Cyber Threats – House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence – James R. Clapper, Director of National Intelligence, September 10, 2015. “Worldwide Cyber Threats – Overview – Cyber threats to US national and economic security are increasing in frequency, scale, sophistication, and severity of impact. The ranges of cyber threat …
“This week EFF presented evidence in two of its NSA cases confirming the participation of Verizon Wireless, Sprint and AT&T in the NSA’s mass telephone records collection under the Patriot Act. This is important because, despite broad public acknowledgement, the government is still claiming that it can dismiss our cases because it has never confirmed …
CRS Legal Sidebar – Legal Sidebar What Does the Latest Court Ruling on NSA Telephone Metadata Program Mean? 09/03/2015 “On August 28, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, in Obama v. Klayman, ruled for the government in the ongoing litigation over the National Security Agency’s (NSA’s) telephone metadata program. The …
