Category Archives: AccessNow

The FBI Director thinks this company found an answer to ‘Going Dark’

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FBI Director Christopher Wray did something Wednesday few of his recent predecessors have done: He finally provided what the bureau believes is a model for how private U.S. technology companies can comply with law enforcement requests to access encrypted data. Wray, who spoke Wednesday at a FBI conference in Boston, claimed that it’s still possible to develop a workaround for law enforcement to collect evidence on encrypted systems that is “consistent with both the rule of law and strong cybersecurity.” In prepared remarks, the FBI director specifically named Palo Alto, Calif.-based Symphony, the creator of an encrypted messaging platform that’s popular in the banking industry, as an example for how other technology companies could one day work with the FBI. “Some of you may know about the chat and messaging platform called Symphony,” Wray said Wednesday. “This was used by a group of major banks, and marketed as offering something called ‘guaranteed […]

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WikiLeaks dump reignites debate over feds hoarding zero days

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The document dump by anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks that identifies alleged CIA hacking tools has reopened a vigorous debate about whether the U.S. government should secretly stockpile cyber-weapons. Critics say the publication of source code for the CIA cyber-weapons would be a cybersecurity disaster akin to the release of anthrax from a government laboratory — and are calling for a new policy. Defenders of U.S. policy say there is already a process in place to weigh the risks any time the government decides to keep a newly discovered software vulnerability to itself and weaponize it, rather than sharing it with the vendor so it can be fixed. And a former White House official tells CyberScoop that U.S. agencies should be reaching out to the manufacturers of the products CIA hackers owned to help them fix the holes they have been using. “Time is of the essence,” former White House Cybersecurity Coordinator J. Michael Daniel, told CyberScoop. In a blog […]

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