Collaborate Disseminate
It finally admitted to buying bulk data on Americans from data brokers, in response to a query by Senator Weyden.
This is almost certainly illegal, although the NSA maintains that it is legal until it’s told otherwise.
Some news articles.
Continue reading NSA Buying Bulk Surveillance Data on Americans without a Warrant
When you get a push notification on your Apple or Google phone, those notifications go through Apple and Google servers. Which means that those companies can spy on them—either for their own reasons or in response to government demands.
Sen. Wyden is trying to get to the bottom of this:
In a statement, Apple said that Wyden’s letter gave them the opening they needed to share more details with the public about how governments monitored push notifications.
“In this case, the federal government prohibited us from sharing any information,” the company said in a statement. “Now that this method has become public we are updating our transparency reporting to detail these kinds of requests.”…
Having a fondness for old and obscure audio and video media formats, [Techmoan] recently revisited the Philips Digital Compact Cassette (DCC) format introduced in 1992. Despite being billed as the …read more Continue reading Exploring Hidden Lyrics on 1990s DCC Audio Tapes
Google is launching a beta version of SynthID, a tool that identifies and watermarks AI-generated images. The tool will initially be available to a limited number of customers that use Imagen, Google’s cloud-based AI model for generating images f… Continue reading Google launches tool to identify AI-generated images
The Intercept has a long article on the insecurity of photo cropping:
One of the hazards lies in the fact that, for some of the programs, downstream crop reversals are possible for viewers or readers of the document, not just the file’s creators or editors. Official instruction manuals, help pages, and promotional materials may mention that cropping is reversible, but this documentation at times fails to note that these operations are reversible by any viewers of a given image or document.
[…]
Uncropped versions of images can be preserved not just in Office apps, but also in a file’s own metadata. A photograph taken with a modern digital camera contains all types of metadata. Many image files record text-based metadata such as the camera make and model or the GPS coordinates at which the image was captured. Some photos also include binary data such as a thumbnail version of the original photo that may persist in the file’s metadata even after the photo has been edited in an image editor…
Data extraction is the process of accessing, collecting & importing data. Discover some examples of data extraction tools & how they work here.
The post Data extraction: What it is and how it works appeared first on TechRepublic.
Continue reading Data extraction: What it is and how it works
Long and interesting interview with Signal’s new president, Meredith Whittaker:
WhatsApp uses the Signal encryption protocol to provide encryption for its messages. That was absolutely a visionary choice that Brian and his team led back in the day - and big props to them for doing that. But you can’t just look at that and then stop at message protection. WhatsApp does not protect metadata the way that Signal does. Signal knows nothing about who you are. It doesn’t have your profile information and it has introduced group encryption protections. We don’t know who you are talking to or who is in the membership of a group. It has gone above and beyond to minimize the collection of metadata…
Hi, everyone. Thank you DFRWS for having me, and thank you for your interest in this short presentation. These are observations from a little side quest that I had to do within my PhD. Here, let me take away the … Read more The post Accura… Continue reading Accuracy of Geolocation Metadata on Pictures Taken Using a Mobile Phone
Executive summary In today’s complex IT environments, Network Detection and Response (NDR) solutions are crucial to identify, assess, and respond to cyberthreats. Many NDR solutions rely on deep packet inspection (DPI) technology, which utilises traffi… Continue reading A comparison of NDR solutions: Deep packet inspection (DPI) vs. metadata analysis
Bunnie Huang has created a Plausibly Deniable Database.
Most security schemes facilitate the coercive processes of an attacker because they disclose metadata about the secret data, such as the name and size of encrypted files. This allows specific and enforceable demands to be made: “Give us the passwords for these three encrypted files with names A, B and C, or else…”. In other words, security often focuses on protecting the confidentiality of data, but lacks deniability.
A scheme with deniability would make even the existence of secret files difficult to prove. This makes it difficult for an attacker to formulate a coherent demand: “There’s no evidence of undisclosed data. Should we even bother to make threats?” A lack of evidence makes it more difficult to make specific and enforceable demands…