American citizens can be ordered to decrypt their PGP-scrambled hard drives for police to peruse for incriminating files, a federal judge in Colorado ruled today in what could become a precedent-setting case.
Judge Robert Blackburn ordered a Peyton, Colo., woman to decrypt the hard drive of a Toshiba laptop computer no later than February 21--or face the consequences including contempt of court.
Blackburn, a George W. Bush appointee, ruled that the Fifth Amendment posed no barrier to his decryption order. The Fifth Amendment says that nobody may be "compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself," which has become known as the right to avoid self-incrimination.
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By JENNIFER VALENTINO-DEVRIES
For more than a year, federal authorities pursued a man they called simply "the Hacker." Only after using a little known cellphone-tracking device—a stingray—were they able to zero in on a California home and make the arrest.
Stingrays are designed to locate a mobile phone even when it's not being used to make a call. The Federal Bureau of Investigation considers the devices to be so critical that it has a policy of deleting the data gathered in their use, mainly to keep suspects in the dark about their capabilities, an FBI official told The Wall Street Journal in response to inquiries.
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COVER STORY July 20, 2011, 11:45 PM EDT
Cyber Weapons: The New Arms Race
The Pentagon, the IMF, Google, and others have been hacked. It’s war out there, and a cyber-weapons industry is exploding to arm the combatants
By Michael Riley and Ashlee Vance
In the early morning hours of May 24, an armed burglar wearing a ski mask broke into the offices of Nicira Networks, a Silicon Valley startup housed in one of the countless nondescript buildings along Highway 101. He walked past desks littered with laptops and headed straight toward the cubicle of one of the company’s top engineers. The assailant appeared to know exactly what he wanted, which was a bulky computer that stored Nicira’s source code. He grabbed the one machine and fled. The whole operation lasted five minutes, according to video captured on an employee’s webcam. Palo Alto Police Sergeant Dave Flohr describes the burglary as a run-of-the-mill Silicon Valley computer grab. “There are lots of knuckleheads out there that take what they can and leave,” he says. But two people close to the company say that they, as well as national intelligence investigators now looking into the case, suspect something more sinister: a professional heist performed by someone with ties to China or Russia. The burglar didn’t want a computer he could sell on Craigslist. He wanted Nicira’s ideas.
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By KEVIN J. O'BRIEN
Published: August 9, 2011
BERLIN — A German computer engineer said Tuesday that he had deciphered the code used to encrypt most of the world’s mobile Internet traffic and that he planned to publish a guide to prompt global operators to improve their safeguards.
Karsten Nohl, who published the algorithms used by mobile operators to encrypt voice conversations on digital phone networks in 2009, said during an interview he planned to demonstrate how he had intercepted and read the data during a presentation Wednesday.
Mr. Nohl said he and a colleague, Luca Melette, intercepted and decrypted wireless data using an inexpensive, modified, 7-year-old Motorola cellphone and several free software applications. The two intercepted and decrypted data traffic in a five-kilometer, or 3.1-mile, radius, Mr. Nohl said.
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http://blogs.forbes.com/marcwebertobias/2011/07/25/its-too-easy-to-hack-voice...
Jul. 25 2011 - 12:32 pm
Marc Weber Tobias
THE TRAVELGEEK
While there’s been extensive coverage of the News Corp. phone hacking cases during the past few weeks, nobody has really addressed two relevant elements of the story: the legal liability (both criminal and civil) for such conduct and the underlying problem which allowed the media to gain access to confidential information: the insecurity of most voice mail systems.
All voice mail platforms, regardless of vendor, are simply stored digital information systems. The law makes little distinction between emails and digital voice messages; they are both stored for later retrieval.
In the United States, the Wiretapping Act, found in Title II of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986 (ECPA), makes it illegal to intercept wire or aural communications except with a Court order or where there is consent by one or both parties to the communications (depending upon the state law of the applicable jurisdiction). While the cases in England involve unauthorized individuals that accessed voice mail systems in violation of UK statutes (Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000) such offenses in the United States, (outside of the normal employer-employee venue for which there may be certain exceptions within ECPA) would constitute the commission of one or more felonies that can be punishable by fine or imprisonment of up to two years.
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by Andy Potts at 18/07/2011 16:33 / http://themoscownews.com/business/20110718/188849174.html
Megafon users might have cause to worry about any incriminating text messages sent from their mobile phones – the provider appears to have fallen victim to a hacking scandal.
On Monday it emerged that thousands of messages sent on one of Russia’s biggest cellphone networks were available to all via the Yandex search engine.
And as well as a breach of privacy, the news might give an anxious moment for anyone who phoned in sick from work, only to message friends for a night out – or an unfaithful spouse caught playing away by phone.
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JULY 15, 2011, 5:04 PM GMT
By Ben Rooney
http://blogs.wsj.com/tech-europe/2011/07/15/vodafone-mobiles-targeted-by-hack...
Hackers gained access to unauthorized information from Vodafone mobiles and its network after exploiting security loopholes in a femtocell—devices aimed at plugging small holes in their network coverage—the group has claimed.
In a statement Vodafone has said that it was aware of the hack the group alleged it had used and had already patched the vulnerability.
“The only time a customer could theoretically have been at risk was if they were registered on, and within 50 metres of, a box which the owner had tampered with,” the company said in the statement. “This would have required that person to dismantle the device and solder additional components onto it, as well as taking the conscious decision to prevent the device from receiving our automatic software updates.”
“Eduart Steiner” (a pseudonym), a spokesman for The Hacker’s Choice group, said: “That is exactly what we did.”
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-14118995#
12 July 2011 Last updated at 09:51 GMT
Rory Cellan-Jones, Technology correspondent
Could anyone else be picking up your messages?
Phone-hacking scandal
Can my mobile phone be hacked? A question a lot of us have been asking over recent days, for obvious reasons. So I set about finding out about the threats to your phone and mine.
I called the network I've been using recently, O2, in search of reassurance. They told me that the original hacking technique which made the phones of anyone who used voicemail insecure does now appear to be obsolete.
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Android and Apple devices are coming under increasing attack from malware and Trojans, a leading security firm has claimed
By Matt Warman, Consumer Technology Editor
Wednesday 13 July 2011
As many as one in 20 Apple and Android mobile phones could be infected by dangerous software within the year, a security firm has warned. Mickey Boodaei, the chief executive of Trusteer claimed “Fraudsters are two steps ahead” and raised concerns about the security of Google's Android operating system in particular. He claimed that “Fraudsters have all the tools they need to effectively turn mobile malware into the biggest customer security problem we've ever seen”.
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this link to reference the article - http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/627316cc-a92f-11e0-bcc2-00144feabdc0.html#ixzz1Raqt8lvF
David Cameron was under huge pressure on Friday as the prime minister’s former communications chief was arrested by officers investigating phone hacking at the News of the World.
Mr Cameron, faced with relentless questioning over his decision to hire the former News of the World editor as his communications chief, insisted that Mr Coulson was still a “personal friend”. Less than an hour later, the 43-year-old was arrested by appointment at a south London police station. He was released on bail later on Friday.
The police also said they had arrested Clive Goodman, the News of the World royal editor who has already been imprisoned for his involvement in intercepting voicemail messages to members of the royal household.
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