Israeli Spy Tech Firm Says It Can Break Into Signal App

Last Thursday, Israeli phone-hacking firm Cellebrite said in a blog post that it can now break into Signal, an encrypted app considered safe from external snooping. Haaretz reports: Cellebrite’s flagship product is the UFED (Universal Forensic Extraction Device), a system that allows authorities to unlock and access the data of any phone in their possession. Another product it offers is the…

Apple Launches New App Store Privacy Labels So You Can See How iOS Apps Use Your Data

Apple is officially launching its so-called “nutrition label” privacy disclosures for all iOS device owners running the latest version of iOS 14. The Verge reports: Apple says the new labels will be required for apps on all of its platforms — that includes iOS, iPadOS, macOS, watchOS, and tvOS — and they will have to be up to date and accurate…

Apple, Cloudflare, and Fastly Propose a New Privacy-Focused DNS Standard Called ‘Oblivious DoH’

“Cloudflare, Apple, and Fastly have co-designed and proposed a new DNS standard to tackle ongoing privacy issues associated with DNS,” reports ZDNet. Cloudflare calls it “a practical approach for improving privacy” that “aims to improve the overall adoption of encrypted DNS protocols without compromising performance and user experience…” Third-parties, such as ISPs, find it more difficult to trace website visits when…

Kazakhstan’s Government Begins Intercepting HTTPS Traffic In Its Capital

ZDNet reports: Under the guise of a “cybersecurity exercise,” the Kazakhstan government is forcing citizens in its capital of Nur-Sultan (formerly Astana) to install a digital certificate on their devices if they want to access foreign internet services. Once installed, the certificate would allow the government to intercept all HTTPS traffic made from users’ devices via a technique called MitM (Man-in-the-Middle)….

Divers Discover Nazi WW2 Enigma Machine in Baltic Sea

German divers searching the Baltic Sea for discarded fishing nets have stumbled upon a rare Enigma cipher machine used by the Nazi military during World War Two which they believe was thrown overboard from a scuttled submarine. From a report: Thinking they had discovered a typewriter entangled in a net on the seabed of Gelting Bay, underwater archaeologist Florian Huber quickly…

US Used Patriot Act To Gather Logs of Website Visitors

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The New York Times: The government has interpreted a high-profile provision of the Patriot Act as empowering F.B.I. national security investigators to collect logs showing who has visited particular web pages, documents show. But the government stops short of using that law to collect the keywords people submit to internet search engines because it…

Spotify Invents AI Tech That Will Police Songwriter Plagiarism

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Music Business Worldwide: According to a document published last week, Daniel Ek’s company is seeking a patent for its “Plagiarism Risk Detector And Interface” technology, which pertains to “Methods, systems and computer program products..for testing a lead sheet for plagiarism.” As explained in the filing — and as our songwriter/musician readers will already know…

Tesla Whistleblower Martin Tripp Ordered To Pay $400,000 To Settle Hacking Case

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Martin Tripp, the former Tesla worker who has been embroiled in a bitter legal battle with CEO Elon Musk for over two years, was ordered to pay his former employer $400,000 after admitting to leaking confidential information to a reporter. The settlement is intended to bring an end to one of the…

How to land a good letter of recommendation: Advice from an admissions expert

by Mary Beth Carroll, Assistant Director of Student Affairs in the Office of Student Engagement and Practice at the University of Michigan School of Public Health Most graduate school applications require two to three letters of recommendation, which provide another dimension to your application and, when viewed alongside other factors such as your GPA, professional experience and […]
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