The Finnish Parliament said on Monday that hackers gained entry to its internal IT system and accessed email accounts for some members of Parliament (MPs)fin. From a report: Government officials said the attack took place in the fall of 2020 and was discovered this month by the Parliament’s IT staff. The matter is currently being investigated by the Finnish Central Criminal…
Tag: Police
Will America’s Next President Break Up Facebook?
With 25 days until Joe Biden becomes America’s next president, Politico writes that throughout the US government, “From lawmakers on Capitol Hill to antitrust enforcers at the Federal Trade Commission, Washington is training its sights on the world’s largest social network like never before.” Biden’s antitrust enforcers will take ownership of a lawsuit the FTC filed this month threatening to dismantle…
Authorities Don’t Need To Break Phone Encryption in Most Cases, Because Modern Phone Encryption Sort of Sucks.
Matthew Green, a cryptographer and professor at Johns Hopkins University, shares in a series of tweets: My students Max and Tushar Jois spent most of the summer going through every piece of public documentation, forensics report, and legal document we could find to figure out how police were “breaking phone encryption.” This was prompted by a claim from someone knowledgeable, who…
Google CEO Criticises Antitrust Regulation
Google chief Sundar Pichai has warned that “regulation can get it wrong” as his firm is increasingly targeted by antitrust moves. From a report: Last week, the European Commission set out new regulation to curb the power of big tech. The Digital Services Act hopes to increase transparency and competition for tech firms. The legislation will force firms, such as Google,…
France Bans Use of Drones To Police Protests In Paris
France’s top administrative court has backed privacy campaigners by imposing a ban on police use of drones for covering public protests in Paris. The BBC reports: The Council of State said Paris police prefect Didier Lallement should halt “without delay” drone surveillance of gatherings on public roads. The ruling comes weeks after MPs backed a controversial security bill that includes police…
UK Use of Software Linked To Russia-Hack Runs Deep
The little-known Texas software company that’s been attacked by suspected Russian hackers has a sprawling reach among U.K. government agencies, potentially putting clients from the National Health Service to police forces at risk. From a report: SolarWinds, which fell victim to hackers who put a “backdoor” in the software giving them access to users’ computer networks, has been deployed by the…
Why Google’s Big ‘Four Year’ Android Update Promise Is a Little Misleading
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Android Police: Today, Google and Qualcomm announced what seemed like a big improvement to updates for Android smartphones. The headlines (ours included! We were confused, too) largely read as though Android phones with Qualcomm chipsets would now receive “four years” of Android updates, an additional year on top of what manufacturers like Google and…
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…
The Zodiac Killer’s Cipher Has Been Solved After 51 Years
“It’s taken over 50 years, but the solution to the Zodiac Killer’s cipher has been found,” writes Slashdot reader quonset. CNN reports: Dubbed the “340 cipher,” the message was unraveled by a trio of code breakers — David Oranchak, a software developer in Virginia, Jarl Van Eycke, a Belgian computer programmer, and Sam Blake, an Australian mathematician. The Zodiac Killer is…
Florida Governor Defends Police Raid On COVID Data Whistleblower
Earlier this week, Florida state police raided the home of Rebekah Jones, the data scientist who ran the state’s coronavirus dashboard until she was fired in June. “Jones has alleged in a whistleblower lawsuit that her firing was in retaliation for her refusal to manipulate data to make the state’s COVID-19 outbreak last spring appear less severe,” reports Yahoo News. Florida…