French government officials have been revealed as fervent users of Telegram, a messaging app that is frustrating their interior minister with its end-to-end encryption.Telegram's fans include the current head of the French judicial police, Christian Sainte, and his predecessor, Frédéric Péchenard. The app's security has also won over a number of legislators, including the French finance minister, who encourages his team to use it, according to Wednesday's edition of French newspaper Le Canard Enchainé.Telegram claims over 100 million monthly users of its secure messaging app, but it was the action of just one of them -- Normandy church attacker Adel Kermiche -- that prompted French interior minister Bernard Cazeneuve to call on Tuesday for investigators to be allowed to eavesdrop on Telegram users' conversations.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
French government officials have been revealed as fervent users of Telegram, a messaging app that is frustrating their interior minister with its end-to-end encryption.Telegram's fans include the current head of the French judicial police, Christian Sainte, and his predecessor, Frédéric Péchenard. The app's security has also won over a number of legislators, including the French finance minister, who encourages his team to use it, according to Wednesday's edition of French newspaper Le Canard Enchainé.Telegram claims over 100 million monthly users of its secure messaging app, but it was the action of just one of them -- Normandy church attacker Adel Kermiche -- that prompted French interior minister Bernard Cazeneuve to call on Tuesday for investigators to be allowed to eavesdrop on Telegram users' conversations.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Marc Tarabella wants to swipe left on Tinder's privacy policy.The company's terms of use breach European Union privacy laws, according to Tarabella, a member of the European Parliament.Tarabella particularly dislikes the way the company gives itself the right to swipe the personal information and photos of its users, and to continue using it even if they deactivate their accounts.It's not just Tinder: Tarabella is also unhappy about how much personal information Runkeeper keeps about runners' movements, even when the app is inactive. He has the same concerns about Happn, a sort of missed-connections dating service.The lawmaker wants the European Commission to root out abusive clauses in the terms of use of a number of mobile apps, and to penalize their developers.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Marc Tarabella wants to swipe left on Tinder's privacy policy.The company's terms of use breach European Union privacy laws, according to Tarabella, a member of the European Parliament.Tarabella particularly dislikes the way the company gives itself the right to swipe the personal information and photos of its users, and to continue using it even if they deactivate their accounts.It's not just Tinder: Tarabella is also unhappy about how much personal information Runkeeper keeps about runners' movements, even when the app is inactive. He has the same concerns about Happn, a sort of missed-connections dating service.The lawmaker wants the European Commission to root out abusive clauses in the terms of use of a number of mobile apps, and to penalize their developers.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Hackers obtained the mobile phone numbers of 15 million Iranian users of the Telegram encrypted messaging app, and hacked the accounts of more than a dozen of them, security researchers say.The accounts were hacked through interception of SMS confirmation codes sent to the associated phone numbers, security researchers Claudio Guarnieri and Collin Anderson told Reuters.The revelations show once again how use of encryption can pit technology companies against governments. Telegram founder Pavel Durov has in the past sided with Apple CEO Tim Cook against the FBI on the question of whether governments should have access to the contents of smartphones.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Hackers obtained the mobile phone numbers of 15 million Iranian users of the Telegram encrypted messaging app, and hacked the accounts of more than a dozen of them, security researchers say.The accounts were hacked through interception of SMS confirmation codes sent to the associated phone numbers, security researchers Claudio Guarnieri and Collin Anderson told Reuters.The revelations show once again how use of encryption can pit technology companies against governments. Telegram founder Pavel Durov has in the past sided with Apple CEO Tim Cook against the FBI on the question of whether governments should have access to the contents of smartphones.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The U.S. Department of Commerce is not just rubber-stamping applications to join the new Privacy Shield data protection program: 24 hours after companies began certifying their compliance, the administration's website still listed no approvals.Microsoft was among the first businesses to certify that it complied with the new rules for transferring European Union citizens' personal information to the U.S. when the Commerce Department's International Trade Administration began accepting applications on Monday."We expect it to be approved in the coming days," Microsoft Vice President for EU Government Affairs John Frank wrote on a company blog.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The U.S. Department of Commerce is not just rubber-stamping applications to join the new Privacy Shield data protection program: 24 hours after companies began certifying their compliance, the administration's website still listed no approvals.Microsoft was among the first businesses to certify that it complied with the new rules for transferring European Union citizens' personal information to the U.S. when the Commerce Department's International Trade Administration began accepting applications on Monday."We expect it to be approved in the coming days," Microsoft Vice President for EU Government Affairs John Frank wrote on a company blog.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Russian military networks and other critical infrastructure have been hit by tailor-made malware, according to government officials.Networks at some 20 organizations in Russia -- including scientific and military institutions, defense contractors, and public authorities -- were found to be infected with the malware, the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) said Saturday.The range of infected sites suggests that the targets were deliberately selected as part of a cyber-espionage operation, the FSB said.Analysis of the attack showed that filenames, parameters and infection methods used in the malware are similar to those involved in other high-profile cyber-espionage operations around the world.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Russian military networks and other critical infrastructure have been hit by tailor-made malware, according to government officials.
Networks at some 20 organizations in Russia -- including scientific and military institutions, defense contractors, and public authorities -- were found to be infected with the malware, the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) said Saturday.
The range of infected sites suggests that the targets were deliberately selected as part of a cyber-espionage operation, the FSB said.
Analysis of the attack showed that filenames, parameters and infection methods used in the malware are similar to those involved in other high-profile cyber-espionage operations around the world.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
European Union plans to extend export controls on so-called "dual-use" technologies to include cyber-surveillance tools could put the brakes on sales of smartphones.Dual-use technologies are those that can serve civil or military purposes, and some countries impose restrictions on their sale because of fears that they could be used to abuse human rights in the destination country. A draft of new EU export regulations could put smartphones in that category because of their location-tracking capabilities.The potential for some technologies to be misused has been a concern in the EU since documents leaked following a compromise of Italian company Hacking Team revealed that it had sold its cyber-surveillance tools to repressive regimes.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Hewlett Packard Enterprise plans to refresh its Itanium server range around the middle of next year, employing Intel's long-promised "Kittson" successor to the current Itanium 9500 series ("Poulson") chips.News of the server update plans comes from Ken Surplice, category manager for mission-critical solutions at HPE's EMEA server division.Surplice told Dutch website Computable that the company is on schedule to refresh its Integrity servers for HP-UX and OpenVMS with Intel's upcoming Kittson Itanium processors in 2017, and that the servers should be with customers mid-year.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Hewlett Packard Enterprise plans to refresh its Itanium server range around the middle of next year, employing Intel's long-promised "Kittson" successor to the current Itanium 9500 series ("Poulson") chips.News of the server update plans comes from Ken Surplice, category manager for mission-critical solutions at HPE's EMEA server division.Surplice told Dutch website Computable that the company is on schedule to refresh its Integrity servers for HP-UX and OpenVMS with Intel's upcoming Kittson Itanium processors in 2017, and that the servers should be with customers mid-year.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Windows 10 breaches French law by collecting too much personal information from users and failing to secure it adequately, according to the French National Data Protection Commission (CNIL).Some of the privacy failings identified can be remedied by users willing to delve deep into the Windows 10 settings, but one of the commission's gripes is that better privacy should be the default setting, not one users must fight for.CNIL served Microsoft with a formal notice on June 30, giving it three months to comply with the law, but only made it public on Wednesday.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Windows 10 breaches French law by collecting too much personal information from users and failing to secure it adequately, according to the French National Data Protection Commission (CNIL).Some of the privacy failings identified can be remedied by users willing to delve deep into the Windows 10 settings, but one of the commission's gripes is that better privacy should be the default setting, not one users must fight for.CNIL served Microsoft with a formal notice on June 30, giving it three months to comply with the law, but only made it public on Wednesday.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Conscientious sysadmins face a dilemma on December 31, when a new leap second will threaten the stability of computer systems and networks.Scientists occasionally add a leap second to Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), the time reference most clocks are set by, so as to keep it in step with the earth's gradually slowing rotation. If they didn't, then clocks would be off by about a minute at midday by 2100.Computer systems don't like leap seconds as they are programmed to expect the same number of seconds in every minute of every hour of every day. The various ways of tricking them into accepting the extra second -- stretching out all the other seconds in the preceding minute, hour or day, repeating the same second twice, or creating a 61st second in a minute, can cause chaos as they affect different computers in different ways.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Conscientious sysadmins face a dilemma on December 31, when a new leap second will threaten the stability of computer systems and networks.Scientists occasionally add a leap second to Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), the time reference most clocks are set by, so as to keep it in step with the earth's gradually slowing rotation. If they didn't, then clocks would be off by about a minute at midday by 2100.Computer systems don't like leap seconds as they are programmed to expect the same number of seconds in every minute of every hour of every day. The various ways of tricking them into accepting the extra second -- stretching out all the other seconds in the preceding minute, hour or day, repeating the same second twice, or creating a 61st second in a minute, can cause chaos as they affect different computers in different ways.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Conscientious sysadmins face a dilemma on December 31, when a new leap second will threaten the stability of computer systems and networks.Scientists occasionally add a leap second to Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), the time reference most clocks are set by, so as to keep it in step with the earth's gradually slowing rotation. If they didn't, then clocks would be off by about a minute at midday by 2100.Computer systems don't like leap seconds as they are programmed to expect the same number of seconds in every minute of every hour of every day. The various ways of tricking them into accepting the extra second -- stretching out all the other seconds in the preceding minute, hour or day, repeating the same second twice, or creating a 61st second in a minute, can cause chaos as they affect different computers in different ways.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Governments may order telcos to retain customer data, but only to fight serious crime, a top European Union judge has advised.Lobby groups European Digital Rights (EDRi) and Privacy International welcomed the recommendation, saying it adds to a growing body of legal opinion opposing mass data retention. It could even, said Privacy International, derail the U.K.'s Investigatory Powers Bill, introduced in March by Theresa May, then home secretary and now prime minister.Advocate General Henrik Saugmandsgaard Øe advised that a general obligation to retain data may be compatible with EU law, but cautioned that laws imposing such obligations should respect personal privacy and impose strict controls on access to the retained data, its security, and the period it is kept. Furthermore, such obligations can only be justified when strictly necessary in the fight against serious crime.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Governments may order telcos to retain customer data, but only to fight serious crime, a top European Union judge has advised.Lobby groups European Digital Rights (EDRi) and Privacy International welcomed the recommendation, saying it adds to a growing body of legal opinion opposing mass data retention. It could even, said Privacy International, derail the U.K.'s Investigatory Powers Bill, introduced in March by Theresa May, then home secretary and now prime minister.Advocate General Henrik Saugmandsgaard Øe advised that a general obligation to retain data may be compatible with EU law, but cautioned that laws imposing such obligations should respect personal privacy and impose strict controls on access to the retained data, its security, and the period it is kept. Furthermore, such obligations can only be justified when strictly necessary in the fight against serious crime.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Peter Sayer