Tag archive: encryption

Ramona Fricosu is a Colorado woman being taken to court on 22 counts of bank fraud, four counts of wire fraud, five counts of false statements to a financial institution, and seven counts of money laundering charges after being accused of trying to take title to foreclosed homes. While the verdict in this mortgage scam won’t set any precedents, the means to that end might. Fricosu is being asked by the federal court to decrypt her laptop and… Read More

Flash memory maker SanDisk has announced it has reached a settlement with flash storage maker Imation that puts an end to two patent infringement suits pending against the company. Under the settlement, SanDisk and Imation will cross-license patents to each other, and Imation will be paying SanDisk royalties for use of its technology. Imation has also stipulated to the validity of SanDisk's U.S. patent 7,137,011, which covers aspects of… Read More

Last year India set a deadline of January 31, 2011, for BlackBerry maker Research in Motion to provide the Indian government access to encrypted communications on the BlackBerry service. Although RIM has provided a way for the Indian government to tap into messages sent using its consumer-level BlackBerry Messenger service, the company has insisted it cannot provide access to encrypted email on its enterprise services, since it doesn't… Read More

The government of India has been exerting pressure on Internet and technology companies to gain access to encrypted communications on Internet and mobile services out of concern that terrorists, militants, and others could use the technology to stage attacks and carry out other illegal activities. Canada's Research in Motion has been the first focus of India's regulation, with the country threatening to shut down BlackBerry… Read More

The lead developer on the OpenBSD project, Theo de Raadt, has disclosed an email message sent to him by a former contractor, Gregory Perry, who has alleged the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation paid developers to put a number of back doors into the communication encryption software used by the OpenBSD operating system. Although the report has not been substantiated, if the allegations are true it means the FBI has been working secretly for… Read More

The prolonged dance between BlackBerry-maker Research in Motion and the government of India appears to be entering another phase—and India seems to be getting everything it wants. An Indian interior ministry spokesperson says RIM has set up an “interim arrangement” for lawful interception of BlackBerry Messenger services, and that a permanent solution should be in place by the end of January 2011. The Indian government and… Read More

Some in the technology industry may have rolled their eyes when countries like Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, India, and others began to crack down on BlackBerry communications services because their law enforcement agencies can't peer into encrypted message traffic—but now the Obama administration may be seeking much the same thing, but not limited to BlackBerry service. According to a report in the New York Times,, the Obama… Read More

In an interview published in the Wall Street Journal, (subscription required), the never-shy RIM co-CEO Michael Lazaridis had some choice remarks for countries considering banning BlackBerry services over security and encryption issues. In a nutshell: “If they can't deal with the Internet, they should shut it off.” The interview comes as RIM's BlackBerry service has run afoul of state regulators in the United Arab… Read More

Makers of the legendary Swiss Army Knife have joined silicon with steel more than once in the long history of the multitool, but the latest one employs old-school security features that even the most sophisticated USB thumb drives lack. Victorinox’s new Secure includes all the usual Swiss Army essentials, including a blade, nail file and scissors, plus a mini flashlight and flip-out USB thumb drive with a biometric fingerprint reader. Besides… Read More

German security research Karsten Nohl, working with other researchers, has published a codebook that significantly reduces the amonut of work necessary to crack 64-bit GSM encryption, used to protect calls placed by more than 4 billion mobile phone users around the world. In theory, the development could make it easier for criminals, fraudsters, and attackers to intercept and decode and eavesdrop on private mobile phone conversations—although… Read More

We discussed the importance of backing up the data stored on your computer’s hard drive in a previous story. But what happens if your computer is lost or stolen? Notebooks are particularly vulnerable. A thoroughly executed back-up plan will alleviate data loss, but do you want strangers perusing the highly personal information you’ve stored on that machine? We didn’t think so; that’s why we put together this guide to keeping your electronic… Read More

Fujitsu Computer Products of America has announces ots MHZ2 CJ series of 2.5-inch hard disk drives for notebook computers, offering full disk encryption technology (FDE) to protect private and confidential data in the event the notebooks are lost or stolen. The drives support the AES-256 encruption standard in hardware, ensuring encryption key's never exist in a computer main memory—and, hence, can't be discovered by… Read More

While properly encrypted hard drives were thought to offer a challenge to even the most talented of hackers, a recent breakthrough has proven that even this extreme security measure possesses major vulnerabilities. On Thursday, a group of Princeton researchers revealed a creative exploit that allows common hard drive encryption software to be easily bypassed in minutes by anyone who has physical access to the computer. While most… Read More

The German security services might not be happy with Skype, but their dissatisfaction should give a measure of pleasure to users of the VoIP service. Does that sound confusing? The problem that the German Federal Police Office have with Skype is the fact that its encryption is stopping the services from tracking criminals, according to Reuters. "We cannot decipher it. That is why we are talking about source telecommunication… Read More