Monthly Archives: March 2014

Foreign firms win big from NSA spying

Posted on by

"Data is being courted by overseas cloud providers, so this is clearly hurting U.S. cloud providers," said Elad Yoran, chairman and CEO of Valutive, a cloud security solutions company. "Many places around the world are seeing this as an opportunity."

Another factor likely to accelerate the trend: Countries like Brazil and Germany are strengthening their data residency laws, which force companies to keep their data stored locally. In other words, if a company wants to store data in the cloud, it needs to do so on servers in the country in question.

A recent survey of 1,000 information and communications technology decision-makers from France, Germany, Hong Kong, the UK and the U.S. revealed that many businesses are in fact aggressively changing the way they store their data.

According to the survey, which was carried out by NTT Communications, 90 percent of respondents had changed the way they use the cloud and 16 percent had delayed or canceled contracts with cloud service providers.

"This is a big deal. It's a terrible problem being foisted on companies. And it's the Achilles' heel of cloud computing. It forces them to replicate their infrastructure around the world in the countries that are implementing these laws," Yoran said.

"The U.S. had such a strong position which is being in effect weakened by the proliferation of these laws and creates an opening for global competitors to get into the cloud market at the expense of business that would have otherwise gone to the U.S."

By CNBC's Cadie Thompson. Follow her on Twitter @CadieThompson.

See more here:
Foreign firms win big from NSA spying

NSA spying gives big boost to non-US tech firms

Posted on by

"Data is being courted by overseas cloud providers, so this is clearly hurting U.S. cloud providers," said Elad Yoran, chairman and CEO of Valutive, a cloud security solutions company. "Many places around the world are seeing this as an opportunity."

Another factor likely to accelerate the trend: Countries like Brazil and Germany are strengthening their data residency laws, which force companies to keep their data stored locally. In other words, if a company wants to store data in the cloud, it needs to do so on servers in the country in question.

A recent survey of 1,000 information and communications technology decision-makers from France, Germany, Hong Kong, the UK and the U.S. revealed that many businesses are in fact aggressively changing the way they store their data.

According to the survey, which was carried out by NTT Communications, 90 percent of respondents had changed the way they use the cloud and 16 percent had delayed or canceled contracts with cloud service providers.

"This is a big deal. It's a terrible problem being foisted on companies. And it's the Achilles' heel of cloud computing. It forces them to replicate their infrastructure around the world in the countries that are implementing these laws," Yoran said.

"The U.S. had such a strong position which is being in effect weakened by the proliferation of these laws and creates an opening for global competitors to get into the cloud market at the expense of business that would have otherwise gone to the U.S."

By CNBC's Cadie Thompson. Follow her on Twitter @CadieThompson.

Read the original post:
NSA spying gives big boost to non-US tech firms

Over 100 World Leaders Targeted by NSA Spying

Posted on by

NSA headquarters at Fort Meade. (Photo: NSA / Wikimedia Creative Commons) Over 100 leaders of foreign states are secretly surveilled by the NSA, and Germany has been more heavily targeted by U.S. and U.K. spying than was previously known.

This is according to secret documents provided by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden and exposed Saturday by Laura Poitras, Marcel Rosenbach and Holger Stark writing for Der Spiegel.

German chancellor Angela Merkel, along with 121 other foreign state leaders, is included in what Der Spiegel describes as a key NSA database "of government leaders who have been tasked as targets." Code-named Nymrod, the database is revealed in a classified 2009 presentation document from the NSA's Center for Content Extraction. Arranged in alphabetical order, only 11 names of world leaders targeted by NSA surveillance are shown on the released document, including Syrias Bashar al-Assad, Belaruss Alexander Lukashenko, and Colombias Alvaro Uribe. According to Der Spiegel, the NSA kept over 300 reports on Merkel alone in this database.

The Der Spiegel report also reveals that in March 2013 the NSA obtained a court order to spy on Germany.

The latest news follows revelations last fall that the NSA had spied on Merkel's mobile phone for up to a decade, causing a significant diplomatic row. While the revelations created a public diplomatic row, German intelligence agencies also closely cooperate with the NSA.

Furthermore, British intelligence agency GCHQ hacked into the servers of German cyber companies and spied on staff communications, Der Spiegel's report reveals. "Is it time for the country to open a formal espionage investigation?" ask the authors.

_____________________

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.

See original here:
Over 100 World Leaders Targeted by NSA Spying

What Is Encryption? (with pictures) – wiseGEEK: clear …

Posted on by

Encryption refers to algorithmic schemes that encode plain text into non-readable form or cyphertext, providing privacy. The receiver of the encrypted text uses a "key" to decrypt the message, returning it to its original plain text form. The key is the trigger mechanism to the algorithm.

Until the advent of the Internet, encryption was rarely used by the public, but was largely a military tool. Today, with online marketing, banking, healthcare and other services, even the average householder is much more aware of it.

Web browsers will encrypt text automatically when connected to a secure server, evidenced by an address beginning with https. The server decrypts the text upon its arrival, but as the information travels between computers, interception of the transmission will not be fruitful to anyone "listening in." They would only see unreadable gibberish.

There are many types of encryption and not all of them are reliable. The same computer power that yields strong encryption can be used to break weak schemes. Initially, 64-bit encryption was thought to be quite strong, but today 128-bit is the standard, and this will undoubtedly change again in the future.

Though browsers automatically encrypt information when connected to a secure website, many people choose to use encryption in their email correspondence as well. This can easily be accomplished with programs that feature plug-ins or interfaces for popular email clients. The most longstanding of these is called PGP (Pretty Good Privacy), a humble name for very strong military-grade encryption program. PGP allows one to not only encrypt email messages, but personal files and folders as well.

Encryption can also be applied to an entire volume or drive. To use the drive, it is "mounted" using a special decryption key. In this state the drive can be used and read normally. When finished, the drive is dismounted and returns to an encrypted state, unreadable by interlopers, Trojan horses, spyware or snoops. Some people choose to keep financial programs or other sensitive data on encrypted drives.

Encryption schemes are categorized as being symmetric or asymmetric. Symmetric key algorithms such as Blowfish, AES and DES, work with a single, prearranged key that is shared between sender and receiver. This key both encrypts and decrypts text. In asymmetric encryption schemes, such as RSA and Diffie-Hellman, the scheme creates a "key pair" for the user: a public key and a private key. The public key can be published online for senders to use to encrypt text that will be sent to the owner of the public key. Once encrypted, the cyphertext cannot be decrypted except by the one who holds the private key of that key pair. This algorithm is based around the two keys working in conjunction with each other. Asymmetric encryption is considered one step more secure than symmetric encryption, because the decryption key can be kept private.

Strong encryption makes data private, but not necessarily secure. To be secure, the recipient of the data often a server must be positively identified as being the approved party. This is usually accomplished online using digital signatures or certificates.

As more people realize the open nature of the Internet, email and instant messaging, encryption will undoubtedly become more popular. Without it, information passed on the Internet is not only available for virtually anyone to snag and read, but is often stored for years on servers that can change hands or become compromised in any number of ways. For all of these reasons, it is a goal worth pursuing.

Read the original post:
What Is Encryption? (with pictures) - wiseGEEK: clear ...

Google says Gmail encrypted

Posted on by

Google says its popular Gmail service will use encryption to thwart snooping, in the latest move by the tech sector reassuring customers following revelations about US surveillance programs.

'Your email is important to you and making sure it stays safe and always available is important to us,' said Gmail engineering security chief Nicolas Lidzborski on Thursday in a blog post.

'Starting today, Gmail will always use an encrypted HTTPS connection when you check or send email.. Today's change means that no one can listen in on your messages as they go back and forth between you and Gmail's servers -- no matter if you're using public WiFi or logging in from your computer, phone or tablet.'

Google has already begun scrambling most of the traffic at its websites as technology firms grapple with moves by US intelligence agencies to spy on what people are doing and sharing online.

Similar moves have been announced by Yahoo, Microsoft and Facebook to use encryption that limits the ability of a third party to read messages or emails.

US tech firms have been ramping up encryption since last year's explosive revelations about the vast surveillance capabilities of the National Security Agency (NSA) and other intelligence services, based on leaked documents.

Lidzborski said Google's latest move 'ensures that your messages are safe, not only when they move between you and Gmail's servers, but also as they move between Google's data centres - something we made a top priority after last summer's revelations.'

Some reports say the NSA had been able to access data centres of Google and other web firms.

Experts say encryption generally prevents outsiders from intercepting a person's messages or documents, but that a persistent effort can gain access through malware or other methods which trick a person into revealing passwords.

Excerpt from:
Google says Gmail encrypted