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Xtra users thought encryption calls a scam

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Telecom's Xtra customers may face another week of chaos.

Tens of thousands of Xtra users who use email clients such like Microsoft Outlook and Android will find it impossible to send or receive emails from Monday, until they change security settings on their accounts.

Telecom has been contacting Xtra customers by phone and email over the past month, asking them to implement SSL (secure socket layer) encryption on their devices.

However, it appears some Xtra users believed the calls from Telecom were a scam.

About a third of Xtra users access emails using programmes such as Outlook, rather than webmail.

Telecom retail boss Chris Quin said there was "still a way to go" to persuade them all to make the settings change.

Telecom had decided to block customers' access to Xtra from late Monday if they hadn't made the change. Its customers didn't want the company to "muck around" with their online security, Quin said.

Spokeswoman Lucy Fullarton said all Xtra users would still be able to send and receive email through webmail. Email clients would be unblocked as soon as customers implemented SSL encryption.

Telecom outsourced Xtra to Yahoo in 2007 and more than 100,000 accounts have been compromised and hijacked in a series of cyber attacks over the past two years.

Yahoo has so far failed to explain the cause.

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Xtra users thought encryption calls a scam

Why Client-Side Encryption Is Critical For Cloud Privacy

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Why Client-Side Encryption Is Critical For Cloud Privacy Posted by Rick Harvey March 12, 2014

The old tale "The Emperors New Clothes" can be applied to the current state of cloud security. Like the gullible emperor, people rely on cloud services to live their online lives and are too trusting in what companies try to sell. Big cloud companies often market fancy-sounding security and encryption features -- like the invisible fabric the emperor could not see but was made to believe was there.

These cloud providers tout the most secure or NSA-proof services, but leave out the most vital detail: encryption is only one thread in the security and privacy fabric. The only way to close the loop on data privacy is to take a look at where keys are stored.

One cloud storage provider touts its server-side encryption as freeing customers from the hassle and risk of managing their own encryption and decryption keys. In reality, this leaves the users information vulnerable to snoops. When you arent managing your own keys, you dont have control over your data.

Essentially, letting a company manage your encryption keys is handing over your protection, or clothes, like the emperor wearing the invisible wardrobe. Your data is left vulnerable to outside attacks and elements because the server or company dictates what happens to your data.

Today, many cloud service providers deliberately provide server-side security to maintain control. But server-side security requires trying to defend everywhere user data is stored: every disk, every server, every link, every router, and every database. Security is only as good as the weakest link, so it only takes one tiny mistake, vulnerability or mishandling for there to be a data breach; the Snapchat hack earlier this year is an example of what can happen.

This focus on infrastructure security is fundamentally weak. Pieces of security dont add up to overall security. Individual bits might be strong (e.g., SSL for links, disk encryption for storage), but the space between the bits might be vulnerable (i.e., data coming off links or off disks is unencrypted). Hackers dont attack individual components; instead, they attack tiny vulnerabilities between components, processes, or human control.

For cloud users to control everything client-side, they must make a paradigm shift from infrastructure protection to data-centric protection (where the encryption keys are held client-side rather than server-side). Client-side encryption is just like putting data in a tamper-proof box: The contents will remain protected regardless of who handles it, how the box is transported or where it is stored. The data is protected anywhere, everywhere and remains individually encrypted until the user with the key unlocks it.

[Read about an industry effort to develop a framework that provides secure connectivity from any device to cloud applications in "Cloud Security Alliance Launches Secure Network Effort."]

Client-side cryptography allows users to protect their own data with individual, per-file encryption and protect access to that data with user-controlled keys. Note that the encryption, decryption and key management are all done on the end users computer or device, meaning the data in the cloud only exists in its encrypted state. This level of encryptions makes the data safe from all the usual cloud risks, including hacking, rogue administrators, accidents, complicit service providers, and snooping governments.

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Why Client-Side Encryption Is Critical For Cloud Privacy

Julian Assange Labels NSA As A ‘Rogue Agency’ During SXSW Speech

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March 10, 2014

redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports Your Universe Online

Speaking via Skype to the attendees of the SXSW conference in Austin, Texas on Saturday, Wikileaks founder Julian Assange said that the US National Security Agency (NSA) had become a rogue agency and hinted that his document-sharing website could soon be publishing additional unidentified documents.

Assange, who has been confined to the Ecuadorian embassy in London since June 2012, said that a grassroots effort would be the catalyst in rolling back the powers of the NSA and similar governmental surveillance agencies.

We have to do something about it. All of us have to do something about it, he said during an hour-long interview at the conferences, reports Stuart Dredge of The Guardian. How can individuals do something about it? Well, weve got no choice.

Assange also ripped President Barack Obama for his administrations lack of response to the revelations of NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, who is scheduled to participate in a remote teleconference on Monday.

We know what happens when the government is serious, he said, according to a report by the Associated Press (AP). Someone is fired, someone is forced to resign, someone is prosecuted, an investigation (is launched), a budget is cut. None of that has happened in the last eight months since the Edward Snowden revelations.

CNNs Doug Gross also noted that Assange said the NSA would be able to fire back politically against the American president if he ever came after them. Assange said that the agency would come up with all of this dirt (on Obama) and that a criminal act would come to light if the president ever attempted to disband the agency.

As for Snowden and other reporters and activists who have traveled internationally in order to continue their whistleblowing and national security reporting efforts, Assange referred to them as a new kind of refugee, according to Russell Brandom of The Verge. He went on to single out the work of Glenn Greenwald (who has reported extensively on Snowdens allegations), Laura Poitras, Wikileaks own Sarah Harrison, and Tor researcher Jacob Appelbaum.

Assange, who was granted asylum by Ecuador and remains in their embassy in order to avoid extradition to Sweden on charges of rape and molestation, called the continued ability of those individuals to continue their work a positive phenomenon that is part of an expanding political awareness spurred on by the Internet. Just a few years ago, he said, the online community was a politically apathetic space, but that culture has rapidly changed.

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Julian Assange Labels NSA As A 'Rogue Agency' During SXSW Speech

WikiLeaks’ Assange talks NSA, hints at more leaks (Update)

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Mar 08, 2014 by Barbara Ortutay Fugitive WikLeaks founder Julian Assange speaks via Skype at the South By SouthWest Interactive festival in Austin, Texas, Saturday, March 8, 2014. Assange's appearance underscores the increasing attention that the technology industry is paying to issues of online privacy, security and surveillance. (AP Photo/Barbara Ortutay)

Fugitive WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, speaking over Skype from the Ecuadorean embassy in London, said his living situation is a bit like prisonwith a more lenient visitor policy.

He also hinted that new leaks are coming from WikiLeaks, though he gave no specifics on what these might be.

Assange, who has been confined to the embassy since June 2012, discussed government surveillance, journalism and the situation in Ukraine on Saturday in a streaming-video interview beamed to an audience of 3,500 attendees of the South By Southwest Interactive festival in Austin, Texas.

Assange's hour-long remote appearance was spiked with technical glitches. As the audio cut out, he sometimes asked audience members to raise their hands if they could hear him. Benjamin Palmer, the co-founder of marketing firm The Barbarian Group who interviewed Assange, at one point resorted to texting his questions.

Looking well-groomed in a white shirt, scarf and a black blazer, Assange blasted President Barack Obama's administration, saying it was not taking fellow secrets leaker Edward Snowden's revelations about the National Security Agency's surveillance activities seriously.

"We know what happens when the government is serious," he said. "Someone is fired, someone is forced to resign, someone is prosecuted, an investigation (is launched), a budget is cut. None of that has happened in the last eight months since the Edward Snowden revelations."

Assange's appearance at this five-day conferencewhich will host Snowden in a similar remote interview Monday from Russia which granted him temporary asylumsignal the growing concern in the tech community around issues of online privacy, surveillance and security, even as Internet giants like Google and Facebook reap billions in advertising revenue from collecting information about their users.

"Now that the Internet has merged with human society and human society has merged with the Internet, the laws of the Internet become the laws of society," Assange said, adding that the NSA's "penetration of the Internet" has led to a "military occupation" of civilian space.

Assange has taken asylum at the Ecuadorean embassy in London to avoid extradition to Sweden over a sexual assault charge, which he has said would be merely a first step in efforts to move him to the U.S. to face charges over publishing hundreds of thousands of secret government documents.

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WikiLeaks' Assange talks NSA, hints at more leaks (Update)


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