True End-to-End Encryption for Proton Mail

 

TRUE END-TO-END ENCRYPTION WITH PROTONMAIL

 

As a long time user of Proton, I gotta tell you, this is an absolute game changer when it comes to finally having a FREE email service with across the board encryption!

Stay Alert, Stay Armed and Stay Dangerous!

Cyber Threats – 3 Easy Steps To Getting Your Door Kicked In

By Mr. A

The Internet is easy to use, but the consequences of using it are hard for people to understand. Just stop and think about that. This technology can be used by almost anyone with a computer, and yet only a very small fraction of people using computers, smart  phones, and tablets really understand what’s going on ‘under the hood’ and how they can be negatively impacted by this.

• Reckless teens post party pictures and vomit up ridiculous and petty comments through multiple social media outlets. Then they wonder a few years later why they were turned down for a job.
• Employees exercise ‘free speech’ online and one day find out they are terminated for making statements the company finds insensitive.
• Teenage girls post mildly inappropriate pictures not knowing those pictures may contain the exact GPS location of their home or school

In 1984, the idea of Big Brother seeing all you do what put forth by George Orwell. What people have a hard time understanding is that in the age of big data almost anyone can be Big Brother and you may be feeding them everything they need to target you.

The latest example of this can be found in new ISIS ‘Kill List’ gathered from church directories posted online. In many states property tax records are online. Targeting and entire church, the pastors, or specific individuals within the congregation is as easy as 1-2-3.

1. Find a church website
2. Find a pastor’s name
3. Search property tax records

Done.

You need to recognize something right now. NONE of this required ‘hacking’, attacker kits, or any sophistication outside of being able to do a Google search. If these 3 steps aren’t sufficient, very simple social engineering can manipulate the remaining information.

Do you really want everything you do posted on Facebook? Do you want your teens posting on Instagram 10x a day? It doesn’t take very much at all to go from ‘online’ to a bad guy kicking down your front door.

Stay Alert, Stay Armed, Watch What You Do Online and Stay Dangerous!

 

Surveillance State: Hackers Have Found a Pulsating New Way to Spy on You on Your Phone and FitBit

Hackers may be pickin’ up good vibrations from your phone. All the better to surveil you with, my dear.

Researchers at the Electrical and Computer Engineering school of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign discovered that the vibration motor in your devices can operate like a microphone, according to the researchers’ paper. That means, if a hacker rewires your vibration motor (which TechCrunch reported could be executed “in a minute or two”), they can listen to what you’re saying.

The system, VibraPhone, works on any device with a vibration motor — which includes our phones and wearables.

And it works damn well. Humans were able to understand the recorded words via the vibration motor with greater than 80% average accuracy, according to the researchers’ paper. The researchers note that the “fidelity to which this is possible has been somewhat unexpected.” More great news for malware eavesdroppers: This system doesn’t require any machine learning or pattern recognition to extract the decoded sounds.

It does have a weakness though: high frequencies. So if you’re squeaking like a chipmunk, chances are the system won’t be able to pick up your sounds. This also includes some consonants and vowels like “i” and “e” which have frequencies high enough to be suppressed by the system, according to the paper.

But it’s not all wiretapping and espionage — the VibraPhone can be used for good. The researchers also see the system as a way to recover speech from the vibrations of vocal cords, facial bones or skull, which can help to build better assistive technology for individuals with speech impairment, TechCrunch reported.

And this isn’t the first time researchers have translated sweet vibrations into words — researchers at MIT, Microsoft and Adobe previously created an algorithm that extracted audio from a vibrating potato-chip bag.

Read the Original Article at Mic

The Espionage Economy

U.S. firms are making billions selling spyware to dictators.

By James Bamford

Ricardo Martinelli resides in a condo at the Atlantis, a luxury high-rise on Florida’s Biscayne Bay made famous by the TV series Miami Vice. A hefty, white-haired billionaire, Martinelli, 63, was viewed just a few years ago as one of Latin America’s most popular leaders: From 2009 until 2014, he was president of Panama. But now, though he’s living in high style, Martinelli is a fugitive from justice.

He fled his country on Jan. 28, 2015, hours before Panama’s Supreme Court announced a corruption investigation into his administration. Among the charges Martinelli faces is political espionage, with a possible prison sentence of 21 years, for illegally eavesdropping on the phones and emails of more than 150 people: Panamanian opposition leaders, journalists, judges, business rivals, cabinet members, U.S. Embassy officials, a Roman Catholic archbishop, and even a woman identified as Martinelli’s mistress.

Much of this alleged activity was made possible by the burgeoning business of private companies selling military-grade spyware. In 2011, the Wall Street Journal reported that the retail market for surveillance tools had increased in value from virtually nothing 10 years prior to around $5 billion annually. Yet the market functions largely unencumbered, and even since the National Security Agency eavesdropping scandal broke in 2013, U.S. policymakers have paid little attention to firms that sell surveillance equipment to foreign governments.

The scandal in Panama offers a unique window into how dangerous the espionage export business has become. Without restrictive controls, the risks the industry poses will only grow: More and more countries will acquire the tools to perpetrate corruption and abuse human rights.

Read the Remainder at Foreign Policy