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Encryption

Cryptography 'Becoming Less Important,' Adi Shamir Says 250

Posted by Soulskill from the encryption-is-useless-when-users-are-also-useless dept.
Trailrunner7 writes "In the current climate of continuous attacks and intrusions by APT crews, government-sponsored groups and others organizations, cryptography is becoming less and less important, one of the fathers of public-key cryptography said Tuesday. Adi Shamir, who helped design the original RSA algorithm, said that security experts should be preparing for a 'post-cryptography' world. 'I definitely believe that cryptography is becoming less important. In effect, even the most secure computer systems in the most isolated locations have been penetrated over the last couple of years by a series of APTs and other advanced attacks,' Shamir said during the Cryptographers' Panel session at the RSA Conference today. 'We should rethink how we protect ourselves. Traditionally we have thought about two lines of defense. The first was to prevent the insertion of the APT with antivirus and other defenses. The second was to detect the activity of the APT once it's there. But recent history has shown us that the APT can survive both of these defenses and operate for several years.""
Security

Ask Slashdot: Identity Theft Attempt In Progress; How To Respond? 239

Posted by timothy from the burrs-on-the-heel-of-the-foot-would-be-mercy dept.
An anonymous reader writes "It appears that two weeks ago my email address got into the wrong database. Since that time there have been continuing attempts to access my accounts and create new accounts in my name. I have received emails asking me to click the link below to confirm I want to create an account with Twitter, Facebook, Apple Games Center, Facebook mobile account, and numerous pornographic sites. I have not attempted to create accounts on any of these services. I have also received 16 notices from Apple about how to reset my Apple ID. I am guessing these notices are being automatically generated in response to too many failed login attempts. At this point I have no reason to believe any of my accounts have been compromised but I see no good response."
Internet Explorer

Microsoft Releases Internet Explorer 10 For Windows 7 321

Posted by timothy from the double-digits-on-the-prime dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Internet Explorer 10 for Windows 7 is out. Windows 8 may suck but now you can at least enjoy (most of) that version's Internet Explorer. IE10 for Win7, originally not planned, has seen the light of day after all — four months after it debuted in Windows 8. It is available via Windows Update as an optional update; however, if you've already installed a pre-release version, it will be updated automatically as an 'important' update. IE10 on Win7 requires a platform update to bring some Windows 8 APIs to the more mature Windows, and it will not feature embedded Adobe Flash as the Windows 8 version does (use the plug-in version from Adobe, as usual, instead)."
Google

Bypassing Google's Two-Factor Authentication 49

Posted by timothy from the disclaimer-dug-song-is-a-genius-monkey dept.
An anonymous reader writes "The team at Duo Security figured out how to bypass Google's two-factor authentication, abusing Google's application-specific passwords. Curiously, this means that application-specific passwords are actually more powerful than users' regular passwords, as they can be used to disable the second factor entirely to gain control of an account. Duo [publicly released this exploit Monday] after Google fixed this last week — seven months after initially replying that this was expected behavior!"
China

Bit9 Says 32 Malicious Programs Whitelisted In Recent Hack 18

Posted by timothy from the nice-binary-number dept.
chicksdaddy writes "The security firm Bit9 released a more detailed analysis of the hack of its corporate network was part of a larger operation that was aimed a firms in a 'very narrow market space' and intended to gather information from the firms. The analysis, posted on Monday on Bit9's blog is the most detailed to date of a hack that was first reported on February 8 by the blog Krebsonsecurity.com, but that began in July, 2012. In the analysis, by Bit9 Chief Technology Officer Harry Sverdlove said 32 separate malware files and malicious scripts were whitelisted in the hack. Bit9 declined to name the three customers affected by the breach, or the industry segment that was targeted, but denied that it was a government agency or a provider of critical infrastructure such as energy, utilities or banking. The small list of targets — just three — and the fact that one malware program was communicating with a system involved in a recent 'sinkholing operation' raises the specter that the hack of Bit9 may have played a part in the recent attacks on Facebook, Twitter and Apple, though Bit9 declined to name the firms or the market they serve."

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