Tag Archive for: Unlocking

Unlocking the secret to private messaging apps

/in


Whether you’re sharing confidential information or swapping movie ideas with a friend, people are turning to private messaging apps that offer end-to-end encryption to protect the contents of their conversations.

When data is shared over the internet, it often traverses a series of networks to reach its destination. Apps such as WhatsApp, owned by social media giant Meta (formerly Facebook), provide a level of privacy that even challenges Government agencies from accessing encrypted conversations.

However, with the apps constantly changing their security and privacy policies, are the messages still safe from being decrypted?

Back in May 2021, disapproval by the online community with the changes to WhatsApp’s privacy policy for business entities using the platform, saw many users switch to other private messaging apps such as Signal and Telegram.

Cybersecurity expert, Dr Arash Shaghaghi from UNSW School of Computer Science and Engineering and UNSW Institute for Cyber Security, compares encryption to the likes of having a secret conversation between you and another person.

“To keep our information away from prying eyes, we rely on cryptographic algorithms to encrypt our data. Encryption involves converting human-readable plaintext into an encoded format and the data can only be read after it’s been decrypted,” he says.

“Encryption involves using a key to lock a message, while decryption is using a key to unlock a message.

“In theory, if an outsider observed an encrypted conversation, they could not make sense of it, and they will need the appropriate key to decrypt it.

“Interestingly, with some end-to-end encryption protocols, such as Signal, even if someone steals the encryption keys and taps over the connection, they cannot decrypt messages already sent. In crypto parlance, this is termed as forward secrecy.”

Read more: Camfecting: how hackers attack by gaining access to your webcam

Are our messages fully secure?

Modern encryption algorithms have been battle-tested and shown to have no known vulnerabilities. While it doesn’t mean it’s impossible to crack, the process requires extensive processing powers and could take a significantly long time to do….

Source…

Appropriate skills essential to unlocking IT sector potential

/in


AS the dust settles on exam results, and schools and colleges gear up for a new term, it feels like a good time to reflect on the skills situation in one of our hottest sectors.

It can’t have escaped your notice that over the past number of years, the IT sector in Northern Ireland has been one of the fastest growing sectors across the whole economy, averaging 3.7 per cent growth per annum between 2012 and 2019. This compares favourably to the economy as a whole, where growth for the same period was 1.7 per cent per annum.

The IT sector currently employs around 25,100 people here, and about a quarter of these jobs have been added since the last big recession.

This rapid growth, coupled with inward investment successes, and an emerging global reputation in the sector, particularly in areas such as cyber security, has seen the sector identified as a key growth sector for the economy. So much so that the cyber security sector and the IT sector have been cited as part of the ‘New Decade New Approach’ and the ‘10x Economy’ strategies as key/priority clusters.

The Department for the Economy aims for these sectors to become global leaders. The importance of the IT sector has become even stronger as a result of the pandemic, with many firms seeing higher levels of IT investment as a result of home working. TechNation found that Northern Ireland-based tech firms had raised £45.6 million in 2020, a record level, despite the ongoing pandemic.

It’s not all plain sailing for the sector however, with skills challenges starting to bite. This is not unique to Northern Ireland, for the UK Employer Skills Survey noted that around 53 per cent of IT respondents stated the main reason for having “hard to fill vacancies” was due to the “low number of applicants with the required skills.”

The strong demand for IT-related jobs has also seen the level of online job postings for IT/computer/software accelerate in recent weeks/months, following an initial lull in job postings at the beginning of lockdown.

The Department for the Economy estimates that there have been between 500 and 700 online job listings in the sector every month this year, mainly in…

Source…

Unlocking Android phones with a 3D-printed head

/in
Unlocking Android phones with a 3D-printed head

Forbes journalist Thomas Brewster wanted to find out just how well a variety of Android phones and a top-of-the-range Apple iPhone would fare against a determined attempt to break facial recognition. And he did that by having a 3D-model printed of his head.

Read more in my article on the Tripwire State of Security blog.

Graham Cluley

Will Unlocking Apple’s iPhone Unlock a Pandora’s Box? – BU Today

/in

BU Today

Will Unlocking Apple's iPhone Unlock a Pandora's Box?
BU Today
Attackers were able to load Flame malware as a signed Microsoft Windows update—just like what the FBI is asking Apple to do—because they broke the security of the algorithm used to compute cryptographic signatures on Windows software updates.

and more »

flame malware – read more