Security & Privacy

North Korea has pounced on the recent revelations of NSA snooping to take a few digs at the United States.

Minju Joson, the country's state-run newspaper, lashed out at the U.S. in the wake of leaks from National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden that the NSA has been collecting data on U.S. citizens under a secret program known as PRISM. Snowden also said last week that the U.S. has been hacking into computers in China and Hong Kong for the past several years.

A commentary in Minju Joson called the U.S. "a kingpin of human rights abuses … Read more

News about the National Security Agency's classified surveillance programs has been abundant the past few days, and to top it off, President Obama is now giving a 45-minute interview about the issue with Charlie Rose on Monday evening.

Buzzfeed published a partial transcript of the interview before tonight's airing of the show. While Obama goes over the topics of the two NSA spying programs with more detail, it appears he's reiterating much of the same when it comes to the White House's stance on the programs and document leaks. Essentially, it did nothing wrong.

"What … Read more

There's a quaint concept that seemingly every technology company dismisses as outdated.

It's called opting in.

Should you not be familiar with it, it's the notion that you ought to choose before, say, all the people in your address book are contacted by a company they've never heard of.

And wouldn't it be lovely to have a choice over whether your kids should have their irises scanned, as they get on their school bus?

The parents of around 750 kids in several Florida schools never got that choice -- because of what might be politely … Read more

Everyone has an opinion about the revelations that government agencies may be tracking us.

Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak believes that America is becoming like Russia.

Some, though, feel comfortable with the idea that government may be offering surveillance for own own good. Or do they?

An answer given by Miss Alabama during the Miss USA pageant on Sunday night fully expressed how pretzel-ish the thinking has to be around our personal safety and security.

Asked by actress Wendie Malick whether NSA surveillance is an invasion of privacy or a necessity, Mary Margaret McCord offered a sure-minded reply.

She said: "… Read more

In addition to targeting suspected terrorists, it appears the National Security Agency also spent time spying on foreign heads of state.

A leaked document from the explosive NSA document deluge shows that the U.S. government was spying on former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev during the London G20 summit in 2009, according to the Guardian.

Apparently, the NSA document shows that U.S. spies got their hands on top-secret communications between Medvedev and his delegation and then shared the information with government officials from the U.K., Australia, Canada, and New Zealand.

The NSA document, titled "Russian Leadership Communications … Read more

Who understands the importance of performance better than an engineer?

Yet the pressures that come with performing to perfect levels can cause some engineers to cut corners, even obfuscate.

How tragic, then, that three apparently bright (or not quite so bright) young things studying engineering at Purdue University have been charged with using their skills to artificially jack up their grades.

I am not sure how sophisticated this alleged scheme was.

It all began to allegedly unravel at the end of 2012 when an engineering professor was suddenly struck by suspicion that the password on his computer kept changing. He … Read more

Verizon and T-Mobile USA have been a tad bit of a headache for the National Security Agency when it wants to collect data, according to a new report.

Because both Verizon and T-Mobile USA have owners that are based outside of the U.S., the U.S. government is not allowed to collect data directly from the carriers, The Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday, citing people who claim to have knowledge of the collection.

But before you get too excited, be aware that this doesn't really mean much. According to the sources, while the NSA is not able … Read more

Heard of the game Bad Pigs? Or is it Bad Piggies?

Some clever hacker decided to create a malicious app deceivingly similar to one of the top games in the Google Play store. And, it was downloaded more than 10,000 times before people took notice.

Security company F-Secure wrote on Wednesday that it had located Bad Pigs -- which had the same artwork and app description as Bad Piggies -- and let Google know. The only apparent differences between the two apps were the names of the app and the developer -- who was "Dan Stokes" rather … Read more

Symantec could let go of as many as 1,700 employees starting as soon as today, according to a report.

The security solutions provider is cutting roughly 8 percent of its global work force in two phases, with about 1,000 positions going first, this month, and another 700 people receiving pink slips in July, AllThingsD reported Thursday, citing unnamed sources.

The layoffs shouldn't come as much of a surprise, as Symantec first talked about the reorganization strategy in January amid its fiscal third-quarter earnings announcement.

The big target here is middle management.

Symantec's most recent quarterly earnings report … Read more