• The past, present, and future of ransomware

    The rise of ransomware over the past year is an ever growing problem. Business often believe that paying the ransom is the most cost effective way of getting their data back — and this may also be the reality. The problem we face is that every single business that pays to recover their files, is directly funding the development of the next generation of ransomware. As a result of this we are seeing ransomware evolve at an alarming rate.

  • The politics of asylum accommodation in the U.K.

    A new study offers a first examination of recent changes in the nature of asylum accommodation in the United Kingdom, arguing that in the model existing today, economic calculations make asylum-seeking a “market” in which neoliberal norms of market competition, economic efficiency, and dispersed responsibility are central.

  • WhatsApp implements end-to-end encryption

    WhatsApp announced on Tuesday that it has implemented complete end-to-end encryption which will protect all text, photo, video, and voice communications from eavesdropping. This means hackers and criminals will be shut out, but so will law enforcement and intelligence services, and even the company itself. This means that the company will not able to comply with court orders to allow law enforcement access to the information stored on the encrypted device. Leaders of law enforcement agencies were quick to criticize WhatsApp’s move for creating “warrant-proof” spaces for criminals and terrorists.

  • Global warming of 2.5°C degrees would put at risk trillions of dollars of world’s financial assets

    An average of $2.5 trillion, or 1.8 percent, of the world’s financial assets would be at risk from the impacts of climate change if global mean surface temperature rises by 2.5°C (4.5°F) above its pre-industrial level by 2100, according to a new study. that the authors found, however, that uncertainties in estimating the “climate Value at Risk” mean that there is a 1 percent chance that warming of 2.5°C could threaten $24 trillion, or 16.9 percent, of global financial assets in 2100.

  • ISO to collect data about terrorism insurance for Treasury Department

    ISO will collect, aggregate, and help analyze terrorism data this year for the U.S. Department of the Treasury, the federal agency charged with assessing the effectiveness of the federal Terrorism Risk Insurance Program. ISO is a Verisk Analytics.

  • FBI cracks terrorists’ iPhone without Apple's help

    The Justice Department on Monday asked a court to withdraw the government’s request that the court order Apple to help the FBI gain access to the encrypted iPhone used by the San Bernardino terrorists. The Justice Department filed the request after the FBI had successfully accessed data stored on an encrypted iPhone. The FBI wanted the court to compel Apple to relax the 10-attempt limit, which is part of the encryption system which comes with the device. If there are more than ten attempts to guess the password, the phone locks forever and all the data on it is wiped out. The FBI argued that its computers, using brute-force, would be able to break the phone’s password, but that it would take more than ten attempts.

  • Texas’s E-Verify law operating under honor system

    After former Gov. Rick Perry issued an executive order in December 2014 mandating the use of E-Verify for state agencies, some lawmakers noted the directive lacked a mechanism to ensure compliance. But more than nine months after Gov. Greg Abbott signed a separate E-Verify bill, some of those gaps still exist.

  • FBI may be able to break into San Bernardino terrorist’s phone without Apple’s help

    Magistrate Judge Sheri Pym has postponed until 5 April a court hearing about the FBI’s request that the court would order Apple to unlock the phone of one of the San Bernardino terrorists. The FBI asked the judge to postpone the hearing after the agency said it may have found a way to unlock the phone without Apple’s help.

  • Hackers could decrypt iMessage photos, videos

    A team of researchers has poked a hole in Apple’s iMessage encryption software. The bug would enable a skilled hacker to decrypt photos and videos sent as secure instant messages. The details of the vulnerability will be published after Apple has issued an update that corrects the flaw.

  • Bangladesh central bank governor resigns after discovery of $81 million cybertheft

    Bangladesh’s central bank governor, Atiur Rahman, resigned on Tuesday after $81 million was stolen from the bank’s account at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. It was one of the largest cyber-heists in history. The Bangladesh central bank said that the hackers had tried to withdraw $951 million from its account at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, but the other transactions were blocked after a typo in one of the instructions raised alarms.

  • WhatsApp to add encryption to voice chats

    Reports say that WhatsApp is planning to add encrypted video chats to its app in order to make it impossible for, so that nobody could snoop on its users. Adding encrypted voice chats will mean that all of the messages that pass through WhatsApp will be secure. Text messages are already encrypted.

  • Identifying national security threats posed by everyday commercial technologies

    For decades, U.S. national security was ensured in large part by a simple advantage: a near-monopoly on access to the most advanced technologies. Increasingly, however, off-the-shelf equipment developed for the transportation, construction, agricultural, and other commercial sectors features highly sophisticated components, which resourceful adversaries can modify or combine to create novel and unanticipated security threats. DARPA’s “Improv” effort asks the innovation community to identify commercial products and processes that could yield unanticipated threats.

  • How organizations can secure their teleworkers, data

    As the number of employees who telework trends upward — and new kinds of devices are used in telework — the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) says it is updating its guidance to include the latest technology available to strengthen an organization’s remote-access data security.

  • Snowden dismisses FBI's claim it cannot unlock San Bernardino killers’ iPhone

    Edward Snowden has joined the debate over the FBI’s attempt to force Apple to help it unlock the iPhone 5C used by one of the San Bernardino terrorists. The FBI says that only Apple can deactivate certain passcode protections on the iPhone — for example, the 10-attempt limit, which makes the phone permanently inaccessible after ten attempts to guess the password —which would allow law enforcement to guess the passcode by using brute-force.

  • The staggering cost of war to Syria, neighbors

    A new report evaluates the economic losses to Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and Turkey to date and into the future. The report concludes that the cost of conflict to Syria is an estimated $275 billion in lost growth opportunities. If the conflict continues to 2020, the cost of conflict to Syria will be $1.3 trillion.