Cyber Security

Facebook’s software for letting users download their data inadvertently exposed the contact information of 6 million users, the company said in a post on its security blog. Phone numbers and email addresses that are stored as part of its friend-recommendation algorithms were inadvertently attached to their contacts’ Facebook accounts, so that someone downloading an archive Continue Reading →

When Max Kelly, the chief security officer for Facebook, left the social media company in 2010, he did not go to Google, Twitter or a similar Silicon Valley concern. Instead the man who was responsible for protecting the personal information of Facebook’s more than one billion users from outside attacks went to work for another Continue Reading →

Microsoft has long resisted this move, but starting June 26 — the date the Windows 8.1 preview will ship — it will finally launch its own security bounty program. The company will offer bounties up to $100,000 for “truly novel exploitation techniques” that expose security issues in Windows 8.1 Preview. It will also pay up Continue Reading →

Facebook for iOS has gotten a small update on Wednesday that adds a couple of nice changes. Foremost is the ability to very quickly edit the privacy of a given post so that it’s visible only to the people you choose. This is accomplished by tapping on the small downward chevron next to any post, Continue Reading →

In a secret court in Washington, Yahoo’s top lawyers made their case. The government had sought help in spying on certain foreign users, without a warrant, and Yahoo had refused, saying the broad requests were unconstitutional. The judges disagreed. That left Yahoo two choices: Hand over the data or break the law. So Yahoo became Continue Reading →

When news broke last week that Verizon was handing over information about all of its calls to the National Security Administration, things were bad enough. In the week since then, however, things have only gotten worse for our personal security. A program called PRISM was outed by the Washington Post. According to the top-secret document Continue Reading →

Google’s chief legal officer has asked U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and FBI Director Robert Mueller for permission to disclose the number of requests for information it has received from federal agencies under the auspices of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. In a corporate blog post that went up minutes ago, Google’s David Drummond published Continue Reading →

The individual responsible for one of the most significant leaks in US political history is Edward Snowden, a 29-year-old former technical assistant for the CIA and current employee of the defence contractor Booz Allen Hamilton. Snowden has been working at the National Security Agency for the last four years as an employee of various outside Continue Reading →

President Obama just delivered his first public statements on the massive government surveillance efforts on internet companies and phone records targeting millions of ordinary citizens, which were revealed by leaked documents published online earlier this week. Answering a reporter’s questions after his speech on healthcare in San Jose, California, the president sought to downplay both Continue Reading →

The National Security Agency and the FBI are tapping directly into the central servers of nine leading U.S. Internet companies, extracting audio and video chats, photographs, e-mails, documents, and connection logs that enable analysts to track foreign targets, according to a top-secret document obtained by The Washington Post. The program, code-named PRISM, has not been Continue Reading →