Concerned by reports of hacking, data breaches and government spying, companies and consumers are looking for better ways to protect their data. Many are turning to encryption, a method of encoding messages that goes back millennia. Encryption is commonly used to secure online banking sessions and to protect credit-card data. But for the average computer ...
Most of the time we discuss encryption as a way to protect ourselves online , but an increasingly popular form of digital attack uses it as an extortion tool. Criminals are stealing personal files, encrypting them, and hold them hostage until their targets pay for the decryption key. A report from security firm Symantec details ...
Government should make better use of regulatory tools and legislation to foster a more competitive environment in South Africa’s pay-television industry rather than requiring that conditional access technology be included in state-subsidised set-top boxes. That’s the view of Solly Mokoetle, the head of the digital migration project at the department of communications (DOC). “The issue ...
When checking your email over a secure connection, or making a purchase from an online retailer, have you ever wondered how your private information or credit card data is kept secure? Our information is kept away from prying eyes thanks to cryptographic algorithms, which scramble the message so no-one else can read it but its ...
New bugs in the widely used encryption software known as OpenSSL were disclosed on Thursday, though experts say do not pose a serious threat like the "Heartbleed" vulnerability in the same technology that surfaced a year ago. "Heartbleed" triggered panic throughout the computer industry when it was reported in April 2014. That bug forced dozens ...
In the wake of the recent Verizon report that shows that 80 percent are out of PCI DSS compliance between audits, some vendors are urging the PCI Council to consider approving software-based point-to-point encryption, in addition to the current hardware-based standard. PCI-approved, hardware-based P2PE allows merchants to drastically shrink the systems subject to compliance, reducing ...
Figure A: Tel Aviv University researchers built this self-contained PITA receiver. Not that long ago, grabbing information from air-gapped computers required sophisticated equipment. In my TechRepublic column Air-gapped computers are no longer secure, researchers at Georgia Institute of Technology explain how simple it is to capture keystrokes from a computer just using spurious electromagnetic side-channel ...
Government-provided set-top boxes for digital terrestrial television will not contain conditional access based on encryption, and prospective pay-television operators wanting to use such a system will have to deploy their own boxes to subscribers. That’s according to a statement, issued at the weekend by communications minister Faith Muthambi, in which she makes it clear that ...
Want to know why forcing tech companies to build backdoors into encryption is a terrible idea? Look no further than President Obama’s stark criticism of China’s plan to do exactly that on Tuesday. If only he would tell the FBI and NSA the same thing. In a stunningly short-sighted move, the FBI - and more ...
QR, or Quick Response, codes -- those commonly black and white boxes that people scan with a smartphone to learn more about something -- have been used to convey information about everything from cereals to cars and new homes. But, University of Connecticut (UConn) researchers think the codes have a greater potential: protecting national security. ...
