Encryption

Apple's Advanced Data Protection for iCloud feature uses end-to-end encryption to provide the highest level of cloud data security that Apple offers. Here's everything you need to know about enabling it on your devices. The encrypted security feature gives you the choice to further protect your important iCloud data, including iCloud Backup, Photos, Notes, and more. Apple's use of...

Signal Encrypted Messenger has become increasingly popular among smartphone users, thanks above all else to its emphasis on privacy and security. Signal chats are end-to-end encrypted, meaning no one – not even the Signal service – can see the messages that you send and receive to other users. In addition, Signal supports the creation of group chats, and like regular conversations in the...

In macOS Mojave, you can choose to encrypt and decrypt disks on the fly right from the desktop. Using this convenient Finder option, we're going to show you how to encrypt a USB flash drive (or "thumb drive"), which is useful if you're traveling light and want to take sensitive data with you for use on another Mac. Finder uses XTS-AES encryption, the same encryption that FileVault 2 uses to...

Five nations including the U.S. and the U.K. have urged tech companies to comply with requests to build backdoors into their encrypted services, or potentially face legislation requiring them to do so by law. The statement is a result of a meeting last week between the "Five Eyes" intelligence sharing countries, which include the U.S., the U.K., Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. In a publ...

Facebook is contesting a demand from the U.S. government that it break the encryption of its popular Messenger app so that law enforcement can listen in to a suspect's conversations as part of an ongoing investigation into the MS-13 gang. The U.S. Department of Justice's demand is in relation to a case proceeding in a federal court in California that is currently under seal, so public files...

Australia is gearing up to release new laws that will force Australian telecommunications companies and global tech companies to comply with law enforcement agencies, when such agencies ask for access to encrypted data on the smartphones of suspected criminals (via ABC News Australia). The laws are the latest in an ongoing global data battle that hit a fever pitch in the United States in early...

The Russian government has asked Apple to help it block Telegram, the secure messaging app that's highly popular in the country, reports WCCFTech. A Russian court in April ordered carriers and internet providers in the country to block Telegram back in April, after Telegram refused to provide Russia with backdoor access to user messages. Telegram, for those unfamiliar with the app, offers ...

A warning has been issued by European security researchers about critical vulnerabilities discovered in PGP/GPG and S/MIME email encryption software that could reveal the plaintext of encrypted emails, including encrypted messages sent in the past. The alert was put out late on Sunday night by professor of computer security Sebastian Schinzel. A joint research paper, due to be published...

The Reform Government Surveillance coalition, which includes several major tech companies who have teamed up to lobby for surveillance law reform, this week released a statement condemning recent proposals for backdoor access into electronic devices and reaffirming a commitment to strong encryption. The coalition is made up of multiple tech companies who have taken a strong stance against...

A Russian law court has ordered that access to the Telegram encrypted messaging service should be blocked, according to Russian news agencies on Friday (via Reuters). The development follows last week's news that Russia's media regulator had filed legal proceedings to block the app in the country because the company refused to enable state security services to access users' messages. The...

Russia appears to be following through on its threat last year to block access to the Telegram encrypted messaging platform. The BBC reports today that the Roskomnadzor media regulator has begun legal proceedings to block the app in the country, after Dubai-based Telegram refused to comply with requests that it hand over the encryption keys. Telegram was given a deadline of 4 April to hand ...

Senior FBI forensic examiner Stephen R. Flatley spoke at the International Conference on Cyber Security yesterday, and during the talk he discussed Apple and the FBI's differing opinions on the topic of smartphone encryption. According to Motherboard, Flatley described the company as "jerks" and "evil geniuses" for creating iOS device encryption that is so powerful as to prevent Apple itself from ...

Swiss-based encrypted email provider ProtonMail today announced Bridge, an app for premium account holders that aims to bring easy-to-use email encryption to desktop email clients like Outlook, Thunderbird, and Apple Mail. One of our goals has always been to bring easy-to-use encrypted email to desktop. The problem is formidable. Desktop systems encompass multiple operating systems with dozens ...

Encrypted messaging app Signal pushed out its v2.19 update late on Friday after a post-release 48-hour delay, owing to an App Store issue that Apple has now resolved. The update includes a number of new features and improvements, including full UI display support for iPhone X. After the update is applied, users will no longer see the "Load Earlier Messages" link within chat threads, because...

Encryption messaging company Keybase launched a Slack-like open source team communications tool on Monday for macOS and iOS platforms. Called Keybase Teams, the fully encrypted platform supports groups as large as 500 people, with free access to a team's message history. Keybase is a new and free security app for mobile phones and computers. For the geeks among us: it's open source and...

The U.K. home secretary Amber Rudd has argued that "real people" do not want secure end-to-end encryption on messaging platforms and are more concerned with usability and features than unbreakable security (via Yahoo News). Rudd made her case in a newspaper article, published ahead of a meeting today with technology companies in San Francisco, where she will warn tech giants that their...

Apple has sent its top privacy executives to Australia twice in the past month to lobby government officials over proposed new laws that would require companies to provide access to encrypted messages. According to the Sydney Morning Herald, Apple privacy advocates met with attorney general George Brandis and senior staff in Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull's office on Tuesday to discuss their...

Telegram is to form a team of moderators to remove terrorist-related content from the encrypted messaging platform in Indonesia, after the country's government threatened to ban the app. Indonesia's Ministry of Communications and Information Technology has already blocked access to the web version of the chat platform, citing concerns that it was being used to spread "radical and terrorist...

Australia on Friday proposed new laws that would require companies like Apple to provide law enforcement authorities with access to encrypted communications (via Reuters). Australia's proposed legislation will compel companies to help security agencies intercept and read messages sent by suspects. It appears to take cues from the U.K.'s Investigatory Powers Bill, which includes provisions that ...

Australia is set to push for greater international powers to thwart the use of encrypted messaging services by terrorists and criminals, according to reports on Sunday (via Reuters). The topic will be addressed this week at a meeting of officials from the "Five Eyes" intelligence sharing network, which includes the U.S., the U.K, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. Australia claimed the...

Russia has threatened to block access to the Telegram messaging platform unless the company that runs the app provides more information about itself (via Sky News). The head of communications regulator Roskomnadzor, Alexander Zharov, said repeated efforts to obtain the information had been ignored by the company and warned that "time is running out" for the app. "There is one demand and it ...

Encrypted email provider ProtonMail today launched its own VPN service called ProtonVPN, which includes a free user tier in its pricing plan. The Swiss-based company said it had been testing its VPN service for four months with the help of over 10,000 members of the ProtonMail community, and the group was ready to make ProtonVPN available to everyone starting Tuesday. The Proton group...

The U.S. Senate has approved popular encrypted messaging app Signal for official use by staffers in the chamber, it was revealed yesterday (via ZDNet). The news came in a letter sent on Tuesday by Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR), known to be a staunch privacy advocate, in which he underlined his belief that "backdoor-free" encryption should be embraced by the state at all levels rather than something ...