The Onion Router (TOR) was designed to help against network surveillance by utilizing a network of secure tunnels. Tor is used by individuals to access blocked websites and communicate freely on the Internet by routing the connection through a series of secure tunnels where each tunnel only knows the previous and next in line.

Torchat utilizes the power of the Tor network to create a peer to peer instant messaging system, effectively a secure anonymous and encrypted instant messenger that runs right of the box. The software program is fully portable and can be run from external drives or local hard drives.

One limitation of the current version is that the listening port cannot be changed unless the user is doing it in the source which would mean that it would have to be compiled again. The author promised to add a configuration option to change the listening port of the application in a later version.

continue reading "Anonymous Encrypted Instant Messaging With Torchat"

Perspectives is a research project to improve SSH-style Host Authentication with Multi-path Network Probing by researchers of the computer science department at Carnegie Mellon University. The title of their research surely sounds scary for many Internet users but it basically means that they have created a method to authentic hosts securely by pulling their information from various servers and comparing those results with the users.

This practically eliminates the danger of man-in-the-middle attacks because the attacker does not have a way to manipulate the traffic of the independent servers who get the important information as well.

Best of all, they have created a Firefox extension that protects the user’s system after installation. The Firefox extension provides two benefits over not using it. The first is something that users might have experienced already. If a user connects to a website with an untrusted certificate he has to manually allow the connection to the website by using exceptions.

continue reading "Perspectives Makes Firefox That Much Securer"

I just came across an amusing news excerpt about the Federal Emergency Management Agency or FEMA, which is a part of Homeland Security. For those of you who don’t know, Homeland Security is a Cabinet department of the U.S. federal government with the responsibility of protecting the territory of the U.S. from terrorist attacks and responding to natural disasters. At least, that’s the Wikipedia definition.

FEMA recently installed a new voicemail system in their Maryland Training Center, which uses the Private Branch Exchange or PBX phone network. This kind of system is used by thousands or maybe even millions of companies throughout the world.

Last weekend though, a hacker broke into the network and made over 400 international calls, totaling up to $12,000. Calls were made to various countries in the Middle East and Asia (ironic, huh) and lasted anywhere from 3 to 10 minutes per call.

continue reading "Hacker Breaks into FEMA Phone System, Makes $12,000 Worth of Calls"

Several security vulnerabilities have been lately discovered in versions of Opera prior to Opera 9.52. The security vulnerabilities are classified as highly critical and include possibilities to bypass security, spoof, expose sensitive information, DoS and provide system access to an attacker.

The Opera 9.52 changelog contains information about the security vulnerabilities. Each one of the listed alone would be serious enough to be fixed immediately, all of them make the matter even more pressing. At least one vulnerability is only affecting computers running Windows but most affect all versions of Opera.

The update is deemed a security and stability update. Next to the important security fixes many changes to various aspects of Opera have been made. The changelog lists more than 30 fixes for various problems that could arise while using Opera.

continue reading "Update To Opera 9.52 Now"

No, I’m not referring to something called French Stick - whatever that might be - that has been renamed to Freedom Stick in an effort to punish the French for not siding with the US in their war against terror. Freedom Stick is a software for an USB device that aims at defeating the virtual (fire)wall around China and any other country.

The aim is to provide every Internet user with the opportunity to surf the Internet without fearing censorship or prosecution. The Freedom Stick basically contains a version of TOR and a Firefox browser that can be used to connect to the Internet through The Onion Network.

It was designed with ease of use in mind. Just download the archive from the Chinese Wall page of the German Chaos Computer Club and unpack the contents on the USB device. If autostart is enabled the system should automatically start the Vidalia Control Panel which establishes the connection with the Tor network. Firefox is opened i that connection is successful and the user can surf the Internet using the anonymity of the Tor network.

continue reading "Freedom Stick Is Better Than Freedom Fries"