The Loopix Anonymity System Wants to Be a More Secure Alternative to Tor
Loopix is a new anonymity network developed by a group of researchers from University College London (UCL) that comes with all the good parts of previous systems and new additions to improve security. Both Loopix and Tor are based on the concept of mix networks and are meant to provide a way to send anonymous […]
Google Accused of Trying to Patent Public Domain Technology
A Polish academic is accusing Google of trying to patent technology he invented and that he purposely released into the public domain so companies like Google couldn’t trap it inside restrictive licenses. The technology’s name is Asymmetric Numeral Systems (ANS) [1, 2], a family of entropy coding methods that Polish assistant professor Jarosław (Jarek) Duda […]
Bitcoin Price Takes a Tumble Amid Rumors of China Banning Cryptocurrency Trading
Bitcoin price took a huge fall on Friday after Caixin, a Chinese financial magazine, reported that Chinese Central Bank officials are working on rules to ban the trading of Bitcoin and all other cryptocurrencies on Chinese exchanges. The decision will apply only to online trading and not to over-the-counter transactions. Owning Bitcoin and other virtual […]
Opera and Vivaldi Founder Believes Google Should Be Regulated
Jon von Tetzchner, the founder of both Opera and Vivaldi, believes that Google has gotten too big and “is now in a position where regulation is needed.” In a blog post on Vivaldi’s website, von Tetzchner said that his once friendly relationship with Google and its founders has soured across the years. Google suspends Vivaldi […]
Six-Year-Old "Loop Bug" Re-Discovered to Affect Almost All Major PDF Viewers
A bug discovered in an obscure PDF parsing library back in 2011 is also present in most of today’s top PDF viewers, according to German software developer Hanno Böck. The original bug affected the PDF parser component included with Evince, a document viewer app for Linux. It was discovered by fellow German software developer Andreas […]
Metadata From IoT Traffic Exposes In-Home User Activity
Metadata from web traffic generated by smart devices installed in a home can reveal quite a lot of information about the owner’s habits and lifestyle. According to research published this month by experts from Princeton University, a determined attacker with “capabilities similar to those of an ISP” can use passive network monitoring techniques to collect […]
Unpatched Flaws Affect Chrome, Firefox, and Safari Browser Extension Systems
Security researchers have discovered two flaws that affect the extension systems embedded in today’s browsers, such as Firefox, Safari, and all the Chromium-related offshoots, such as Chrome, Opera, and others. These flaws can be exploited by a determined attacker to expose a list of the user’s installed extensions with a 100% accuracy. This information can […]
Google Error Causes Widespread Internet Outage in Japan
An error on Google’s part has caused widespread Internet outages in Japan for about an hour, on Friday, August 25. The downtime was caused by a BGM route hijack that began at 12:22 PM local Japan time and was resolved by 1:01 PM. BGP is a routing protocol used to interconnect the networks of major […]