The Simple Secruity Measure That Could’ve Stopped Heartbleed Dead

The Simple Secruity Measure That Could've Stopped Heartbleed Dead

We learned yesterday of a catastrophic bug, nicknamed "Heartbleed ," that has critically threatened the security of some HTTPS sites since 2011. By some estimates, Heartbleed affects 2 out of 3 web servers on the Internet.

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Every Gmail Message You Send Will Now Be Protected by Encryption

Every Gmail Message You Send Will Now Be Protected by Encryption

Good news, security lovers! Google just announced that Gmail will be all encrypted all the time. More specifically, every single email you send or receive will use an encrypted HTTPS connection, regardless of which device you’re using and which network. Even public Wi-Fi is okay.

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ISP Throttling Test for BitTorrent and Usenet Traffic

This article was written on May 13, 2011 by CyberNet.

Test isp throttling

Do you have suspicions that your ISP may be throttling (a.k.a. traffic shaping) some of your Internet traffic? It’s easy to tell if your ISP is blocking something, such as BitTorrent traffic, since nothing will get through, but it is more difficult to tell whether they are just restricting your download/upload speeds. That’s where the free Glasnost service comes into play.

Glasnost is a Java-powered web service that lets you run various tests for checking whether your P2P, email, or web traffic is being throttled by your ISP. Here’s a quick list of the 9 different tests you can run as well as a brief description of what gets tested with each of them:

  • BitTorrent – Filesharing with BitTorrent.
  • HTTP – A file download from a webserver using HTTP.
  • IMAP – A download of an email with a large attachment from an IMAP email server.
  • POP – A download of an email with a large attachment from a POP email server.
  • Flash Video – Flash video over HTTP, as used by, e.g., YouTube.
  • SSH – A file transfer over the SSH protocol, as done by the SCP utility.
  • Gnutella – Filesharing with Gnutella.
  • eMule – Filesharing with eMule.
  • Usenet – Sharing Binary Files using Usenet Server (NNTP protocol).

I use Comcast for my ISP and I was happy to see that the couple tests I ran all came back saying that my traffic wasn’t being throttled. Of course this isn’t a definitive answer as to whether it is actually being done since they may only do it at specific times (e.g. during peak traffic periods), but it is a little more reassuring.

Glasnost Homepage

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Marissa Mayer: Yahoo will encrypt all user data by early 2014

Yahoo recently announced that it will encrypt webmail by default, and today Marissa Mayer shared that the security measure will be applied across all Yahoo products “by the end of Q1 2014.” In a post on the company Tumblr, CEO Mayer outlined three specific measures to protect user data:

  • Encrypt all information that moves between our data centers by the end of Q1 2014;
  • Offer users an option to encrypt all data flow to/from Yahoo by the end of Q1 2014;
  • Work closely with our international Mail partners to ensure that Yahoo co-branded Mail accounts are https-enabled.​

This news is no doubt a response to persisting questions — and court cases — about the scope of the NSA’s information-tapping policies as they relate to internet giants such as Facebook, Google and Yahoo. As the company has previously asserted, Mayer emphasized that Yahoo has “never given access to… data centers to the NSA or to any other government agency. Ever.”

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Yahoo Mail Is Switching to HTTPS–Four Years After GMail

Yahoo Mail Is Switching to HTTPS--Four Years After GMail

From January 8th, Yahoo will be enabling encryption by default for all of its webmail users. That’s great news—it just happens to be four years later than the likes of GMail.

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The Technology You Need to Protect Against Mass Surveillance

The Technology You Need to Protect Against Mass Surveillance

In the past several weeks, EFF has received many requests for advice about privacy tools that provide technological shields against mass surveillance. We’ve been interested for many years in software tools that help people protect their own privacy; we’ve defended your right to develop and use cryptographic software, we’ve supported the development of the Tor software, and written privacy software of our own. This article looks at some of the available tools to blunt the effects of mass surveillance.

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Firefox 14 rolls out: Google searches default to HTTPS, OS X Lion users get fullscreen support

Firefox 14 rolls out, defaults Google searches to HTTPS

The changes in Firefox 14 may not be quite as immediately noticeable as those in the recently released Firefox 13, but they’re still fairly notable nonetheless. One of the biggest is Mozilla delivering on its promise to move to HTTPS for all Google search results and search suggestions, giving users a bit of added security. Mac OS X Lion users will also be glad to know that the full screen mode is now fully supported, and all users can also now expect better mouse performance in web-based games and other applications thanks to Mozilla’s implementation of the Pointer Lock API. As is the norm now, though, you’ll just have to wait another six weeks for the next release if a feature you’ve been waiting for didn’t make it into this one.

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Firefox 14 rolls out: Google searches default to HTTPS, OS X Lion users get fullscreen support originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 17 Jul 2012 13:31:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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