Edward Snowden declassified another NSA surveillance program

NSA collects millions of online address books of users per year.

U.S. National Security Agency collects millions of contact lists of e-mail services , and instant messaging platforms people in America and around the world. It on Tuesday, October 15, reported the publication of The Washington Post with reference to another portion of the documents submitted by the former U.S. intelligence officer Edward Snowden.

Tracking program, which has not been previously disclosed, is the interception of e-mail addresses and "buddy lists" in the instant messaging service during transmission on global communication channels. Data collection began at the moment when a user authenticate to the instant messaging service or public e-mail, or synchronize their devices with the information stored on remote servers.

Instead of tracking specific users, the NSA collects data en masse in order to make it easier for users to define relationships with terrorist organizations.

Insider threats are more difficult to detect/prevent than they were in 2011

According to new research from the company Vormetric, approximately 54% IT-administrators believe that now more and more difficult to identify and prevent insider attacks, compared with 2011. 46% of respondents admitted that they suffer from similar threats. The reason for careful attention to insider activity was the scandal of Edward Snowden.

The main problem for 63% of the respondents was that the rights of employees to abuse their privileged status. 35% are concerned about the protection of the clouds, 36% think about network extensions, and 27% are afraid of APT, which can steal personal data. On the other hand, more than half of the organizations have begun to deal with insider threats, highlighting this extra money from the budget.

The recent scandal of Edward Snowden made the organization more closely relate to the risks that are caused by the activities of employees. 45% of companies reported changes his views on insider threats.

NSA is Working to Undermine Encrypted Communications in the Internet

Disclosed NSA (National Security Agency) activities to introduce backdoors to decrypt the encrypted traffic in the Internet

Another portion of classified U.S. intelligence reports disclosed by Edward Snowden, shows that U.S. National Security Agency developed a project to provide transcripts of almost all HTTPS and VPN communications.

To implement this feature was used not only practice request access to the private key encryption from vendors and identify vulnerabilities, but also attempts to implement backdoors in the implementation of encryption technologies and directly into the encryption standards.

No facts and evidence of the presence of bookmarks in RC4 and other technologies are not yet available , information is still limited to a common reference potential for exploitation of the methods used for communication via HTTPS and VPN, and the presence of an unnamed bookmarks in commercial products. Also not published a list of Internet companies and software vendors, collaborating with the NSA in terms of making the hidden vulnerabilities.

Yahoo sues National Security Agency

American Internet company Yahoo! has filed a lawsuit against the U.S. National Security Agency ( NSA ), to defend the right to publish information on the number of requests that U.S. intelligence agencies were doing to gain access to the personal data of users, the newspaper Guardian.

Yahoo! has made in mid-July in the court of law to publish the documents on personal data collection program PRISM. The documents concern attempts to Yahoo! decline to provide personal data of its users at the request of the NSA. A U.S. court ruled that the U.S. Department of Justice is obliged to declassify documents that in 2009 the company Yahoo, according to her statement, "strongly protested " against the government structures of user data. The Court defined the term declassification of documents and the decision on the case until September, that does not mean full disclosure , since the U.S. government continues to edit for publication some of them , which , according to the authorities, must remain secret .

"We went to court because we have no right to disclose ( information on the number ) queries," - said the representative of the company. On Monday, a similar initiative was the largest of Microsoft and Google, for even greater transparency in the matter of interaction with special services.