Tag Archive for: row

Centre must give a categorical response to Pegasus row: Justice B N Srikrishna | Latest News India

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Retired Supreme Court judge Justice B N Srikrishna, who authored the first draft of the data protection bill in 2018, says the Narendra Modi government should probe the alleged phone hacking of ministers, politicians, activists and journalists, and also explicitly state if any of its agencies uses Israeli military-grade spyware Pegasus.

Justice Srikrishna, who was appointed by this government to identify and address issues in data protection in India in 2017, described the response of the government, which has thus far denied its involvement in any illegal surveillance as “unsatisfactory”.

“Even the French government has ordered an inquiry so we need to do that too,” said Justice Srikrishna. “I am not at all satisfied with the government’s response. They need to give a categorical answer about who’s behind the hacking.”

As unearthed by a collaborative investigation involving 17 media organisations, and reported by The Wire, which is one of the 17, the phone numbers of Union ministers Ashwini Vaishnaw and Prahlad Patel, opposition leaders Rahul Gandhi and Abhishek Banerjee, activists, and 38 journalists, including three from HT and one from its sister publication Mint, were potential targets of spyware.

While NSO Group, the Israeli firm that makes Pegasus, has maintained that only governments are its clients, India’s IT minister Ashwini Vaishnaw has called the investigation an “attempt to malign Indian democracy and its well-established institutions”.

Home minister Amit Shah has questioned the timing of the revelations that came out just a day before the start of the monsoon session of Parliament. “Aap chronology samajhiye! (Understand the chronology) This is a report by the disrupters for the obstructers. Disrupters are global organisations which do not like India to progress. Obstructers are political players in India who do not want India to progress,” he had said.

“It has nothing to do with timing. That is irrelevant,” said Justice Srikrishna. “An important question is being asked in Parliament and they (government) should answer it. That is how democracy is strengthened. They should give an open answer so that such issues are frankly dealt…

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Windows 11 Upgrade Row Reveals Microsoft Ransomware Red Herring

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Remember back in 2015 when Microsoft ‘developer evangelist’ Jerry Nixon now famously stated that “Windows 10 is the last version of Windows” at the Microsoft Ignite conference that year? If not, maybe you recall how the company called it “the most secure Windows ever” just before it launched that same year? Guess what? The first statement hasn’t aged well, with Windows 11 now looking likely for release in October.

Microsoft is also beating the Windows 11 security drum and beating it hard by talking up how it features the strongest protection against malware yet. However, it’s the claim that Windows 11 will “raise the security baseline” to protect against ransomware that has got many infosecurity professionals scratching their collective heads.

The great Windows 11 TPM kerfuffle

Before we get to the Windows 11 ransomware red herring, let’s deal with the security stink that been wafting around social media and tech forums since the hardware requirements for running the next-generation Windows operating system were revealed, shall we?

Yes, I’m talking about the great TPM kerfuffle. The Trusted Platform Module (TPM) is a hardware requirement for running Windows 11, specifically TPM 2.0, which replaced the previous TPM 1.2 standard in 2019, hence the online anger over needing to upgrade your computer to upgrade the OS.

MORE FROM FORBESRansomware Reality Shock: 92% Who Pay Don’t Get Their Data BackBy Davey Winder

An uproar which isn’t totally justified as Chester Wisniewski, a principal research scientist at Sophos, says, “TPM 2.0 is available to almost all hardware at no real cost these days as it has built into nearly all Intel and AMD processors for many years now.”

What’s more, if you have a TPM 1.2 chip, this can likely be upgraded to TPM 2.0 by way of a firmware update from the computer vendor at no cost, rather than requiring a new hardware module to be purchased and installed.

Although Microsoft has withdrawn the somewhat controversial, because of the lack of detailed information it provided to users, Windows 11 compatibility checker at the moment, it’s easy enough to find out if you have the TPM 2.0 component required to run Windows 11. Open device…

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US is ‘world’s top empire of hacking and theft of secrets’, says China on NSA spying row

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China on May 31 weighed in on the Danish and European media reports alleging that the United States spied on its European allies including German Chancellor Angela Merkel between 2012 and 2014. While US-China has often indulged in a public war of words, the Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson on Monday labelled Washington as the “world’s top empire of hacking and theft of secrets.” On Twitter, China’s government account stated, “As facts have proven time and again, the US is the world’s top empire of hacking and theft of secrets. With targets including not only competitors but also its allies, the US is a real master of large-scale, indiscriminate tapping and theft of secrets.” It also shared an article with the same news.

China’s remarks came after a French government official on May 31 said that if proven, the claims are “extremely serious.” Secretary of State for European Affairs in France, Clement Beaune told the country’s Info radio, “It is extremely serious, we need to see if our partners in the EU, the Danes, have committed errors or faults in their cooperation with American services.” He noted that it would be very serious if Washington actually spied on EU leaders. 

“Between allies, there must be trust, a minimal cooperation, so these potential facts are serious,” said the minister while urging that the facts must first “be verified” and then “conclusions drawn in terms of cooperation.”

US Spied On Several European Allies

The United States spied on the top politicians in Europe including German Chancellor Angela Merkel from 2012 to 2014 with the assistance of Danish intelligence, as reported by Danish and European media on May 30. Danish public broadcaster Danmarks Radio (DR) said that the United States National Security Agency (NSA) had listened to Danish internet cables to spy on top politicians and even senior officials in…

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