Representatives from Apple and the FBI testified Tuesday at a House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing on the ongoing encryption debate. Both vowed to work cooperatively to move past the current encryption impasse and find common ground. They also used the hearing to clarify stances on encryption and set the record straight on the FBI’s use...

Tibetans, journalists and human rights workers in Hong Kong and Taiwan have been targeted in an APT campaign that makes use of Microsoft Rich Text File (RTF) documents to compromise computers. Researchers say it’s a new strategy by attackers in an ongoing advanced persistent threat that dates back to 2009. According to Arbor Networks, the...

Microsoft’s lawsuit against the U.S. government for the right to tell its customers when a federal agency is looking at their emails is getting widespread support by privacy advocates. For many, Microsoft’s stance lends an important and powerful voice to ongoing efforts to reform the Electronic Communications Privacy Act that is at the heart of...

Mike Mimoso and Chris Brook recap the news of the week, including the Badlock bust, encryption legislation (Burr-Feinstein, the California decryption bill) and the dawn of ‘cryptoworms’ – Mike also discusses last week’s Infiltrate Conference in Miami. Download: Threatpost_News_Wrap_April_15_2016.mp3 Music by Chris Gonsalves

Civil liberty groups and tech firms are celebrating the defeat of a controversial California bill that would have forced phone makers to decrypt their devices by court order. The proposed legislation, AB 1681, died when lawmakers refused to give the bill a vote. But opponents of the bill, who argued Assembly Bill 1681 would undermine...

Threatpost Op-Ed is a regular feature where experts contribute essays and commentary on what’s happening in security and privacy. Today’s contributor is Katie Moussouris @k8em0.  Today marks an exciting development in the often monotonous rehashing of vulnerability disclosure. The ISO standard that began about 11 years ago with the emotionally loaded title “Responsible Vulnerability Disclosure,”...

A bill that would force companies to decrypt messages and unlock devices if ordered to do so by government court order, surfaced Friday and is rattling security and privacy advocates and IT business leaders. They contend the bill is misguided and will have a detrimental effect on civil liberties and business. The issue came to...

Juniper Networks hopes to remove any clouds of uncertainty that its networking gear might still have a backdoor that could allow the NSA or hackers to snoop on traffic running through its hardware. On Thursday, Juniper completed an update to the way its ScreenOS software handles encryption. Juniper said it has integrated the company’s widely...

MIAMI—Lisa Wiswell’s phone rang off the hook last summer in the throes of the OPM hack. But she wasn’t just answering questions from those whose security clearance and personal data disappeared into the Chinese ether; there were also hackers on the other end of the line offering their help. Wiswell, digital service lead with the...

The FBI issued a rare bulletin admitting that a group named Advanced Persistent Threat 6 (APT6) hacked into US government computer systems as far back as 2011 and for years stole sensitive data. The FBI alert was issued in February and went largely unnoticed. Nearly a month later, security experts are now shining a bright...