In the final decision on a criminal case that began a decade ago, an appellate court has said that the National Security Agency’s phone data collection practices were in fact illegal. They did, however, uphold the convictions in the case. According to the 9th Circuit Court’s Sept. 2 opinion in USA v. Moalin: We conclude that the government may have violated the Fourth Amendment and did violate the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (“FISA”) when it collected the telephony metadata of millions of Americans. The court continued to attack the program, writing that the government’s case neglects that “the collection of …

The servers Edward Snowden used to leak thousands of documents to journalists were paid for using bitcoin (BTC), the National Security Agency whistleblower revealed at the Bitcoin 2019 Conference on June 27. Snowden was working as a CIA subcontractor in 2013 when his leak revealed that telecom companies and governments were involved in “almost Orwellian” mass surveillance programs that swept up the phone records of unsuspecting Americans. Speaking via video-link from Russia, he described the ability to exchange and transact without being watched and recorded “is the foundation of all rights” — and said bitcoin was helping to deliver privacy …

American software security firm Symantec found a spike in a new crypto mining malware that mainly targets enterprises, TechCrunch reports on April 25. The new cryptojacking malware, dubbed Beapy, uses the leaked United States National Security Agency (NSA) hacking tools to spread throughout corporate networks to generate big sums of money from a large amount of computers, the report notes. First spotted in January 2019, Beapy reportedly surged to over 12,000 unique infection across 732 organizations since March, with more than 80% of infections located in China. As found by researchers, Beapy malware is reportedly spread through malicious emails. Once …

Leaked code targeting Microsoft Systems which hackers allegedly stole from the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) sparked a fivefold increase in cryptocurrency mining malware infections, Bloomberg reports Wednesday, September 19, citing a new cryptojacking report. Eternal Blue, the tool which can exploit vulnerabilities in Microsoft software, is behind the now-infamous global cyberattacks WannaCry and NotPetya, which continue to cause disruption since they first surfaced in 2017. Bloomberg notes that Eternal Blue was allegedly stolen from the NSA in 2017 by a hacking group called the Shadow Brokers. Hackers have since been using the tool in order to gain access to …

Some mainstream media put the blame for the latest WannaCry cyber attack on Bitcoin, thoughtlessly copy-pasting the statements that the cryptocurrency is a convenient tool for terrorists. In reality, the technologies behind Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies might very well become the next level security against future attacks. Ransomware Ransomware attacks of an unprecedented scale put hundreds of thousands of computers at risk. As Bitcoin and Blockchain take the limelight again, Blockchain may offer a viable solution. NSA tools and Windows vulnerability caused the largest cyber attack in history. While Bitcoin and Blockchain can easily be singled out as a scapegoat, …

The newly patched “Venom” vulnerability in virtualization software is “perfect” for any organization targeting bitcoin wallets, private keys and forum passwords, according to Robert Graham, chief executive officer of security firm Errata. Researchers first discovered the bug through the security firm CrowdStrike, which described Venom as a security vulnerability in the virtual floppy drive code used by computer virtualization platforms. They said: “This vulnerability may allow an attacker to escape from the confines of an affected virtual machine (VM) guest and potentially obtain code-execution access to the host.” “Absent mitigation, this VM escape could open access to the host system …

US House of Representatives votes to end bulk data collection by the NSA on Americans, ChangeTip comes to Soundcloud, and more top stories for May 14. US House of Representatives ends NSA bulk spying The US House of Representatives has passed a bill aiming to end the bulk collection of data by the NSA. Called the USA Freedom Act, its contents stop what whistle-blower Edward Snowden has called the NSA Dragnet. Although those in the US might now be free from their data being collected, the bill continues to allow the collection of data on people outside of the US. …

Security experts agree that Intel computing processors, among others, have likely been compromised by the NSA, giving them the power to key log your pass phrases, and generally access your computer's RAM and memory beyond the control of your operating system. So far, the experts say, the Bitcoin community has not been targeted specifically, but can we protect ourselves against possible hardware hacking? Problem from Hell In an interview with IamSatoshi, Vinay Gupta a cryptographic application designer and Ethereum release coordinator, argued that “in the long run, Bitcoin is forcing us to confront the fact that in all probability, Intel …

We have already reported on the American government’s exploration of cryptocurrencies — and the supposed threats they pose — back in the mid-90s. Well, according to r/Bitcoin redditor u/Itilvte, philosopher Alan Watts may have even pre-empted the NSA by almost three decades. Watts, a respected thinker throughout the 20th Century who promoted Zen Buddhism and Eastern thought in the West, held an interesting talk in the late-60s called “Money, Guilt, and the Machine.” Bitcoin users will recognize many of his arguments. Here are u/Itilvte’s excerpts from the talk (emphasis our own): "(...) one of the reasons that our technology is …