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January 22, 2015 Prachi Gupta

Infamous hacker and internet entrepreneur Kim Dotcom, who has been hanging out in New Zealand to avoid U.S. authorities, has released an encrypted video calling service called MegaChat. It’s free, opens in your browser to make audio calls, and offers end-to-end encryption, meaning “Mega shouldn’t have access to users’ encryption keys and shouldn’t be able […]

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November 19, 2014 Prachi Gupta

While the FCC continues to debate net-neutrality regulations, scientists in China and America are quietly creating a new kind of internet, encyrpted by bursts of light instead of the standard long string of numbers. Revelations gleaned from the NSA leaks by Edward Snowden showed that even the largest tech companies with the best security were vulnerable to […]

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October 31, 2014 Rhett Jones

When it comes to technology-related security fears, many people immediately think of hackers and identity thieves as the number one threat, but over the last few years it’s become increasingly clear that the very people assigned to protect you are the ones to be afraid of. Case in point: A Virginia judge ruled on Thursday […]

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September 18, 2014 Sophie Weiner

Even before intelligence contractor Edward Snowden revealed the extent of monitoring being undertaken by the NSA in surveilling everyday citizens, cryptographers and computer scientists have been trying to achieve the ultimate in security: a system that can not be hacked. Now, a few companies are working on a promising solution. Quantum key distribution is a […]

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July 28, 2014 Sophie Weiner

In theme with Russia’s war on anonymity and “extremism” on the internet, the country’s interior ministry is recruiting hackers to decrypt identities of Tor users. The ministry is offering 3.9 million rubles (about $110,000) to anyone who can crack the encryption service, BBC reports, which is a lot better than their previous contest where you get a free refrigerator for giving birth on June […]

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July 14, 2014 Sophie Weiner

Software engineer and artist David Huerta has made a mixtape that is encrypted against NSA surveillance, for the express purpose of sending it to the NSA. This snarky subversion is inspired by the “cypherpunks” of the 90’s, whose open sourcing of encryption software allowed regular people access to government-level privacy enforcement. “I work outside the […]

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July 3, 2014 Sophie Weiner

A piece of code used by the NSA to label online “extremists” has been uncovered for the first time. The German public television network ARD reported that the popular encryption service Tor, which is based in Germany, was one of the entities that had become a target for the NSA’s labeling as part of their […]

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June 21, 2013 Kyle Chayka

This typeface was designed specifically to be unreadable by most automated text scanning software. The disruptive typeface ZXX takes its name directly from the Library of Congress’ listing of three-letter codes meant to specify what language a text is written in. The code “ZXX” is used to denote when there is no information that can be found from within the text. […]

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