The Daily Nerd (October 29th, 2013) — Security Edition

The Daily Nerd (October 29th, 2013) — Security Edition #

Schneier on Security: How the NSA Attacks Tor/Firefox Users With QUANTUM and FOXACID #

Tor is a well-designed and robust anonymity tool, and successfully attacking it is difficult. The NSA attacks we found individually target Tor users by exploiting vulnerabilities in their Firefox browsers, and not the Tor application directly.

NSA monitored calls of 35 world leaders after US official handed over contacts #

• Agency given more than 200 numbers by government official NSA encourages departments to share their ‘Rolodexes’ Surveillance produced ‘little intelligence’, memo acknowledges

Schneier on Security: How to Remain Secure Against the NSA #

With all this in mind, I have five pieces of advice:

1. Hide in the network 2. Encrypt your communications. 3. Assume that while your computer can be compromised, it would take work and risk on the part of the NSA — so it probably isn’t. 4. Be suspicious of commercial encryption software, especially from large vendors. 5. Try to use public-domain encryption that has to be compatible with other implementations