Mediaboss Marketing

"I would say that it has had a material impact in our ability to generate insights as to what counterterrorism, what terrorist groups around the world are doing," Adm. Michael Rogers told a group gathered in Washington for a cybersecurity summit hosted by the New America think tank.

READ: Jeb Bush defends NSA dragnet

"Do you have new blind spots that you didn't have prior to the revelation," moderator and CNN National Security correspondent Jim Sciutto asked.

"Have I lost capability that we had prior to the revelations? Yes," Rogers responded. "Anyone who thinks this has not had an impact I would say doesn't know what they're talking about."

Snowden himself remains free in Russia. A film about him won an Academy Award on Sunday evening.

Rogers says he knew U.S. infrastructure would likely come under cyber-attack on his watch, but the target of Sony Pictures was a surprise.

"I fully expected, sadly in some ways, that in my time as the commander of United States Cyber Command the Department of Defense would be tasked with attempting to defend the nation against those kind of attacks," he said. "I didn't realize that it would be against a motion picture company, to be honest."

North Korea is widely believed to be behind the hack in response to Sony's production of the film "The Interview," which depicts a comedic plot to kill leader Kim Jong-un

Rogers declined to respond to a question if the United States was behind a retaliatory online attack that took down North Korea's Internet access.

When asked which nations had the ability to strike U.S. cyber interests Rogers declined to provide assessments of most countries.

See the article here:
NSA: Snowden leaks hurt us

The U.S. should be able to craft a legal framework to let government agencies read encrypted data, Rogers says

It probably comes as no surprise that the director of the U.S. National Security Agency wants access to encrypted data on computers and other devices.

The U.S. should be able to craft a policy that allows the NSA and law enforcement agencies to read encrypted data when they need to, NSA director Michael Rogers said during an appearance at a cybersecurity policy event Monday.

Asked if the U.S. government should have backdoors to encrypted devices, Rogers said the U.S. government needs to develop a "framework."

"You don't want the FBI and you don't want the NSA unilaterally deciding, 'So, what are we going to access and what are we not going to access?'" Rogers said during his appearance at the New America Foundation. "That shouldn't be for us. I just believe that this is achievable. We'll have to work our way through it."

Justsecurity.org has a transcript of an exchange between Rogers and Yahoo CISO Alex Stamos at Monday's event.

Rogers isn't the first member of President Barack Obama's administration to call for encryption workarounds in recent months. In September, after Apple and Google announced encryption features on their smartphone OSes, both FBI Director James Comey and Attorney General Eric Holder raised concerns that additional encryption tools would hinder law enforcement investigations.

Stamos questioned whether it is a good idea to build backdoors in encryption. "If we're going to build defects/backdoors or golden master keys for the U.S. government, do you believe we should do so .... for the Chinese government, the Russian government, the Saudi Arabian government, the Israeli government, the French government?" he said, according to the Justsecurity transcript.

Rogers objected to using the word "backdoor". "When I hear the phrase 'backdoor', I think, 'Well, this is kind of shady. Why would you want to go in the backdoor? It would be very public,'" he said. "Again, my view is: We can create a legal framework for how we do this. It isn't something we have to hide, per se."

An NSA spokeswoman wasn't immediately available for further comment.

View original post here:
NSA director wants gov't access to encrypted communications

In one of the most public confrontations of a top U.S. intelligence official by Silicon Valley in recent years, a senior Yahoo Inc. official peppered the National Security Agency director, Adm. Mike Rogers, at a conference on Monday over digital spying.

The exchange came during a question and answer session at a daylong summit on cybersecurity hosted by the think tank New America. Mr. Rogers spent an hour at the conference answering a range of questions about his agencys practices and the global cyber threat.

The tense exchange began when Alex Stamos, Yahoos chief information-security officer, asked Mr. Rogers if Yahoo should acquiesce to requests from Saudi Arabia, China, Russia, France and other countries to build a backdoor in some of their systems that would allow the countries to spy on certain users.

It sounds like you agree with [Federal Bureau of Investigation Director James] Comey that we should be building defects into the encryption in our products so that the US government can decrypt, Mr. Stamos said, according to a transcript of the exchange compiled by the Just Security blog.

That would be your characterization, Mr. Rogers said, cutting the Yahoo executive off.

Mr. Stamos was trying to argue that if Yahoo gave the NSA access to this information, other countries could try and compel the company to provide the same access to data.

Mr. Rogers said he believed that it is achievable to create a legal framework that allows the NSA to access encrypted information without upending corporate security programs.He declined to provide more details.

Well, do you believe we should build backdoors for other countries? Mr. Stamos continued?

My position is hey, look, I think that were lying that this isnt technically feasible, Mr. Rogers replied.

He said the framework would have to be worked out ahead of time by policy makers not the NSA.

See original here:
Yahoo Executive Confronts NSA Director Over Backdoors

TIME Tech Security This Is the Best Mac Security Software You Can Buy Avast Avast Free Mac Security Avast Free Mac Security 2015 is the go-to free software

Many Mac owners may be under the impression that their computers dont need antivirus protection. Theyre inherently safer, right? While there are fewer Trojan horses, viruses and worms designed to attack Macs than PCs, that doesnt mean theyre immune to infection.

Many threats, like phishing, dont care whether youre running Windows or a Mac, says Christopher Budd, global threat communications manager for Trend Micro.

In fact, a serious threat to Macs was verified as recently as December 2014, according to the National Vulnerability Database. To combat this threat, Apple issued its first ever automatic security update for Mac computers in December. (Previously, Mac users would initiate the security updates themselves.) The bug, CVE-2014-9295, could enable hackers to gain remote control of machines through a vulnerability with the network time protocol, or NTP, which synchronizes a computers clock. It was serious enough that Apple didnt want to wait for users to fix it themselves, according to Reuters.

With even one threat on the table, protection is needed. So we set out to find the best Mac antivirus software out there. We reviewed security lab results, interface accessibility data, and product feature ratings from independent experts and websites to recommend our favorites.

We placed an emphasis on performance and security over a trunk full of features. To find the best freeware, it had to meet top-notch security ratings while still offering a few perks. For paid software, we decided it had to not only achieve high security ratings, but it had to cost less than $100, offer a one-year subscription with multi-device protection, and be designed for home use.

With that, we narrowed it down to our two security software picks one free, one paid for 2015.

Avast Free Mac Security 2015 is the go-to software for protecting your Mac without spending a penny. Its a simple, on-demand scanning platform that can complete four different types of scans: Full System Scan, Removable Volumes Scan, Home Scan or Custom Scan. While the variety is useful for performing different system checks, it lacks the scheduled scans feature that many busy consumers want. Nonetheless, its simple-to-use interface, strong all-around coverage, and anti-spam features still pull it ahead of other free offerings.

While its not perfect at detecting all intrusions, independent security researcher AV-TEST reports that it gets the job done after all, its free. In testing, it performed the highest among its freeware counterparts, detecting 97.4 percent of all on-demand threats (above the average of 80.8 percent). It even outperformed some paid competitors, including Kaspersky, which only detected threats 93.2 percent of the time. It also held its own with paid offerings when it came to minimizing system slowdown.

Once Avast detects something suspicious, it locks it away in a quarantined area called the Virus Chest, where you can choose to restore it if its a falsely-identified file, or delete it altogether. And like most of its competitors, Avast also detects Windows malware.

See the original post:
This Is the Best Mac Security Software You Can Buy

Your tax situation is simple. You dont own a business, you have no taxable investments, youre not paying student loan interest, you dont own a home and you dont itemize deductions (see An Overview of Itemized Deductions.).

When your tax situation is that basic, you dont need a tax preparer and the popular online platforms will charge you zero for filing your federal return. What are your options?

The IRS doesnt offer free tax filing, but it does partner with all of the most common companies. Go to the IRS Free-File page to learn more.

Probably the best known of all tax software platforms, TurboTax will let you easily file your basic federal taxes online for free. Additionally, it includes support for earned income credits something that most of the other well-known platforms do not. Filing a state tax return costs $27.99 per state.

There's a good reason TurboTax is being rather generous this year.

Because of some missteps by its parent company, Intuit, TurboTax is fighting hard to regain the trust of its long-time customers.The company faced a ferocious backlash when it moved features that used to be part of a lower-priced package into more expensive ones. Second, the Minnesota Department of Revenue temporarily stopped accepting TurboTax returns, citing potentially fraudulent activity." It resumed them after Intuit implemented new targeted security measures.

In the end, TurboTax had to roll back its changes, offer a rebate to customers who had already paid the extra charges and take other steps to keep people from using its competitors. This has made it one of the best values for 2015.

Often seen in Wal-Mart stores, Jackson Hewitts free offering is similar to most where the basic service is free, but a state return will cost you. In this case, youre going to pay an eye-popping $34.95 to file that state return. Most others are much cheaper.

Filing your federal return is easy and the state return will cost you $9.99 less than many other competitors. H&R Block offers very few options in the free version, but if you only need a few more features, its lowest-cost paid plan is only $19.99 (note that the cost of filing a state return shoots up to $36.99 with this plan).

TaxACTmight have the most impressive free offering. It offers more complex options including investments, itemized deductions and small business scenarios. What it doesnt allow is importing of prior year returns or current W-2s and other tax forms. To get that, you will have to spring for the Deluxe edition; this costs $12.99 and a state return is $7.00, for a total price tag of $19.99. The free basic federal return, plus state filing, costs $14.99.

Read more:
The Best Free Tax-Prep Software For April 15, 2015