Muscular Disorders
MUSCULAR (DS-200B), located in the United Kingdom, is the name of a surveillance program jointly operated by Britain's Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) and the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) that was revealed by documents released by Edward Snowden and interviews with knowledgeable officials. GCHQ is the primary operator of the program. GCHQ and the NSA have secretly broken into the main communications links that connect the data centers of Yahoo! and Google. Substantive information about the program was made public at the end of October 2013. Overview The programme is jointly run by: * – Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) (United Kingdom) * – U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) MUSCULAR is one of at least four other similar programs that rely on a trusted 2nd party, programs which together are known as WINDSTOP. In a 30-day period from December 2012 to January 2013, MUSCULAR was responsible for collecting 181 million records. It was however dw ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Northwestern Europe, off the coast of European mainland, the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. The UK includes the island of Great Britain, the north-eastern part of the island of Ireland, and most of List of islands of the United Kingdom, the smaller islands within the British Isles, covering . Northern Ireland shares Republic of Ireland–United Kingdom border, a land border with the Republic of Ireland; otherwise, the UK is surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean, the North Sea, the English Channel, the Celtic Sea and the Irish Sea. It maintains sovereignty over the British Overseas Territories, which are located across various oceans and seas globally. The UK had an estimated population of over 68.2 million people in 2023. The capital and largest city of both England and the UK is London. The cities o ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Special Source Operations
Special Source Operations (SSO) is a division in the US National Security Agency The National Security Agency (NSA) is an intelligence agency of the United States Department of Defense, under the authority of the director of national intelligence (DNI). The NSA is responsible for global monitoring, collection, and proces ... (NSA) which is responsible for all programs aimed at collecting data from major fiber-optic cables and switches, both inside the US and abroad, and also through corporate partnerships. Its existence was revealed through documents provided by Edward Snowden to media outlets in 2013 and, according to him, it is the "crown jewel" of the NSA. History The program began in 2006, according to one of Snowden's documents, when the NSA was collecting the equivalent of "one Library of Congress every 14.4 seconds". ''The Washington Post'' described the official seal of the SSO division as something "that might have been parody: an eagle with all the world's cabl ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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2013 Mass Surveillance Disclosures
During the 2010s, international media reports revealed new operational details about the Anglophone cryptographic agencies' global surveillance of both foreign and domestic nationals. The reports mostly relate to top secret documents leaked by ex- NSA contractor Edward Snowden. The documents consist of intelligence files relating to the U.S. and other Five Eyes countries. In June 2013, the first of Snowden's documents were published, with further selected documents released to various news outlets through the year. These media reports disclosed several secret treaties signed by members of the UKUSA community in their efforts to implement global surveillance. For example, ''Der Spiegel'' revealed how the German Federal Intelligence Service (; BND) transfers "massive amounts of intercepted data to the NSA", while Swedish Television revealed the National Defence Radio Establishment (FRA) provided the NSA with data from its cable collection, under a secret agreement sign ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Google+
Google+ (sometimes written as Google Plus, stylized as G+ or g+) was a Social networking service, social network owned and operated by Google until it ceased operations in 2019. The network was launched on June 28, 2011, in an attempt to challenge other social networks, linking other List of Google products, Google products like Google Drive, Blogger (service), Blogger, Adsense and YouTube. The service, Google's fourth foray into social networking, experienced strong growth in its initial years, although usage statistics varied, depending on how the service was defined. Three Google executives oversaw the service, which underwent substantial changes that led to a redesign in November 2015. Due to low user engagement and disclosed software design flaws that potentially allowed outside developers access to personal information of its users, the Google+ developer API was discontinued on March 7, 2019, and Google+ was shut down for business and personal use on April 2, 2019. Histo ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Chinese Cyberwarfare
Cyberwarfare is the strategic use of computer technology to disrupt the functions of a state or organization, specifically through the deliberate targeting of information systems for military or tactical purposes. In the People's Republic of China, it is related to the aggregate of cyberattacks attributed to state organs and various related advanced persistent threat (APT) groups. Background Academic Fiona Cunningham writes that while it has targeted U.S. critical infrastructure with Volt Typhoon, as of mid-2024, there have been no public reports of a Chinese cyberattack with a scope similar to the United States-Israel Stuxnet cyberattack on Iran, or the Russian cyberattacks on Ukraine's power grid). Development history In 1992, the People's Liberation Army stated that the United States was developing computer virus weapons. According to the PLA journal ''Foreign Military Arts'', US computer virus weapons would have the potential to attack civilian targets and military target ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Advanced Persistent Threat
An advanced persistent threat (APT) is a stealthy threat actor, typically a State (polity), state or state-sponsored group, which gains unauthorized access to a computer network and remains undetected for an extended period. In recent times, the term may also refer to non-state-sponsored groups conducting large-scale targeted intrusions for specific goals. Such threat actors' motivations are typically political or economic. Every major business sector has recorded instances of cyberattacks by advanced actors with specific goals, whether to steal, spy, or disrupt. These targeted sectors include government, Arms industry, defense, financial services, Practice of law, legal services, Manufacturing, industrial, Telecommunication, telecoms, Final good, consumer goods and many more. Some groups utilize traditional espionage vectors, including Social engineering (security), social engineering, Human intelligence (intelligence gathering), human intelligence and Infiltration tactics, infil ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company, technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the History of personal computers#The early 1980s and home computers, rise of personal computers through software like Windows, and the company has since expanded to Internet services, cloud computing, video gaming and other fields. Microsoft is the List of the largest software companies, largest software maker, one of the Trillion-dollar company, most valuable public U.S. companies, and one of the List of most valuable brands, most valuable brands globally. Microsoft was founded by Bill Gates and Paul Allen to develop and sell BASIC interpreters for the Altair 8800. It rose to dominate the personal computer operating system market with MS-DOS in the mid-1980s, followed by Windows. During the 41 years from 1980 to 2021 Microsoft released 9 versions of MS-DOS with a median frequen ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Encryption
In Cryptography law, cryptography, encryption (more specifically, Code, encoding) is the process of transforming information in a way that, ideally, only authorized parties can decode. This process converts the original representation of the information, known as plaintext, into an alternative form known as ciphertext. Despite its goal, encryption does not itself prevent interference but denies the intelligible content to a would-be interceptor. For technical reasons, an encryption scheme usually uses a pseudo-random encryption Key (cryptography), key generated by an algorithm. It is possible to decrypt the message without possessing the key but, for a well-designed encryption scheme, considerable computational resources and skills are required. An authorized recipient can easily decrypt the message with the key provided by the originator to recipients but not to unauthorized users. Historically, various forms of encryption have been used to aid in cryptography. Early encryption ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Encrypted Communication
Secure communication is when two entities are communicating and do not want a third party to listen in. For this to be the case, the entities need to communicate in a way that is unsusceptible to eavesdropping or Signals intelligence, interception. Secure communication includes means by which people can share information with varying degrees of certainty that third parties cannot intercept what is said. Other than spoken face-to-face communication with no possible eavesdropper, it is probable that no communication is guaranteed to be secure in this sense, although practical obstacles such as legislation, resources, technical issues (interception and encryption), and the sheer volume of communication serve to limit surveillance. With many communications taking place over long distance and mediated by technology, and increasing awareness of the importance of interception issues, technology and its compromise are at the heart of this debate. For this reason, this article focuses on co ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Transport Layer Security
Transport Layer Security (TLS) is a cryptographic protocol designed to provide communications security over a computer network, such as the Internet. The protocol is widely used in applications such as email, instant messaging, and voice over IP, but its use in securing HTTPS remains the most publicly visible. The TLS protocol aims primarily to provide security, including privacy (confidentiality), integrity, and authenticity through the use of cryptography, such as the use of certificates, between two or more communicating computer applications. It runs in the presentation layer and is itself composed of two layers: the TLS record and the TLS handshake protocols. The closely related Datagram Transport Layer Security (DTLS) is a communications protocol that provides security to datagram-based applications. In technical writing, references to "(D)TLS" are often seen when it applies to both versions. TLS is a proposed Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) standard, fir ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Private Cloud
Cloud computing is "a paradigm for enabling network access to a scalable and elastic pool of shareable physical or virtual resources with self-service provisioning and administration on-demand," according to ISO. Essential characteristics In 2011, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) identified five "essential characteristics" for cloud systems. Below are the exact definitions according to NIST: * On-demand self-service: "A consumer can unilaterally provision computing capabilities, such as server time and network storage, as needed automatically without requiring human interaction with each service provider." * Broad network access: "Capabilities are available over the network and accessed through standard mechanisms that promote use by heterogeneous thin or thick client platforms (e.g., mobile phones, tablets, laptops, and workstations)." * Resource pooling: " The provider's computing resources are pooled to serve multiple consumers using a multi-ten ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |