Computer Security Day is an annual event and is celebrated on the 30th November each year. It is designed to raise awareness and to promote best practices in Information Security. The main objective of this event is to bring together international and local IT and … Continue reading World Computer Security Day
For years users have wanted to save time and effort when accessing servers on the network, Web sites requiring credentials, etc. So, there have been options in the operating system to save usernames and passwords for faster and easier access. I am sure you have seen this, either in a prompt or a checkbox, asking you to save the password. In Windows, you have the ability to store the credentials for resources that you access often, or just don’t want to have to remember the password. Although this is a time-saving option, you might want to reconsider using this feature due to security issues.
Windows stores the passwords that you use to log in, access network shares, or shared devices. All of these passwords are stored in an encrypted format, but some passwords easily are decrypted using your Windows login password.
Windows stores the login credential details in a hidden desktop app named Credential Manager. Here is how to find this app, how to see which credentials are stored by Windows and how to manage them:
What is the Credential Manager?
Credential Manager is the “digital locker” where Windows stores log-in credentials like usernames, passwords, and addresses. This information can be saved by Windows for use on your local computer, on other computers in the same network, servers or internet locations such as websites. This data can be used by Windows itself or by programs like File Explorer, Microsoft Office, Skype, virtualization software and so on. Credentials are split into several categories:
How to open the Credential Manager in Windows:
The method that works the same in all versions of Windows. First, open the Control Panel and then go to “User Accounts –> Credential Manager.”
You’ll notice there are two categories: Web Credentials and Windows Credentials. The web credentials will have any passwords from sites that you saved while browsing in Internet Explorer or Microsoft Edge. Click on the down arrow and then click on the Show link.
You’ll have to type in your Windows password in order to decrypt the password.
f you click on Windows Credentials, you ’ll see fewer credentials stored here unless you work in a corporate environment. These are credentials when connecting to network shares, different computers on the network, or network devices such as a NAS.
In the same way, I’ll also mention how you can view Google Chrome saved passwords. Basically, each browser has the same feature, so you can do the same thing for Firefox, Safari, etc. In Chrome, click on the three dots at the top right and then click on Settings. Scroll down and then click on Passwords.
Under Passwords, enable Offer to save your web passwords. You can view the saved passwords.
History of the Credential Manager:
According to a 1996 Network Applications Consortium (NAC) study, users in large enterprises spend an average of 44 hours per year performing login tasks to access a set of four applications. The same study revealed that 70 percent of calls to companies’ Help desks were password-reset requests from users who had forgotten a password.
Single sign-on (SSO) is an approach that attempts to reduce the time users spend performing login tasks and the number of passwords users must remember. The Open Group, an international vendor and technology-neutral consortium dedicated to improving business efficiency, defines SSO as the “mechanism whereby a single action of user authentication and authorization can permit a user to access all computers and systems where that user has access permission, without the need to enter multiple passwords”
SSO solutions come in two flavors: solutions that deal with one set of user credentials and solutions that deal with multiple sets of user credentials.
A good example of the first type of solution is a Kerberos authentication protocol-based SSO setup.
A good example of the second type of solution is the Credential Manager. Credential Manager is a new SSO solution that Microsoft offers in Windows Server 2003 and Windows XP. It’s based on a secure client-side credential-caching mechanism.
The Windows 2000 (and earlier) requirement that users must re-enter the same credentials whenever they access resources on the same Internet or intranet server can be frustrating for users, especially when they have more than one set of credentials. Administrators often must cope with the same frustration when they have to switch to alternative credentials to perform administrative tasks. Credential Manager solves these problems.
Conclusion:
Browser-stored passwords make it easy for hackers to get inside your network
allowing a browser to “remember” passwords can pose a major security risk because:
DO NOT USE THE “REMEMBER PASSWORD” FEATURE ON APPLICATIONS SUCH AS WEB BROWSERS (Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Safari, Internet Explorer etc.)
For IT Admins:
Get your FREE Browser-Stored Password Discovery Tool from Thycotic to quickly and easily identify risky storage of passwords in web browsers among your Active Directory users. You get reports that identify:
The Browser-Stored Password Discovery Tool is free. You can re-run the Browser-Stored Password Discovery Tool at any time to identify browser password risks and help enforce compliance with web browser security policies.
Source: online-tech-tips, digitalcitizen, techgenix,
Google’s Gmail Confidential Mode lets an email sender set a message to automatically expire anywhere from 24 hours to five years after itis sent.
Remember Hollywood movie series Mission Impossible (MI), in that the agent used to receive his assignments through self-destructing messages that usually detonating itself.
Confidential mode on Gmail adds access restrictions to emails that you sent using the mode. Designed to protect sensitive information, it enables you to set time limits and passcodes. The mode blocks certain actions, forwarding, copy and paste, downloading of the email, and printing as well automatically.
Here disappearing emails may not actually detonate, but they do vanish after a certain amount of time. The tool is part of Google’s efforts to beef up privacy and cybersecurity for Gmail users. It will be available to corporate accounts as well as personal Gmail account holders, you can enable it and use it right away.
Here’s how.
Open Gmail on your computer and tap the compose/reply button.
Now select this icon on the bottom of the screen. It’s a tiny lock with a clock on it.
A click on the icon opens the confidential mode configuration overlay which gives you two options:
No SMS passcode – if the recipients don’t use Gmail, they’ll get a passcode by email.
SMS passcode – Recipients will get a passcode by SMS (text message)
Gmail highlights confidential mode by adding a “content expires” message to the email. You can edit the requirement or click on the x-icon to remove it again before you hit the send button.
What happens when you hit send? If you selected the passcode option, you are asked to type the phone number of the recipient.
That’s it. Now the email will automatically delete itself after your predetermined self-destruction time period ends. Recipients can open the email until then, which means the clock starts right when you send it, not when they open it.
Also, if you want to revoke access sooner, you can do that by opening Gmail, selecting “Sent,” opening the confidential email you just sent and then selecting “remove access.”
The email that you receive does not contain the message. Google uses the selected subject and shows the sender of the email, but instead of displaying the content, it informs you that you have received a confidential email which you can only open.
In other words: Google sends you a notification by email that a confidential email was sent to you and that you may click on the link to open it.
No SMS passcode– if the recipients don’t use Gmail, they’ll get a passcode by email.
SMS passcode– Recipients will get a passcode by SMS (text message)
But, before you start emailing friends the juicy details of your diary, there are a few important limits on confidential emails you might want to keep in mind. Erased emails may fade away from receivers’ inboxes, but they’ll still show up in your “sent” file if you don’t manually delete them. Keep in mind as well that Mac OS and Windows OS both allow the taking and saving of screenshots of anything that appears on a screen. It’s also not clear how long the messages stay on Google’s servers.
There is another issue that needs to be addressed. Recipients get an email with a link asking them to click on the link and even sign in to a Google account if they are not already to view it. If that does not sound a lot like phishing I don’t know what does.
Recipients may not want to click on the links. Ironically, attackers who use phishing as an attack vector may exploit the new functionality to steal user credentials.
Closing Words
Gmail’s Confidential mode feature is not the right option when you need to send confidential messages to others. Email is not the right format for confidential messages unless you use Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) or another secure form of communication.
Source: computer.howstuffworks, ghacks, cnbc, downloadsource,
Dear Lord,
Help us to remember that you created people to be equal.
Help us to remember that you love people regardless of their skin colour, their character or their culture. Help us not to judge others, and to tolerate those things about them that are different from ourselves, so that we may live together in peace.
World Kindness Day is an international observance on 13 November. It was introduced in 1998 by the World Kindness Movement, a coalition of nations’ kindness NGOs.
During the 1999 World Kindness Movement conference in Tokyo, the cosmos bipinnatus was adopted as the official flower for the organization.
I know, I know, every day should be World Kindness Day. But the reality is, between an out of whack work-life balance, losing patience in traffic jams, and feeling stressed over the upcoming holiday season, smiling at a stranger is often the last thing on people’s minds. So maybe we need a day to reinforce the importance of niceness, reminding us to let go of any anger and perhaps soften our too-hard exterior.
Besides, the mental and physical benefits of kindness are plenty, which should make us want to smile more and frown less. Author David R. Hamilton, Ph.D. writes that kindness has positive side effects including healthier hearts, better aging, and improved relationship bonds.
Source: Wikipedia, Randomactsofkindness, HuffingtonPost
HTTP/2 (originally named HTTP/2.0) is a major revision of the HTTP network protocol used by the World Wide Web. It was derived from the earlier experimental SPDY protocol, originally developed by Google.
HTTP/2 was developed by the Hypertext Transfer Protocol working group httpbis (where bis means “second”) of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF).
What is a Protocol?
A protocol is a set of rules that govern the data communication mechanisms between clients (for example web browsers used by internet users to request information) and servers (the machines containing the requested information).
Protocols usually consist of three main parts: Header, Payload, and Footer.
The Header placed before the Payload contains information such as source and destination address as well as other details (such as size and type) regarding the Payload.
The Payload is the actual information transmitted using the protocol.
The Footer follows the Payload and works as a control field to route client-server requests to the intended recipients along with the Header to ensure the Payload data is transmitted free of errors.
The system is similar to the postal mail service. The letter (Payload) is inserted into an envelope (Header) with destination address written on it and sealed with glue and postage stamp (Footer) before it is dispatched.
What is SPDY?
SPDY (pronounced SPeeDY) is a networking protocol developed by Google with the purpose of speeding up the delivery of web content. It does this by modifying HTTP traffic which in turn reduces web page latency and improves web security.
HTTP, while powerful in its day, cannot keep up with the demands of today’s digital world, which is the reason SPDY was introduced to help meet those demands.
What is HTTP/2?
HTTP/2 is the second major version update to the HTTP protocol since HTTP1.1 which was released more than 15 years ago. The HTTP/2 protocol was developed due to the ever-evolving digital world and the need to load more resource intensive web pages.
SPDY was also implemented to help reduce web page latency users experience when using HTTP1.1. HTTP/2 is based off SPDY, however, contains key improvements that have led to the deprecation of SPDY in February 2015.
How does HTTP/2 work?
Whenever you click on a link to visit a site a request is made to the server. The server answers with a status message (header) and a file list for that website. After viewing that list, the browser asks for the files one at a time. The difference between HTTP 1.1 and HTTP/2 lies in what happens next.
Say you want a new LEGO set. First, you go to the store to buy your LEGO. When you get home, you open the box and look at the instructions, which tell you what you have to do: one brick at a time. So for every brick, you have to look at the instructions to see which brick to use next. The same for the next brick, and so on. This back-and-forth keeps happening until you have finished the entire LEGO set. If your set has 3,300 bricks, that’ll take quite a while. This is HTTP1.1.
With HTTP/2 this change. You go to the store to pick up your box. Open it, find the instructions and you can ask for all the bricks used on one section of the LEGO set. You can keep asking the instructions for more bricks, without having to look at the manual. “These bricks go together, so here they are.” If you want it really quickly, you could even get all the bricks at once so you can build the set in an instant.
Differences from HTTP1.1
Similar to SPDY, using HTTP/2 does not require any changes to how web applications currently work, however, applications are able to take advantage of the optimization features to increase page load speed.
Differences between the HTTP1.1. and HTTP/2 protocol includes the following:
Is it HTTP/2.0 or HTTP/2?
The Working Group decided to drop the minor version (“.0”) because it has caused a lot of confusion in HTTP/1.x.
In other words, the HTTP version only indicates wire compatibility, not feature sets or “marketing.”
Similarities with HTTP1.x and SPDY
| HTTP1.x | SPDY | HTTP2 |
|---|---|---|
| SSL not required but recommended. | SSL required. | SSL not required but recommended. |
| Slow encryption. | Fast encryption. | Even faster encryption. |
| One client-server request per TCP connection. | Multiple client-server requests per TCP connection. Occurs on a single host at a time. | Multi-host multiplexing. Occurs on multiple hosts at a single instant. |
| No header compression. | Header compression introduced. | Header compression using improved algorithms that improve performance as well as security. |
| No stream prioritization. | Stream prioritization introduced. | Improved stream prioritization mechanisms used. |
Conclusion
HTTP/2 is without a doubt the direction the web is moving towards in terms of the networking protocol that is able to handle the resource needs of today’s websites. While SPDY was a great step forward in improving HTTP1.1, HTTP/2 has since further improved the HTTP protocol that has served the web for many years.
According to W3Techs, as of November 2018, 31% of the top 10 million websites supported HTTP/2.
Both HTTP and HTTPS are protocols being used for transmitting and receiving information across the Internet.
HTTP is the acronym for Hypertext Transfer Protocol. HTTP has been the standard communication protocol pretty much since the internet was developed.
HTTP: HyperText Transfer Protocol:
Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is a system for transmitting and receiving information across the Internet. HTTP is an “application layer protocol,” which ultimately means that its focus is on how information is presented to the user, however, this option doesn’t really care how data gets from Point A to Point B.
It is said to be “stateless,” which means it doesn’t attempt to remember anything about the previous web session. The benefit of being stateless it that there is less data to send, and that means increased speed.
Here is the fact of HTTP:
HTTPS: Hyper Text Transfer Protocol Secure:
Hyper Text Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS) is the secure version of HTTP, the protocol over which data is sent between your browser and the website that you are connected to. The ‘S’ at the end of HTTPS stands for ‘Secure’. It means all communications between your browser and the website are encrypted. HTTPS is often used to protect highly confidential online transactions like online banking and online shopping order forms.
Web browsers such as Internet Explorer, Firefox and Chrome also display a padlock icon in the address bar to visually indicate that an HTTPS connection is in effect.
Here is the fact of HTTPS:
HTTPS provides three key layers of protection
There is a belief among many around the web that HTTPS is slower. Fortunately, this is a myth. HTTPS is actually much faster than HTTP.
Is HTTP dying?
HTTP isn’t really dying, per se. It’s just being forced to evolve. As we mentioned earlier, the browsers are basically our de facto vehicle for getting around the internet. The vast majority of us could not use the internet without a browser. And that puts the browsers in position to influence the internet as they see fit.
Right now, they’re mandating SSL. The initiative began a few years ago with a soft push. Google announced HTTPS would become a ranking factor for SEO, then the browsers started making new features exclusive to sites with SSL. Gradually they incentivized encryption more and more.
For a detailed explanation on SSL/TLS protocols, check my earlier post: SSL/TLS
Keep reading, Keep learning 😊
Source: Sanjay Barot, geeksforgeeks, i-techgeeks, instantssl, Bhavesh Patel
People often say you can’t truly understand something until it happens to you, which is true in many situations in life. We can’t imagine data security issues impact our lives.
All infrastructure is vulnerable to attack.
There is no magic platform that is completely impenetrable now and in the future. Despite what you may see in advertisements, no vendor, no firewall, no router, no hardware, no operating system, and no software product can block all possible attacks.
This is why information security is a process that begins when a system is being planned, and monitors, evaluates, and corrects security issues throughout the lifetime of the system, and continues until the system is decommissioned and its components securely disposed of.
What are the cybersecurity attacks?
Cybersecurity refers mainly to protecting internet-connected systems, including hardware, software, and data, from cyber attacks. Cyber attacks can result in the following issues:
I thought you could use a starting point, a guide you can use to do a personal security risk assessment, so you can then take the necessary actions to improve your protection from cyber-attacks.
In order for your data to be secure, it has to check 3 important factors. We want our information to:
When going through the questions below and answering them honestly (no grades will be given), keep in mind these three principles. This security risk assessment is not a test, but rather a set of questions designed to help you evaluate where you stand in terms of personal information security and what you could improve.
It will be really useful to make a list of the different types of information you have stored:
Do you have personal emails, work documents, confidential corporate data, photos and videos of your family or personal information, such as banking credentials or passwords?
Think of the online services you use on a daily or weekly basis. You could list:
You can use three degrees of importance: “low”, “medium” and “high”. Define this value based on the potential cost (financial, reputational or emotional) of an unauthorized person gaining access to that piece of information or service.
For example:
Consider the following options (and others that apply to your situation):
I use strong passwords (longer than 8 characters and including symbols and numbers)
I use passwords for both my online accounts and for logging into my laptop/tablet/phone
I use two-step authentication whenever it’s available
I have set strong security questions in the event of a security breach
I have my email accounts connected so I can regain access to my information in the case of a cyber attack
I set up my phone number to receive alerts from important services (such as online banking or email) in the case my accounts should be compromised.
Do you have an antivirus solution installed? Do you update it regularly? And, most of all, do you know that antivirus is not enough?
In order to understand why antivirus is not enough, you’ll need to learn about the difference between an antivirus and an anti-spyware product. To put it briefly:
Before choosing any cybersecurity product, make sure to do some research and learn about what the product offers, check AV testing websites (AV Test, AV Comparatives, Virus Bulletin, PC Mag) and other reviews that compare options, so that you can make the best choice for you.
Cyber-attacks directed at collecting financial information and leaking confidential data are increasing in numbers and severity. This is why, in order to conduct online transactions with peace of mind, browse the web securely and keep your private information secure, you’ll need a dedicated product.
In order to get protection against financial malware, the solution you need should:
Keeping your data backed up is crucial for your cyber security plan. Evaluate your options: would you rather use an external drive or a cloud based solution? Weigh in the pros and cons for each, but be sure to keep the essential information you deem valuable safe.
Backup your data regularly in order not to lose the important progress you’ve made. There’s even a World Backup Day celebration happening on March 31 to help you remember!
Do any other people use your gadgets? Have you set up guest accounts for them or do they have access to the administrator account? Do you have kids that use your gadgets (and have you taught them about information security)?
I know these seem like a lot of questions, but the human factor is the most common cause for cyber-attacks because hackers know how to manipulate and trick the vulnerable categories into revealing information or installing malicious software.
Also, keeping a back-up of shared documents and files could save you the trouble of having to do the work all over again if someone should delete or modify those files. When possible, be sure to offer view-only permission and regularly check who has access to confidential information (after a colleague’s departure from the company, after a break-up with a spouse or boyfriend/girlfriend, etc.).
Maintain a vigilant attitude and, to the extent that you can, try to share valuable these what you’ve learnt from this security risk assessment with those around you, especially with the people you shared gadgets or accounts and documents stored in the cloud with.
You’ve probably accumulated plenty of passwords by now, which is what makes it so difficult to manage them. You may be tempted to use the same password more than once and make it easy to remember, but, by all means, NEVER do that!
The safest way to manage your passwords is to use a password manager application, like LastPass. You should use a generator to create long, complicated passwords and store them in LastPass, and NEVER, EVER store them in your browser.
This is especially recommended if you’re using your personal device at work. Don’t forget to password-protect your devices as well, and remember to lock/log off each time you leave them unattended.
It may take a bit to set things up at first, but, when you’re done, you’ll have more peace of mind and have a simpler way to manage your passwords.
Consider some of these choices:
Do you perform operating system updates when you’re prompted to do so?
Do you have automatic software update set up for both your OS and your applications?
Do you regularly update Oracle Java, Adobe Reader or Adobe Flash, which are known to cause 85% of security exploits that hackers use?
Do you keep your browsers updated to the latest versions?
One of the most common and dangerous types of cyber attacks that hackers engineer are called “social engineering” strategies. These attacks entail the psychological manipulation of the victim to trick the person into divulging confidential information. The purpose can be information gathering, fraud, or system access.
So, ask yourself: do you reply to e-mails received from unknown people? Do you trust strangers and talk openly about your digital assets? Think about how you behave online and then adjust your habits so that you can become your own layer of protection.
Source: Heimdal Security, business2community
All major web browser makers announced on October 15, 2018, that the browsers that they produce will stop supporting the standards TLS 1.0 and TLS 1.1 in 2020.
The change was announced by Google, Apple, Microsoft, and Mozilla on company websites.
Transport Layer Security (TLS) is a security protocol used on the Internet to protect Internet traffic. It uses encryption to protect the data from eavesdropping.
TLS 1.0 and TLS 1.1 are old standards. TLS 1.0 turned 19 this year, a very long time on the Internet. The main issue with TLS 1.0 is not that the protocol has known security issues but that it doesn’t support modern cryptographic algorithms.
History & Development of SSL/TLS:
Transport Layer Security (TLS), and its now-deprecated predecessor, Secure Sockets Layer (SSL), are cryptographic protocols designed to provide communications security over a computer network. Several versions of the protocols find widespread use in applications such as web browsing, email, instant messaging, and voice over IP(VoIP). Websites can use TLS to secure all communications between their servers and web browsers.
SSL and TLS are often referred to as a group – e.g. SSL/TLS
SSL which was initially invented by Netscape in 1994.
The SSL 1.0 version was never released to the public because of its serious security flaws. The SSL 2.0 was released in February 1995 and was later replaced by SSL 3.0 which is regarded as a complete redesign of the protocol performed by the American cryptographer Paul Kocher in collaboration with Netscape’s engineers in the year 1996.
Dr. Taher Elgamal, who was the chief scientist at Netscape Communications from 1995 to 1998, is considered the “Father or SSL”
In 2014, researchers at Google disclosed the ‘POODLE’ vulnerability, which could allow attackers to decrypt encrypted connections to websites that use the SSL 3.0 protocol using a Man-in-the-Middle (MitM)attack – a popular way to intercept data.
This is where the hacker inserts a process in between the client and server through which their communication passes through, allowing the hacker to listen in on a private communication. The hacker may also be able to redirect the client to a web site controlled by the hacker where the hacker will infect the client with malware and/or commit financial fraud.
SSL 2.0 was prohibited in 2011. SSL 3.0 was also later prohibited in June 2015.
Image Source: ssl2buy
TLS (Transport Layer Security) is developed by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) as a successor protocol to SSL.
In 1999, TLS 1.0 was designed as another protocol for SSL. Although the differences were not essential, experts stated that SSL 3.0 was less secure than TLS 1.0.
In 2006, TLS 1.1 was released. The next version TLS 1.2 released in August 2008. TLS 1.3 was released in August 2018.
TLS – a future enhancement of SSL
SSL uses the Message Authentication (MAC) algorithm; Transport Layer Security (TLS) goes a step further than this and uses keyed-Hashing Message Authentication (HMAC). What does HMAC will do? Well, it generates an identity check same as the MAC but with HMAC, it becomes tougher to break it into. TLS is a venture of Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF).
TLS protocol consists of two different layers of sub-protocols:
Even though TLS 1.3 was first announced in 2014, it was released this April via OpenSSL. The distribution is still not global yet. There are millions of websites that need to upgrade to the latest version.
TLS 1.3 is currently supported in both Chrome (starting release of 66 version) and Firefox (starting with release 60), and in development for Safari and Edge browsers.
Benefits of using TLS 1.3:
In the previous versions, two round-trips were needed to establish a secure connection. This process takes place before any actual data is transferred and lasts for hundreds of milliseconds.
With TLS 1.3 there is only one round-trip necessary to create a secure connection. This cuts the encryption latency by half!
TLS 1.3 speeds up the previously established connections even more with so-called “zero-round trip time” (0-RTT) mode. TLS 1.3 “remembers” previously shared keys and allows to send early data when resuming previous sessions.
Unfortunately, 0-RTT could be a potential threat. Attackers could access your 0-RTT communication and duplicate the flight of 0-RTT data. If your pre-shared keys are not expired, the server will accept attacker’s 0-RTT data and respond to it. This is especially dangerous for POST HTTP requests, e.g. “/buy-something”.
In order to prevent any harm, servers that allow 0-RTT should implement the anti-replay mechanism and limit 0-RTT calls to only some requests. Currently, TLS 1.3 does not provide and even cannot provide inherent replay protections for 0-RTT.
With a “less is more” approach, TLS 1.3 removed broken and vulnerable pieces of the previous protocols. Having done this, TLS 1.3 enhances security and its implementation is much simpler for developers.
Moreover, TLS 1.3 improves the safety of previous connection by securing session resumption with a PFS (Perfect Forward Secrecy) mechanism. Therefore, an attacker won’t be able to decrypt previous traffic even if he gains access to the session encryption key. In other words, all sessions and even session resumptions are individually protected.
Tor is free software for enabling anonymous communication. The name is derived from an acronym for the original software project name “The Onion Router”.
Tor directs Internet traffic through a free, worldwide, volunteer overlay network consisting of more than seven thousand relays to conceal a user’s location and usage from anyone conducting network surveillance or traffic analysis. Using Tor makes it more difficult to trace Internet activity to the user: this includes “visits to Web sites, online posts, instant messages, and other communication forms”.
Tor’s intended use is to protect the personal privacy of its users, as well as their freedom and ability to conduct confidential communication by keeping their Internet activities from being monitored.
History of Tor:
Tor is based on the principle of ‘onion routing’ which was developed by Paul Syverson, Michael G. Reed and David Goldschlag at the United States Naval Research Laboratory in the 1990’s. The alpha version of Tor, named ‘The Onion Routing Project’ or simply TOR Project, was developed by Roger Dingledine and Nick Mathewson. It was launched on September 20, 2002. Further development was carried under the financial roof of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF).
The Tor Project Inc. is a non-profit organization that currently maintains Tor and is responsible for its development. The United States Government mainly funds it, and further aid is provided by the Swedish Government and different NGOs & individual sponsors.
How Tor Works?
Tor works on the concept of ‘onion routing’ method in which the user data is first encrypted and then transferred through different relays present in the Tor network, thus creating a multi-layered encryption (layers like an onion), thereby keeping the identity of the user safe.
One encryption layer is decrypted at each successive Tor relay, and the remaining data is forwarded to any random relay until it reaches its destination server. For the destination server, the last Tor node/exit relay appears as the origin of the data. It is thus tough to trace the identity of the user or the server by any surveillance system acting in the mid-way.
Is it safe or legal to use the Tor browser?
Yes, it’s safe and legal to use Tor browser.
But one more thing, it depends on your content, if you are visiting legal content with Tor then it’s legal.
But if you are doing something wrong with the help of Tor then it may create trouble for you.
Detailed Explanation:
The internet is like a glacier. The tip of the glacier or the Surface Web are parts of the Internet that you can find from a search engine. But there is a large part (said to be around 90%) of the Internet that cannot be found by search engines. This forms the Deep Web. For example, when you go to Facebook from your browser and see the login page, you are on the surface web. This page can be found by using a normal search engine or by directly going to its URL. However, the moment you log in to your account, you are inside the deep web. Your Facebook feed cannot be accessed by a search engine. You need to go through a door of sorts to access it.
There, however, is a darker part of Deep Web called the Dark Web. This is where the bad guys come in. This is the place where there are marketplaces for drugs, illegal guns, stolen credit cards, and even professional assassins. And that’s not even the worst part of it. Needless to say, those guys running these sites would be absolutely destroyed if their identities are revealed. Thus they operate on the dark web. These websites have the suffix of .onion and can only be accessed by special browsers like TOR. This is what TOR is infamous for. Sure there are people who use it for genuine, privacy concerns; but a lot of people use it as an access point to the dark web.
Using TOR is not illegal, but visiting dark websites engaging in activities that are illegal in your country will be illegal. You can still use it for your day to day activities, but remember that it will be slower than your normal browsers as the data is passed across many nodes as I mentioned above.
TOR Latest Update:
The Tor Project team has released Tor Browser 8.0, a brand-new version of the web browser to the public recently.
Tor Browser is based on Mozilla Firefox; more precisely on Mozilla’s Extended Support Release version of the Firefox web browser. Tor Browser 8.0 is based on Firefox 60.2 ESR. Tor Browser includes Tor which users of the web browser can use to connect to the Tor network to anonymize their Internet connection and various improvements especially when it comes to online privacy.
How to uninstall TOR browser?
Tor Browser does not affect any of the existing software or settings on your computer. Uninstalling Tor Browser will not affect your system’s software or settings.
Removing Tor Browser from your system is simple:
Note that your operating system’s standard “Uninstall” utility is not used.
Tor Alternatives:
Hornet is a new anonymity network that provides higher network speeds compared to Tor. I2P (Invisible Internet Project) and Freenet are other anonymity networks which can act as Tor alternatives. Also, Tails and Subgraph OS are Linux-based distributions with built-in Tor support.
Source: wikipedia, torproject, fossbytes, Arpit-Kubadia, eff, winmyst
lakkireddymadhu 