Signal Threatens to Exit Sweden Over Government’s Backdoor Proposal

Sweden’s proposal to mandate encryption backdoors faces backlash from Signal, cybersecurity experts, and even its military over privacy and security risks...

Belarus-Linked Ghostwriter Uses Macropack-Obfuscated Excel Macros to Deploy Malware

Opposition activists in Belarus as well as Ukrainian military and government organizations are the target of a new campaign that employs malware-laced Microsoft Excel documents as lures to deliver a new variant of PicassoLoader. The threat cluster has been assessed to be an extension of a...

The Untold Story of Trump's Failed Attempt to Overthrow Venezuela's President

A successful CIA hack of Venezuela's military payroll system, insider fights for spy agency resources, and messy opposition politics: A WIRED investigation reveals a secret Trump-era attempt to oust autocratic ruler Nicolás Maduro...

Spyware in India

Apple has warned leaders of the opposition government in India that their phones are being spied on: Multiple top leaders of India’s opposition parties and several journalists have received a notification from Apple, saying that "Apple believes you are being targeted by state-sponsored attackers...

AI is the Solution, Not the Problem

AI is the Solution, Not the Problem By Trellix · August 07, 2023 This story was also written by Oded Margalit. AI Artificial Intelligence / ML Machine Learning has recently been painted as the master evil. In this blog I would like to suggest a different view, where we can use it to make a better...

Doctors Behind Mifepristone Ban Called ‘Christians’ a Top Threat

Leaked documents reveal that the American College of Pediatricians viewed “mainstream medicine” and “nominal Christians” as its opposition...

Cyberweapons Arms Manufacturer FinFisher Shuts Down

FinFisher has shut down operations. This is the spyware company whose products were used, among other things, to spy on Turkish and Bahraini political opposition...

Iranian State Broadcaster Clobbered by ‘Clumsy, Buggy’ Code

Footage of opposition leaders calling for the assassination of Iran’s Supreme Leader ran on several of the nation’s state-run TV channels in late January after a state-sponsored cyber-attack on Iranian state broadcaster IRIB. The incident – one of a series of politically motivated attacks in Iran...

Zoom deepfaker fools politicians…twice

We recently said deepfakes “remain the weapon of choice for malign interference campaigns, troll farms, revenge porn, and occasionally humorous celebrity face-swaps”. Skepticism that these techniques would work on a grand scale such as an election, remains in place. In the realm of malign...

Changing California’s privacy law: A snapshot at the support and opposition

This month, the corporate-backed, legislative battle against California privacy met a blockade, as one Senate committee voted down and negotiated changes to several bills that, as originally written, could have weakened the state’s data privacy law, the California Consumer Privacy Act. Though the...

Pegasus Spyware Used in 45 Countries

Citizen Lab has published a new report about the Pegasus spyware. From a ZDNet article: The malware, known as Pegasus or Trident, was created by Israeli cyber-security firm NSO Group and has been around for at least three years -- when it was first detailed in a report over the summer of 2016. Th...

Hurdles Remain After Senate Votes To Restore Net Neutrality

The U.S. Senate this week gave the nod to restoring net neutrality regulations that would prevent ISPs from controlling access to certain websites. But roadblocks remain, even as the legislation is pushed on the fast track to a House vote: Bigwig ISPs, independent ISPs, small businesses, Democrat...

Supporters of Net Neutrality Vow to Fight Rule Changes

The repeal of network neutrality rules inched closer to reality on Thursday when the Federal Communications Commission submitted into the Federal Registry its controversial replacement called the Restoring Internet Freedom order. Opponents say the new order will create powerful internet gatekeepe...

Subway Elevators and Movie-Plot Threats

Local residents are opposing adding an elevator to a subway station because terrorists might use it to detonate a bomb. No, really. There's no actual threat analysis, only fear: "The idea that people can then ride in on the subway with a bomb or whatever and come straight up in an elevator is awf...

Privacy Activists Cheer Passage of Email Privacy Act, Brace for Senate Battle

In a vote of 419-0 on Wednesday, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the Email Privacy Act that would require the government to obtain a warrant in order to access digital communications stored in the cloud. Privacy advocates cheered the victory and said it was a win for U.S. citizens and...

NSA Whistleblowers, Civil Liberties Groups Urge Congress to Oppose USA Freedom Act

As the expiration date for the controversial Section 215 of the Patriot Act draws near, the voices opposing a renewal of the surveillance powers the measure grants the NSA are growing louder. The latest entry is a letter sent to members of Congress by a long list of privacy, civil liberties, and...

Pro-Syria Cyberespionage Campaign Uses Social Engineering

It’s a tried-and-true plotline for many a corny movie: the lonely soldier on the front lines falling for a girl who turns out to be the enemy. If you apply a 2015 reality to that scenario, you have the lonely soldier Skyping with an alluring woman who turns out to be an enemy hacker dropping cust...

Google, Microsoft to Implement Mobile 'Kill Switch'

Google and Microsoft will incorporate remote kill switch features into the default builds of their respective mobile operating systems for the first time. Oddly enough, the announcement comes in a joint press release issued by New York Attorney General, Eric Schneiderman, and San Francisco Distri...

CISPA Returns back, Forget privacy reforms

The Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection act CISPA will be reintroduced by House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers R-Mich. and ranking member Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger D-Md. before the US House next week. CISPA would've allowed any company to give away all the data its collected on...

Anonymous Hackers Targeting Russian government websites for Putin Inauguration

Anonymous Hackers Targeting Russian government websites for Putin Inauguration Anonymous hackers to launch cyber attacks on the websites of the Russian state agencies to support the opposition. In a YouTube video , Hackers said that the Russian government website will be subjected to DDOS attack ...