The Israeli company NSO Group sells Pegasus spyware to countries around the world (including countries like Saudi Arabia, UAE, India, Mexico, Morocco and Rwanda). We assumed that those countries use the spyware themselves. Now we’ve learned that that’s not true: that NSO Group employees operate the spyware …
Carrying 99% of the world’s international telecommunications, the vulnerable lines are drawing nefarious interest The lead-clad telegraphic cable seemed to weigh tons, according to Lt Cameron Winslow of the US navy, and the weather wasn’t helping their attempts to lift it up from the seabed and sever …
Google researchers said they uncovered a Kremlin-backed operation targeting recruits for the Ukrainian military with information-stealing malware for Windows and Android devices. The malware, spread primarily through posts on Telegram, came from a persona on that platform known as "Civil Defense." Posts on the @civildefense_com_ua telegram channel and the …
Researchers have unearthed two sophisticated toolsets that a nation-state hacking group—possibly from Russia—used to steal sensitive data stored on air-gapped devices, meaning those that are deliberately isolated from the Internet or other networks to safeguard them from malware. One of the custom tool collections was used starting …
Rolling Stone has a long investigative story (non-paywalled version here ) about a CIA agent who spent years posing as an Islamic radical. Unrelated, but also in the “real life spies” file: a fake Sudanese diving resort run by Mossad. [...]
Officials seized documents from NSO Group to try to stop handover of information about notorious hacking tool, files suggest The Israeli government took extraordinary measures to frustrate a high-stakes US lawsuit that threatened to reveal closely guarded secrets about one of the world’s most notorious hacking tools, leaked …
This move has been coming for a long time. The Biden administration on Thursday said it’s banning the company from selling its products to new US-based customers starting on July 20, with the company only allowed to provide software updates to existing customers through September 29. The ban …
The US is using a World War II law that bans aircraft photography of military installations to charge someone with doing the same thing with a drone. [...]
Exclusive: Defence ministry was told in recent days that staff details accessed but sources say SSCL knew in February The IT company targeted in a Chinese hack that accessed the data of hundreds of thousands of Ministry of Defence staff failed to report the breach for months, the Guardian …
During the Cold War, the US Navy tried to make a secret code out of whale song. The basic plan was to develop coded messages from recordings of whales, dolphins, sea lions, and seals. The submarine would broadcast the noises and a computer—the Combo Signal Recognizer (CSR)—would …
Microsoft announced that it caught Chinese, Russian, and Iranian hackers using its AI tools—presumably coding tools—to improve their hacking abilities. From their report : In collaboration with OpenAI, we are sharing threat intelligence showing detected state affiliated adversaries—tracked as Forest Blizzard, Emerald Sleet, Crimson Sandstorm, Charcoal Typhoon …
Findings suggest Jordan is relying on cyberweapon to quash dissent and its use is ‘staggeringly widespread’ About three dozen journalists, lawyers and human rights workers in Jordan have been targeted by authorities using powerful spyware made by Israel’s NSO Group amid a broad crackdown on press freedoms and …
Enlarge / Cybercriminals or anonymous hackers use malware on mobile phones to hack personal and business passwords online. (credit: Getty Images) Hackers suspected of working for the Chinese government are mass exploiting a pair of critical vulnerabilities that give them complete control of virtual private network appliances sold by Ivanti …
Spying and surveillance are different but related things. If I hired a private detective to spy on you, that detective could hide a bug in your home or car, tap your phone, and listen to what you said. At the end, I would get a report of all the …
Google removed fake Signal and Telegram apps from its Play store. An app with the name Signal Plus Messenger was available on Play for nine months and had been downloaded from Play roughly 100 times before Google took it down last April after being tipped off by security firm …
The NSA discovered the intrusion in 2020—we don’t know how—and alerted the Japanese. The Washington Post has the story : The hackers had deep, persistent access and appeared to be after anything they could get their hands on—plans, capabilities, assessments of military shortcomings, according to three …
The Washington Post is reporting that the US is spying on the UN Secretary General. The reports on Guterres appear to contain the secretary general’s personal conversations with aides regarding diplomatic encounters. They indicate that the United States relied on spying powers granted under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance …
Everyone is writing about an interagency and international report on Chinese hacking of US critical infrastructure. Lots of interesting details about how the group, called Volt Typhoon, accesses target networks and evades detection. [...]
Reuters is reporting that the FBI “had identified and disabled malware wielded by Russia’s FSB security service against an undisclosed number of American computers, a move they hoped would deal a death blow to one of Russia’s leading cyber spying programs.” The headline says that the FBI …
Now this is interesting: Thousands of pages of secret documents reveal how Vulkan’s engineers have worked for Russian military and intelligence agencies to support hacking operations, train operatives before attacks on national infrastructure, spread disinformation and control sections of the internet. The company’s work is linked to …
Documents leaked from Vulkan cybersecurity firm also raise questions about role of IT engineers behind information-control project A consortium of media outlets have published a bombshell investigation about Russia’s cyber-capabilities, based on a rare leak of documents. The files come from NTC Vulkan, a cybersecurity firm in Moscow …
• Documents leaked by whistleblower angry over Ukraine war • Private Moscow consultancy bolstering Russian cyberwarfare • Tools support hacking operations and attacks on infrastructure • Documents linked to notorious Russian hacking group Sandworm • Russian program aims to control internet and spread disinformation The inconspicuous office is in Moscow’s north-eastern suburbs. A …
Enlarge / Locked out. (credit: Sean Gladwell / Getty Images ) Threat actors aligned with Russia and Belarus are targeting elected US officials supporting Ukraine, using attacks that attempt to compromise their email accounts, researchers from security firm Proofpoint said. The campaign, which also targets officials of European nations, uses malicious JavaScript …
France has banned not only TikTok from government phones, but Facebook and Twitter, too. Could this be a tipping point for big tech? Plus, AI-generated pictures of the pope signal a new type of viral image Don’t get TechScape delivered to your inbox? Sign up for the full …
Move follows UK government’s decision to ban Chinese-owned video-sharing app Politics live - latest updates Parliament is to ban the Chinese-owned video-sharing app TikTok from “all parliamentary devices and the wider parliamentary network”, citing the need for cybersecurity. The move goes further than the ban last week of the …