Author Archives: Patrick Howell O'Neill

Tor launches official anonymous Android browser

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Tor is coming to Android. The popular anonymization technology will arrive on Google’s mobile operating system with the release of a mobile Tor Browser, Tor Project developers announced on Friday. Although there has long been a slate of third-party mobile Tor apps, the official app is now slated to be released in early 2019. An early and unstable alpha version of the browser is available now in the Google Play store and on the official Tor website. “Mobile browsing is on the rise around the world, and in some parts, it is commonly the only way people access the internet,” the developers wrote. “In these same areas, there is often heavy surveillance and censorship online, so in the past year, we’ve focused on better supporting these users.” Apple’s iOS remains without an official Tor Browser, but Tor’s developers recommend the free Onion Browser as a replacement. The project is still early […]

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Popular Mac app grabs your browser history and sends it to China

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Apple’s famous walled garden isn’t keeping all the undesirables out. New research on one of the most profitable apps in the official Mac App Store reveals developers are side-stepping around Apple’s controls to surreptitiously grab a user’s browser history and send it back a company in China. Even though it’s a clear violation of Apple’s data collection and storage rules, the app remains up and running in the store. Apple has not yet commented on the subject. Former NSA staffer and notorious Mac hacker Patrick Wardle and security researcher @privacyis1st published research on Friday spotlighting Adware Doctor, a popular anti-adware application that is the fifth-most popular paid app in the Mac App Store. The app, the researchers write, steals browser histories and a handful of other private information that it should not be able to access, including App Store searches and  processes running on a machine. “Our research uncovered blatant […]

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Tesla offers ‘goodwill’ to security researchers hacking its cars

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Go ahead and hack that car in peace. In a move greeted happily by cybersecurity researchers around the world, the electric-automobile company Tesla announced that hacking the company’s software as part of “good-faith security research” will not void your warranty. The announcement is part of a “goodwill” revamping of Tesla’s vulnerability disclosure program to allow research without risking legal action, a voided warranty or a broken car — as long as hackers play by the rules. As long as your work complies with our bug bounty policy, Tesla will not void your warranty if you hack our software https://t.co/HhibE1UpRC https://t.co/NIISSrrViD — Tesla (@Tesla) September 5, 2018 “Tesla values the work done by security researchers in improving the security of our products and service offerings,” the company’s vulnerability disclosure page reads. “We are committed to working with this community to verify, reproduce, and respond to legitimate reported vulnerabilities. We encourage the community […]

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‘We simply haven’t done enough’: Facebook and Twitter execs testify on foreign influence campaigns

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Internet giants Facebook, Twitter and Google took center stage in Washington, D.C. on Wednesday at a congressional hearing aimed to move forward in solving the problem of foreign influence campaigns on American social media networks. “We simply haven’t done enough,” Twitter co-founder and CEO Jack Dorsey said in a hearing focused on the twin failings of Silicon Valley and the U.S. federal government to deal with an intensifying global problem. “We were too slow to spot this and too slow to act,” Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg said. “That’s on us.” Despite the regular infusion of mea culpas, Sandberg and Dorsey touted improvements by both companies in combating foreign influence including, most pointedly, the recent removal of hundreds of accounts across multiple independent foreign campaigns. Last week, Facebook banned Myanmar’s commander-in-chief as ethnic violence continues in that country. Larry Page, the chief executive of Google parent company Alphabet, declined an invitation to attend the hearing. That […]

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A well-known hacking group is getting better at evading detection

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A well-known hacking group remains highly active with new incursions against Middle Eastern governments, according to a new report from U.S. cybersecurity firm Palo Alto Networks. Additionally, the group is employing evasion techniques meant to cut down on the risk of detection. The new report focuses on OopsIE, a trojan first tracked earlier this year, being used in spear phishing attacks against a highly targeted a Middle Eastern government agency. The trojan is being used by OilRig, a group that has been linked to Iran. “The OopsIE variant delivered in this attack begins its execution by performing a series of anti-VM and sandbox checks,” the researchers wrote. “If any of the checks … are successful, the Trojan will exit without running any of its functional code. These evasion techniques are meant to thwart automated analysis in an effort to avoid detection.” The checks OopsIE runs include ones on vitals like […]

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FBI launches new ‘Combating Foreign Influence’ website for political campaigns

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With just about two months until Election Day, the FBI created a Combating Foreign Influence guide to “educate the public” and political campaigns about disinformation, cyber attacks and “the overall impact of foreign influence on society,” the agency announced on Thursday. It’s a small public showing for the lead agency responsible for investigating foreign influence operations. Earlier this month, FBI director Christopher Wray outlined a larger non-public effort from the FBI to combat foreign influence. “I can’t describe the full extent of our efforts because of important operational sensitivities,” Wray said during an August 2 White House press briefing. “But our Foreign Influence Task Force works with FBI personnel in all 56 of our field offices. And, even as we speak, we’ve got open investigations with a foreign influence nexus spanning FBI field offices across the country. Make no mistake—the scope of this foreign influence threat is both broad and deep.” […]

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Germany launches new cybersecurity research agency modeled after DARPA

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Germany’s federal government will launch a new cybersecurity research agency with funding of €200 million over the next five years, the country’s defense and interior ministers announced on Wednesday. The agency’s goal is to make Germany technologically independent of other powers with regards to cybersecurity. The country’s dependence on other nations like China or the United States has been an ongoing political issue, as Germany purchases almost all of what it needs from foreign companies and partners. “We cannot just sit around watching sensitive information technology of high security relevance being controlled by third countries,” Interior Minister Horst Seehofer said. Seehofer presented the new agency in a Wednesday press conference in Berlin alongside Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen. “We have to secure and expand those key technologies ourselves.” The agency is modeled after the United States’ Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, a Department of Defense agency responsible for the research and […]

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Fourth man receives prison sentence in ‘Celebgate’ photo leak

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George Garofano was sentenced to eight months in prison on Wednesday after he pleaded guilty to hacking 240 iCloud accounts and taking part in a campaign known as “Celebgate” that resulted in the posting of nude photographs of female celebrities online. Garofano, 26, faced up to five years in prison. Earlier this month, he expressed remorse and asked the judge for a shorter sentence. The defendant’s lawyer emphasized that he was not the mastermind behind the scheme and that he had matured since the wrongdoing, committed when he was 21 years old. Prosecutors asked for a sentence of 10 to 16 months. Garofano, who will surrender in October, will face supervised release for three years after the prison stint is over. “Garofano used the usernames and passwords to illegally access his victims’ iCloud accounts, which allowed him to steal personal information, including sensitive and private photographs and videos, according to his plea […]

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Facebook bans Myanmar general as U.N. calls for independent investigation into Rohingya crisis

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Faced with continued ethnic violence in Myanmar, Facebook banned the country’s commander-in-chief, the military’s television network and dozens of pages and accounts followed by almost 12 million people, the company announced on Monday. Earlier on the same day, a United Nations fact finding mission in Myanmar called for an independent investigation of Facebook’s role in what the mission’s report describes as a genocide against the Rohingya ethnic minority, directed in large part by Gen. Min Aung Hlaing. The U.N. investigators found that “Facebook has been a useful instrument for those seeking to spread hate, in a context where for most users Facebook is the Internet” and that the company has been “slow and ineffective” in response to the ongoing crisis. Earlier this year, a U.N. investigator said Facebook’s primary role in directing hate and inciting violence against the Rohingya showed the platform had “turned into a beast.” “The ethnic violence in […]

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Ukrainian hacker sentenced to 6 years in U.S. prison

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Ukrainian national Ruslan Yeliseyev was sentenced to six years in U.S. prison on Friday for hacking and trafficking stolen financial information. Yeliseyev, 42, sold stolen financial information on Russian-language criminal forums. “The information that Yeliseyev sold, which had been stolen from approximately 40,000 hacked computers, included over 62,000 credit card numbers as well as usernames and passwords to victims’ online banking accounts,” the Department of Justice said in a statement after his sentencing. Ukraine does not extradite its own citizens. However, Yeliseyev was arrested in 2016 when he was vacationing in Israel. He was then extradited to the United States for prosecution. The Justice Department has used the arrest tactic to nab hackers in the past few years. A pair of Romanians accused of an international hacking and identity theft conspiracy were extradited from Romania to the United States in May. In March, the Justice Department extradited Yevgeniy Nikulin from the Czech Republic. Nikulin […]

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