Author Archives: Shannon Vavra

White House official, former Nunes aide Michael Ellis named NSA general counsel

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The Pentagon’s general counsel has selected Michael Ellis, a White House official and former Republican aide on Capitol Hill who has faced accusations of politicizing intelligence, to be the National Security Agency’s next general counsel, according to a U.S. government official familiar with the matter. In recent months the White House has been repeatedly pressuring the Department of Defense’s general counsel to slate Ellis, who served as Intelligence Committee counsel to Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., as the top attorney at the NSA, a person familiar with the matter told CyberScoop. The appointment of Ellis to a traditionally non-partisan role could raise questions about whether President Donald Trump is seeking to plant political allies throughout the U.S. government before his final 70 days as a “lame duck” president come to a close. The news comes at a turbulent time for the Trump administration. Trump has refused to concede the election, and in recent hours announced he had […]

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European Parliament paves path for tighter spyware export controls

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The European Parliament announced Monday that it is taking steps to curtail the exportation of surveillance technologies, including spyware, outside of the European Union. The action clears the path for the European Union to establish new ground rules for the export and sale of so-called dual-use technologies, which can be used in legitimate but also malicious ways that violate human rights. The premise of the new rules is to limit authoritarian regimes’ ability to “secretly get their hands on European cyber-surveillance,” Markéta Gregorovà, a member of European Parliament and a lead negotiator of the new scheme, said in a statement. The new guardrails will include an update to European export controls, such as inclusion of licensing criteria that more heavily emphasizes human rights, and an EU-wide scheme that dictates stricter export reporting requirements for member states. “Parliament’s perseverance and assertiveness against a blockade by some member states has paid off: respect for human […]

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Zoom settles charges with FTC over deceptive security practices

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Zoom reached a deal with the Federal Trade Commission to settle allegations it misrepresented its security and privacy protections for users, the FTC announced Monday. In its action against Zoom, the FTC alleged Zoom “engaged in a series of deceptive and unfair practices that undermined the security of its users.” The FTC alleged that Zoom misled users when it claimed it offered end-to-end encryption — intended to protect user communications from external, unintended eavesdroppers — when Zoom actually didn’t offer that level of security, according to the complaint. The FTC also alleged Zoom informed users it would store recordings of Zoom meetings in an encrypted format, when in reality they were kept unencrypted up to 60 days, and eventually were encrypted later. Zoom compromised users’ security when it secretly installed ZoomOpener, software intended to help users join meetings more seamlessly, but which actually made users vulnerable to malware, according to the FTC. The FTC alleges […]

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Vietnamese hacking group OceanLotus uses imitation news sites to spread malware

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Suspected Vietnamese government-linked hackers are behind a series of fake news websites and Facebook pages meant to target victim with malicious software, according to Volexity research published Friday. The hackers, known as OceanLotus or APT32, historically have targeted companies that have business interests in Vietnam. In this case, the fake sites and Facebook pages, which were set up within the last year, were intended for targets in Vietnam and across Southeast Asia, according to Volexity researchers. The attackers appear to have dual aims in their campaign — first, to gather information about the visitors to the fake media sites through a web profiling framework. They also occasionally target victims with malware meant to log targets’ keystrokes. Earlier this year, Kaspersky researchers revealed the hackers have been using the Google Play Store to disperse malware, suggesting both domestic and foreign intelligence collection requirements. This April, when the coronavirus was spreading around the world, the same group began sending malware to […]

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Election-related misinformation is spilling into the real world. Just look at Arizona.

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When a group of pro-Trump protesters surrounded an election center in Arizona in the wee hours of Thursday morning, demonstrators chanted slogans echoing manufacuted narratives amplified by right wing social media users that the 2020 U.S. presidential election was somehow being stolen from President Donald Trump. While calling for officials in Maricopa County to count the ballots, demonstrators parroted the baseless allegations, some of which were initiated by Trump, who earlier tweeted that “we are up BIG, but they are trying to STEAL the Election.” In videos of the incident, protesters can be seen holding signs, at least one of which said, “Stop The Steal,” which appeared to be recycled from the hashtag #StopTheSteal, a hashtag that originally began spreading on Twitter on Election Day to suggest, without evidence, that officials somehow were defrauding Trump in Pennsylvania. Our crew being escorted out of ⁦@MaricopaVote⁩ #AZ2020 ⁦@FoxNews⁩ pic.twitter.com/LgiD56drFb — Alicia Acuna (@aacuna1) November 5, 2020 There is no evidence widespread election fraud has […]

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How Twitter, Facebook say they will treat premature claims of electoral victory

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With less than 24 hours before Election Day in the United States, social media platforms were still announcing plans about how they intend to flag premature and unfounded claims of victory in the event that a candidate tries to seize on a moment of global anxiety for their own gain. While Twitter previously said it would flag misleading claims about election results, the company on Monday clarified the criteria on which it will base its decisions. President Trump has told several close associates that he plans to declare victory on election night if he looks like he’s “ahead,” regardless of the official tally, according to Axios. Twitter, meanwhile, has made it clear that it will consider such claims premature if they come before at least two outlets from a pool including ABC News, the Associated Press, CBS News, CNN, Decision Desk HQ, Fox News, and NBC News publicly share their projections or election results. Twitter has also said […]

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Don’t let election-themed misinformation fool you. Here’s what to watch out for.

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Whether it’s Russian trolls or verified Twitter accounts spreading disinformation during the current political moment almost is besides the point. Four years after Russian operatives aimed to influence the 2016 election in favor of President Donald Trump by spreading lies on social media, a large range of groups, lawmakers and influential political voices have been amplifying false claims in to boost their own political goals ahead of the 2020 elections. U.S. voters are bombarded with misinformation prior to Election Day in the form of social media posts, text messages, robocalls and tweets from President Trump and his campaign staffers. There’s also been threatening emails traced to Iran, and recent reports of how a Russian agent sought to sway political opinion in the U.S. While many could feel a sense of whiplash from the onslaught of manufactured narratives, academics and social scientists are advising Americans to be careful, and fact-check claims about the election, voting processes, and any political candidate, particularly if the allegations […]

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Munich Security Conference attendees targeted with Iran-linked spearphishing, Microsoft says

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Iranian government-linked hackers have been sending spearphishing emails to large swaths of high-profile potential attendees of upcoming the Munich Security Conference as well as the Think 20 Summit in Saudi Arabia, according to Microsoft research. The Iranian attackers, known as Phosphorous, have disguised themselves as conference organizers and have sent fake invitations containing PDF documents with malicious links to over 100 possible invitees of the conferences, both of which are prominent summits dedicated to international security and policies of the world’s largest economies, respectively. In some cases the attackers have been successful in guiding some victims to those links, which lead victims to credential-harvesting pages, Tom Burt, corporate vice president of Microsoft Security and Trust announced in blog published Wednesday morning. “We believe Phosphorus is engaging in these attacks for intelligence collection purposes,” Burt wrote in the blog. “The attacks were successful in compromising several victims, including former ambassadors and other senior policy experts who help shape […]

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Iran’s bogus email campaign on U.S. elections had a Facebook disinformation prong

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Facebook has removed a network of fake accounts and pages with connections to the Iranian government, one of which was peddling misinformation related to the U.S. elections, the company announced Tuesday. The Iranian network broadly focused on the U.S. and Israel, but it included one fake account that was operating as part of the Iranian email misinformation campaign that sent unsubstantiated threats about voting to Democratic voters in the U.S., Facebook’s head of cybersecurity policy Nathaniel Gleicher told reporters in a phone call. The email campaign, which the U.S. government called out last week, threatened targets to vote for President Donald Trump in the upcoming presidential elections. After a tipoff from the FBI, which announced Iran was behind the email misinformation campaign last week, Facebook removed the related account on its platform and discovered it was connected with 11 other fake Facebook accounts, six fake Facebook pages, and 11 fake Instagram accounts. These accounts […]

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DOD, FBI, DHS warn of active North Korean government-linked hacking operation

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The FBI and departments of Defense and Homeland Security issued a joint alert Tuesday warning the private sector about what they say is a global hacking operation run by North Korean government-linked hackers. The hacking group, known as Kimsuky, tends to run intelligence-gathering intrusions against targets in South Korea, Japan and the U.S., according to the alert by the FBI, DHS’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and Cyber Command, DOD’s offensive hacking arm. Kimsuky commonly runs cyber-espionage campaign against South Korean think tanks, as well as targets related to sanctions, nuclear topics, and other issues affecting the Korean Peninsula, according to the U.S. government. To obtain initial access to victims, the hackers typically use spearphishing emails and watering holes to trick victims to give up information, the U.S. government alert says. Kimsuky’s operations, which have been active since at least 2012, are “most likely tasked by the North Korean regime,” according to the report. Researchers have previously linked […]

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