Collaborate Disseminate
A U.N. cybercrime treaty could give global governments new — and what many human rights defenders call worrisome — powers to prosecute cybercrimes.
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The U.S. State Department said the hack of the International Committee of the Red Cross last month was a “dangerous development” that has harmed the organization’s family re-unification mission. The commentary from Foggy Bottom comes in response to a Jan. 19 announcement from the Red Cross that a cyberattack compromised personal data for more than half a million people from at least 60 Red Cross and associated Red Crescent national organizations across the globe. “Targeting the Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement’s sensitive and confidential data is a dangerous development,” said Ned Price, a spokesman for the State Department. “It has real consequences: this cyber incident has harmed the global humanitarian network’s ability to locate missing people and reconnect families. This is why it is so vital that humanitarian data be respected and only used for intended purposes.” Price also called on other nations to join the State Department and […]
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The United Nations’ top human rights official Wednesday called for a global moratorium on the sale and use of artificial intelligence systems that pose human rights concerns until safeguards are put in place. “We cannot afford to continue playing catch-up regarding AI – allowing its use with limited or no boundaries or oversight, and dealing with the almost inevitable human rights consequences after the fact,” U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet said alongside the release of a report on the emerging technology. “The power of AI to serve people is undeniable, but so is AI’s ability to feed human rights violations at an enormous scale with virtually no visibility.” The U.N. did not list specific AI tools that governments should ban. Instead, the report points to a number of ways the technology is used in decision-making that can have life-altering consequences, including the rise in the use of […]
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By Waqas
The group of hackers behind the cyberattack on the Iranian prison goes by the name of Edaalate Ali. Here’s what footage was leaked online.
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For the last six years, hackers have stalked Iranian dissidents with spying tools that mimic the software those dissidents use to protect their communications, security firm Kaspersky said Wednesday. Researchers from Kaspersky and other firms only recently pieced together the activity, showing the limits of the cyber industry’s knowledge of Tehran-linked hacking against those who often bear the brunt of it: Iranian citizens. While Kaspersky researchers did not attribute the hacking to the Iranian government, FireEye, another security firm, said it suspected the hackers were affiliated with Tehran. The findings are consistent with a surveillance dragnet that Iranian authorities have used to jail and beat protesters who challenge the regime. Iranian security services killed 304 people in a 2019 crackdown, according to Amnesty International. The hackers, Kaspersky said, have sent their targets malware-laced images and videos claiming to be from prisoners in Iran. When opened, the malicious documents hijack users’ […]
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President Joe Biden on Thursday signed an executive order that expands restrictions on U.S. investments in the Chinese defense sector and takes aim at the export of Chinese surveillance technologies. Building on a Trump administration order, the new directive expands to 59 the list of Chinese companies that Americans are barred from investing in. The order, the White House said, will also give U.S. officials greater leeway in addressing the threat of Chinese surveillance technology that is used to repress religious or ethnic groups inside and outside of China. The directive allows the U.S. “to prohibit – in a targeted and scoped manner – U.S. investments in Chinese companies that undermine the security or democratic values of the United States and our allies,” the White House said in a statement. Several Chinese technology firms have been implicated in the Chinese government’s mass detention of Uyghurs, a mostly Muslim minority group whose […]
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An ex-U.S. ambassador to Russia, anti-corruption activists in Ukraine and election observers in other parts of Eastern Europe were among the apparent targets of a suspected Russian state-sponsored hacking effort, according to data linked to the spying operation that a researcher shared with CyberScoop. The list offers classic examples of organizations that Russian spies might want to infiltrate, including those working to expose graft, combat disinformation and promote secure elections. It also points to the persistent threats that small nonprofits face from well-resourced hackers, as well as the long-running alleged Russian efforts to undermine democratic institutions. Microsoft on May 27 said hackers had used a breached account belonging to the U.S. Agency for International Development, a U.S. government agency, to send phishing emails to some 3,000 email accounts at 150 organizations in 24 countries (U.S. officials estimated an even broader set of targets: 7,000 accounts and 350 organizations.) Microsoft blamed […]
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Human rights advocates are warning that a controversial proposal at the United Nations to counter cybercrime could validate tactics that authoritarian governments around the world have used to criminalize free speech and security research. The Russian and Chinese governments back the notion of establishing a new anti-cybercrime convention, a process that diplomats at the U.N. will begin considering next week. However the wording of the proposal, which calls for curbs on the use of technologies for “criminal purposes,” is vague to the point of potentially enabling further government repression, critics say. A report issued Wednesday by Human Rights Watch, a New York-based advocacy group, details a growing list of so-called cybercrime laws that governments have allegedly used to target dissenters, or infringe on personal privacy. A Pakistani law, for example, enables authorities to block websites used to criticize government officials. In the Philippines, police can collect computer data without a […]
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Facebook on Wednesday exposed what it said was a long-running hacking campaign targeting Uighurs living around the world and supported by Chinese technology firms. The scheme was aimed at journalists and dissidents, and affected Uighurs living in places like as far-flung as U.S., Turkey and Australia. It involved fake Facebook personas duping targets into clicking on links, as well as malicious Android and iOS software, Facebook said. Facebook said it’s aware of less than 500 people whom the campaign targeted. Facebook’s investigators traced the Android malware developers in the hacking campaign to Chinese firms Beijing Best United Technology and Dalian 9Rush Technology. Neither could be reached for comment on Wednesday. China has a history of allegedly using front companies as cover for its hacking operations. The hacking campaign began as far as back as 2019, and Facebook executives said they expected the attackers to continue their spying efforts. It’s only […]
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For the past several years a Vietnamese hacking group best known for its attacks on the auto sector has been targeting activists and non-governmental organizations with spyware, according to an Amnesty International investigation published Wednesday. The suspected government-linked hackers, known as OceanLotus or APT32, specifically targeted pro-democracy activist Bui Thanh Hieu, who writes about human rights and economic justice, with spyware on four occasions between February 2018 and December 2019, according to the investigation. The same group launched spyware against a blogger, who has written on a violent police clash in Vietnam in 2009, three times between July and November of last year. Bui Thanh Hieu has been exiled in Germany since 2013. Amnesty did not identify the blogger out of concern for their safety. The hackers also went after the Vietnamese Overseas Initiative for Conscience Empowerment (VOICE), which works on behalf of Vietnamese refugees resettling, in April of 2020. […]
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