Collaborate Disseminate
Australia’s signal intelligence agency calls upon an Eighties popstar to fight terrorism, and a simple act of kindness leads to a woman being scammed for thousands.
All this and much more is discussed in the latest edition of the “Smashing Security”… Continue reading Smashing Security podcast #325: Rick Astley and the little birdie scam
More than 1,400 people have downloaded a spyware app that, while appearing to deliver news, enables hackers to collect sensitive data about the Kurds, an ethnic community living throughout Iran, Iraq and northern Syria. The espionage campaign involves duping Android smartphone owners into downloading a program that spies use to record phone calls, extract files, take screenshots and gather other information from unwitting victims, according to details published Tuesday by the security vendor ESET. The endeavor marks the latest attempt to undercut the Kurds, an indigenous people embedded in conflicts of the Middle East over the past generation. Kurdish fighters have been active in the fight against the Islamic State group dating back to 2014, aligning with U.S forces while also struggling against the Turkish government. Suspected Iranian hackers also used mobile spyware to monitor Kurdish targets, the security firm Check Point reported in February. The effort that ESET discovered […]
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Over the past decade, Iran has launched attacks on the NYSE, a dam in New York, a Las Vegas casino, and the city of Atlanta. Continue reading Iran Has Already Hacked the U.S. At Least 4 Times — and Could Do It Again
It took down four foreign interference campaigns and announced initiatives to prevent foreign interference in US elections.
Continue reading Facebook pulls fake news networks linked to Russia and Iran
As loyalties among Afghanistan’s Islamic extremists continue to shift, the U.S. military may be poised to rely more heavily on offensive cyber capabilities to target one group in particular — the dispersed but still active membership of ISIS, according to one military cyber commander. Joint Task Force ARES, the outfit charged with running joint and coalition cyber-operations against ISIS, is working to uncover information about how the terrorist group continues to operate in Afghanistan, the deputy commander said Monday. “JTF-ARES is in or around where ISIS is operating,” Brig. Gen. Len Anderson said during a question and answer at an Atlantic Council event Monday. “We are trying to illuminate the network, trying to figure out how they’re communicating, what they’re using, where the money might be flowing, is there money.” Although the Islamic State’s physical caliphate has been crushed in Iraq and Syria, reporting from the Defense Intelligence Agency this year says the group still has a […]
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Facebook announced on Monday its taken hundreds of accounts, pages and groups offline upon determining they were engaged in separate information operations with roots in Iraq and Ukraine. The company caught 244 accounts, 269 pages, 80 groups and seven Instagram pages that were used to mislead legitimate Facebook users about their behavior, Nathaniel Gleicher, Facebook’s head of cybersecurity policy, said in a blog post. Facebook has for months publicized its account removals, in which the social media giant scrubs pages deemed to be violating Facebook policy, typically by lying about their true location or account owner. The company’s general term for the offenses is “coordinated inauthentic behavior.” Gleicher repeatedly has stressed that Facebook takes these actions based on apparent user behavior, not the content posted. In this case, Facebook removed 168 accounts, 149 pages and 79 groups for activity focused on Ukraine. People involved in this operation used fake identities […]
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A zero-day vulnerability in Adobe Flash was recently used to infect a likely diplomatic target in Qatar with malware, new research from Seattle-based cybersecurity company ICEBRG and Chinese tech firms Qihoo and Tencent shows. Adobe patched the vulnerability Thursday as part of a broader software update in a release that credited Seattle-based cybersecurity firm ICEBRG for alerting them to the flaw. The findings come as Qatar faces significant geopolitical struggles, including a trade blockade established by the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Egypt. Over the last six months, politically-motivated Middle Eastern hacking has popped up numerous times. In late May, Qatar was outed as being connected to a hacking operation against top Republican donor Elliot Brody, an influential critic of the gulf state. Months earlier, Qater blamed UAE for hacking and editing content hosted by the Qatari News Agency (QNA), a government-backed news program. Subsequent reporting tied the QNA hack […]
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Continue reading Flash zero-day shows up in Qatar amid geopolitical struggles
A new study found ecstasy and psychotherapy “significantly decreased” symptoms of PTSD in veterans and first responders. Continue reading Scientists Want the FDA to Designate MDMA a ‘Breakthrough Therapy’ for PTSD
Iraqi artifacts smuggled into the US by Hobby Lobby contain new evidence of a lost Sumerian city, and have scholars divided over whether to study the looted relics. Continue reading eBay, Organized Crime, and Evangelical Christians: The Ethical Minefield of Studying Ancient Civilizations
Some of the 5,500 stolen artifacts purchased by Hobby Lobby are believed to have originated in the long-lost city of Irisagrig. Continue reading Ancient Artifacts Smuggled by Hobby Lobby Traced to Mysterious Sumerian City