Collaborate Disseminate
Ron Wyden, D-Ore., fears the regulations have a major loophole and don’t cover enough repressive governments’ agencies.
The post Exclusive: Senator calls on Commerce to tighten proposed rules on exporting surveillance, hacking tech to problematic nations appeared first on CyberScoop.
Sanctions and public exposure might have driven Intellexa into silence for months, but that doesn’t mean its Predator spyware is gone for good.
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Peach Sandstorm is said to have focused on the oil and gas, satellite, government and communications sectors.
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The firm Lookout says that Houthi use of cyberespionage is a sign that mobile surveillance is a growing force in global conflicts.
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The operations are just the latest example of the proliferation of sophisticated spyware among private vendors, Google says.
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The former intelligence operatives worked in a hacking unit of the cybersecurity firm DarkMatter, which is known for developing spyware.
The post State Department debars ex-NSA cyber mercenaries who aided vast UAE surveillance operation appeared first on CyberScoop.
United Arab Emirates agents loaded Pegasus spyware on the phone of journalist Jamal Khashoggi’s wife months before his death, the Washington Post first reported Tuesday. The software was discovered by Citizen Lab, which examined the device at the request of the newspaper and Khashoggi’s wife, Hanan Elatr. Agents placed the spyware on her phone after seizing her from the Dubai airport in April 2018 and interrogating her, the researchers said. During the interrogations, they seized her two Android phones. Agents typed in a web address that researchers have tied to a network used to spread the spyware. The Post first reported in July that Elatr was targeted by Pegasus spyware via text messages, but researchers couldn’t tell if the hack was successful. It’s unclear if the spyware launched by UAE agents finished installing on the phone, Citizen Lab researcher Bill Marczak told the Post. However, the new findings are the […]
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A parade of nations recounted grim experiences with ransomware at the start of a two-day White House-led summit on Wednesday, where the gathered officials will collaborate on how to counter the rise of digital extortion. Israel was, at the moment, dealing with an ongoing ransomware attack at a major hospital, Hillel Yaffe Medical Center. Ireland and the Czech Republic have experienced similar attacks on their medical centers. South Korea has seen a 70% year-over-year increase in ransomware incidents, and the United Arab Emirates has seen a 200% rise. Each anecdote, each statistic fed into the White House message for the day that ransomware is a global issue that will require collective action. Scheduled sessions will cover resilience, illicit finance, disrupting criminals and diplomacy, each led by officials from a different country. “No one country, no one group can solve this problem,” said U.S. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan. “Transnational criminals […]
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The White House on Wednesday and Thursday will convene meetings with representatives from more than 30 countries to discuss how to counter ransomware, leaving out the country the president most frequently criticizes for hosting gangs of hackers: Russia. “Participants will cover everything from efforts to improve national resilience, to experiences addressing the misuse of virtual currency to launder ransom payments, our respective efforts to disrupt and prosecute ransomware criminals and diplomacy as a tool to counter ransomware,” a senior administration official told reporters on Tuesday. The official didn’t specify why Russia didn’t get an invitation beyond unnamed “constraints.” The lack of an invitation this time “doesn’t preclude future opportunities for them to participate.” The U.S. also has other avenues for discussing ransomware with the Kremlin, the official said. The lack of an invitation for Russia exemplifies the tensions over when the U.S. might involve more adversarial nations in discussions over […]
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Hackers suspected to work for the governments of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates breached 36 devices belonging to Al Jazeera journalists in recent months by using a zero-click iPhone exploit and NSO Group spyware, according to new Citizen Lab research published Sunday. The suspected government hackers behind the operations had a particularly pernicious tactic for accessing their targets — an iPhone iMessage that requires zero interaction from the target to work, according to the researchers. Citizen Lab is based at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy at the University of Toronto. The hacking operations, which researchers attribute to the governments of Saudi Arabia and the UAE with “medium confidence,” could have allowed the operators to record audio, take pictures, track device location and access passwords or stored credentials on compromised phones, the researchers said. Qatar, where Al Jazeera is based, historically has a fraught relationship with […]
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