The Justice Department has charged two former Twitter employees for allegedly spying on behalf of the Saudi government. A third man is also being charged but didn’t work at Twitter. Instead, he allegedly served as an intermediary for the Saudi government and the Twitter staffers. Engadget reports: The Justice Department has charged Ali Alzabarah (the one whose activities first surfaced) and…
Tag: espionage
GitLab Considers Ban On New Hires In China and Russia Due To Espionage Fears
GitLab is considering blocking new hires from countries such as China and Russia over espionage fears. “There is a general train of thought that both Russian and Chinese intelligence agencies might use the same blueprint and plant agents or coerce GitLab staff into handing over data belonging to western companies,” reports ZDNet. An anonymous reader shares an excerpt from the report:…
China-Linked Hackers Target Military, Government Texts, FireEye Says
A state-linked Chinese hacking group is using malware to steal SMS text messages from high-ranking military and government targets, according to cybersecurity company FireEye. From a report: The hacking technology, known as MESSAGETAP, “allows China to efficiently steal data from multitudes of sources from one location,” Steven Stone, FireEye’s director of advanced practices, said in a statement. “Espionage-related theft and intrusions…
WAV Audio Files Are Now Being Used To Hide Malicious Code
JustAnotherOldGuy quotes ZDNet: Two reports published in the last few months show that malware operators are experimenting with using WAV audio files to hide malicious code. The first of these new malware campaigns abusing WAV files was reported back in June by Symantec security researchers who said they spotted a Russian cyber-espionage group known as Waterbug (or Turla) using WAV files…
Russian Cyber-Espionage Group Controlled Its Malware Partly Through Reddit Posts
“Cyber-espionage operations from Cozy Bear, a threat actor believed to work for the Russian government, continued undetected for the past years by using malware families previously unknown to security researchers,” reports BleepingComputer — citing a surprisingly detailed report: Relying on stealthy communication techniques between infected systems and the command and control servers, the group managed to keep their activity under the…
Russian Malware ‘Patches’ Chrome and Firefox To Fingerprint TLS Traffic
An anonymous reader quotes ZDNet: A Russian cyber-espionage hacker group has been spotted using a novel technique that involves patching locally installed browsers like Chrome and Firefox in order to modify the browsers’ internal components. The end goal of these modifications is to alter the way the two browsers set up HTTPS connections, and add a per-victim fingerprint for the TLS-encrypted…
Russian State Hackers Rarely Share Code With One Another
Russia’s state-sponsored hacking groups rarely share code with one another, and when they do, it’s usually within groups managed by the same intelligence service, a new joint report published today reveals. From a report: This report, co-authored by Check Point and Intezer Labs, is a first of its kind in its field. The two companies looked at nearly 2,000 malware samples…
Israel Accused of Planting Mysterious Spy Devices Near the White House
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Politico: The U.S. government concluded within the past two years that Israel was most likely behind the placement of cellphone surveillance devices that were found near the White House and other sensitive locations around Washington, according to three former senior U.S. officials with knowledge of the matter. But unlike most other occasions when flagrant…
The Big Levandowski: Could an Uber Engineer’s Indictment Discourage Workers From Changing Jobs?
Long-time Slashdot reader theodp writes: For nearly 20 years,” writes WIRED’s Alex Davies in How Anthony Levandowski Put Himself at the Center of an Industry, “the French-American Levandowski has played a kind of purposeful Forrest Gump for the world of autonomous driving. Rather than stumbling into the center of one momentous event after another, Levandowski has put himself there. And he…
Mozilla Blocks UAE Bid To Become an Internet Security Guardian After Hacking Reports
Firefox browser maker Mozilla is blocking the United Arab Emirates’ government from serving as one of its internet security gatekeepers, citing Reuters reports on a UAE cyber espionage program. From a report: Mozilla said in a statement on Tuesday it was rejecting the UAE’s bid to become a globally recognized internet security watchdog, empowered to certify the safety of websites for…