Facebook has accused the Israeli surveillance technology company NSO Group of using servers located in the U.S. to infect hundreds of smartphones with spyware. From a report: The allegation comes as part of a lawsuit that Facebook initiated last year accusing the NSO Group of using WhatsApp accounts to hack into the phones. Facebook owns the popular messaging app. In a…
Tag: spyware
Facebook Wanted NSO Spyware To Monitor Users, NSO CEO Claims
Facebook representatives approached controversial surveillance vendor NSO Group to try and buy a tool that could help Facebook better monitor a subset of its users, according to an extraordinary court filing from NSO in an ongoing lawsuit. From a report: Facebook is currently suing NSO for how the hacking firm leveraged a vulnerability in WhatsApp to help governments hack users. NSO…
Thank God for the Internet
Everything is so dark, but the internet — for all its bad and broken parts — is helping to keep us together in a way that has never happened before, writes Joshua Topolsky in an essay on Input Mag. Two excerpts from the essay: What the hell would we do right now without the internet? How would so many of us…
Ex-NSA Hacker Drops New Zero-Day Doom for Zoom
Zoom’s troubled year just got worse. From a report: Now that a large portion of the world is working from home to ride out the coronavirus pandemic, Zoom’s popularity has rocketed, but also has led to an increased focus on the company’s security practices and privacy promises. Hot on the heels of two security researchers finding a Zoom bug that can…
Spying Concerns Raised Over Iran’s Official COVID-19 Detection App
Catalin Cimpanu, reporting for ZDNet: Google has removed an Android app from the official Play Store that was developed by the Iranian government to test and keep track of COVID-19 (coronavirus) infections. Before being removed from the Play Store, controversy surrounded the app, and several users accused the Iranian government of using the COVID-19 scare to trick citizens into installing the…
Barclays Installed Big Brother-style Spyware on Employees’ Computers
Barclays has been criticised by HR experts and privacy campaigners after the bank installed “Big Brother” employee monitoring software in its London headquarters. From a report: Introduced as a pilot last week, the technology monitors Barclays workers’ activity on their computers, and in some instances admonishes staff in daily updates to them if they are not deemed to have been active…
UK To Host Spyware Firm Accused of Aiding Human Rights Abuses
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: The British government is helping a controversial Israeli spyware company to market its surveillance technologies at a secretive trade fair visited by repressive regimes, the Guardian can reveal. The government will host the NSO Group, which sells technology that has allegedly been used by autocratic regimes to spy on the private messages…
FBI Probes Use of Israeli Firm’s Spyware In Personal and Government Hacks
nickwinlund77 shares a report from Reuters: The FBI is investigating the role of Israeli spyware vendor NSO Group Technologies in possible hacks on American residents and companies as well as suspected intelligence gathering on governments, according to four people familiar with the inquiry. The probe was underway by 2017, when Federal Bureau of Investigation officials were trying to learn whether NSO…
‘Police Tracked a Terror Suspect on WhatsApp — Until His Phone Went Dark After a Warning From Facebook’
“A team of European law-enforcement officials was hot on the trail of a potential terror plot in October, fearing an attack during Christmas season, when their keyhole into a suspect’s phone went dark,” reports the Wall Street Journal: WhatsApp, Facebook Inc.’s popular messaging tool, had just notified about 1,400 users — among them the suspected terrorist — that their phones had…
EA Appears To Be Permanently Banning Linux Players On Battlefield V
Many users have taken to the Lutris Forums to report that EA is permanently banning Linux players on Battlefield V. “Good friends, finally after some time without being able to play Battlefield V for Linux, this week I was using lutris-4.21, I was having fun when my anti-cheat, FairFight, blew me out of the game, so I was banned,” writes one…