Schneier on Security

NOVEMBER 11, 2022

There’s nothing really interesting in the IG document, which is heavily redacted. Here in 2022, we have a newly declassified 2016 Inspector General report—”Misuse of Sigint Systems”—about a 2013 NSA program that resulted in the unauthorized (that is, illegal) targeting of Americans. News story.

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Surveillance 244

Schneier on Security

DECEMBER 18, 2020

Gizmodo is reporting that schools in the US are buying equipment to unlock cell phones from companies like Cellebrite: Gizmodo has reviewed similar accounting documents from eight school districts, seven of which are in Texas, showing that administrators paid as much $11,582 for the controversial surveillance technology.

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Security Affairs

DECEMBER 16, 2024

Researchers warn of previously undetected surveillance spyware, named NoviSpy, that was found infecting a Serbian journalist’s phone. Then he requested help from Amnesty Internationals Security Lab fearing to be the target of surveillance software like other journalists in Serbia. Development traces back to at least 2018.

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Security Affairs

DECEMBER 23, 2024

Court documents state that on October 29, 2019, plaintiffs filed this lawsuit, alleging that the defendants used WhatsApp to target approximately 1,400 mobile phones and devices to infect them with the surveillance software. ” reads the court document. ” The U.S. from April 29, 2018, to May 10, 2020).

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Security Affairs

AUGUST 28, 2022

Leaked documents show the surveillance firm Intellexa offering exploits for iOS and Android devices for $8 Million. Intellexa is an Israeli surveillance firm founded by Israeli entrepreneur Tal Dilian, it offers surveillance and hacking solution to law enforcement and intelligence agencies. Pierluigi Paganini.

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Schneier on Security

OCTOBER 26, 2023

Interesting article about the Snowden documents, including comments from former Guardian editor Ewen MacAskill MacAskill, who shared the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service with Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras for their journalistic work on the Snowden files, retired from The Guardian in 2018.

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Schneier on Security

JUNE 30, 2023

They indicate that the United States relied on spying powers granted under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) to gather the intercepts. Lots of details about different conversations in the article, which are based on classified documents leaked on Discord by Jack Teixeira.

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Surveillance 275

Schneier on Security

JULY 6, 2018

Includes some new Snowden documents. The Intercept has a long story about the NSA's domestic interception points.

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Surveillance 169

Schneier on Security

OCTOBER 13, 2020

One of the things we learned from the Snowden documents is that the NSA conducts “about” searches. ” These searches are legal when conducted for the purpose of foreign surveillance, but the worry about using them domestically is that they are unconstitutionally broad. .”

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Security Affairs

FEBRUARY 2, 2025

WhatsApp linked the hacking campaign to Paragon, an Israeli commercial surveillance vendor acquired by AE Industrial Partners for $900 million in December 2024. The WIS, among other things, allows defendants clients to send cipher files with installation vectors that ultimately allow the clients to surveil target users.

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The Hacker News

FEBRUARY 21, 2025

OpenAI on Friday revealed that it banned a set of accounts that used its ChatGPT tool to develop a suspected artificial intelligence (AI)-powered surveillance tool.

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Security Affairs

DECEMBER 1, 2021

An FBI document shows what data can be obtained from them. The Record shared an FBI training document that reveals the surveillance capabilities of the US law enforcement detailing which data can be extracted from encrypted messaging apps. ” reads the document. Which are the most secure encrypted messaging apps?

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Schneier on Security

MARCH 6, 2020

spy agencies became accustomed to, if not addicted to, global surveillance. I mean, the United States came to expect that kind of penetration, that kind of global surveillance capability. And the Snowden documents tell us a lot about how they did that. To me, the history of the Crypto operation helps to explain how U.S.

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Schneier on Security

JANUARY 9, 2023

This is the interesting part: Investigators identified Greenwood and Crahan almost immediately after the attacks took place by using cell phone data that allegedly showed both men in the vicinity of all four substations, according to court documents. I don’t even think turning your cell phone off would help in this instance.

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Schneier on Security

SEPTEMBER 26, 2019

The reason these threats are so real is that it's not difficult to hide surveillance or control infrastructure in computer components, and if they're not turned on, they're very difficult to find. Even so, these examples illustrate an important point: there's no escaping the technology of inevitable surveillance.

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Adam Shostack

FEBRUARY 12, 2025

This is a big, complex document. The apparent complexity is exacerbated by the intermingling of how to conduct with sample output and perhaps the document might be improved by breaking it into two: a how to guide and a sample output document or documents. What makes this level of detail right for this document?

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Security Affairs

APRIL 8, 2020

In October 2019, WhatsApp sued the Israeli surveillance firm NSO Group accusing it of carrying out malicious attacks against its users. According to the NSO CEO, Facebook was interested in improving surveillance capabilities on iOS devices of the Onavo Protect. ” reported Motherboard, the media outlet that disclosed the story.

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Schneier on Security

JANUARY 21, 2022

MY2022 is fairly straightforward about the types of data it collects from users in its public-facing documents. Server responses can also be spoofed, allowing an attacker to display fake instructions to users. MY2022 includes features that allow users to report “politically sensitive” content.

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WIRED Threat Level

APRIL 18, 2025

In a document published Thursday, ICE explained the functions that it expects Palantir to include in a prototype of a new program to give the agency near real-time data about people self-deporting.

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Security Affairs

FEBRUARY 8, 2021

Iran-linked APT group Domestic Kitten, also tracked as APT-C-50, has been conducting widespread surveillance targeting over 1,000 individuals. Both groups have conducted long-running cyber-attacks and intrusive surveillance campaigns, which target both individuals’ mobile devices and personal computers.”

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Schneier on Security

MAY 20, 2020

Bart Gellman's long-awaited (at least by me) book on Edward Snowden, Dark Mirror: Edward Snowden and the American Surveillance State , will finally be published in a couple of weeks. It's an interesting read, mostly about the government surveillance of him and other journalists. There is an adapted excerpt in the Atlantic.

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Security Affairs

SEPTEMBER 24, 2018

Cisco has patched a critical vulnerability in the Cisco Video Surveillance Manager (VSM) could be exploited by an unauthenticated remote attacker to gain root access. Cisco has fixed a critical vulnerability in the Cisco Video Surveillance Manager software running on some Connected Safety and Security Unified Computing System (UCS) platforms.

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SecureWorld News

APRIL 15, 2024

In an updated support document , the iPhone maker revised the language around its threat notification system to explicitly mention alerting users who may have been "individually targeted by mercenary spyware attacks." The developers go to great lengths to remove any clues that might link the software back to them or their clients."

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DoublePulsar

MAY 7, 2022

Recently, PwC Threat Intelligence documented the existence of BPFDoor, a passive network implant for Linux they attribute to Red Menshen… Continue reading on DoublePulsar ».

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Security Affairs

MARCH 20, 2025

The modular architecture of the malware allows to extend its functionalities for multiple malicious purposes, including surveillance, reconnaissance, information theft, DDoS attacks, and arbitrary code execution.

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Security Affairs

AUGUST 4, 2019

The US government is testing high-altitude balloons manufactured by Sierra Nevada to conduct surveillance over American soil. The US government is planning to use high-altitude balloons to conduct surveillance over Americans. SecurityAffairs – high-altitude balloons, surveillance). ” states The Guardian.

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Security Affairs

SEPTEMBER 16, 2024

The IT giant fears that the disclosures of its threat intelligence related to commercial spyware operations could aid NSO and other surveillance firms. federal court for illegally targeting its customers with the surveillance spyware Pegasus. ” reads the court filing.

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SecureList

NOVEMBER 29, 2021

The victim was infected by PowerShell malware and we discovered evidence that the actor had already stolen data from the victim and had been surveilling this victim for several months. Additionally, we discovered older variants of the malware, delivered via HWP documents, dating back to mid-2020. Spear-phishing document.

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Security Affairs

FEBRUARY 7, 2023

The collective Anonymous released last week 128 gigabytes of documents that were allegedly stolen from the Russian Internet Service Provider Convex. The stolen documents contain evidence of a dragnet surveillance activity conducted by the intelligence service FSB. ” reads a statement sent by Caxxii to the Kyiv Post.”

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Security Affairs

FEBRUARY 26, 2025

LightSpy can steal files from multiple popular applications like Telegram, QQ, and WeChat, as well as personal documents and media stored on the device. ” LightSpy now targets social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram from Android, extracting messages, contacts, and metadata, enhancing surveillance and exploitation potential.

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Security Affairs

JULY 19, 2019

The Israeli surveillance firm NSO Group informed its clients that it is able to scoop user data by mining from major social media. The Financial Times reported that the Israeli surveillance firm NSO Group informed its clients that it is able to mine user data from major social media. SecurityAffairs – NSO Group, surveillance).

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Security Affairs

FEBRUARY 6, 2022

One of the Apple iOS zero-day flaws exploited by the NSO group was also used by another surveillance firm named QuaDream. One of the vulnerabilities in Apple iOS that was previously exploited by the spyware developed by the Israeli company NSO Group was also separately used by another surveillance firm named QuaDream.

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Security Affairs

JUNE 17, 2022

Experts uncovered an enterprise-grade surveillance malware dubbed Hermit used to target individuals in Kazakhstan, Syria, and Italy since 2019. Lookout Threat Lab researchers uncovered enterprise-grade Android surveillance spyware, named Hermit, used by the government of Kazakhstan to track individuals within the country.

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Schneier on Security

FEBRUARY 26, 2018

Gates converted that.pdf into a "Word" document so that it could be edited , which Gates sent back to Manafort. Manafort altered that "Word" document by adding more than $3.5 He then sent this falsified P&L to Gates and asked that the "Word" document be converted back to a.pdf, which Gates did and returned to Manafort.

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SecureList

JUNE 16, 2021

It is only recently that it drew attention when a lure document was uploaded to VirusTotal and went public thanks to researchers on Twitter. Two suspicious documents that were uploaded to VirusTotal in July 2020 and March 2021, and which seem to be operated by the same attackers, caught our attention. Background.

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WIRED Threat Level

AUGUST 10, 2021

Documents reveal that police bought facial-recognition software, vans equipped with x-ray machines, and “stingray” cell site simulators—with no public oversight.

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WIRED Threat Level

FEBRUARY 8, 2024

In a test at one station, Transport for London used a computer vision system to try and detect crime and weapons, people falling on the tracks, and fare dodgers, documents obtained by WIRED show.

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