WikiLeaks: Here’s how the CIA hacks your phones, TVs and PCs
The organization released thousands of documents it claims show how the US spy agency can crack open devices from Apple, Samsung, Google and Microsoft.
Apple, Google and Motorola declined to comment on WikiLeaks’ claims. Samsung didn’t respond to a request for comment.
“The CIA/Wikileaks story today is about getting malware onto phones, none of the exploits are in Signal or break Signal Protocol encryption,” said Moxie Marlinspike, the founder of Signal. “This story isn’t about Signal or WhatsApp, but to the extent that it is, we see it as confirmation that what we’re doing is working.”
Telegram said on its website that the problem lies with operating systems and not encrypted messaging apps and that naming specific encrypted services is “misleading.” WhatsApp declined to comment.
“Framework and Terminology for Understanding Cyber-Enabled Economic Warfare,” a new report by Samantha F. Ravich and Annie Fixler for the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
Cyber-enabled economic warfare is a “hostile strategy involving attack(s) against a nation using cyber technology with the intent to weaken its economy and thereby reduce its political and military power.”
For example, China’s economic theft of intellectual property from the U.S. is considered CEEW, along with Russia’s cyberattack on Estonia and Iran’s Saudi Aramco attack. The authors also contend that the U.S. sanctions on Iran using cyber means to cut off Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication access also falls under CEEW.
The reason staffers chose Confide over other secure messaging apps, like Signal, is that Confide erases messages as soon as they’re read.
Other secure messengers, like Signal, do not wipe read messages — meaning they could be intercepted if someone gains access to a phone where the messages have not been explicitly deleted.
Only recently, the general view in the U.S. was that the less-free Chinese system created a poor environment for tech innovation. Put somewhat simply, the argument was that in a society without our kind of freedom of speech or unrestricted access to communication such as the Internet, people would miss out on information and ideas that come from a free system and feel more psychologically constrained from venturing off the beaten path with innovative ideas. The Chinese would be limited, in this view, to knock-offs of U.S. technologies.
The government has also cracked down on use of virtual private networks that Chinese, especially young people, have used to “climb the wall” (i.e. find sites outside the “Great Firewall of China”). And recently, there were media complaints that at the top elite universities such as Tsinghua the anti-VPN policy was not being enforced strictly enough.
Clearly, though, Chinese progress has taken place despite these restrictions.
we should not naively assume that all good (or bad) things go together. Maybe freedom of political and cultural expression is not as important as we have thought for advances, say, in information technology. But it still might be more important for development of less technical or scientific ideas such as public policy proposals or cultural expressions.
So much for that bipartisan Senate bid to prevent the FBI from gaining expanded hacking powers. Senators Ron Wyden, Chris Coons and Steve Daines have failed to block changes to the US’ criminal procedure rules (specifically, Rule 41) that would let the FBI hack computers in any jurisdiction provided they have a search warrant. Texas Senator John Cornyn and other Republican leaders thwarted the measure. The rule change should take effect on December 1st, barring surprises.
The Department of Homeland Security and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence issued a joint statement earlier this month that condemned Russia for the attacks.
“Do not drop this in the cyber problem box, drop this in the Russia problem box,” Hayden suggested, saying the focus should be on the actor, not the means. “And by the way, that Russian problem box needs a bigger box, there’s a lot of stuff going on.”
Though there are aspects of cybersecurity that only government can handle, most of it will be driven by the private industry, Hayden said. Government can help the private sector by getting out of the way — removing liability, enabling legal protections, sharing information and redoing the classification system.
And since the government too depends on the private sector for security innovation, Hayden said he sides with Apple regarding whether the company should have to create a back door for the FBI to bypass iPhone encryption.
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more on surveillance, government in this IMS blog:
Social media has the potential to facilitate much closer relationships between libraries and their patrons. Current usage of social media by the library community generally remains ad hoc and somewhat experimental, but the uptake of these tools is accelerating, and they will likely play an increasingly important role in library service provision and outreach in the future. Taylor & Francis has produced a white paper that analyzes current practices relating social media’s use in the library and how this differs by librarian job role. The sample was taken from academic librarians around the world, which also allows us to examine differences by geographic location. The goal: to establish how librarians are currently using social media in their roles, the most useful social media tools and best applications for these tools in a library setting.
explores a variety of social media tools in terms of how they can be used to organize information and communities. Together, you will survey and use a variety of social media tools, such as Delicious, Diigo, Facebook, Goodreads, Google Hangouts, LibraryThing, Pinterest, Storify, Twitter, and more! You will also explore how social media tools can be used to organize and disseminate information and how they can be used to foster and sustain communities of learning.
With the widespread use of library technology that incorporates social media components, intelligent objects, and knowledge-sharing tools comes the ability of libraries to provide greater opportunities for patron engagement in those discovery systems through user-generated content. These features may include the ability of users to contribute commentary such as reviews, simple point-and-click rating systems (e.g. one star to five stars), or to engage in extensive discussions or other social interactions. This kind of content could transform authoritative files, alter information architecture, and change the flow of information within the library discovery system.
Across generations, concerns for privacy may dissipate with time as specific technologies take hold or as people become aware of a technology’s benefits and value those over their value for privacy.
Library Privacy Guidelines for Students in K-12 Schools
The proposed social media privacy law, scheduled to be considered by the state Senate Wednesday, bars any institution from asking or requiring an applicant or enrolled student to disclose a user name or password for a personal social media account.
Under the bill, a student could also not be prevented from participating in extracurricular activities if they refuse to disclose social media accounts or provide a list of contacts associated with those accounts.
the topics of privacy pertaining technology is becoming ubiquitous.
If you feel that the content of your class material can benefit of such discussions, please let us know.
Please have some titles, which can help you brainstorm topics for discussions in your classes:
Kif Leswig