Tag Archive for: Call

Israeli Phone Malware Maker QuaDream Apparently Ready To Call It Quits After Suffering A Little Negative Press

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from the cut-and-run dept

QuaDream, an NSO-alike with links to Israeli intelligence services, first made international headlines last year. And for the worst reasons. An investigation found QuaDream (much like NSO Group) sold iPhone-targeting malware to human rights violators. These sales were given a layer of plausible deniability, handled by a Cyprus-based company on behalf of QuaDream as it collected paychecks from garbage governments around the world.

Further investigations by Toronto’s Citizen Lab uncovered QuaDream’s links to abusive governments, as well as abusive deployments of its zero-click exploit to target journalists, activists, political opponents, and dissidents.

Now that it’s inadvertently shown its whole ass to the world, it appears QuaDream is shuttering its malware business. Or at least, it wants all of its critics to believe that’s what it’s doing. But this report from the Jerusalem Post indicates that, real or otherwise, QuaDream’s latest business move involves laying off several actual human beings.

Israeli cybersecurity company QuaDream reportedly summoned many of its 40 employees to a pre-termination hearing on Monday ahead of widespread layoffs, according to Globes.

This downturn (and its unfortunate effect on 40 QuaDream employees) is being blamed on everything but the company’s decision to sell to human rights abusers, engage in zero oversight of its products’ deployment, and it’s willingness to engage in ethically awful business practices.

QuaDream, which can only access iPhones (unlike NSO, which can also hack Android phones), wrote in a letter to court: “The crisis in the industry began due to the public disclosure of the activities of some of the companies from 2018 onward, which resulted in the fact that in November 2011, the US Chamber of Commerce put NSO and Candiru on its blacklist. Immediately after that, at the start of 2022, the regulator in Israel decided to reduce the number of countries to which it is allowed to sell the companies’ products in the industry from 102 to only 37, which caused a severe economic crisis in the entire industry.”

When you’re blaming a government for harming your business by…

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How A Satellite Hack Became a Cybersecurity Wakeup Call

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How A Satellite Hack Became a Cybersecurity Wakeup Call

People around the world rely on satellites for their internet connections, credit card transactions–and even to keep track of time.  Last year, a suspected Russian-led satellite hack exposed how vulnerable they are to security breaches, from individual hackers seeking to pilfer information for profit and governments looking to weaken their adversaries.

Bloomberg reporter Katrina Manson joins this episode to discuss the fallout of the hack, and what companies and governments are doing to harden their systems against future attacks. Plus, James Pavur, a hacker and Pentagon cybersecurity expert, walks us through how satellites are compromised, and what we can do to keep our own data from being stolen. 

Mar 13, 2023

Bloomberg Podcasts

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As Bellone seeks ‘centralized’ computer network, other Suffolk officials call for autonomy

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As Suffolk moves to put a crippling ransomware attack behind it, County Executive Steve Bellone is touting a newly centralized infrastructure as the core of his efforts to secure disparate county networks.

“Never again will the county information technology security team be in a position to ask someone to fix a security concern because they don’t have the credentials to access systems themselves,” Bellone said.

But as Bellone moves to implement the long-planned vision, some other elected county officials, citing the impacts of the ransomware lockdowns and concerns about confidentiality, are pushing for even greater levels of security autonomy. The Sept. 8 cyberattack shut down a broad cross-section of county services for several months.

“We’re getting the hell out of there completely,” Suffolk Comptroller John Kennedy said of the county’s network. By the second week of March, Kennedy said he expects to have his office’s audit software application onto a remotely hosted cloud-based system that will be “completely off any county hardware or servers.”

WHAT TO KNOW

  • A newly centralized infrastructure is the core of County Executive Steve Bellone’s efforts to secure disparate Suffolk networks.
  • Other elected county officials, citing concerns about confidentiality, are pushing for even greater levels of security autonomy.
  • The consultant helping Suffolk search for its first chief information security officer said the county’s “siloed” structure of networks is one of its biggest challenges.

The structure of the network presents it with long-recognized challenges, with the county’s main Department of Information Technology controlled by the Bellone administration and sub-networks with varying levels of autonomy and responsibility, including separate IT staffs, and under elected officials such as the county clerk and sheriff.

Experts said that “siloed” approach can leave the county more vulnerable to attack and more of a challenge to get cyber insurance. But political realities leave others concerned that ceding too much control to the county executive could expose sensitive information to political foes.

Security dome over disparate systems

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Transport Workers’ Union will call an emergency safety summit in the wake of attack on female bus driver

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The Transport Workers’ Union will call an emergency safety summit in the wake of a violent attack on a female bus driver in which she was allegedly spat on, kicked and punched by a 13-year-old boy and an older accomplice.

The woman was driving the route between Elizabeth Quay and Curtin University when she pulled into the Victoria Park station about 7.15pm on Thursday and was set upon in an assault TWU WA branch secretary Tim Dawson said was “hard to put into words”.

According to police, a 13-year-old boy who had boarded the bus with a disorderly group of people spat on the bus driver before stealing her phone.

It is alleged the same boy then kicked the victim, before a 32-year-old woman punched her in the face.

The brutal alleged attack came just two days after Edward Charles Abbott pleaded guilty to attacking a 66-year-old TransWA bus driver in Geraldton.

When Abbott was denied a seat on the bus, he struck the bus driver multiple times to the head, causing him to lose his front teeth, and leaving him with cutting and bruising to his mouth and face. He will be sentenced next month.

In a statement on Sunday, the TWU said it was time to call time on the “safety crisis” on WA buses, saying the union has had enough of State Government “inaction on anti-social behaviour and bus driver attacks”.

Mr Dawson has called on bus operators to release union delegates and health and safety representatives from work next Wednesday so they could attend the urgent safety summit.

He said the union had long been calling for an increase to security measures for bus drivers, including bringing security services in-house rather than contracting it out.