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Short doc ‘Terror Contagion’ Investigates NSO And Its Pegasus Malware – Deadline

December 11, 2021/in Computer Security

With voting now underway for the Oscar documentary shortlists, Academy Doc Branch members are choosing from a variety of contenders, including one from Laura Poitras, director of the Oscar-winning Citizenfour.

Poitras’s earlier film focused on Edward Snowden, the whistleblower who revealed the existence of the National Security Agency’s secret and widespread surveillance programs. Her latest, the short documentary Terror Contagion, exposes the activities of a private Israeli company called NSO, maker of a spyware program that has been deployed by numerous governments to crack down on journalists, human rights advocates and others.

“It’s classified as a cyber weapon. This is how extremely violent and invasive this technology is,” Poitras tells Deadline. “NSO Group, this Israeli company, sells to other countries, often countries that have a very bad history or track record of human rights.”

A graphic from 'Terror Contagion' — A graphic from ‘Terror Contagion’ showing people and entities targeted by Pegasus software
Neon

Like Saudi Arabia. The regime allegedly used the Pegasus software to infect the phone of a Saudi dissident, Omar Abdulaziz, and through that hack was able to monitor one of his friends, the journalist Jamal Khashoggi, a columnist for the Washington Post. Khashoggi was subsequently assassinated in 2018; according to an assessment by the U.S. Director of National Intelligence, Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman approved the murderous operation.

“This assassination was empowered with Israeli software,” Shourideh Malavi, a researcher with Forensic Architecture (FA), says in the film. FA describes itself as a “research agency, based at Goldsmiths, University of London, investigating human rights violations including violence committed by states, police forces, militaries, and corporations.” FA’s investigation of NSO Group and Pegasus forms the basis of Terror Contagion.

Abdulaziz was living in exile in Canada when he was hacked through Pegasus malware, evidence that governments can now track perceived opponents no matter their location.

“Pegasus is being used by governments… to track people even once they have left their…

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GT investigates: Hacking China’s medical institutes at COVID-19 outbreak, targeting aerospace firms during China’s space missions – Cyberattacks from India disclosed

November 5, 2021/in Internet Security

Photo: CFP

Evil flower in South Asia, lure of beauty, ghost war elephants roaming the Himalayas … To many people, these fantastic code names could only be heard in thrilling hacker movies.

It turns out that they are real groups from India with possible intelligence background and state support. Investigations conducted by several of China’s leading cybersecurity companies have revealed a sophisticated network: they have constantly attacked defense and military units as well as state-owned enterprises in China, Nepal and Pakistan over the past few years, and such attacks are on the rise under new disguises of international trendy topics.

These groups are normally known as Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) organizations made up of hackers with government support which focuses on persistent network attacks against specific targets. APT organizations are spread in the world, with many having been active in attacks against key infrastructure and government departments for years.

Chinese cybersecurity analysts and diplomatic relations observers often mention that the next world war will be fought not on the ground, or in the air or under water, but virtually in the cyberspace.

China has been victims of cyberattacks for many years and the rising attacks from India once again revealed the severity of the situation and the urgency to speed up building of a cybersecurity safeguard system.

Cyberattacks from South Asian regions, mainly India, target China’s key industries. Graphic: Feng Qingyin/GT

Accurate attacks with varying tactics

India is a country that might be overlooked as a threat by the world intelligence community. Even other countries in South Asia may not be fully aware of its advanced cyber capabilities.

“Since March, we have detected several phishing activities targeting government, defense and military units, as well as state-owned enterprises in China, Pakistan, and Nepal,” Antiy Labs, one of China’s renowned cybersecurity companies, said in a statement sent to the Global Times.

The organization behind the attacks is from India and its activities can be traced back to as early as April 2019. So far, more than 100 phishing counterfeit websites created by the…

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Germany Investigates Russia Over Pre-Election Hacking

September 11, 2021/in Computer Security

BERLIN — The federal prosecutor’s office in Germany said Friday it was investigating who was responsible for a spate of hacking attempts aimed at lawmakers, amid growing concerns that Russia is trying to disrupt the Sept. 26 vote for a new government.

The move by the prosecutor’s office comes after Germany’s Foreign Ministry said this week that it had protested to Russia, complaining that several state lawmakers and members of the federal Parliament had been targeted by phishing emails and other attempts to obtain passwords and other personal information.

Those accusations prompted the federal prosecutor to open a preliminary investigation against what was described as a “foreign power.” The prosecutors did not identify the country, but they did cite the Foreign Ministry statement, leaving little doubt that their efforts were concentrated on Russia.

In their statement, the prosecutors said they had opened an investigation “in connection with the so-called Ghostwriter campaign,” a reference to a hacking campaign that German intelligence says can be attributed to the Russian state and specifically to the Russian military intelligence service known as the G.R.U.

Russia was found to have hacked into the German Parliament’s computer systems in 2015 and three years later, it breached the German government’s main data network. Chancellor Angela Merkel protested over both attacks, but her government struggled to find an appropriate response, and the matter of Russian hacking is now especially sensitive, coming in the weeks before Germans go to the polls to select a successor after her nearly 16 years in power.

Moscow denied that it was involved in the hacking efforts.

“Despite our repeated appeals through diplomatic channels, our partners in Germany have not provided any evidence of Russia’s involvement in these attacks,” the Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova, said at a briefing on Thursday.

She called the German allegations “an extraordinary P.R. story,” and said the suspicions appeared to be the work of “individual politicians” intent on showing they would “not allow gaps in trans-Atlantic solidarity,” in an apparent reference to…

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