Nice try, GRUciffer. What many security experts deemed a pathetically thin front for a Russian intelligence operation has effectively been exposed as such, per a report in The Daily Beast. The person(s) controlling “Guccifer 2.0,” the online persona that claimed to be a lone, Romanian hacker and who took credit for hacking the Democratic National Committee in 2016, apparently failed to connect to a VPN service before logging onto a social media site (probably WordPress or Twitter), thereby exposing the trickster’s actual IP address. The digital footprints trace back to the Moscow headquarters of the GRU, Russia’s military intelligence directorate. We’re not surprised.
Pry it from my cold, dead hands. Police are using the fingerprints of dead suspects to unlock phones. For criminal investigators in states like New York and Ohio, the practice has become commonplace, Forbes reports. Cops do not seem to believe they require a warrant to attempt to access the encrypted contents of a dead target’s Apple iPhone this way. Apparently, the privacy protections enjoyed by the living are not afforded to the recently deceased.
Ouch, that burns. Earlier this month Kaspersky Lab, a Russian cybersecurity giant, exposed a malware campaign dubbed “Slingshot” that for six years compromised thousands of devices in and Africa and the Middle East. The operation was apparently part of a U.S.-led intelligence operation aimed at countering terrorism from the likes of ISIS and al-Qaeda, CyberScoop reports. Complicating the matter: Kaspersky is currently embroiled in a legal feud with the U.S. over allegations that its software poses a risk to national security. It’s unclear whether the Russian company expected its report would expose such a sensitive military mission.
Changing of the guard. In the wake of controversies surrounding Russia-funded election ads and Cambridge Analytica’s improper acquisition of user data, Alex Stamos, Facebook’s chief security officer, is said to be leaving the company by August. His team has apparently dwindled from 120 people to three in recent months. Meanwhile, Michael Coates, Twitter’s chief information security officer, is departing to found a cybersecurity startup. Michael Zalewski, director of information security engineering at Google, said on the same day he was leaving his post by month’s end.
Leaving this here, since we all have beef with Facebook.
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