How foreign governments spy using PowerPoint and Twitter by Ron Deibert.
From the post:
News of the alleged Russian hack of the Democratic National Committee’s computers has riveted the world. But for many, this kind of behavior is a daily reality.
Take, for example, Syrian Nour Al-Ameer. A former vice president of the Syrian National Council, Al-Ameer was arrested and sent to infamous Adra prison in Damascus, where she was brutally tortured. Upon release, she became a refugee, fleeing to relative safety in Turkey.
Or so she thought.
Al-Ameer is a net savvy activist, and so when she received a legitimate looking email containing a PowerPoint attachment addressed to her and purporting to detail “Assad Crimes,” she could easily have opened it. Instead, she shared it with us at the Citizen Lab.
As we detail in a new report, the attachment led our researchers to uncover an elaborate cyberespionage campaign operating out of Iran. Among the malware was a malicious spyware, including a remote access tool called “Droidjack,” that allows attackers to silently control a mobile device. When Droidjack is installed, a remote user can turn on the microphone and camera, remove files, read encrypted messages, and send spoofed instant messages and emails. Had she opened it, she could have put herself, her friends, her family and her associates back in Syria in mortal danger.
Our organization has been documenting these type of targeted digital attacks against civil society for years. We’ve found that these organizations are assaulted by state-based cyberespionage the same way that governments and industry are. But they’re far less equipped to deal, and receive significantly less attention from policymakers.
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A great post that quickly becomes disappointing because Ron cites only the usual suspects, China, Ethiopia, Latin America, Russia, Sudan, and the United Arab Emirates as governments that spy on civil society.
The United States has confessed to spying on its citizens. Illegally.
You can argue the United States hasn’t murdered its citizens on the basis of illegal surveillance (that we know of), but it has overthrown governments and inflicted hundreds of thousands of casualties upon civilian populations based on its spying efforts.
Every citizen, of all countries, deserves robust defenses against spying governments.
All governments, no exceptions.