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bellingcat - Guccifer Rising? Months-Long Phishing Campaign on ProtonMail Targets Dozens of Russia-Focused Journalists and NGOs - bellingcat
by Alberto Cammozzo Aug. 12, 2019

Aug. 12, 2019

<https://www.bellingcat.com/news/uk-and-europe/2019/08/10/guccifer-rising-mo…> A sophisticated phishing campaign targeting Bellingcat and other Russia-focused journalists has been much larger in scope than previously thought, and has lasted at least several months. Bellingcat has identified dozens of targeted individuals across Europe and the US, with the earliest reported attack dating back to April 24 2019, and some evidence suggesting the campaign was in the works since as early as March 2018. The target list of over 30 individuals using the end-to-end encrypted ProtonMail email service includes journalists, researchers, academics, employees of NGOs, and political activists. The one common denominator among them is the Russian focus of their research or activist work. Contrary to previous reporting, we have identified that at least some of the phishing attempts have been successful. Bellingcat believes that this phishing campaign formed a stage of a larger ongoing hacking operation against Russia-focused journalists and researchers, with various methods and tools – some of them without precedent – being deployed against a range of targets both within Russia and abroad. “A Most Sophisticated Phishing Campaign” The active, publicly traceable phase of the phishing operation began in early April, when the perpetrators registered 11 domains intended to impersonate ProtonMail mail-hosting sites. Bellingcat has identified five different domains that were used between April 26 and July 23 2019 when our initial reporting led to a closure of the offending websites. These domains were: my[.]secure-protonmail[.]com (April and May) actions[.]protonmail[.]team (May) mail[.]protonmail[.]systems (June and July) mail[.]protonmail[.]sh (July) mailprotonmail[.]ch (July) Based on an iterative technique termed “timestamp pivoting” , cyber-threat consultancy ThreatConnect were able to identify a further 6 domains registered by the same actor group. Timestamp-pivoting essentially scouts out domains that were registered in close temporal proximity to the known offending domains, on the assumption that cyber-crime actors purchase groups of a domains in single transactions to minimize resources and exposure. mailprotonmail[.]com protonmail[.]direct protonmail[.]gmbh prtn[.]app protonmail[.]support prtn[.]xyz Timestamp-pivoting is not a bullet-proof algorithm and is most likely to be successful with domains registered via smaller registrars. That said, ThreatConnect’s approach did identify two domains that we later confirmed to have been used for the phishing operation. We have not identified phishing traffic from any of the remaining registered domains. The phishing messages were in fact fake ProtonMail alerts suggesting the user’s email account had been compromised or subject to suspicious login attempts. The messages came in 8 different flavors, with one of the following subject lines: “Unrecognised connection was blocked”, “Unknown connection alert”, “Someone knows your Protonmail password”, “ProtonMail unusual network activity”,” ProtonMail suspicious login”, “Keep your ProtonMail account secure”, “New login from unusual place”, and “Someone exported your encryption keys”. The sender optically appeared usually as support[(a)]protonmail.ch (a legitimate Protonmail service account). However, email headers show that this sender address was spoofed, with the actual sender – visible in the Return-Path variable – being one of three external web-mail accounts hosted at the Germany-based free mail service mail.uk: kobi.genobi[(a)]mail[.]uk, notifysendingservice[(a)]mail[.]uk and xavi.alonso[(a)]mail[.]co[.]uk. We identified that the first two of these accounts have been closed by Mail.de after the initial publications about phishing campaign; however the third one is not closed as of press time. (Our detailed list of questions about the incident and the closure of the two accounts to the owner of the mail service, Mail.de GmbH, were not answered.) [...]

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nuova iniziativa: "The Syllabus"
by J.C. DE MARTIN Aug. 12, 2019

Aug. 12, 2019

Anticipazione: https://mailchi.mp/the-syllabus/tech-week32 ----- https://the-syllabus.com/ Welcome to the Syllabus! We are only launching in September. But we are quite happy that you found us this early. *What are we about?* Let’s first tell you what we do /not/ want to do: organize /all/ of the world’s information. We leave such utopian endeavours to others. Rather, we focus on salvaging the best, the deepest, and the most important bits from the ever-growing great pile of information. We thus aspire to unearth, polish, and promote the hidden gems that often go unnoticed in today’s cacophony of ceaseless notifications, absurd listicles, and surveillance-soaked clickbait. Our credo is simple: the vital information that one needs in order to interpret and change the world is already here – it’s just not evenly distributed. Over the last six years, we have developed a novel and eclectic method that pairs humans and algorithms to discover only the best and the most relevant information. And we do this in important categories that have been neglected by other platforms in their pursuit of surveillance/advertising revenues. We thereby uncover the best and most original items on a given theme amidst all the latest academic papers, books, talks and podcasts. Given our expertise in the history, economics and politics of technology – an area of critical importance to today’s debates – it is here that we have first deployed our algorithmic and editorial powers. Now that we are satisfied with our methodology, we want to make the results of our work available to others. Ours is not a view from nowhere. We seek to read reality from a critical perspective, tilting towards research that either offers bold and intellectually risky interpretations of the problems at hand or research that offers pragmatic, original, and transformative solutions to them. We have no patience for sentences without content that are in mass production in today’s factories of the obscure. We also do not doubt that 99% of academic papers, books, and conferences put most people to sleep – we are no exception – so we focus on finding the 1% that is rich and not boring, but that gets lost amid the arcane and the unnecessary. *What does all this mean for you?* In the months to come, we will be launching weekly curated selections of our best new readings, videos and podcasts on important or emerging issues, most of them related to technology: the future of work, the political and social impact of artificial intelligence, the policy debate surrounding Big Tech, the social and philosophical consequences of digitisation, the geopolitics of technology and cybersecurity, the many uses (and abuses) of the blockchain. Editions dedicated to many other topics are being “forged” as we write this. If you are interested in receiving any of our digests or finding out more about The Syllabus, please sign up with your email address below.

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Could Robots Teach Sign Language to Children with Autism?
by don Luca Peyron Aug. 10, 2019

Aug. 10, 2019

To start with, let’s answer the first big question:* Why use a robot in autism therapy?* People with autism have an attention preference to objects over people (Kerola et al., 2009), and children with autism have shown more interest toward therapy when it involves technological or robotic components (Robins et al., 2006). Additionally, a robot’s operation can be strictly controlled, which can make therapy less overwhelming for autistic people (Kozima et al., 2009). An interesting paper.... dl https://towardsdatascience.com/could-robots-teach-sign-language-to-children… _________________________ www.universitari.to.it via XX settembre 83, Torino tel. 011 5156239

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Researchers break iPhone’s FaceID by putting modified glasses on unconscious people
by Giacomo Tesio Aug. 10, 2019

Aug. 10, 2019

https://thenextweb.com/plugged/2019/08/09/apple-faceid-iphone-broken-biomet… “We found weak points in FaceID,” the researchers explain. “It allows users to unlock while wearing glasses […] if you are wearing glasses, it won’t extract 3D information from the eye area when it recognizes the glasses.” Using this trick, the researchers were able to unlock a victim’s phone and even transfer their funds through a mobile payment app. [...] ____ Il giornalista sminuisce il problema perché è difficile mettere gli occhiali alla vittima senza che se ne accorga. Sono l'unico a trovarlo un po' ingenuo? Giacomo

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How Social Media Shapes Our Identity | The New Yorker
by J.C. DE MARTIN Aug. 9, 2019

Aug. 9, 2019

How Social Media Shapes Our Identity The Internet constantly confronts us with evidence of our past. Are we losing the chance to remake ourselves? By Nausicaa RennerAugust 8, 2019 https://www.newyorker.com/books/under-review/how-social-media-shapes-our-id… (Sent from my wireless device; please excuse brevity and typos (if any))

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Facebook ha brevettato... lo shadow ban
by Giacomo Tesio Aug. 9, 2019

Aug. 9, 2019

http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=… Users of social networking system are provided with user interface elements permitting the user to post comments on pages within the social networking system. Pages may be provided for any non-user entity, including for example, pages for businesses, products, concepts, etc. Embodiments provided herein permit page moderators to ban certain content from being displayed on a page. For example, the social networking system may receive a list of proscribed content and block comments containing the proscribed content by reducing the distribution of those comments to other viewing users. However, the social networking system may display the blocked content to the commenting user such that the commenting user is not made aware that his or her comment was blocked, thereby providing fewer incentives to the commenting user to spam the page or attempt to circumvent the social networking system filters. _____ Il sistema di brevetti in tutto il suo splendore. :-D https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_banning Giacomo

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Un cloud federato per la sovranità tecnologica europea: il piano
by Giacomo Tesio Aug. 9, 2019

Aug. 9, 2019

Bel pezzo di Paolo Vecchi su Agenda Digitale. https://www.agendadigitale.eu/infrastrutture/un-cloud-federato-per-la-sovra… Sempre più di frequente diverse amministrazioni pubbliche e private stanno rivedendo le scelte tecnologiche fatte in passato e un po’ alla volta iniziano, in modo più o meno pubblico, ad abbandonare l’utilizzo di software e piattaforme cloud vendute da produttori statunitensi per implementare alternative a livello regionale e nazionale. Come vedremo, non si tratta di una tendenza pericolosa, anzi. Alcuni, forse a causa di inesperienza e conoscenza di come il cloud e l’informatica si è evoluta negli ultimi anni, hanno visto in questi cambiamenti un pericolo per la crescita digitale dell’Europa ed una limitazione nel movimento delle informazioni a livello europeo che il Digital Single Market promuove. Quello che i meno esperti nel settore non hanno visto è che i cambiamenti in atto sono indispensabili per dotare l’Europa di strumenti e tecnologie che permettano una reale implementazione di un mercato comune digitale per l’Europa a beneficio dei cittadini Europei. In un recente articolo questi cambiamenti, come il divieto di utilizzare Office365 nelle scuole in quanto non rispetta la privacy o la richiesta da parte del ministro dell’economia tedesco Peter Altmaier di avere i dati dei cittadini tedeschi in Germania anziché in Cina o negli Stati Uniti, dimostrano che diverse amministrazioni pubbliche hanno già capito che esistono dei problemi di sicurezza nazionale e privacy ed il loro intento è quello di spingere le istituzioni Europee ad agire a livello comunitario non di creare dei Cloud chiusi a livello nazionale. [...] # Il governo tedesco indica la via “La Germania ha diritto alla sovranità tecnologica. I data center dei cloud non dovrebbero essere installati solo negli Stati Uniti o in Cina, ma anche in Germania, in modo che le aziende europee, che desiderano un’archiviazione sicura e affidabile dei dati, abbiano questa opzione” [...] # L’Europa verso il cloud federato La bozza del piano infatti riporta diverse volte la volontà di creare un Cloud federato tra gli Stati membri per facilitare lo scambio dei dati in modo sicuro e rispettando la privacy dei cittadini. [...] Il Piano Digitale è ancora in forma di bozza per cui si possono notare ancora alcune lacune e tutti i cittadini europei sono invitati ad inviare le delle raccomandazioni o preferenze. La bozza sicuramente sta andando nella direzione giusta ma si nota che purtroppo diversi esempi di buona governance digitale di diversi Stati membri non sono stati inclusi nel progetto. [...] Includendo nel Piano Digitale l’adozione ufficiale a livello Europeo del formato aperto dei documenti (ODF) come già hanno fatto l’Inghilterra, il Portogallo, la Svezia, la Francia ed altri, elimineremmo l’obiezione di compatibilità con prodotti proprietari che viene usata da molti per bloccare i cambiamenti necessari. Seguendo l’esempio del Ministero della Difesa italiano che ha implementato LibreOffice o quello della Gendarmeria Nazionale Francese che utilizza Linux anche sui desktop potremmo essere meno vulnerabili ad attacchi informatici, che hanno comunque come target primario Windows e Microsoft Office, e di ridurre ulteriormente il lock-in in prodotti che spingono sempre più gli utenti a migrare verso Cloud proprietari. Se poi venisse anche incluso il Manifesto per la Sovranità Tecnologica, che ho contribuito a scrivere, l’Europa diventerebbe sicuramente l’esempio per il resto del mondo di come la trasformazione Digitale deve essere implementata per servire i cittadini e non le multinazionali.

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Introducing the Principled Artificial Intelligence Project
by don Luca Peyron Aug. 9, 2019

Aug. 9, 2019

Berkman Klein’s Cyberlaw Clinic launched the “Principles Artificial Intelligence Project” to map AI principles and guidelines. The team created a data visualization <https://ai-hr.cyber.harvard.edu/primp-viz.html> to summarize their findings, and will later publish the final data visualization, along with the dataset itself and a white paper detailing their assumptions, methodology and key findings. https://ai-hr.cyber.harvard.edu/primp-viz.html A very smart tool to me, have a nice day dl _________________________ www.universitari.to.it via XX settembre 83, Torino tel. 011 5156239

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Schoolchildren in China work overnight to produce Amazon Alexa devices
by don Luca Peyron Aug. 9, 2019

Aug. 9, 2019

Leaked documents show children as young as 16 recruited by Amazon supplier Foxconn work gruelling and illegal hours. Lo sapevamo, ma talora può essere utile saperlo di più. Buona lettura dl https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2019/aug/08/schoolchildren-i… _________________________ www.universitari.to.it via XX settembre 83, Torino tel. 011 5156239

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Europe must set its own digital rules
by J.C. DE MARTIN Aug. 9, 2019

Aug. 9, 2019

https://www.ft.com/content/b8056536-b911-11e9-96bd-8e884d3ea203 (Sent from my wireless device; please excuse brevity and typos (if any))

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