Security News
Microsoft is the subject of growing criticism in the US over allegations that its Bing search engine censors results for users in China that relate to sensitive subjects the state wants blocked. Republican Senator Marco Rubio has added his voice to criticism of the Redmond software giant for reportedly removing search results from Bing on human rights, democracy, climate change, and other sticky issues within China.
The Tor Project officially introduced WebTunnel, a new bridge type specifically designed to help bypass censorship targeting the Tor network by hiding connections in plain sight. Tor bridges are relays not listed in the public Tor directory that keep the users' connections to the network hidden from oppressive regimes.
China's censorship regime remains pervasive and far reaching, but the bureaucratic apparatus implementing it is unevenly developed and is not always well funded, according to a report released on Tuesday. The document analyzes censorship practices in the Middle Kingdom and concludes that "Despite the importance the CCP places on domestic information control, its censorship apparatus is unevenly developed and plagued by unfunded mandates."
Finish newspaper Helsinin Sanomat has created a custom Counter-Strike: Global Offensive map explicitly made to bypass Russian news censorship and smuggle information about the war in Ukraine to Russian players. Starting in March 2022, following its invasion of Ukraine, Russia began blocking international news outlets to implement tighter controls over what news reaches the Russian audience regarding the ongoing war.
In remarks made to Indian outlet The Economic Times, minister of state for electronics and IT Rajeev Chandrasekhar said the government's plan was to "Crack down on enemies of India, state actors, those with vested interests, child sexual abuse, and religious incitement" - but not on general news or comment. Over the weekend, the minister also raised the topic of having Big Tech pay to link to news stories published by India's media.
Popular instant messaging service WhatsApp has launched support for proxy servers in the latest version of its Android and iOS apps, letting users circumvent government-imposed censorship and internet shutdowns. "Choosing a proxy enables you to connect to WhatsApp through servers set up by volunteers and organizations around the world dedicated to helping people communicate freely," the Meta-owned company said.
Named "Torrents of Truth," the initiative is similar to "Call Russia," a project to help break through Russian propaganda and open people's eyes to what's happening in Ukraine. The initiative creates torrents that contain a text file with a list of credible news sources that Russians can trust and instructions on downloading and installing a VPN to secure anonymity from ISPs.
The Tor Project team has announced the release of Tor Browser 11.5, a major release that brings new features to help users fight censorship easier. The Tor Browser has been created specifically for accessing sites through The Onion Router network to offer users anonymity and privacy when accessing information on the internet.
The transparency organization Distributed Denial of Secrets has released 800GB of data from Roskomnadzor, the Russian government censorship organization. Specifically, Distributed Denial of Secrets says the data comes from the Roskomnadzor of the Republic of Bashkortostan.
Twitter is now accessible over the Tor network, allowing users in countries that banned it to continue accessing the social network's site. The new onion URL was announced today by security engineer Alec Muffett who announced that Twitter can now be accessed worldwide via the Tor browser.