Security News
Infosec in brief US Congress nearly killed a reauthorization of FISA Section 702 last week over concerns that it would continue to allow warrantless surveillance of Americans, but an amendment to require a warrant failed to pass. Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act has long been contentious for its provisions which indirectly allow surveillance of US citizens without a warrant.
On March 27 the commission asked telecommunications providers to weigh in and detail what they are doing to prevent SS7 and Diameter vulnerabilities from being misused to track consumers' locations. The FCC has also asked carriers to detail any exploits of the protocols since 2018.
This is applications, so it is not because I've nuked state in a browser. It is applications for services for which I am paying money.
The Iran-affiliated threat actor tracked as MuddyWater (aka Mango Sandstorm or TA450) has been linked to a new phishing campaign in March 2024 that aims to deliver a legitimate Remote Monitoring...
The Washington Post is reporting on the FBI's increasing use of push notification data-"Push tokens"-to identify people. The police can request this data from companies like Apple and Google without a warrant.
Last week, someone posted something like 570 files, images and chat logs from a Chinese company called I-Soon. I-Soon sells hacking and espionage services to Chinese national and local government.
The U.S. State Department said it's implementing a new policy that imposes visa restrictions on individuals who are linked to the illegal use of commercial spyware to surveil civil society...
Using a panel of 709 volunteers who shared archives of their Facebook data, Consumer Reports found that a total of 186,892 companies sent data about them to the social network. On average, each participant in the study had their data sent to Facebook by 2,230 companies.
It finally admitted to buying bulk data on Americans from data brokers, in response to a query by Senator Weyden. This is almost certainly illegal, although the NSA maintains that it is legal until it's told otherwise.
For a country that prides itself on being free, America does seem to have an awful lot of spying going on, as the new Street Surveillance Hub from the Electronic Frontier Foundation shows. The Hub contains detailed breakdowns of the type of surveillance systems used, from bodycams to biometrics, predictive policing software to gunshot detection microphones and drone-equipped law enforcement.