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Decrypted: The tech police use against the public
There is a darker side to cybersecurity that’s frequently overlooked.
Just as you have an entire industry of people working to keep systems and networks safe from threats, commercial adversaries are working to exploit them. We’re not talking about red-teamers, who work to ethically hack companies from within. We’re referring to exploit markets that sell details of security vulnerabilities and the commercial spyware companies that use those exploits to help governments and hackers spy on their targets.
These for-profit surveillance companies flew under the radar for years, but have only recently gained notoriety. But now, they’re getting unwanted attention from U.S. lawmakers.
In this week’s Decrypted, we look at the technologies police use against the public.
THE BIG PICTURE
Secrecy over protest surveillance prompts call for transparency
Last week we looked at how the Justice Department granted the Drug Enforcement Administration new powers to covertly spy on protesters. But that leaves a big question: What kind of surveillance do federal agencies have, and what happens to people’s data once it is collected?
While some surveillance is noticeable — from overhead drones and police helicopters overhead — others are worried that law enforcement are using less than obvious technologies, like facial recognition and access to phone records, CNBC reports. Many police departments around the U.S. also use “stingray” devices that spoof cell towers to trick cell phones into turning over their call, message and location data.
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Neutrino employees who once worked for a controversial surveillance tech company will leave Coinbase
Last month, Coinbase’s acquisition of blockchain analytics startup Neutrino was criticized because of the founders’ ties to a controversial surveillance technology company called Hacking Team. Today Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong said in a blog post that employees of Neutrino who previously worked at Hacking Team will transition out of Coinbase instead of joining its team in London as originally planned.
Neutrino maps blockchain networks, focusing on crypto token transactions, and one of its main services is working with law enforcement to track stolen digital assets, investigate ransomware attacks and analyze activity on the “darknet.” Before launching Neutrino, CEO Giancarlo Russo, CTO Alberto Ornaghi and chief research officer Marco Valleri worked at Hacking Team, a security and surveillance tech company that has been criticized for selling products to governments with a history of human rights violations, including Egypt, Kazakhstan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Sudan and Turkey. As The Intercept reported in 2015, Hacking Team’s malware has also been found on the computers of activists and journalists.
The close link between Hacking Team and Neutrino concerned many members of the blockchain community. Amber Baldet, CEO of Clovyr and the former lead of JP Morgan’s blockchain program, told Motherboard that “given the number of accounts Coinbase has opened, how they choose to implement compliance tools and their relationship with law enforcement will impact a lot of people.”
In his post, Armstrong said there was “a gap in our diligence process” while Coinbase was shopping for a blockchain analytics startup to acquire.
“While we looked hard at the technology and security of the Neutrino product, we did not properly evaluate everything from the perspective of our mission and values as a crypto company,” he wrote. “We took some time to dig further into this over the past week, and together with the Neutrino team have come to an agreement: those who previously worked at Hacking Team (despite the fact that they have no current affiliation with Hacking Team), will transition out of Coinbase. This was not an easy decision, but their prior work does present a conflict with our mission. We are thankful to the Neutrino team for engaging with us on this outcome.”
“Coinbase seeks to be the most secure, trusted, and legally compliant bridge to cryptocurrency,” he added. “We sometimes need to make practical tradeoffs to run a modern, regulated exchange, but we did not make the right tradeoff in this specific case. We will fix it and find another way to serve our customers while complying with the law.”
Coinbase achieved an $8 billion valuation last October after raising a $300 million Series E and is focused on broadening its user base from consumers to institutional investors. Neutrino’s eight employees had planned to move to Coinbase’s office in London as part of the acquisition.
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Experts Find A Third Hacking Team Flash Exploit, Call For An End To The Madness
TrendMicro has posted yet another 0day AKA urgent Flash hole that could put your data at risk. The Hacking Team, a group of professional hackers who supplied governments with hacking tools and whose entire information database was recently leaked, used this exploit to attack computers without the user’s knowledge. The new vulnerability, CVE-2015-5123, follows two other 0day exploits.… Read More
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