Calls are growing for an investigation into how commercial Pegasus spyware developed by Israel's NSO Group gets sold to autocratic governments and used to target journalists, lawyers, human rights advocates and others, with some lawmakers saying "the hacking-for-hire industry must be brought under control."
In the latest weekly update, four editors at Information Security Media Group discuss important cybersecurity issues, including the use of commercially available spyware and security risk management in the telecom sector.
This edition of the ISMG Security Report features an analysis of ongoing investigations into the use of NSO Group's Pegasus spyware to spy on dissidents, journalists, political rivals, business leaders and even heads of state - and discussion of whether the commercial spyware business model should be banned.
As ransomware continues to pummel organizations, if they do get hit, then from an incident response standpoint, what are the essential steps they should take to smooth their recovery? Veteran ransomware-battler Fabian Wosar, CTO of Emsisoft, shares essential steps and guidance for recovery.
APT 31, a China-linked hacking group, is targeting French organizations by exploiting home and office routers in an espionage campaign, warns CERT-FR, the French government's computer emergency readiness team that's part of the National Cybersecurity Agency of France, or ANSSI.
Following revelations that commercial spyware vendor NSO Group was able to exploit the latest model of the Apple iPhone to install surveillance software, experts describe how Apple could be doing more to lock down its iOS mobile operating system as well as curtail attacks by making them much costlier to run.
Can NSO Group and other commercial spyware vendors survive the latest revelations into how their tools get used? The Israeli firm is again being accused of selling spyware to repressive regimes, facilitating the surveillance of journalists, political opponents, business executives and even world leaders.
Many security experts and analysts are applauding the U.S. for calling out China's cyber behavior, especially after the White House had focused so much attention on Russia's cyber activities. But some are calling for bolder action.
The leaking of an alleged target list of 50,000 individuals, tied to users of NSO Group's Pegasus spyware, has prompted questions over the scale of such surveillance operations, if the use of commercial spyware gets sufficiently policed and whether the sale of spyware to certain countries should be blocked.
The Biden administration formally accused China's Ministry of State Security of conducting a series of attacks against vulnerable Microsoft Exchange servers earlier this year that affected thousands of organizations. This group is also accused of carrying out ransomware and other cyber operations.
The U.S. has indicted four Chinese nationals working with the nation's Ministry of State Security in connection with an alleged hacking campaign conducted from 2011 to 2018 that targeted universities and government entities to obtain trade secrets, medical research and other intellectual property.
The U.S and its allies formally accusing China of cyberattacks on Microsoft Exchange servers comes as no surprise because it's "indicative of the behavior of the administration in China for many years now," says Cybereason CSO Sam Curry.
A leak of 50,000 telephone numbers and email addresses led to the "Pegasus Project," a global media consortium's research effort that discovered how Pegasus spyware developed by NSO Group is being used in the wild.
A new exposé tracking how spyware has been used to target journalists and human rights advocates suggests attackers have been exploiting zero-day flaws in Apple applications and devices. Apple says the flaws, while serious, likely pose no risk to the vast majority of its users.
Cyberattackers used spyware from the Israeli firm Candiru to target at least 100 human rights defenders, dissidents, journalists and others across 10 countries, according to researchers at the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab, which tracks illegal hacking and surveillance.
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