ISDEI Instituto de Seguridad, Defensa y Estudios Internacionales

Pierluigi Paganini Security experts speculate that the Chinese government is using mobile spyware, MITM attacks and Internet monitoring to control Hong Kong protesters. In the last days I published the news regarding a spyware used to spy on activists in Hong Kong , a Fake Occupy Central app is targeting the smartphones of the activists belonging to the Occupy Central pro-democracy movement. The malicious app has circulated online claiming to be an instrument to coordinate the members of the Occupy Central pro-democracy movement. The spyware is disguised as an Android App , dubbed Code4HK, designed by a group of coders trying to improve government transparency in Hong Kong. “No one from the Code4hk community has done any application on OC at the moment nor sent the message out.” Code4HK in an official statement . It’s a shared opinion that the Chinese government might be using smartphone apps to spy on pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong, the suspect is confirmed by the analysis ma...

by Pierluigi Paganini Two researchers Brandon Wilson and Adam Caudill released their attack code to reprogram USB sticks and use them as an undetectable hacking instrument. Recently, two independent researchers, Brandon Wilson and Adam Caudill, have released the code which can reprogram, benign USB devices turning them in malicious components. The experts published the code on the Github raising the question related to the real level of security of USB devices, the BadUSB research was approached in detail during the Black Hat conference when security experts demonstrated the risks related to an undetectable menace carried via USB. Security experts explained that USB devices can be used to compromise personal computers in a potential new type of attacks that could not be detected with all actual security protections. Karsten Nohl, chief scientist with Berlin’s SR Labs, discovered that bad actors could exploit this new class of attacks loading malicious software low-cost computer chi...

"What the world believes and what actually happened are quiet different" The current president of Rwanda, Paul Kagame, has long been portrayed as the man who brought an end to the killing and rescued his country from oblivion. Now there are increasing questions about the role of Kagame's Rwandan Patriotic Front forces in the dark days of 1994 and in the 20 years since. The film investigates evidence of Kagame's role in the shooting down of the presidential plane that sparked the killings in 1994 and questions his claims to have ended the genocide. It also examines claims of war crimes committed by Kagame's forces and their allies in the wars in the Democratic Republic of Congo and allegations of human rights abuses in today's Rwanda. Former close associates from within Kagame's inner circle and government speak out from hiding abroad. They present a very different portrait of a man who is often hailed as presiding over a model African state. Rwanda's...

Pakistani Taliban says it will provide fighters "and every possible support" to help ISIL defeat its enemies. By Al Jazeera and agencies The Pakistani Taliban has declared it is backing the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant and ordered fighters across the region to help the group in its campaign to set up an Islamic caliphate. In a message on Saturday marking the Muslim festival of Eid al-Adha, the Pakistani Taliban said it fully supported ISIL's goals to set up a "caliphate" in the Middle East. "Oh our brothers, we are proud of you in your victories. We are with you in your happiness and your sorrow," said the statement by Shahidullah Shahid, a Taliban spokesman, on Saturday. "In these troubled days, we call for your patience and stability, especially now that all your enemies are united against you. Please put all your rivalries behind you. "All Muslims in the world have great expectations of you... we are with you, we will provide you...

Reuters / Ints Kalnins The EU’s chief criminal intelligence agency warms that the threat of “online murder” is set to rise, with cyber criminals increasingly targeting victims with internet technology. The European Police Office (Europol) said governments are ill-equipped to counter the menace of “injury and possible deaths” spurred by hacking attacks on critical safety equipment, the UK Independent reported Sunday. Security experts called for a paradigm shift in forensic science which would react to the ‘Internet of Everything’ (IoE) – the dawning era of technological interconnectedness where increasingly more human activity is mediated through computer networks. “The IoE represents a whole new attack vector that we believe criminals will already be looking for ways to exploit," according to the Europol threat assessment . “The IoE is inevitable. We must expect a rapidly growing number of devices to be rendered ‘smart’ and thence to become interconnected. Unfortunately, we fee...