TechLetters #46 - Europe accuses Russia of cyberattacks. Russia demands information on alleged cyberattacks from USA. Chinese disinformation strategy. ICRC wants to mark systems with a Red Cross.
Security
Russia wants explanations? For real. Russia is demanding clarifications from the USA concerning "cyberattacks on their elections". "comprehensive explanations regarding the cyber attacks from American territory recorded during the elections"? Detailed demand here: “At the same time, we note that during the recent elections, the Central Election Comission of Russia faced an unprecedented number of cyber attacks. 50% of them were detected to be conducted precisely from the territory of the United States. The purpose of these hacks is to discredit our electoral system. We would like to receive detailed explanations of this case from the American side”. It was a distributed denial of service attack, so attack on availability of the electoral systems. There’s more! Russia "does not rule out the possible imposition of sanctions against these states” (source).
Europe condemns Russia for cyberattacks. Oficially condemns Russian cyber operations in Europe “targeting numerous members of Parliaments, government officials, politicians, and members of the press and civil society”. In front of the United Nations General Assembly (source document). Those political cyber operations are targeting, among others, Germany, Lithuania, Poland. They have an impact on domestic situations, which is a clear breach of sovereignty. If Russia would manage to influence the results of Sunday's elections in Germany, it must be remembered that this would consequently impact on the entire Europeans Union. That is why it is treated seriously. There’s more. Germany announced Russian cyberattacks on German Federal Statistical Office. The reason is it actually oversees Sunday’s election. "internal election server wasn’t affected by this attack". Close, though not direct on election infrastructure. Still, Russia officially refuted the accusations of the European Union. "We are ready to consider any facts, but the facts (from EU) Are not given to us,". Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergei Lavrov said. So, where does this lead?
Chinese disinformation strategy. A new branch of Chinese army is the Strategic Support Force (解放军 战略 支援部队) which took charge of the areas of cyber and electronic warfare. Very nice handbook on Chinese disinformation (in French, English version soon, so I hear).
Digital protective emblems. Hypothetical proposals for a 'digital red cross/crescent' emblem marking systems/infrastructure as protected from cyberattacks under international humanitarian law. If this was to be a technical writeup, sadly no details inside except maybe for "it should use public-key infrastructure". Which is not bad in itself. But The immediate problem is: who will be the source of trust of the granted PKI-based emblems? The International Committee of the Red Cross? I don't think this is so simple to reconcile, technical competencies-wise. But if not the ICRC, who else could be accepted as neutral and impartial?
Fraud up. Fraud in UK has risen to a level of “national security threat”, according association of banks. £754m stolen from customers during the first half of 2021 (up 30%) (press). A lot of it is due to the covid-19 risk theme.
Privacy
Not so private relay? Defeating Apple's Private Relay to get the user's IP address, using WebRTC. “Because Safari doesn’t proxy STUN requests through iCloud Private Relay, STUN servers know your real IP address. This isn’t an issue on its own, as they have no other information; however, Safari passes ICE candidates containing real IP addresses to the JavaScript environment. De-anonymizing you then becomes a matter of parsing your real IP address from the ICE candidates — something easily accomplished with a web application.”. That should be simple to address. That said, similar attacks were already known for a while. So it’s a privacy design issu
Technical censorship capability in Chinese smartphones. Lithuanian Defense Minister instructed citizens to avoid buying Chinese smartphones. He also advised that one should be thrown out. “"Our recommendation is to not buy new Chinese phones, and to get rid of those already purchased as fast as reasonably possible," Defence Deputy Minister Margiris Abukevicius told reporters in introducing the report.”. They have built-in technical censorship functions. Government report points to source-code functions. From the report: “Analyzing the performance of the Xiaomi device, the researchers found that it had the technical capability to censor the content downloaded to it. Even several manufacturer's gadgets on your phone, including the Mi Browser, periodically receive a list of keywords to block from the manufacturer. When it detects that the content you want to send contains words in the list, the device automatically blocks that content. … "Once the device determines that the content contains certain keywords, the device performs filtering of this content and the user cannot see it ... list regularly downloaded from the server … this functionality is activated remotely by the manufacturer ... for all countries using Xiaomi devices … At the time of the study, the list included 449 keywords or groups of keywords in Chinese characters, such as "Free Tibet," "Voice of America," "Democratic Movement," "Longing Taiwan Independence," and more. “". German Federal Office for Information Security will investigate the matter. German politicians are very concerned.
Technology Policy
UK AI strategy. United Kingdom wants to become an AI superpower. At the expense of data protection? "unlocking the power of data". The strategy also speaks of governance and future regulations, as well as “aligning” data protection frameworks.
Other
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