TechLetters #93 - cyberwarfare tactics, US warns from travelling to Montenegro due to cyberattack, Privacy Architectural Change remodel how the Web works, UK preparing to work without electricity
Security
Montenegro has a big problem. Key State systems (Ministry of Finance, critical infrastructure) have been hacked. Ransomware. Suspected Russia. In a major precedent, the US Embassy issued an official precedential warning ... This has never been done before. Was this an overreaction? Perhaps. We don’t know what led to such a decision. Still: a precedent. France and US sent cyber-technical/investigation help. It seems to be the work of Cuba ransomware group and the government eventually the government started to steer back from the “Russia” narrative. The impact is significant, with really many government systems affected or disconnected. It seems that the government communication about this issue is very poor. They lack competent people, it is evident.
Samsung data breach. Unknown number of users. Those affected are not only in US.
Cyberwar tactics. Interesting tactic of (non-government!) operators. Campaign to get geotagged photos from Russian soldiers via chat, pretending to be women; then giving the data to Ukraine's army for the bases to be blown up. “…identified a remote Russian base near occupied Melitopol in southern Ukraine. Then, using fake profiles of attractive women on Facebook and Russian social media websites, they tricked soldiers into sending photos that they geolocated, and shared with the Ukrainian military … a few days later, they watched on TV as the base was blown up by Ukrainian artillery” Would be a direct involvement in war effort?
Privacy
My analysis describing web architectural changes. Driven by privacy, but it appears that it is difficult to navigate this evolution. Those early well-informed will have an edge, of course. Some will likely go out of business (like, completely) due to their inactivity.
Technology Policy
US is prohibiting the export of certain technologies to Russia and China. By Nvidia, AMD. Significant technology effects. But the many ways of employing such technologies are easily imaginable, including in military applications. No concrete, specific products mentioned, but a cap on performance capabilities, limitations. So it works also for future products. Consequence: it places China/Russia permanently “a few years behind” the industry standard. While China/Russia are able to produce their own chips, these are not those with high performance.
Japan wants to get rid of floppy disks. No, really. Country procedures/bureucracy require them, so this technology is still “alive”. Good luck fighting bureaucracy!
UK is preparing for days without electricity. So: no copiers, no email, no printers. Civil servants will use technology from beginning of XIX century: carbon paper, to make copies.
Blocking content. Cloudflare (infrastructure company that, among others, protects against some cyberattacks) is blocking a discussion forum. Due to a lot of, well, "revolting content" (also, death threats), on this platform. Cloudflare considers their decision dangerous. This case is about balancing the eventual consequences of hard choices. “While we believe that in every other situation … it would have been appropriate as an infrastructure provider for us to wait for legal process, in this case the imminent and emergency threat to human life which continues to escalate causes us to take this action … the individuals that used the site to increasingly terrorize will feel even more isolated and attacked and may lash out further. There is real risk that by taking this action today we may have further heightened the emergency”
Other
In the US, people have their air conditioning shut down. Remotely. Total loss of temperature control control in the event of an energy emergency, let's say: such a tariff. Possible thanks to connected thermostats. In this case, with user’s agreement. Technically possible in general.
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