On September 12-14, 2012, the Citizen Lab and Canada Centre for Global Security Studies at the University of Toronto, the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) organized a workshop on international cyber norms for the second time at MIT in Cambridge, MA.

After years spent as one of the world’s most strictly controlled information environments, the government of Burma has recently begun to open up access to previously censored online content. Recent OpenNet Initiative testing has confirmed these changes, finding a variety of opposition websites, critical blogs and foreign news sites to be accessible after years of blocking. This ONI blog post discusses recent developments in Burma and reports on the results of testing conducted in Burma in August 2012.

In this report, Citizen Lab Security Researcher Morgan Marquis-Boire describes analysis performed on malicious software used to compromise a high profile dissident residing in the United Arab Emirates. The findings indicate that the software is a commercial surveillance backdoor distributed by an Italian company known as Hacking Team. The report also describes the potential involvement of vulnerabilities sold by the French company, VUPEN.

This edition of the Latin America and The Caribbean CyberWatch covers related developments from Cuba, Jamaica, Venezuela, Chile, and Brazil.

In this blog post, we report on malware campaigns targeting human rights groups using the PlugX Remote Access Trojan (RAT).

Citizen Lab Post-Doctoral Fellow Brenden Kuerbis wrote an article titled European Privacy Authorities Object to ICANN Whois Proposals for the CircleID news website.

Online freedom of expression continues to be threatened in Vietnam, as recently proposed regulations and the ongoing detainment and harassment of bloggers combine with an already strict regime of Internet filtering to further restrict information openness. This OpenNet Initiative blog post describes these new developments and reports on the results of testing conducted in Vietnam from April to August 2012.

In this technical brief, Citizen Lab Senior Security Analyst Seth Hardy presents a detailed analysis of IEXPL0RE RAT, a remote access trojan targeting human rights-related organizations.

2012 Google Policy Fellow Kieran Bergmann wrote an article titled Outsourcing Censorship for the Canadian International Council on how governments in Asia are increasing their efforts to control online content.

This report, written and coordinated by Citizen Lab Technical Advisor Morgan Marquis-Boire, analyzes several samples we believe to be mobile variants of the FinFisher Spy Kit targeting iPhone, Android, Blackberry, Windows Mobile and Symbian platforms. It is a follow-on to a previous research brief, From Bahrain with Love: FinFisher's Spy Kit Exposed?, that analyzed several pieces of malware targeting Bahraini dissidents.