Jason Q. Ng is a graduate student in East Asian Studies at the University of Pittsburgh and author of Blocked on Weibo, a book about censorship and sensitive topics in Chinese social media.

Citizen Lab Director Ron Deibert spoke about how repressive governments around the world have been getting assistance from Western technology companies.

May 14, 2013

This blog post reports on a malware attack in which a compromised version of Kakao Talk, an Android-based mobile messaging client, was sent in a highly-targeted email to a prominent individual in the Tibetan community. The malware is designed to send a user’s contacts, SMS message history, and cellular network location to attackers. This post was updated on 18 April 2013.

This edition of Social Media CyberWatch looks at new developments in privacy research, legal debates, and online service provider policies and decisions.

This edition of the Middle East and North Africa CyberWatch covers topics such as censorship and surveillance, blogger and netizen arrests, cyber attacks and technological developments from the region.

This edition of the Southeast Asia CyberWatch covers Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, and Vietnam.

In a report published by The School of Public Policy at the University of Calgary, professor Ron Deibert argues that Canada has potential to be a global leader in cyber security, but this opportunity is being squandered because of the lack of a clear strategy in this area.

This post describes the results of a comprehensive global Internet scan for the command and control servers of FinFisher’s surveillance software. It also details the discovery of a campaign using FinFisher in Ethiopia that may have been used to target individuals linked to an opposition group. Additionally, it provides examination of a FinSpy Mobile sample found in the wild, which appears to have been used in Vietnam.

Bloomberg Business Week reports on joint Citizen Lab and University of New Mexico research on surveillance in the TOM-Skype instant messaging client (Chinese version of Skype).