The use of remote surveillance software against activists has been a feature of the ongoing conflict in Syria. Today, the EFF and Citizen Lab report on the use of a new toolkit by a previously observed attacker. This actor has been circulating malware which surreptitiously installs BlackShades RAT on victims machines.
A new report, entitled The Canadian Connection: An investigation of Syrian government and Hezbullah web hosting in Canada, continues Citizen Lab research into the intersection of the private sector, authoritarianism, and cyberspace regulation, turning our attention to a component of the Internet that does not typically receive the same amount of attention as filtering, surveillance, and computer network attack products and services: web hosting services.
Although Blue Coat has recently acknowledged the presence of their devices in Syria, this brief contributes to previous findings of devices in the country, documents additional devices in use in Syria, and identifies Blue Coat devices actively in use in Burma.
Between May and September 2023, former Egyptian MP Ahmed Eltantawy was targeted with Cytrox’s Predator spyware via links sent on SMS and WhatsApp after Eltantawy publicly stated his plans to run for President in the 2024 Egyptian elections. As Egypt is a known customer of Cytrox’s Predator spyware, and the spyware was delivered via network injection from a device located physically inside Egypt, we attribute the attack to the Egyptian government with high confidence.
هذا البعد الرقمي للقمع العابر للحدود – الذي نشير إليه بالقمع الرقمي العابر للحدود – أصبح بسرعة حجر الزاوية للقمع العابر للحدود بشكل يومي، ويشكل تهديدًا لحقوق وحريات المعارضين والنشطاء الذين يعيشون في المنفى.
这份报告阐述了数字化跨国镇压对居住在加拿大的活动家和异见人士有哪些影响。我们的结论是，数字化跨国镇压对这些群体产生了严重影响，包括对他们开展跨国人权宣传工作能力的影响。然而，遭受这种攻击的受害者几乎没有得到任何支持，到目前为止，加拿大政府的政策力度仍显不足。
The Citizen Lab’s response to the questionnaire of the U.N. Working Group on the use of mercenaries on the provision of military and security products and services in cyber space by cyber mercenaries and related actors and its human rights impact.
This submission outlines Canadian technology companies and the threat they pose to human rights abroad, as well as suggests mechanisms the Government of Canada’s RBC strategy can adopt to address the harmful impacts of Canadian-made technology.
The Information Controls Fellowship Program (ICFP) from the Open Technology Fund (OTF) supports research into how governments in countries, regions, or areas of OTF’s core focus are restricting the free flow of information, cutting access to the open Internet, and implementing censorship mechanisms, thereby threatening the ability of global citizens to exercise basic human rights and democracy; work focused on mitigation of such threats is also supported.
This is a living resource document providing links and descriptions to litigation and other formal complaints concerning digital surveillance and the digital surveillance industry.
