Citizen Lab

Posts tagged “Citizen Lab”

Syria’s digital counter-revolutionaries

In this article, The Atlantic reports on the Syrian Electronic Army, an open and organized pro-government computer attack group that is operating with at least tacit support from the regime, who uses DDoS attacks, phishing scams, and other tricks to fight opposition activists online.

Citizen Lab Briefing – August 2011 Edition

The Citizen Lab is pleased to announce the publication of a monthly Citizen Lab Briefing, which will feature latest news from the Citizen Lab and its related projects, articles about our new publications and information about our upcoming events.

New Reports on Circumvention Tool Usage, International Bloggers, and Internet Control

The Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University has released three new publications as part of their circumvention project. Over the past two years, the Center has carried out a number of research activities designed to improve our understanding of the knowledge, usage, and effectiveness of circumvention tools as a means to promote access to information online in repressive online environments.

CBC Radio Calgary Interviews Dr. Rafal Rohozinski

On Tuesday, August 16, CBC Radio Calgary’s David Gray interviews Rafal Rohozinski on the future of cybersecurity. Dr. Rohozinski is in Calgary to speak at the Globalfest Human Rights Forum August 17th at 7:30am.

Listen to the full interview here.

Paper presentation by Canada Centre Visiting Research Fellow Karl Kathuria at the FOCI ’11 Workshop

On August 8, 2011, Canada Centre Visiting Research Fellow in International Broadcasting, Karl Kathuria, and a team from the Citizen Lab presented a paper titled Bypassing Internet Censorship for News Broadcasters at the first USENIX Workshop on Free and Open Communications on the Internet (FOCI ’11) in San Francisco, California. The paper is concerned with Internet censorship as a major problem faced by news organizations.

Canadian Software Used to Censor Web Abroad

In this article, CTV News reports on the role of Western companies in promoting censorship in the Middle East and North Africa. Specifically, it looks at Netsweeper Inc., a Canada-based developer of content filtering software, and its role in providing governments in Qatar, Yemen, and the United Arab Emirates with tools to filter online content.

Ron Deibert, director of the Citizen Lab, told CTV News that the recent controversy surrounding the Canadian company demonstrates that the Canadian federal government needs to take a clear position on content filtering, and within this, develop a clear foreign policy for cyberspace. For example, Deibert suggests that the Canadian government introduce legislation which makes it “illegal for Canadian companies to filter content in countries that violate the freedoms outlined in the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights.” In essence, “take a major international treaty of the 20th century, and apply it in a decidedly 21st century context.”

Deibert said that Canada should take on a leadership role on cyber policy “in international forums to spotlight and develop a kind of normative agreement that is consistent with the values we hold as a country.”

For the full article see here.

Securing the Cyber Commons 2011: Video Highlights

On March 27-28 2011 the Canada Centre for Global Security Studies at the  Munk School of Global Affairs and the SecDev Group (Ottawa) convened a  public forum entitled Securing the Cyber Commons: a Global Dialogue .

This video presents highlights of the two day event. A full video of  the opening plenary and panel will be made available soon. For  information on the upcoming 2012 Dialogue and future sponsorship opportunities   please contact: info@citizenlab.org

China linked to new breaches tied to RSA

Recent attacks on three U.S. defense contractors could be tied to cyberespionage campaigns waged from China, several security experts told CNET.

“The reality is, part of the basis of U.S. hegemony…has been the ability to leverage command of signals intelligence to have perspective on the motivations and activities of others. Cyberspace has equalized that, so all of a sudden we’re in a competitive intelligence environment,” said Rafal Rohozinski, a principal at SecDev who did research on targeted attacks on Tibet and others with supposed links to China. Those attacks were detailed in a “GhostNet” report in 2009.

“China has made no secret that they see cyberspace as the domain that allows them to compete with the U.S.,” Rohozinski said.

For full original article, see here