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Ex-Twitter employee sentenced over spying for Saudi Arabia
A former Twitter employee was sentenced to three-and-a-half years in prison this week after his August conviction of spying for Saudi Arabia.
Recommended Reading: How do we deal with giant space garbage?
Recommended Reading highlights the week's best long-form writing on technology and more.
'Fortnite' Chapter 2 Season 2 is all about secret agents and Deadpool
Fortnite might be one of the biggest games in the world, but the battle royale shooter has certainly had its problems over the past few months. Thanks to a mix of the Christmas holidays, the introduction of a new game engine and various other development issues, Epic Games' main issue was that it was forced to delay the the second instalment of Chapter 2, leaving players to "enjoy" the longest season on record. Thankfully, that all changes today with the introduction of Season 2: Top Secret.
Recommended Reading: The CIA-owned company that helped it spy on the world
The intelligence coup of the century Greg Miller, The Washington Post This in-depth report tells the story of Crypto AG, a Switzerland-based company that achieved success for its code-making machines during World War II. The company eventually became a popular manufacturer of encryption machines for countries around the world in the decades that followed. Governments trusted that communications between diplomats, military and spies were being kept secret. What those nations didn't know was that Crypto AG as actually owned by the CIA -- originally in partnership with West German intelligence. What's more, the access allowed the two countries to to rig the tech so they could easily crack any code.
Huawei technicians may have helped African governments spy on opponents
An investigation by The Washington Post claims Huawei technicians helped African governments spy on domestic political opponents. According to the report, Huawei employees helped authorities in Uganda intercept encrypted messages and allowed police in Zambia to locate opposition bloggers. Such claims could validate the Trump administration's concerns about the use of Huawei technology in the US, but Huawei told The Washington Post it has "never been engaged in 'hacking' activities."
Government hackers reportedly broke into Russian search company Yandex
According to a Reuters report, hackers working for Western intelligence agencies reportedly broke into Yandex, the company often referred to as "Russia's Google." The hackers were allegedly looking for technical information that would indicate how Yandex authenticates user accounts. That information could help a spy agency impersonate Yandex users and obtain access to their private messages.
Super Micro will move chip production out of China to avoid spying claims
Server maker Super Micro is moving production out of China in a bid to allay US customer's concerns about spying, even though independent tests have shown no evidence of cyber espionage. The company has also announced its plans to expand its own in-house manufacturing facilities to help mitigate any perceived risks. A spokesperson for the company said Super Micro wants to be more self-reliant "without depending only on those outsourcing partners whose production previously has mostly been in China."
WikiLeaks claims Ecuadorian Embassy is spying on Assange
WikiLeaks says it has uncovered a comprehensive spying operation against its founder Julian Assange in the Ecuadorean embassy, where he has sought political refuge since 2012. According to the group, thousands of photos, videos and audio recordings have been taken of Assange, in what WikiLeaks editor-in-chief Kristinn Hrafnsson calls a "total invasion of privacy."
Maria Butina: Cybersecurity charlatan, spy
Russian spy Maria Butina's cover story was her academic interest and expertise in cybersecurity. As cover stories go, this unfortunately wasn't a hard one to pull off. Except anyone holding even the barest minimum of cybersecurity knowledge could've figured out in minutes that Butina's interest in cybersecurity was minimal.
After Math: Every robot was parkour fighting
What a week it's been! Between Google's Pixel 3 event, the lucky landing by the Soyuz crew, and Facebook's latest data breach, it feels like we almost didn't have time to talk about Waymo's self-driving cars, Amazon's new line of picker bots and Boston Dynamic's gymnastic droids. But that's where the After Math comes in.
When your Uber driver is a spy
Like other migrating beasts, hackers travel huge distances for feeding, breeding, and breaking things every summer -- at Defcon in Las Vegas. The way they move about the city is driven primarily by the availability of free booze at corporate parties or the convenience of air-conditioned infosec habitats; the heat makes them torpid. As such, everyone takes taxis, Ubers, and Lyfts everywhere, day and night.
Julian Assange’s protection reportedly cost Ecuador millions
The Ecuadorian government has apparently spent quite a bit of money protecting Wikileaks founder Julian Assange. According to a report at The Guardian, the country had the full assent of the Ecuadorian president and foreign minister to "protect" Assange via "Operation Guest," which sources say had an average cost of at least $66,000 per month.
Homeland Security claims DJI drones are spying for China
A memo from the Los Angeles office of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement bureau (ICE) has been making the rounds and it states some pretty bold claims about drone-maker DJI. The memo, which was apparently issued in August, says that the officials assess "with moderate confidence that Chinese-based company DJI Science and Technology is providing US critical infrastructure and law enforcement data to the Chinese government." The LA ICE office also says that the information is based on, "open source reporting and a reliable source within the unmanned aerial systems industry with first and secondhand access."
'SpyParty' finally looks like a real video game
Yes, after nearly 10 years, SpyParty is still in development. It's an underground kind of independent, competitive game where one player is a spy attempting to complete discreet tasks at a fancy party, and another player is positioned outside, observing the scene through the scope of a sniper rifle. The spy attempts to blend in with a room full of AI-powered partygoers while the sniper tries to figure out which one is actually human (and then shoot that character, of course). And soon, it will all be much, much prettier. Creator Chris Hecker, artist John Cimino and newly hired environment artist Reika Yoshino today revealed five new characters, a professional-looking UI and an updated version of SpyParty's largest map, Veranda. The update isn't live yet, but it's coming in hot and should be available in the game's paid beta late tonight.
US catches spies shipping military tech to Russia
We got some good things out of the Cold War, like James Bond and John le Carré, but overall it was a pretty miserable period in history. That's why it's so disappointing to see Russia trying to bring us back to those dark with its latest attempt at ham-fisted espionage. The Department of Justice has announced that an American and two Russians have been arrested on suspicion of running a scheme to swipe military technology. According to a statement, the trio posed as a US electronics startup in order to buy integrated circuits for weapons.
ICYMI: Wannabe spies can make iPhone screens invisible
try{document.getElementById("aol-cms-player-1").style.display="none";}catch(e){}Today on In Case You Missed It: A phone repair store owner in Turkey is trying to copyright his invention that syncs a pair of eyeglasses to the screen of an iPhone. When the glasses are worn, the screen can be viewed perfectly. But to anyone without the glasses, the screen will only look white. However, buyer beware. The stories about this man's invention detail his claim that he's inserted a chip into the eyeglasses to view the screen, but it may be that he just removed the polarized filter built into the phone, then pointed polarized 3D glasses at it.
Stop nuclear devastation at the heart of a never-ending Cold War
One of the most famous works of graffiti on the Berlin Wall is a depiction of former Soviet general secretary Leonid Brezhnev kissing the ex-leader of East Germany, Erich Honecker, full on the mouth. In the painting, called "My God, Help Me to Survive This Deadly Love," Brezhnev's profile commands a majority of the frame, as if he's sucking the life out of Honecker. It's based on a 1979 photo of the two statesmen locked in a fraternal kiss, a common form of greeting among socialist leaders at the time. Fast-forward to 2016, and artist Rafal Fedro of inbetweengames has updated this iconic painting to feature US president Barack Obama and Russian president Vladimir Putin sharing their own fraternal kiss. In the studio's latest project, a spy tactics game called All Walls Must Fall, the new painting represents a wide range of scenarios: heightened tensions between the two countries that were at the heart of the Cold War, fraying international relationships, or the subconscious desire to love our enemies, to name a few interpretations.
Samsung says its new Tizen TVs will be harder to hack
Samsung has announced that its next generation of Tizen smart TVs will be a lot harder to crack than before. The firm has created Gaia, a security product for its 2016 range that promises to do for TV what Knox did for its smartphones. Some of the features promised include locking your credit card information with a smartphone-style pin, encrypting the data it sends out and a built-in anti-malware system. In addition, the TVs will ship with physical encryption chips to make it that much harder for others to access your microphone or, in some models, webcam.
Researchers develop multifaceted insect eyes for UAVs
A team of researchers from the Laboratory of Intelligent Systems at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL) have developed a tiny new set of electronic eyes for drones that are based on the multifaceted peepers of insects. These eyes are built specifically for the next generation of very small surveillance UAVs -- like that origami quadcopter EPFL developed earlier this year -- and operate very differently than the conventional cameras currently employed. Insect eyes aren't capable of generating a high spatial resolution (that is, the number of pixels you can pack into a single image) so they instead rely on quickly reacting to changes in how light reflects or objects appear as the insect moves. The new camera works the same way.
Hacking Team's clients are a who's who of despotic regimes
We now know that Hacking Team, a company responsible for building some of the more notorious surveillance software in the world, was also doing business with some of the most notorious regimes in the world. How do we know this? Well a treasure trove of leaked documents found their way online. Thanks internet! Wondering just what actors the company was working with and how bad they were? Well check we've got a handy breakdown for you below.
