Wednesday, March 10, 2021

UK The spy cops scandal

Covid Baby Bust Has Governments Rattled

A falloff in baby production has capitalists very worried.


How to poison the data that Big Tech uses to surveil you MIT Technology Review




Czech city halls, public offices, and schools will commemorate the 62nd anniversary of the Tibetan rebellion against Chinese occupation by raising Tibetan flags today. 


ANU study details how dark web drug networks can elude law enforcement agencies

MARCH 9, 2021 7:11PM
Evin PriestNCA NewsWire

An Australian National University study has conceded the online war on drugs may never be won despite ongoing attempts from law enforcement agencies to disrupt networks selling lethal synthetic opioids.

The dark web is a hidden collective of internet sites only accessible by a specialised web browser.

It is the easiest marketplace for drug users to buy synthetic opioids such as fentanyl – a designer drug 80 times more potent than morphine – and a drug originally created to sedate elephants called carfentanil.



 In 2010, Mark Stone, an environmental activist, was on holiday with his girlfriend when she discovered a passport for a man called Mark Kennedy in the glove box of their van. The man she was in a relationship with was actually a police officer who for seven years had lived deep undercover at the heart of the environmental protest movement. When the story became public, senior officers tried to quell the outcry, insisting that Kennedy was merely a rogue officer. In fact, the opposite was true. Kennedy was just one of many footsoldiers who had been routinely infiltrating political groups, mostly on the left, since as far back as 1968.



The spy cops scandal: part 1



The spy cops scandal: Part 2


Gizmodo: “In the latest in a string of security-related headaches for Microsoft, the company warned customers Tuesday that state sponsored hackers from China have been exploiting flaws in one of its widely used email products, Exchange, in order to target American companies for data theft. In several recently published blog posts, the company listed four newly discovered zero-day vulnerabilities associated with the attacks, as well as patches and a list of compromise indicators. Users of Exchange have been urged to update to avoid getting hacked. Microsoft researchers have dubbed the main hacker group behind the attacks “HAFNIUM,” describing it as a “highly skilled and sophisticated actor” focused on conducting espionage via data theft. In past campaigns, HAFNIUM has been known to target a wide variety of entities throughout the U.S., including “infectious disease researchers, law firms, higher education institutions, defense contractors, policy think tanks and NGOs,” they said. In the case of Exchange, these attacks have meant data exfiltration from email accounts. Exchange works with mail clients like Microsoft Office, synchronizing updates to devices and computers, and is widely used by companies, universities, and other large organizations. In the case of Exchange, these attacks have meant data exfiltration from email accounts…”


Some Things You Always Wanted to Know about CVs and Weren’t Afraid to Ask (guest post)

“One of the many things we don’t usually teach people how to do in our profession is construct a CV.” (more…)