Cyber Brief: Tech Giants Block Fake Accounts

FEATURED STORY

MONDAY, AUGUST 27, 2018

U.S. TECH GIANTS BLOCK FAKE ACCOUNTS

Facebook, Twitter, and Google moved to scrub their social media platforms of disinformation campaigns originating in Iran and Russia. Facebook said it deleted more than 600 fake accounts, pages, and groups that were trying to spread false news and politically provocative content in the United States, Latin America, the Middle East, and beyond. Twitter said it suspended more than 280 accounts, while Google terminated nearly 40 YouTube channels.

Separately, Microsoft said it seized websites created in recent weeks by hackers linked to the Russian military. The sites, which imitated conservative U.S. think tanks and other institutions, attempted to steal user passwords and other credentials.

Tech leaders including Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s chief operating officer, and Jack Dorsey, Twitter’s chief executive, are expected to appear before the U.S. Senate next week to answer questions about online disinformation campaigns. (WSJ, Reuters, NYT)

HACKERS

Russian Trolls: A new study in the American Journal of Public Health examines how Russian internet trolls and bots attempted to use the U.S. debate over vaccines to stoke social discord during the 2016 election. (NYT)

DNC: The Democratic National Committee said that what they thought was an outside attempt to hack into its voter database was actually a cybersecurity test. The confusion reportedly stemmed from a lack of communication between national and state party officials. (WSJ, NYT)

COURTS

NSA Worker: A Georgia federal court sentenced former National Security Agency contractor Reality Leigh Winner to five years in prison for leaking classified information about a Russian hacking investigation. She pleaded guilty in June to unlawful retention and transmission of national defense information. (ABC)

Facebook Fugitive: Paul Ceglia, a New York man who spent more than 3 years as a fugitive after being charged with trying to defraud Mark Zuckerberg, has been arrested in Ecuador and may be extradited to the U.S.. (Reuters)

ON THE HILL

Privacy Policy: Facebook, Google, IBM, Microsoft, and other U.S. tech firms have reportedly been aggressively lobbying the Trump administration to start outlining a federal privacy law. Analysts say companies are keen to neutralize a tough data privacy law passed in California in June. (NYT)

Trump on Social: The president accused social media companies of “silencing millions of people” in an act of “censorship.” Without providing proof, Trump has previously said social media platforms were were “totally discriminating against Republican/Conservative voices.” (Reuters)

Russia Sanctions: The Trump administration imposed sanctions on several Russian entities for attempts to help a Russian company skirt previous U.S. sanctions levied in response to the country’s malicious cyber activities. (Reuters)

DOD

AI Strategy: Defense Secretary Jim Mattis sent a memo to the president in May requesting that the administration develop a national strategy for artificial intelligence. The memo, which has not been reported before, said the U.S. was falling behind rival countries in AI tech. (NYT)

PRIVATE SECTOR

Alphabet: The Google parent looks to be broadening its operations in China beyond just internet search. Among other recent steps, the company has opened a research center, and its self-driving car unit Waymo has quietly registered a Shanghai subsidiary. (NYT)

THE WORLD

Australia: The government effectively blocked Chinese telecom giants Huawei and ZTE from Australia’s 5G mobile network, although it did not mention them by name. The move adds more tension to the increasingly troubled bilateral relationship. (WSJ)

China: Despite China’s efforts to protect consumers in recent years, companies and individuals can reportedly buy people’s personal information from shadowy online brokers for pennies. (Reuters)

MUST READS

NotPetya: The Most Devastating Cyberattack in History: “The release of NotPetya was an act of cyberwar by almost any definition—one that was likely more explosive than even its creators intended. Within hours of its first appearance, the worm raced beyond Ukraine and out to countless machines around the world, from hospitals in Pennsylvania to a chocolate factory in Tasmania. It crippled multinational companies including Maersk, pharmaceutical giant Merck, FedEx’s European subsidiary TNT Express, French construction company Saint-Gobain, food producer Mondelēz, and manufacturer Reckitt Benckiser. In each case, it inflicted nine-figure costs,” writes Andy Greenberg in Wired.

How FireEye Helped Facebook Spot a Disinformation Campaign: “The discovery of the disinformation campaign also represented a shift in the bad behavior that independent security companies are on the lookout for. Long in the business of discovering and fending off hacking attempts and all sorts of malware, security companies have expanded their focus to the disinformation campaigns that have plagued Facebook and other social media for the past few years,” write Kate Conger and Sheera Frenkel in the New York Times.

How Hackers Made $100 Million From Stolen Press Releases: “The case exemplifies the way insider trading has been quietly revolutionized by the internet. Traders no longer need someone inside a company to obtain inside information. Instead, they can turn to hackers, who can take their pick of security weaknesses: a large corporation or bank may have good in-house security, but the entities it works with — such as financial institutions, law firms, brokerages, smaller investment advisories, or, in this case, newswires — might not,” writes Isobel Koshiw for The Verge.

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