3010, 2024

DeepSec 2024 Talk: The Tyrant’s Toolbox – Julian & Pavle B.

Sanna/ October 30, 2024/ Conference/ 0 comments

Social media, and our communications systems, have devoured any semblance of privacy, putting the eyes and ears of authoritarian and wannabe fascist types into the pockets of each of us; radically erasing whatever distance once existed between those who exercise authority and the human objects of their control, both at home and abroad. As Professor Ronald J. Deibert, founder of Citizen Lab, eloquently highlights in his book “Reset: Reclaiming the Internet for Civil Society”: “…recent years have brought about a disturbing descent into authoritarianism, fueled by and in turn driving income inequality in grotesque proportions the rise of a kind of transnational gangster economy.” As we continue our descent into a global madness fueled by AI, spyware, algorithms, and misinformation, tyrants around the world continue to expand their toolbox. Through our talk, we examine

Read More

0311, 2023

DeepSec 2023 Talk: Oil – But at What Cost: Azerbaijan and the EU’s Murky Partnership – Pavle Bozalo

Sanna/ November 3, 2023/ Conference

Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the European Union has rightfully sought to reduce its dependence on Russian oil with the ultimate aim of completely eliminating it. In this quest for trustworthy oil suppliers, Brussels has turned to countries such as Azerbaijan who, although wealthy in oil, have dubious human rights records and who, in many ways, are at the forefront of cyber surveillance and cyberwarfare. This quest has come at a cost, with the EU keeping mum on Azerbaijan’s armed invasion of the Nagorno-Karabakh territories southwards of Armenia – a scenario otherwise eerily similar to Russia’s armed invasion. As it cracks down on spyware within the EU, the European Commission buys Azeri President Aliyev’s oil, apparently unaware of hackers from Baku rolling out spyware and remote access trojans. Not only do Armenian officials find

Read More

2910, 2019

DeepSec 2019 Talk: Chinese Police and CloudPets – Abraham Aranguren

Sanna/ October 29, 2019/ Conference, Security

[In our Call for Papers we mentioned that DeepSec and specifically DeepINTEL will have a connection to geopolitics. Well, the following description of a presentation at DeepSec gives you an idea of what we meant.] This talk is a summary of three different security audits with an interesting background: First, CloudPets, their epic track record, what we found and what happened afterwards. Next, two mobile apps by Chinese Police: “BXAQ” and “IJOP”, both related to surveillance of ethnic minorities, but in different ways. Stay tuned. Part 1: CloudPets Wouldn’t it be cool, for a parent far from home, to be able to record a voice message with their phone and make the sound come out of a soft toy that children can hug? That’s the idea of CloudPets. Children can even respond directly from

Read More