Spain fires intelligence chief amid phone hacking scandals

Spain’s government fired the director of the country’s top intelligence agency Tuesday following the hacking of politicians’ cellphones, including the devices of the prime minister and several supporters of the Catalonia region’s secession. The National Intelligence Center, or CNI, has Read More …

Indian government wants VPNs to store and share user data

A new directive from the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) and the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-in) requires VPN companies to retain data on users for 5 years or more. The rule also applies to data centres Read More …

UK: Met Police is planning to root out corruption with use of ‘sophisticated’ new technology that monitors officers’ phones and computers

The Met Police will root out rogue officers with ‘sophisticated’ new technology that can monitor officers’ emails and work phones for ‘alarming’ words in a bid to stamp out its culture of sexism and racism. The software will also track Read More …

Android security: Flaw in an audio codec left two-thirds of smartphones at risk of snooping, say researchers

Millions of Android devices were vulnerable to a remote code execution attack due to flaws in an audio codec that Apple open-sourced years ago but which hasn’t been patched since. Researchers at Check Point discovered a bug in Apple Lossless Read More …

UK spy agencies sharing bulk personal data with foreign allies was legal, says court

A privacy rights org this week lost an appeal in a case about the sharing of Bulk Personal Datasets (BPDs) by MI5, MI6, and GCHQ with foreign intelligence agencies. The British agencies have never stated, in public, whether any of Read More …

Inspector general says the U.S. post office surveillance program exceeded legal authority

An inspector general probe into the U.S. Postal Service surveillance program, known as iCOP, concluded that the agency did not have the legal authority to conduct the sweeping intelligence collection and surveillance of American protesters and others between 2018 and Read More …

UK government starts public consultation on telco security

While the world watches Ukraine, the British government has quietly dropped a requirement for mass surveillance of UK internet users by their service providers. A public consultation on the Electronic Communications (Security Measures) Regulations 2022, currently in draft, revealed that Read More …

How a Saudi woman’s iPhone revealed hacking around the world

A single activist helped turn the tide against NSO Group, one of the world’s most sophisticated spyware companies now facing a cascade of legal action and scrutiny in Washington over damaging new allegations that its software was used to hack Read More …

Israel Police Used NSO’s Pegasus Spyware Against Top Gov’t Officials, Journalists and Activists

Israel Police used NSO’s Pegasus spyware to hack the phones of public figures, including protest leaders, journalists, government employees and associates of former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, according to a report by Calcalist on Monday. According to the report, the Read More …