#spyware for mobile

[p2ii]

ive got the boop button on mobile. maybe wait a bit or close and re open tumblr

oooh cool, I'll give it a shot!

[orbitbrain]

Chinese Spyware Targets Uyghurs Through Apps: Report

Chinese Spyware Targets Uyghurs Through Apps: Report

Home › Mobile Security Chinese Spyware Targets Uyghurs Through Apps: Report By AFP on November 11, 2022 Tweet Cybersecurity researchers said they have found evidence of Chinese spyware in Uyghur-language apps that can track the location and harvest the data of Uyghurs living in China and abroad. Uyghurs are a Turkic Muslim minority predominantly in China’s northwestern region of Xinjiang, where a…

[lavenderselkie]

If my workplace thinks they can force me to download their apps onto my personal mobile device they have another thought coming. I am currently running their sketchy ass app on Bliss OS on one of my thinkpads from a live disc and they can kiss my ass about it.

[0sbrain]

here's a list of mozilla add-ons for all of you tumblrinas out there to have a better internet experience

also, if you like my post, please reblog it. Tumblr hates links but i had to put them so you adhd bitches actually download them <3 i know because i am also adhd bitches

BASIC STUFF:

AdGuard AdBlocker / uBlock Origin : adguard is a basic adblock and with origin you can also block any other element you want. for example i got rid of the shop menu on tumblr

Privacy Badger : this add on will block trackers. if an element contains a tracker it will give you the option to use it or not

Shinigami Eyes: this will highlight transphobic and trans friendly users and sites using different colors by using a moderated database. perfect to avoid terfs on any social media. i will explain how to use this and other add-ons on android as well under the read more cut

THINGS YOU TUMBLINAS WANT:

Xkit: the best tumblr related add on. with many customizable options, xkit not only enhances your experience from a visual standpoint, but provides some much needed accessibility tools

bonus: if you are into tf2 and wanna be a cool cat, you can also get the old version to add cool reblog icons

AO3 enhancer: some basic enhancements including reading time and the ability to block authors and tags

YOUTUBE

Return of the YouTube Dislike : pretty self explanatory

Youtube non-stop: gets rid of the annoying "Video paused. Continue watching?" popup when you have a video in the background

SponsorBlock: gives you options to skip either automatically or manually sponsors, videoclip non music sectors and discloses other type of sponsorships/paid partnerships

Enhancer for YouTube: adds some useful options such as custom play speed, let's you play videos in a window and most important of all, it allows you to make the youtube interface as ugly as your heart desires. I can't show a full image of what it looks like because i've been told its eye strainy and i want this post to be accessible but look at this <3

PocketTube: allows you to organize your subscriptions into groups

YouTube Comment Search: what it says

FINDING STUFF

WayBack Machine: you probably know about this site and definitely should get the add on. this allows you to save pages and access older versions with the click of a button. while you can search wayback using web archives, please get this one as well as it allows you to easily save pages and contribute to the archive.

Web Archives: it allows you to search through multiple archives and search engines including WayBack Machine, Google, Yandex and more.

Search by Image: allows you to reverse image search using multiple search engines (in my experience yandex tends to yield the best results)

Image Search Options: similar to the last one

this next section is pretty niche but... STEAM AND STEAM TRADING

SteamDB: adds some interesting and useful statistics

Augmented Steam: useful info specially for browsing and buying games

TF2 Trade Helper: an absolute godsend, lets you add items in bundles, keeps track of your keys and metal and your recent trades, displays links to the backpack tf page next to users profiles and more. look it tells me how much moneys i have and adds metal to trades without clicking one by one oh may god

IN CONCLUSION: oooooh you want to change to firefox so badly, you want to delete chrome and all the chrome clones that are actually just spyware and use firefox

HOW TO USE MOZILLA ADD-ONS ON YOUR PHONE

if you already use firefox on android, you'll know there are certain add-ons compatible with the app, some of them even being made just for the mobile version such as Video Background Play FIx. while most of them are pretty useful, some more specific ones aren't available on this version of the browser, but there's a way of getting some of them to work

you need to download the firefox nightly app, which is basically the same as the regular firefox browser but with the ability of activating developer mode. you can find how to do that here. once you've enabled it, you need to create a collection with all the add ons you want. i wouldn't recommend adding extensions if the creators haven't talked about phone compatibility, but XKit and Shinigami Eyes should work

also, don't tell the government this secret skater move, but you can try using both the regular firefox browser and nightly so you can have youtube videos in a floating box while you browse social media.

see? i can block this terf while Rick Rolling the people following this tutorial. isn't that tubular?

[fabaulti]

I think most of us should take the whole ai scraping situation as a sign that we should maybe stop giving google/facebook/big corps all our data and look into alternatives that actually value your privacy.

i know this is easier said than done because everybody under the sun seems to use these services, but I promise you it’s not impossible. In fact, I made a list of a few alternatives to popular apps and services, alternatives that are privacy first, open source and don’t sell your data.

right off the bat I suggest you stop using gmail. it’s trash and not secure at all. google can read your emails. in fact, google has acces to all the data on your account and while what they do with it is already shady, I don’t even want to know what the whole ai situation is going to bring. a good alternative to a few google services is skiff. they provide a secure, e3ee mail service along with a workspace that can easily import google documents, a calendar and 10 gb free storage. i’ve been using it for a while and it’s great.

a good alternative to google drive is either koofr or filen. I use filen because everything you upload on there is end to end encrypted with zero knowledge. they offer 10 gb of free storage and really affordable lifetime plans.

google docs? i don’t know her. instead, try cryptpad. I don’t have the spoons to list all the great features of this service, you just have to believe me. nothing you write there will be used to train ai and you can share it just as easily. if skiff is too limited for you and you also need stuff like sheets or forms, cryptpad is here for you. the only downside i could think of is that they don’t have a mobile app, but the site works great in a browser too.

since there is no real alternative to youtube I recommend watching your little slime videos through a streaming frontend like freetube or new pipe. besides the fact that they remove ads, they also stop google from tracking what you watch. there is a bit of functionality loss with these services, but if you just want to watch videos privately they’re great.

if you’re looking for an alternative to google photos that is secure and end to end encrypted you might want to look into stingle, although in my experience filen’s photos tab works pretty well too.

oh, also, for the love of god, stop using whatsapp, facebook messenger or instagram for messaging. just stop. signal and telegram are literally here and they’re free. spread the word, educate your friends, ask them if they really want anyone to snoop around their private conversations.

regarding browser, you know the drill. throw google chrome/edge in the trash (they really basically spyware disguised as browsers) and download either librewolf or brave. mozilla can be a great secure option too, with a bit of tinkering.

if you wanna get a vpn (and I recommend you do) be wary that some of them are scammy. do your research, read their terms and conditions, familiarise yourself with their model. if you don’t wanna do that and are willing to trust my word, go with mullvad. they don’t keep any logs. it’s 5 euros a month with no different pricing plans or other bullshit.

lastly, whatever alternative you decide on, what matters most is that you don’t keep all your data in one place. don’t trust a service to take care of your emails, documents, photos and messages. store all these things in different, trustworthy (preferably open source) places. there is absolutely no reason google has to know everything about you.

do your own research as well, don’t just trust the first vpn service your favourite youtube gets sponsored by. don’t trust random tech blogs to tell you what the best cloud storage service is — they get good money for advertising one or the other. compare shit on your own or ask a tech savvy friend to help you. you’ve got this.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

How to design a tech regulation

TONIGHT (June 20) I'm live onstage in LOS ANGELES for a recording of the GO FACT YOURSELF podcast. TOMORROW (June 21) I'm doing an ONLINE READING for the LOCUS AWARDS at 16hPT. On SATURDAY (June 22) I'll be in OAKLAND, CA for a panel (13hPT) and a keynote (18hPT) at the LOCUS AWARDS.

It's not your imagination: tech really is underregulated. There are plenty of avoidable harms that tech visits upon the world, and while some of these harms are mere negligence, others are self-serving, creating shareholder value and widespread public destruction.

Making good tech policy is hard, but not because "tech moves too fast for regulation to keep up with," nor because "lawmakers are clueless about tech." There are plenty of fast-moving areas that lawmakers manage to stay abreast of (think of the rapid, global adoption of masking and social distancing rules in mid-2020). Likewise we generally manage to make good policy in areas that require highly specific technical knowledge (that's why it's noteworthy and awful when, say, people sicken from badly treated tapwater, even though water safety, toxicology and microbiology are highly technical areas outside the background of most elected officials).

That doesn't mean that technical rigor is irrelevant to making good policy. Well-run "expert agencies" include skilled practitioners on their payrolls – think here of large technical staff at the FTC, or the UK Competition and Markets Authority's best-in-the-world Digital Markets Unit:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/13/kitbashed/#app-store-tax

The job of government experts isn't just to research the correct answers. Even more important is experts' role in evaluating conflicting claims from interested parties. When administrative agencies make new rules, they have to collect public comments and counter-comments. The best agencies also hold hearings, and the very best go on "listening tours" where they invite the broad public to weigh in (the FTC has done an awful lot of these during Lina Khan's tenure, to its benefit, and it shows):

https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/events/2022/04/ftc-justice-department-listening-forum-firsthand-effects-mergers-acquisitions-health-care

But when an industry dwindles to a handful of companies, the resulting cartel finds it easy to converge on a single talking point and to maintain strict message discipline. This means that the evidentiary record is starved for disconfirming evidence that would give the agencies contrasting perspectives and context for making good policy.

Tech industry shills have a favorite tactic: whenever there's any proposal that would erode the industry's profits, self-serving experts shout that the rule is technically impossible and deride the proposer as "clueless."

This tactic works so well because the proposers sometimes are clueless. Take Europe's on-again/off-again "chat control" proposal to mandate spyware on every digital device that will screen everything you upload for child sex abuse material (CSAM, better known as "child pornography"). This proposal is profoundly dangerous, as it will weaken end-to-end encryption, the key to all secure and private digital communication:

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/article/2024/jun/18/encryption-is-deeply-threatening-to-power-meredith-whittaker-of-messaging-app-signal

It's also an impossible-to-administer mess that incorrectly assumes that killing working encryption in the two mobile app stores run by the mobile duopoly will actually prevent bad actors from accessing private tools:

https://memex.craphound.com/2018/09/04/oh-for-fucks-sake-not-this-fucking-bullshit-again-cryptography-edition/

When technologists correctly point out the lack of rigor and catastrophic spillover effects from this kind of crackpot proposal, lawmakers stick their fingers in their ears and shout "NERD HARDER!"

https://memex.craphound.com/2018/01/12/nerd-harder-fbi-director-reiterates-faith-based-belief-in-working-crypto-that-he-can-break/

But this is only half the story. The other half is what happens when tech industry shills want to kill good policy proposals, which is the exact same thing that advocates say about bad ones. When lawmakers demand that tech companies respect our privacy rights – for example, by splitting social media or search off from commercial surveillance, the same people shout that this, too, is technologically impossible.

That's a lie, though. Facebook started out as the anti-surveillance alternative to Myspace. We know it's possible to operate Facebook without surveillance, because Facebook used to operate without surveillance:

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3247362

Likewise, Brin and Page's original Pagerank paper, which described Google's architecture, insisted that search was incompatible with surveillance advertising, and Google established itself as a non-spying search tool:

http://infolab.stanford.edu/pub/papers/google.pdf

Even weirder is what happens when there's a proposal to limit a tech company's power to invoke the government's powers to shut down competitors. Take Ethan Zuckerman's lawsuit to strip Facebook of the legal power to sue people who automate their browsers to uncheck the millions of boxes that Facebook requires you to click by hand in order to unfollow everyone:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/02/kaiju-v-kaiju/#cda-230-c-2-b

Facebook's apologists have lost their minds over this, insisting that no one can possibly understand the potential harms of taking away Facebook's legal right to decide how your browser works. They take the position that only Facebook can understand when it's safe and proportional to use Facebook in ways the company didn't explicitly design for, and that they should be able to ask the government to fine or even imprison people who fail to defer to Facebook's decisions about how its users configure their computers.

This is an incredibly convenient position, since it arrogates to Facebook the right to order the rest of us to use our computers in the ways that are most beneficial to its shareholders. But Facebook's apologists insist that they are not motivated by parochial concerns over the value of their stock portfolios; rather, they have objective, technical concerns, that no one except them is qualified to understand or comment on.

There's a great name for this: "scalesplaining." As in "well, actually the platforms are doing an amazing job, but you can't possibly understand that because you don't work for them." It's weird enough when scalesplaining is used to condemn sensible regulation of the platforms; it's even weirder when it's weaponized to defend a system of regulatory protection for the platforms against would-be competitors.

Just as there are no atheists in foxholes, there are no libertarians in government-protected monopolies. Somehow, scalesplaining can be used to condemn governments as incapable of making any tech regulations and to insist that regulations that protect tech monopolies are just perfect and shouldn't ever be weakened. Truly, it's impossible to get someone to understand something when the value of their employee stock options depends on them not understanding it.

None of this is to say that every tech regulation is a good one. Governments often propose bad tech regulations (like chat control), or ones that are technologically impossible (like Article 17 of the EU's 2019 Digital Single Markets Directive, which requires tech companies to detect and block copyright infringements in their users' uploads).

But the fact that scalesplainers use the same argument to criticize both good and bad regulations makes the waters very muddy indeed. Policymakers are rightfully suspicious when they hear "that's not technically possible" because they hear that both for technically impossible proposals and for proposals that scalesplainers just don't like.

After decades of regulations aimed at making platforms behave better, we're finally moving into a new era, where we just make the platforms less important. That is, rather than simply ordering Facebook to block harassment and other bad conduct by its users, laws like the EU's Digital Markets Act will order Facebook and other VLOPs (Very Large Online Platforms, my favorite EU-ism ever) to operate gateways so that users can move to rival services and still communicate with the people who stay behind.

Think of this like number portability, but for digital platforms. Just as you can switch phone companies and keep your number and hear from all the people you spoke to on your old plan, the DMA will make it possible for you to change online services but still exchange messages and data with all the people you're already in touch with.

I love this idea, because it finally grapples with the question we should have been asking all along: why do people stay on platforms where they face harassment and bullying? The answer is simple: because the people – customers, family members, communities – we connect with on the platform are so important to us that we'll tolerate almost anything to avoid losing contact with them:

https://locusmag.com/2023/01/commentary-cory-doctorow-social-quitting/

Platforms deliberately rig the game so that we take each other hostage, locking each other into their badly moderated cesspits by using the love we have for one another as a weapon against us. Interoperability – making platforms connect to each other – shatters those locks and frees the hostages:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/08/facebooks-secret-war-switching-costs

But there's another reason to love interoperability (making moderation less important) over rules that require platforms to stamp out bad behavior (making moderation better). Interop rules are much easier to administer than content moderation rules, and when it comes to regulation, administratability is everything.

The DMA isn't the EU's only new rule. They've also passed the Digital Services Act, which is a decidedly mixed bag. Among its provisions are a suite of rules requiring companies to monitor their users for harmful behavior and to intervene to block it. Whether or not you think platforms should do this, there's a much more important question: how can we enforce this rule?

Enforcing a rule requiring platforms to prevent harassment is very "fact intensive." First, we have to agree on a definition of "harassment." Then we have to figure out whether something one user did to another satisfies that definition. Finally, we have to determine whether the platform took reasonable steps to detect and prevent the harassment.

Each step of this is a huge lift, especially that last one, since to a first approximation, everyone who understands a given VLOP's server infrastructure is a partisan, scalesplaining engineer on the VLOP's payroll. By the time we find out whether the company broke the rule, years will have gone by, and millions more users will be in line to get justice for themselves.

So allowing users to leave is a much more practical step than making it so that they've got no reason to want to leave. Figuring out whether a platform will continue to forward your messages to and from the people you left there is a much simpler technical matter than agreeing on what harassment is, whether something is harassment by that definition, and whether the company was negligent in permitting harassment.

But as much as I like the DMA's interop rule, I think it is badly incomplete. Given that the tech industry is so concentrated, it's going to be very hard for us to define standard interop interfaces that don't end up advantaging the tech companies. Standards bodies are extremely easy for big industry players to capture:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/30/weak-institutions/

If tech giants refuse to offer access to their gateways to certain rivals because they seem "suspicious," it will be hard to tell whether the companies are just engaged in self-serving smears against a credible rival, or legitimately trying to protect their users from a predator trying to plug into their infrastructure. These fact-intensive questions are the enemy of speedy, responsive, effective policy administration.

But there's more than one way to attain interoperability. Interop doesn't have to come from mandates, interfaces designed and overseen by government agencies. There's a whole other form of interop that's far nimbler than mandates: adversarial interoperability:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/10/adversarial-interoperability

"Adversarial interoperability" is a catch-all term for all the guerrilla warfare tactics deployed in service to unilaterally changing a technology: reverse engineering, bots, scraping and so on. These tactics have a long and honorable history, but they have been slowly choked out of existence with a thicket of IP rights, like the IP rights that allow Facebook to shut down browser automation tools, which Ethan Zuckerman is suing to nullify:

https://locusmag.com/2020/09/cory-doctorow-ip/

Adversarial interop is very flexible. No matter what technological moves a company makes to interfere with interop, there's always a countermove the guerrilla fighter can make – tweak the scraper, decompile the new binary, change the bot's behavior. That's why tech companies use IP rights and courts, not firewall rules, to block adversarial interoperators.

At the same time, adversarial interop is unreliable. The solution that works today can break tomorrow if the company changes its back-end, and it will stay broken until the adversarial interoperator can respond.

But when companies are faced with the prospect of extended asymmetrical war against adversarial interop in the technological trenches, they often surrender. If companies can't sue adversarial interoperators out of existence, they often sue for peace instead. That's because high-tech guerrilla warfare presents unquantifiable risks and resource demands, and, as the scalesplainers never tire of telling us, this can create real operational problems for tech giants.

In other words, if Facebook can't shut down Ethan Zuckerman's browser automation tool in the courts, and if they're sincerely worried that a browser automation tool will uncheck its user interface buttons so quickly that it crashes the server, all it has to do is offer an official "unsubscribe all" button and no one will use Zuckerman's browser automation tool.

We don't have to choose between adversarial interop and interop mandates. The two are better together than they are apart. If companies building and operating DMA-compliant, mandatory gateways know that a failure to make them useful to rivals seeking to help users escape their authority is getting mired in endless hand-to-hand combat with trench-fighting adversarial interoperators, they'll have good reason to cooperate.

And if lawmakers charged with administering the DMA notice that companies are engaging in adversarial interop rather than using the official, reliable gateway they're overseeing, that's a good indicator that the official gateways aren't suitable.

It would be very on-brand for the EU to create the DMA and tell tech companies how they must operate, and for the USA to simply withdraw the state's protection from the Big Tech companies and let smaller companies try their luck at hacking new features into the big companies' servers without the government getting involved.

Indeed, we're seeing some of that today. Oregon just passed the first ever Right to Repair law banning "parts pairing" – basically a way of using IP law to make it illegal to reverse-engineer a device so you can fix it.

https://www.opb.org/article/2024/03/28/oregon-governor-kotek-signs-strong-tech-right-to-repair-bill/

Taken together, the two approaches – mandates and reverse engineering – are stronger than either on their own. Mandates are sturdy and reliable, but slow-moving. Adversarial interop is flexible and nimble, but unreliable. Put 'em together and you get a two-part epoxy, strong and flexible.

Governments can regulate well, with well-funded expert agencies and smart, adminstratable remedies. It's for that reason that the administrative state is under such sustained attack from the GOP and right-wing Dems. The illegitimate Supreme Court is on the verge of gutting expert agencies' power:

https://www.hklaw.com/en/insights/publications/2024/05/us-supreme-court-may-soon-discard-or-modify-chevron-deference

It's never been more important to craft regulations that go beyond mere good intentions and take account of adminsitratability. The easier we can make our rules to enforce, the less our beleaguered agencies will need to do to protect us from corporate predators.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/06/20/scalesplaining/#administratability

Image: Noah Wulf (modified) https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Thunderbirds_at_Attention_Next_to_Thunderbird_1_-_Aviation_Nation_2019.jpg

CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en

[australianwomensnews]

Inmates convicted of domestic violence tracking their former partners from inside prison. A suspected child trafficker purchasing 11 magnetic surveillance devices. An elderly couple whose relationship deterioration started in tracking and ended in murder-suicide.

These are all examples of what the NSW Crime Commission says is an escalating problem – criminals using trackers to keep tabs on their victims.

Surveillance devices, including GPS trackers that can attach to a car, mobile phone spyware and bluetooth tracking devices like Air Tags, are increasingly being used in both domestic violence and organised crime, says a report from the Crime Commission released on Tuesday.

“It’s scary. We knew devices were being used in crime, particularly organised crime, but didn’t know how widely,” NSW Crime Commissioner Michael Barnes told the Herald.

The Commission was initially investigating the use of surveillance in organised crime, like in the execution of drug kingpin Alen Moradian, but came to realise they “had to include domestic violence”, said Barnes.

Asked about the crossover between organised crime and domestic violence, he said: “I think it’s the type of people. They are macho and violent, very possessive, their ego is out of control, it’s not surprising they are unrealistically possessive and controlling.

“To do that sort of work you have to be involved in violence, and have a command and control approach.”

The Commission analysed 5663 purchases of tracking devices, with alarming findings. One in four purchasers had a history of domestic violence, 15 per cent of purchasers had a history in serious or organised crime, and 126 were subject to apprehended violence orders at the time of purchase.

One in three offenders charged under the Surveillance Devices Act with unlawfully using tracking devices were also associated with organised crime networks, the report said.

Such was the commission’s alarm that it referred 391 of those purchasers to NSW Police for investigation. NSW Police were contacted for comment.

One man – with no criminal convictions but suspected to be involved in the trafficking and sexual abuse of children – purchased 11 magnetic trackers in the past year.

In another instance, an elderly man, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, used a GPS tracker from a car shop to stalk his wife of 25 years before murdering her. “The tracking appeared to form part of a series of behaviours that the offender used to prevent the victim from leaving the relationship,” said the report.

In another example, two men, both in prison for domestic violence offences, continue to undertake surveillance on their partners from inside.

“It’s extraordinary,” said Barnes.

Barnes said the Find My iPhone app can alert people who suspect they are being surveilled.

“It gives you an alert if you are in close vicinity and moving with an AirTag that isn’t on your device.”

The Crime Commission has made a number of recommendations to government to reduce access to tracking devices. These include amending legislation to explicitly prohibit accessing tracking devices in AVO proceedings and regulating the sale of surveillance devices through licensing, recording device identifiers and customer particulars, and mandatory reporting of suspicious transactions.

A spokesperson for Police Minister Yasmin Catley said the government “will consider the findings and respond in due course”.

If you or someone you know is affected by sexual assault, domestic or family violence, call 1800RESPECT on 1800 737 732.

[fishing-lesbian-catgirl]

what do you use to play arknights on the computer? I looked at the official noxplayer app and it looks like spyware, do you recommend any emulator in particular?

I use bluestacks. It’s not perfect but it works. My friend uses I think a like beta google play mobile emulator thing and she seems to like it so maybe check that out. Bluestacks does sometimes have an ad on the side if you’re like idling on the home screen, but it works for me for what I use it for

[the-jellicle-duelist]

i am a noted AI hater and as we speak tech companies are constructing the coffin and putting in the nails that get me to become an extremely weird computer and mobile phone person

microsoft is both discontinuing windows 10 security fixes and official support in october 2025, and simultaneously rolling out sweeping AI integrations and what amounts to spyware into windows 11 and calling it a feature

in the next few weeks, apple will unveil its latest iterations of most of their os stack, and if they’re going to also integrate AI i am out. i am just going to have to make linux work, and i’m going to find some other device(s) that will replace my phone. i am out.

i don’t want any of this shit and i will gladly sacrifice a few conveniences if it means that i don’t have have ai shoved in my face to sell me ads to scrape my data to sell me adds and when i look up how to make pizza google says to put glue in it because of ai. i’m so done with this shit. it’s so objectively bad

[oratoful]

did someone say hatoful oc

This is Ulrich Althaus! A 22 year old Hawk Party member who primarily does internal operations regarding programming and technology in general. Me and my friend actually have an entire AU dedicated to expanding on the tensions between the Hawk and Dove party and the internal corruption of the Dove party. I'd adore infodumping about it once we have it more wrapped up and cohesive.

Spoiler stuff regarding general hatoful world-lore and things of the like. I wanna be safe soOOOOOOOOOO

Ulrich became a hawk operative when he was around 13 years of age. Having an interest in tech from a young age, he was placed in advanced courses within his school. Very cool and good, I know. His father was a liaison within Europe and was killed by the Human Liberation Force due to a miscommunication between parties. As a result, Ulrich learns to despise humans. He's visited by a hawk researcher (Raphael, who I will make a post about) who offers him a position within their junior programming division. He claims there are benefits and that Ulrich could do with not hauling himself in his and his mother's home due to his father's death. His mother, begrudgingly, accepts the offer, realizing that not only will the facility offer him higher education for his intelligence, but it will actively watch over him.

Unbeknownst to her, of course, Ulrich becomes ensnared in Hawk activities. He's an overly prideful man who feels the need to avenge his father's name/live up to his family's expectations. Of course, he doesn't realize that in this universe, his father would absolutely loathe what he's done. He would hate the man his son has become. He’s completely tarnishing the efforts faust made toward human and bird peace in an attempt to bring a vengeance his father would’ve never wanted.

Hatoful Ulrich seeks to make it known that he doesn't cut corners and that he wants to get back at humans for their assumed atrocities (he has a biased viewpoint bc those are fun). I imagine he's absolutely made spyware with the sole purpose of information gauging and getting data for the hawk party. He covers his tracks pretty well while also leaving annoying damage for the doves to fix.

As a little fun side thing, I like to imagine the Programming and Technical department he works for is a subsidiary for SecOps. They bleed into each other very often. As a result, this rude little man butts heads with Tohri SO OFTEN before Tohri ends up pursuing other work. (in mine and nick's au he stays in the lab for longer)

Would love to get more into him sometime he's so in depth UGHHH.

for some fun facts with him:

He uses a mobility aid! He's my cane rep

He hates being helped. It makes him feel like he's being looked down on. One of my other researchers often hovers over him due to how often he tries to push his physical limitations. Ulrich has flogged him. Twice.

autistic. He's so crude/judgmental in speech. He also doesn't care to drop formality and say when he doesn't like someone.

He often works from home and doesn't enjoy coming into the lab for work.

Ulrich is genuinely painfully vindictive and efficient though. I feel like if he had the motivation to back something like the hawk party, he'd leave destruction in his wake. I also think that motherfucker would tamper with machinery to make it fail on researchers he doesn't like

He trips people with his tail if they make him angry enough. He's a little PRICK

speaking of little he actually stands smaller than most other peafowl

Him and Tohri have a WEIRD relationship. They're the best of friends one day and they're trying to kill each other the next day. It's impossible to tell what they actually feel about each other.

[mariacallous]

Russian intelligence is using a Serbian agent to infiltrate EU institutions and to spread pro-Kremlin talking points about its invasion of Ukraine, according to a Western intelligence briefing seen by POLITICO.

As recently as October 2023, Serbian national Novica Antić — an active “agent of influence” who knowingly worked closely with Russia’s security agency, according to the documents — held meetings with European officials in Brussels and in particular, Members of the European Parliament.

Those MEPs included German Greens lawmaker Viola von Cramon-Taubadel, Italian Socialists & Democrats lawmaker Alessandra Moretti, and Vladimír Bilčík, a Slovakian member of the conservative European People’s Party Group, according to a press release and a photo seen by POLITICO. There is nothing in the intelligence briefing to suggest that Moretti, Bilčík and von Cramon-Taubadel were aware of Antic’s FSB links when they met with him.

Moretti, Bilčík and von Cramon-Taubadel did not respond to a request for comment from POLITICO.

Antić, the chair of the Serbian Military Trade Union, also met with representatives of the EUROMIL and EPSU trade unions, which represent armed forces personnel and public services employees in the European Union, respectively.

When asked about the meeting with Antić, an EPSU official responded, saying: “A delegation of his union was in Brussels in October, where they met with several MEPs and they were all transparent. The only topic was trade union rights.”

EUROMIL told POLITICO said they reacted strongly to the events in Serbia and rejected any possible ties with the Russian authorities.  EUROMIL President Emmanuel Jacob added “the organization could take the short-term step of temporarily suspending Serbia’s observer status pending clarification.”

According to the Western intelligence briefing seen by POLITICO, Antić is an active “agent of influence” for Russia’s Federal Security Service, known as the FSB.

Antić works closely with an FSB associate named Vyacheslav Kalinin, a Russian national and editor-in-chief of Veteran News, a media website specializing in news for the veterans of the armed forces. An “About us” tab on the website says that Veteran News is an “information partner” of the FSB and the Russian Ministry of Defense, among other branches of Russia’s security forces.

Kalinin did not respond to a request for comment from POLITICO. 

While the intelligence briefing highlights Antić’s actions in particular, it noted Kalinin recruited other people, without specifying how many and within which countries.

Russia is using Serbia as a launchpad for influence operations designed to weaken pro-EU and pro-NATO sentiment inside the country as well as within the European Union, which has been a staunch supporter of Ukraine since Russia’s full-scale invasion two years ago. Antić has used his role as head of Serbia’s military union to criticize Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić and senior members of the country’s armed forces.

“They took every opportunity to promote Russian propaganda relating to the war in Ukraine,” the briefing said, referring to meetings in Serbia and EU countries.

The news that Antić held meetings inside the European Parliament underscores the body’s vulnerability to state-backed influence operations. Earlier this month, POLITICO revealed spyware was found on the mobile phones of two lawmakers in the European Parliament, including former French Europe minister Nathalie Loiseau, who chairs the body’s defense subcommittee. 

Antić and his representatives did not respond to a request for comment from POLITICO.

Kalinin invited Antić to Russia to meet with senior Russian military officials between 2019 and 2020. Initially focused on influencing Serbian civil society, the pair have since widened their focus to include European trade union and veterans’ organizations and, in recent months, members of the European Parliament.

Antić, an outspoken critic of Serbia’s armed forces who has fallen afoul of the country’s political leadership, is currently being detained on unspecified charges, according to news website Balkan Insight.

According to Balkan Insight, Antić has been dismissed from Serbia’s military twice over the past five years. He has, per the publication, gone on a hunger strike to protest his detention. A lawyer for Antić declined to specify to Balkan Insight on what charges he was being held.

[elladastinkardiamou]

We’ve lost Greece’s manual This week's newsletter from AthensLive is out:

* The costliest Olympics end up in derelict venues and a financial crisis 

* The EU strikes migration deal, while it is revealed pushed-back refugees burned alive 

* Major Greek involvement in Predator scandal revealed in detail 

The iconic and super-expensive OAKA stadium roof, created by renowned Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava for Greece’s 2004 Olympic Games, has become derelict to such a degree that the stadium closed due to safety reasons, Greeks were told. It was reported that the roof was created with a license for a pergola and that its maintenance manual had been lost…

While the EU was striking an important migration deal that would supposedly lead to a change of its asylum rules to lift pressure on the continent’s border countries, Greek authorities were confiscating the mobile phones of the Coast Guard officers involved in the Pylos shipwreck - a whole 119 days after. Plus, the NYT revealed that refugees who burned alive during Greece’s wildfires were push-back victims.

Finally, a series of investigative reports named Predator Files brings stormy details on Greece’s deep involvement with Predator illegal spyware.  

It cannot be recommended strongly enough to read and share this week's updates on the events and developments in Greece here: https://steadyhq.com/en/athenslivegr/posts/e679cd16-c2ad-4122-86b1-0938f60e2549

For anyone with a wish or need to follow and to gain an insight into recent events in Greece and to read and support independent and investigative journalism in English, the weekly newsletter from AthensLive should be a core element in the reading flow.

If you want the best overview of the events and developments in Greece right now, this is the place to go. Not the mainstream Greek news, but independent journalism with sharp analysis and links to interesting and important topics from a variety of sources.

Become a member and get the newsletter in your inbox every week here:

https://steadyhq.com/en/athenslivegr/newsletter/sign_up

[lesbianchemicalplant]

On September 11th, 2023 Google released an emergency security fix for a critical vulnerability discovered, identified as CVE-2023-4863 affecting the Google Chrome for Windows, macOS, and Linux. CVE-2023-4863 is a zero day heap buffer overflow vulnerability in Google Chrome’s WebP with a HIGH 8.8 CVSS score. The vulnerability allows a remote attacker to perform an out-of-bounds memory write via a crafted HTML page. According to Google’s report and the CISA KEV Catalog, the vulnerability is known to be exploited in the wild, which highlights its urgency and affects any application or software that uses the libwebp package of WebP codec, which significantly increases the attack surface. Rezilion analysis of the vulnerability reveals that: • The scope of this vulnerability is much wider than initially assumed, affecting millions of different applications worldwide • Vulnerability scanners will not necessarily provide a reliable indication of the presence of this vulnerability, due to being wrongly scoped as a Chrome issue. • It is highly likely that the underlying issue in the libwebp library is the same issue resulting in CVE-2023-41064 used by threat actors as part of the BLASTPASS exploit chain to deploy the NSO Group’s Pegasus spyware on target mobile devices. Rezilion analysis reveals that there are several common Linux applications that contain or use the vulnerable libwebp package as a dependency. Examples include: libtiff, python-pillow, libgd, gnuplot, libavcodec58, libmagickcor, libqt5webkit5, libgvc6, libimlib2, and others.  Rezilion has also identified the vulnerable library in several popular container images׳ latest versions, collectively downloaded and deployed billions of times, such as Nginx, Python, Joomla, WordPress, Node.js, and more.

(September 21st 2023)

(September 26th 2023)

A critical zero-day vulnerability Google reported on Wednesday in its Chrome browser is opening the Internet to a new chapter of Groundhog Day. Like a critical zero-day Google disclosed on September 11, the new exploited vulnerability doesn’t affect just Chrome. Already, Mozilla has said that its Firefox browser is vulnerable to the same bug, which is tracked as CVE-2023-5217. And just like CVE-2023-4863 from 17 days ago, the new one resides in a widely used code library for processing media files, specifically those in the VP8 format. Pages here and here list hundreds of packages for Ubuntu and Debian alone that rely on the library known as libvpx. Most browsers use it, and the list of software or vendors supporting it reads like a who’s who of the Internet, including Skype, Adobe, VLC, and Android. It’s unclear how many software packages that depend on libvpx will be vulnerable to CVE-2023-5217. Google’s disclosure says the zero-day applies to video encoding. By contrast, the zero-day exploited in libwebp, the code library vulnerable to the attacks earlier this month, worked for encoding and decoding. In other words, based on the wording in the disclosure, CVE-2023-5217 requires a targeted device to create media in the VP8 format. CVE-2023-4863 could be exploited when a targeted device simply displayed a booby-trapped image. “The fact that a package depends on libvpx does NOT necessarily mean that it'd be vulnerable,” Will Dorman, senior principal analyst at Analygence, wrote in an online interview. “The vuln is in VP8 encoding, so if something uses libvpx only for decoding, they have nothing to worry about.” Even with that important distinction, there are likely to be many more packages besides Chrome and Firefox that will require patching. “Firefox, Chrome (and Chromium-based) browsers, plus other things that expose VP8 encoding capabilities from libvpx to JavaScript (i.e. web browsers), seem to be at risk,” he said.

(September 28th, 2023)