Information Technology

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The Russian-backed group, Nobelium, that gained notoriety for the SolarWinds supply chain hack — an attack that saw a backdoor planted in thousands of organisations before cherrypicking nine US federal agencies and about 100 US companies to actually compromise and steal information from — has now hit Microsoft itself. In an update on Friday, Microsoft said it found “information-stealing malware” on the machine of one of its support agents that had access to “basic account information for a small number of our customers”. “The actor used this information in some cases to launch highly-targeted attacks as part of their broader campaign. We responded quickly, removed the access and secured the device,” the company said. “The investigation is ongoing, but we can confirm that our support agents are configured with the minimal set of permissions required as part of our Zero Trust ‘least privileged access’ approach to customer information. We are notifying all impacted customers and are supporting them to ensure their accounts remain secure.” Microsoft recommended using multi-factor authentication and zero trust architectures to help protect environments. Redmond recently warned that Nobelium was conducting a phishing campaign impersonating USAID after it managed to take control of a USAID account on the email marketing platform Constant Contact. The phishing campaign targeted around 3,000 accounts linked to government agencies, think tanks, consultants, and non-governmental organisations, Microsoft said.

In its Friday update, Microsoft said it has continued to see “password spray and brute-force attacks”. “This recent activity was mostly unsuccessful, and the majority of targets were not successfully compromised — we are aware of three compromised entities to date,” it said. “All customers that were compromised or targeted are being contacted through our nation-state notification process.” Malware made its way through normal Microsoft driver signing process In a second Friday post, Microsoft admitted a malicious driver has managed to get signed by the software giant. “The actor’s activity is limited to the gaming sector specifically in China and does not appear to target enterprise environments. We are not attributing this to a nation-state actor at this time,” the company said. “The actor’s goal is to use the driver to spoof their geo-location to cheat the system and play from anywhere. The malware enables them to gain an advantage in games and possibly exploit other players by compromising their accounts through common tools like keyloggers.” As a result of the incident, Microsoft said it would be “refining” its policies, validation, and signing processes. Microsoft added the drivers would be blocked through its Defender applications. While Microsoft called the malware a driver, Karsten Hahn of G Data, which discovered the Netfilter malware, labelled it as a rootkit. “At the time of writing it is still unknown how the driver could pass the signing process,” he wrote. Hahn said searching Virustotal produced sample signatures going back to March. Netfilter has an update mechanism after hitting a particular IP address, installs a root certificate, and updates proxy settings, Hahn said. Microsoft said for the attack to work, the attackers must have admin privileges for the installer to update registry keys and install the driver, or convince the user to do it themselves. Related Coverage More

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YouTube took down videos posted by a human rights group that documented testimonies from Uyghur people who have had family members disappear in China’s Xinjiang region, MIT Technology Review reported. According to the report, the human rights group, Atajurt Kazakh Human Rights, had its YouTube channel blocked entirely on June 15, with the platform reportedly explaining that 12 of its videos received multiple “strikes” for containing people holding up ID cards to prove they were related to Uyghurs that have disappeared in China’s Xinjiang region. YouTube reportedly said this type of content violates the platform’s policy as it does not allow content to contain personally identifiable information. “We have strict policies that prohibit harassment on YouTube, including doxing,” a YouTube representative was reported as telling MIT Technology Review.”We welcome responsible efforts to document important human rights cases around the world. We also have policies that do not allow channels to publish personally identifiable information, in order to prevent harassment.”The channel’s administrators then appealed the block and the removal of the 12 videos, which was followed by the channel and some of the videos being reinstated three days later, the report explained.For the remaining videos that continue to be blocked, however, YouTube reportedly has not provided an explanation for why they continue to be blocked.

When YouTube was assessing whether to unblock the flagged content, the platform reportedly requested for Atajurt Kazakh Human Rights to blur the ID cards shown in the videos. In an interview with Reuters, an Atajurt Kazakh Human Rights member reportedly said the group did not want to comply with YouTube’s request as it did not want to tarnish the credibility of the videos.In light of Atajurt Kazakh Human Rights’s videos being blocked on YouTube, it has since backed up its content on blockchain-based video platform Odysee. China has faced growing condemnation for its treatment of Uyghur Muslims and other Muslim minorities, with numerous reports stating that Chinese authorities have been tracking the movements of these people. There have also been reports of other human rights abuses, such as the installation of spyware on the phones of Uyghur Muslim and placing Uyghur Muslims into “re-education” camps. Related Coverage More

A new report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) has found that the controversial Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act (SESTA) and Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act (FOSTA) have been used just once since becoming law in April 2018.The GAO report, issued by GAO director of the Homeland Security and Justice team Gretta Goodwin, said that criminal restitution has never been sought and civil damages have not been awarded at all under section 3 of FOSTA.  Before being passed by Congress, the laws faced bitter opposition from advocacy groups, some members of the US Justice Department and even some US Senators, who warned that the law would force sex trafficking and prostitution operations even deeper underground while also making it harder for law enforcement to disrupt groups involved. Others said the law disrupted legitimate avenues for safe sex work and endangered those voluntarily involved in the industry. Federal authorities made news in 2018 when they seized backpage.com, the largest online platform for buying and selling commercial sex.But the GAO now says the closure of backpage.com and the passage of the laws “led many who controlled platforms in this market to relocate their platforms overseas.” “Additionally, with backpage.com no longer in the market, buyers and sellers moved to other online platforms, and the market became fragmented. The current landscape of the online commercial sex market heightens already existing challenges law enforcement face in gathering tips and evidence,” the report said. “The July 2020 Polaris and April 2019 childsafe.ai reports state that since backpage.com was removed from the market, there has been fierce competition among platforms for market share, and no single platform has emerged as dominant at the national level. DOJ officials confirmed this assessment,” the report added. 

Federal law enforcement agencies are now struggling to gather tips and evidence because online platforms have relocated to platforms overseas, use complex payment systems and have “increased use of social media platforms,” according to the GAO, which spoke with Justice Department prosecutors, FBI officials and many others within the government. Those involved in the illegal sex trade are increasingly using “hobby board platforms,” according to FBI officials cited in the report. Hobby boards “are designed around preserving legitimacy and reputation, and even have built-in mechanisms whereby users moderate content on the platforms,” according to the report, which added that the boards provide more information than what is available on advertising platforms. “For instance, in addition to reviews from other buyers, buyers may be able to see a detailed list of services provided and a graphic description of the provider’s appearance. Further, provider profiles contain contact information and pricing information with detail that is often banned on advertising sites, such as rates and location, according to the April 2019 childsafe.ai report,” the report said. “Thus, the childsafe.ai CEO said, although buyers may still shop on advertising platforms, they are increasingly relying on hobby board platforms both to shop and to ensure they will be receiving the services they will be paying for.”The use of “sugar dating” platforms for this purpose has also increased since 2018 because it doubles as a way to service those already involved in the online commercial sex market as well as people who “would otherwise not be,” according to the GAO.Multiple organization provided information to GAO indicating that the search functions on these sites intentionally provide users with the content they are looking for, with some profiles “clearly insinuating that sex is part of the sugar dating commercial arrangement.”FBI officials also told GAO representatives that they were having issues with information gathering because many social media or messaging platforms are now encrypted, allow for anonymity or have features that allow messages to be deleted instantly. As of March, the only case brought forward by the Justice Department under the criminal provision established by section 3 of FOSTA relates to a June 2020 case against the owner of cityxguide.com. USA v. Martono is still ongoing. Federal prosecutors defended not using the law enough by saying racketeering and money laundering charges are more successful in court.The GAO report questions why more victims have not brought more civil cases under section 3 of FOSTA but explains that representatives from the Human Trafficking Institute said victims “may not want to bring cases years after crimes took place because doing so might open old wounds for which they do not want to relive the trauma.” “Successfully bringing a civil case could be easier when there has been a related criminal conviction, and there have been no criminal convictions for aggravated violations of section 3 of FOSTA,” the report said. “Victims and their attorneys may not have the resources to gather sufficient evidence to prove that injury was suffered as a result of an aggravated violation of section 3 of FOSTA.”Dirk Schrader, a vice president at New Net Technologies, told ZDNet the GAO report was another manifestation of a larger issue. “There is no common approach to cybercrime in the laws of the countries of the world, and the cross connects between real-life serious crimes and the cyber world have not been understood nor embedded into such laws,” Schrader said. “As long as there is no common ground for what is good or bad in the cyber world across the majority of legislations in the world, these kinds of laws enacted in a certain country will always have shortcomings when it comes to enforcement and application. Cyber crime has many facets, and only a few of them can be addressed with a technical solution.” Others cited a warning issued by US Senator Ron Wyden in 2017 that predicted many of the GAO’s findings and said the law’s “approach will make it harder to catch dangerous criminals.”Sarah Roth-Gaudette, executive director of advocacy group Fight for the Future, said the report confirmed the organization’s worst fear. She called FOSTA-SESTA a “complete disaster” and said lives were put in danger as people were forced into the darkest corners of the internet.”And now we learn that the law has only been used once in its three-year history,” Roth-Gaudette said. “Until we fully study the unintended consequences of amending Section 230, by investigating the impact of FOSTA-SESTA, we cannot pretend that uncareful changes to Section 230 will not harm the most vulnerable and marginalized members of society.”  More

Zscaler, which specializes in data security for cloud-based applications, had had quite a year. At its fourth annual Zenith Live event (all-digital format again, as in 2020), the company talked about how the pandemic helped its cloud-based security products go from being considered “nice to have” to “must-have” in protecting the massive number of home-based workers. In actuality, the strong momentum for Zscaler started long before the pandemic, because the rise of cloud apps, enterprise embracing SaaS models, mobility and an eroding defensive perimeter mandates a different type of security. In today’s world, traditional on-premises security principles are rendered ineffective. Zscaler’s cloud security model is designed for the cloud and mobility apps, enabling it to be deployed anywhere an organization has resources–including home offices.An easy way to think about the need for cloud resident security is to consider how the IT environment has changed. Years ago, all of an organization’s data, users and applications were centrally located on the company premises. In this case, it made sense to have a moat around the environment with a single entry point protected by a centralized security infrastructure. The few users that were off the company network could connect via VPN and be protected by the same security.  Apps, users and data are now highly distributed and dynamic. This requires a security model that is equally dynamic and distributed, which is what Zscaler offers from its cloud. VPNs were fine when they were the exception, but, as any network manager knows, VPNs can expose the network to would-be attackers and can get expensive very fast. This is because of the cumbersome processing overhead required to provision an entire company. This is why the interest in Zscaler has been growing and accelerated during the pandemic. Zero trust the top-level topicOne of the big themes at Zenith Live was zero trust, because this has become the security industry’s latest focal point. The concept of zero-trust network access (ZTNA) is fairly simple: The internet was designed with a model in which any thing or person can talk to anything else, and that’s why it works so well. The downside is that threat actors exploit this to breach organizations. ZTNA flips the model around and denies anything from talking to any other connected asset unless explicitly allowed. This essentially makes all company resources invisible to the bad guys and protects the company assets. The term zero trust is now being used by almost every security vendor, but the reality is that there are multiple approaches. Zscaler offers a Zero Trust Exchange, where its cloud acts as a centralized hub for resources to connect with one another. During his keynote at Zenith Live, CEO Jay Chaudhry outlined the three tenets to Zscaler’s approach. They are: Connect users and applications to resources, not the corporate network, preventing lateral movement of threats, thus reducing security and business risk. Make applications invisible to the internet. Applications protected behind the Zero Trust Exchange are not visible and cannot be discovered, thus eliminating the attack surface.Use a proxy architecture, not a passthrough firewall, for content inspection and security. The only way to ensure effective cyberthreat defense and data protection is by requiring content inspection, including encrypted traffic, and policy enforcement before it reaches its intended destination.Examples of zero-trust securityA good analogy to the way this works is to think of the network as a secure building, where a user would need to go to the reception desk and ask for permission to access a room. The person would then be escorted there until they completed their tasks and then escorted back, with permission revoked. 

Traditional ZTNA done with on-premises firewalls is quite different. In this case, the network or security team would create secure segments and give a user perpetual access only to the assets required. So, someone in finance would give access to the accounting servers, and that’s all that would be required. The downside of this approach is that managing all of the policies to ensure that people have access to the things they need can be incredibly complicated, particularly in highly dynamic environments.  The upside of the Zscaler model is that policies are defined at the user, device, application and content level, making the IP addresses invisible. The argument against it would be that Zscaler now becomes a single point of failure; that would be a concern if it only had a single or only a few points of presence, but the company has built out a massively distributed cloud environment, so that seems unlikely.  It would be like shopping at a brick-and-mortar store instead of Amazon, because that person was worried its cloud would go down. Active defense uses decoys, honeynetsThe other topic of interest at Zenith Live was what Zscaler will do with the recently closed acquisition of Smokescreen, which does active defense through the use of decoys, lures and honeynets. These are fake domains, controllers, active directory servers and other enterprise resources used to fool threat actors. The assumption with active defense is that the environment is already breached and provides a fast way to identify and remove attackers.  Because these are fake resources, there should be no activity; so, by definition, any activity at all indicates a breach, and action can be taken. Smokescreen can help reverse a growing asymmetric problem facing security pros. With an eroding perimeter, corporate IT needs to protect a number of entry points that are growing exponentially, but the bad guys need to find only one way in. With Smokestack, attackers need to stay hidden as they move laterally, and in the fake environment, the security team now needs to only find a single sign of activity to know it has been breached.The combination of ZTNA and active threat defense is a powerful combination as zero trust assumes the Fox Mulder mentality of “trust no one” and makes everything invisible. However, because everything is invisible, it can be difficult to identify a breach. Conversely, Smokescreen assumes a breach has happened and looks for signs of activity to expose it. This duality offers a practical path to zero trust and offers a simple but effective way to find and eliminate attackers who are trying to move laterally. More

June 25, 2:15 PM Pacific: This post has been updated multiple times since its initial publication to reflect Microsoft’s scrambling to clean up the mess they made.You might think it’s a simple, straightforward task to find out whether your current PC will run Windows 11. You might think that if you went to Microsoft.com and paid nearly $5000 for a top-of-the-line Surface PC today, you’d be assured of being able to upgrade to Windows 11 in a few months, when it’s ready for general release.Think again. Microsoft can’t quite get its upgrade story straight. And the clash between the company’s engineering decisions and its marketing plan is about to cause screams of outrage from customers who will discover that their new or nearly new hardware just isn’t good enough, in Microsoft’s eyes.

For starters, two pieces of core documentation disagree with one another. The official Windows 11 System Requirements page has one set of specs, while the Compatibility for Windows 11 documentation that the Windows engineering team prepared for Microsoft partners as part of the Compatibility Cookbook for Windows tells (update: well, told)  a different story. And in both cases the details are incomplete. To cap things off, the official compatibility checker (included in the new PC Health Check app) that Microsoft released to its most eager fans on the day of the Big Reveal delivered its results without details. If the compatibility checker says your PC will run Windows 11, you’re good to go. But when those eager would-be upgraders ran the compatibility check and got results like the one shown below on a system that appeared to meet every specification with ease? Ugh. Frustratingly, this tool doesn’t appear to create a log fileUpdate: After this article was published, Microsoft released a new version of the PC Health Check app, without documenting the fact that the tool had been revised. The new version includes a few extra words in the dialog box that explains the results. On my test PC, the new wording reads “This PC can’t run Windows 11. This processor isn’t supported for Windows 11.” That, of course, was in conflict with the official documentation at Microsoft Docs, which said that the older CPU would be supported, but upgrading was not advised. And then someone decided to edit the documentation. Hoo boy. Read on.

The basic hurdles are easy enough to clear. You need a 64-bit Intel or AMD processor running at a speed of at least 1 GHz with 2 or more cores, or, on Arm-based PCs, a compatible System on a Chip (SoC). The biggest change from Windows 10 specs is that 32-bit (x86) CPUs are no longer supported. You also need at least 4 GB of RAM and 64 GB of storage. Most PCs built in the last 10 years will meet those specs. The device also can’t be running in S Mode. The two biggest stumbling blocks for PCs involve support for an essential security feature called a Trusted Platform Module, or TPM, and support for a minimum CPU generation. TPM support The system requirements page says you’ll need a TPM version 2.0 to run Windows 11. The Compatibility Cookbook says you’ll need a TPM version of 1.2 or greater. Specifically, the TPM 1.2 requirement (with a Secure Boot capable PC) is part of a so-called Hard Floor, while the TPM 2.0 spec is part of the Soft Floor. According to the docs, “Devices that do not meet the hard floor cannot be upgraded to Windows 11, and devices that meet the soft floor will receive a notification that upgrade is not advised.” Update: And now Microsoft has revised the Compatibility Cookbook page, removing all references to the Soft Floor and Hard Floor and adding a note that says TPM 2.0 support and a compatible CPU are required.That’s not a trivial detail, because millions of older PCs are equipped with TPM 1.2 in hardware and can’t be upgraded. To make things even more confusing, the compatibility checker might tell you your PC can’t be upgraded to Windows 11 if the device has a TPM but that feature is disabled in firmware. You can check for the presence of a TPM by looking in Device Manager (Devmgmt.msc) under the Security Devices heading, as shown here. Use Device Manager to check the TPM versionYou can also run the TPM Management snap-in (Tpm.msc). That tool will tell you the name of the TPM manufacturer as well as the version information. Be sure to close the snap-in without making any changes. If you’re certain your PC has a TPM but you don’t see it listed in Device Manager, you’ll need to go into firmware settings and enable it. On a UEFI-based Windows 10 PC, the easiest way to do that is to follow these steps: Go to Settings > Update & Security > Recovery.Under the Advanced Startup heading, click Restart Now.After restarting, click Troubleshoot > Advanced Options > UEFI Firmware Settings.Look for a setting labeled TPM or PTT (short for Intel Platform Trust Technology) or, on AMD systems, fTPM (short for Firmware Trusted Platform Module). You might need the PC’s manual to find the exact setting. And while you’re in the firmware setting, make sure Secure Boot is enabled. That should resolve any TPM issues. CPU Generation If the compatibility checker still insists that you can’t run Windows 11, and you’ve confirmed that the TPM isn’t the sticking point, the problem might be an older CPU. Yes, there’s also a Soft Floor requirement for CPU. Frustratingly, the documentation simply says this is defined by “CPU Generation,” without going into any additional details. Update: Here, too, Microsoft has edited the pages in Microsoft Docs (normally the authoritative page for documentation) and removed all references to CPU Generation and Hard Floors and Soft Floors. What a mess.It appears that any device running on an Intel 7th Generation (Skylake) CPU or earlier will also trigger that compatibility check. That was the case on a Dell desktop PC I checked. Frustratingly, the PC Health Check app doesn’t appear to generate any log files that would make the sleuthing easier. Instead, I turned to an open source tool called Win11SysCheck, which is available on GitHub as source code and a precompiled binary. (The executable download is here. You might get a SmartScreen error if you try to download this tool and run it, because Windows flags it, for now at least, as “not commonly downloaded.”) That tool confirmed that the i7-6700 CPU on my desktop PC was the culprit. This open source tool provides more details than the official compatibility checkerThat’s a 2015-era CPU, and my PC is about five years old. The good news is that Windows 11 should run on it, although the upgrade is not recommended. Update: Or it won’t. Who knows?Of course, not all PCs with that CPU are old. Microsoft’s most expensive PC, the Surface Studio 2, is available for sale today starting from $3,499.99 and can be configured to cost $4,799.99. And what CPU is in that brand-new PC if you pay that lofty price tag today?An i7-7820HQ, that’s what. No, it’s not on the list of compatible CPUs, which means if you go online today and pay Microsoft nearly five grand for their most expensive Surface PC, they won’t allow you to upgrade to Windows 11. The Microsoft engineering document that contains the full list of compatible CPUS was prepared for hardware manufacturers; it includes a full list of supported Windows 11 CPUs from AMD, Intel, and Qualcomm. Of course, those specs should only apply to PC makers, but apparently that’s the “hard floor” that Windows 11 will use for upgraders as well. Hopefully, this will all be sorted out by the time Windows 11 is ready for its first general release, but don’t count on it.

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(Image: file photo)Amazon Web Services is acquiring the encrypted messaging app Wickr, the company announced Friday. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Launched in 2012, Wickr’s end-to-end messaging service was one of the early pioneers of ephemeral communication, offering encrypted and disappearing messaging long before Signal took off and WhatsApp rolled out encryption of its own. Wickr gained traction among enterprises, public sector and government agencies for its advanced security features and zero trust platform design, with the US Department of Defense among its list of customers.”Today, public sector customers use Wickr for a diverse range of missions, from securely communicating with office-based employees to providing service members at the tactical edge with encrypted communications,” said AWS chief information security officer Stephen Schmidt, in a blog post. “Enterprise customers use Wickr to keep communications between employees and business partners private, while remaining compliant with regulatory requirements.”Schmidt said the need for Wickr’s style of secure communication is accelerating across sectors. In other words, AWS sees an opportunity to use Wickr to bolster its own portfolio of communication, collaboration and productivity services.Schmidt said Wickr’s services will be offered to AWS customers effective immediately, but notes that Wickr’s services will continue uninterrupted for new and existing users.  More

On Friday, Mozilla announced the release of a new data sharing platform called Rally that is designed to provide users with more control over how they share their data. The Firefox add-on allows people to donate their data to research studies that will focus on building new resources, tools, and “potentially even policies that empower people just like you to build a better internet and fight back against exploitative tech,” according to Mozilla. Rebecca Weiss, director of data science at Mozilla and inceptor of Rally, told ZDNet the platform sought to answer the question “What if — instead of companies taking your data without giving you a say — you could select who gets access to your data, and put it to work for public good?””Rally is built for the browser with privacy and transparency at its core, and empowers people to contribute their browsing data to crowdfund projects for a better internet and a better society. The researchers behind each project will have better quality data, with a clear understanding of the source, and confidence that it’s compliant with data privacy regulations,” Weiss explained. “At Mozilla, we work every day on building a better internet, one that puts people first, respects their privacy, and gives them power over their online experience. We’ve been a leader in privacy features that help you control your data by blocking trackers. But, being ‘data-empowered’ also requires the ability to choose who you want to access your data.”Mozilla called Rally a “first-of-its-kind” platform that addresses the thorny problem of data control. The organization has done surveys showing that many people in the US are frustrated by the lack of options they have when it comes to their data. Outside of using defensive tools to block all data collection or simply allowing all data to be used without user consent by online services, there are few options available for most users. Mozilla said it was trying to “flip the script on the surveillance economy’s data practices” by demonstrating that there is a case to be made for an equitable market for data.  

Users install the Mozilla Rally add-on that is available for Firefox and sign up before finding studies that they would like to contribute to. Researchers will provide detailed explanations of what each research study is focused on, how your data will be used and where it ends up. Users are in full control and can pull their information out whenever they would like. Weiss told ZDNet that Mozilla has been concerned about data ecosystem issues for years and has been interested in additional data ecosystem innovations. Weiss added that Mozilla started by extending and applying their internal tools and capabilities to new user problems. “We also wanted to collaborate with a wider community and started with public interest researchers. We worked with Jonathan Mayer’s group at Princeton to build tools to collect and manage user data. These tools are as accurate as researchers need, but don’t require collection of as much data from users,” Weiss said.”We let individuals choose how much data to share, to which organizations, and for what purpose. In return, they’ll not only contribute their data for public good, they’ll also understand how their data is being used and tracked overall.”Mozilla has already partnered with Princeton University for studies like “Political and COVID-19 News” — about misinformation about politics and COVID-19 — and Stanford University on upcoming projects like “Beyond the Paywall.””Cutting people out of decisions about their data is an inequity that harms individuals, society, and the internet. We believe that you should determine who benefits from your data. We are data optimists and want to change the way the data economy works for both people and day-to-day business,” Weiss said. “We are excited to see how Rally can help understand some of the biggest problems of the internet and make it better.” Researchers, like Princeton’s Mayer, will be able to invite people to participate in studies and crowdfunded scientific efforts. Mayer, head of the “Political and COVID-19 News” project, said that for years, academic researchers have been “stymied” when trying to experiment on online services. “Rally flips the script and enables a new ecosystem of technology policy research,” he noted.Shoshana Vasserman and Greg Martin of the Stanford University Graduate School of Business are working on the “Beyond the Paywall” project, and Vasserman said research is needed to “get answers to the hard questions that we face as a society in the information age.””But for that research to be credible and reliable, it needs to be transparent, considered, and treat every participant with respect. It sounds simple, but this takes a lot of work. It needs a standard bearer to make it the expectation in social science,” Vasserman said. “In working with Rally, we hope to be part of that transformation.”Mozilla added that it was also launching a new toolkit called WebScience that helps researchers build standardized browser-based studies on Rally. Weiss and others at Mozilla explained that their goal for Rally is to show “that there is a case for an equitable market for data, one where every party is treated fairly, and we welcome mission-aligned organizations that want to join us on this journey.” Rally is only available for Firefox users in the US over the age of 19 right now, but Mozilla said it plans to expand it globally in the future.  More

Three men have been jailed for violent crimes conducted against victims found through Grindr. 

Michael Atkinson, Pablo Ceniceros-Deleon, and Daryl Henry, 28, 21, and 24-years-old, respectively, deliberately targeted men believed to be homosexual in what the US Department of Justice (DoJ) calls “bias-motivated violence.”Grinder is a social networking and dating app for the LBTQI community. The trio, located in Texas, abused the app to find victims for crimes including kidnapping, carjacking, theft, and assault.  US prosecutors say that as many as nine men around the Dallas area have been targeted in this way since late 2017.  The crimes included luring innocent men to apartments and holding them at gunpoint — carjacking their vehicles, and using further threats of violence to force them to withdraw cash from ATMs. Some of the victims were also physically attacked, taunted with homophobic slurs, and at least one individual was sexually assaulted.  In 2019, Atkinson pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit hate crimes, kidnapping, carjacking, and one count of kidnapping; Ceniceros-Deleon admitted to hate crimes, carjacking, and the use of a firearm in a violent crime; and Henry pleaded guilty to one hate crime count, conspiracy to commit hate crimes, kidnapping, and carjacking. 

Atkinson has been sentenced to 11 years in prison. Ceniceros-Deleon will serve 22 years behind bars and Henry has been issued a prison term of 20 years. There was one more member of the group involved in these criminal activities. Daniel Jenkins, due to be sentenced in October, has also pleaded guilty to hate crimes, kidnapping, carjacking, and the use of a firearm in a criminal setting. Under a plea agreement, Jenkins faces a sentence of up to 26 years. The investigation into the crime spree was conducted by the FBI’s Dallas Field Office.  “These defendants brutalized multiple victims, singling them out due to their sexual orientation,” commented Acting US Attorney Prerak Shah for the Northern District of Texas. “We cannot allow this sort of violence to fester unchecked. The Department of Justice is committed to prosecuting hate crimes. In the meantime, we urge dating app users to remain vigilant. Unfortunately, predators often lurk online.” Previous and related coverage Have a tip? Get in touch securely via WhatsApp | Signal at +447713 025 499, or over at Keybase: charlie0 More