Twitter
Facebook
Email Lists
DonateWith more than a billion users, Facebook is not only the biggest global social network but also an increasingly important forum for journalists. In some repressive countries it has even served as a publishing platform for journalists whose newspapers or news websites have been closed down. That is why journalists and bloggers should note today's news that after a year of standing on the threshold, Facebook has decided to step inside the Global Network Initiative tent.
Committee to Protect Journalists
CPJ Internet Channel
Defending Free Expression Online
Middle East & North Africa
That is a bogus @ap tweet.
-- AP CorpComm (@AP_CorpComm) April 23, 2013
More than a quarter million Twitter accounts have been hacked worldwide, the social media company disclosed in February, but Tuesday's attack on The Associated Press's verified account, @AP, had unusual effect. The Dow Jones industrial average fell 143 points after someone hijacked the AP's account to falsely tweet that two explosions at the White House had wounded President Barack Obama. The market recovered, but the hacking--just the latest in a series of attacks on news organizations--sent shudders through a profession that's grown accustomed to breaking its news on Twitter.
For most of its almost-150-year history, the meetings of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), the United Nations' communications standards body, have been rather predictable affairs.
The Syrian Internet, like the country, appears to have been collapsing into a patchwork of unconnected systems for some time. I spent time talking to Syrians tech activists this week in Tunisia before Thursday's shutdown, and their reports from the front painted a picture of two different networks.
We talk a lot about hacking attacks against individual journalists here, but what typifies an attempt to access a reporter's computer? Joel Simon, CPJ's executive director, received an email last week that reflects some characteristics of a malware attack against a journalist or activist. There was nothing particularly notable about the targeting. (Like many reporters, CPJ receives such attempts occasionally). The attack failed at the first fence, and my casual investigation into the source was inconclusive. There are no shocking answers or big headlines to draw from this attack. But it does illustrate a contemporary reality: Opportunistic assailants regularly shower journalists with software attacks.
The Syrian civil war is also a propaganda war. With the
Assad regime and the rebels both attempting to assure their supporters and the
world that they are on the brink of victory, how the facts are reported has
become central to the struggle. Hackers working in support of Assad loyalists
this week decided to take a shortcut, attacking the Reuters news agency's blogging
platform and one of its Twitter
accounts, and planting
false stories about the vanquishing of rebel leaders and wavering support
for them from abroad.
This week, Morgan Marquis-Boire and Bill Marczak of the University of Toronto's Citizen Lab provided a disturbing look into the likely use of a commercial surveillance program, FinFisher, to remotely invade and control the computers of Bahraini activists. After the software installs itself onto unsuspecting users' computer, it can record and relay emails, screenshots, and Skype audio conversations. It was deployed against Bahraini users after being concealed in seemingly innocent emails.
This week, YouTube
announced a feature that should catch the eye of video journalists and bloggers
working in dangerous conditions. After uploading a video to YouTube, you can
now deploy a "blur faces" post-production tool that, in theory,
should disguise the visual identity of everyone on the screen. The Hindu
newspaper has an excellent how-to guide for their
readers.
Some journalists continue to receive the warning from Google about state-sponsored attacks that we mentioned last week. The message appears on top of logged-in services like Gmail. Occasionally it will disappear for a few hours and then reappear, but there is no way to remove it.
The last few weeks have offered the strongest indications
yet that nation-states are using customized software to exploit security flaws
on personal computers and consumer Internet services to spy on their users. The
countries suspected include the United States, Israel, and China. Journalists
should pay attention--not only because this is a growing story, but because if
anyone is a vulnerable target, it's reporters.
Subscribe
