News of the Cyber World

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Elon Musk Fires Twitter’s General Counsel and Ex-FBI Official James Baker

“In light of concerns about Baker’s possible role in suppression of information important to the public dialogue, he was exited from Twitter today,” wrote Musk on Twitter. Musk did not offer any more details on Baker’s exit or what role he played at the firm.

Musk, the new owner of Twitter, was responding to an article penned by Jonathan Turley, the George Washington University law professor and political commentator, who noted that Baker was a former FBI general counsel. Baker has not issued a public comment about his apparent departure from the social media firm.

It came days after Musk provided internal Twitter information to journalist Matt Taibbi, who had published details about the social media platform’s decision to essentially censor the New York Post’s report about Hunter Biden’s laptop in October 2020.

Maryland governor bans use of TikTok by state agencies

Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan issued an emergency cybersecurity directive on Tuesday, prohibiting the use of Russian and Chinese-influenced products and platforms like TikTok in the executive branch of the state.

In a press release, the governor’s office said platforms like TikTok present risks to the state, possibly being involved in cyber-espionage, surveillance of government entities, and inappropriate collection of sensitive personal information.
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The directive is not just focused on TikTok, but also applies to ZTE Corp, Huawei Technologies, Tencent Holdings, Alibaba products, and Kaspersky.

Agencies under the executive arm of Maryland’s government were ordered to remove the products from state networks, put measures in place to prevent the products from being reinstalled, and implement restrictions on the network that prevent use or access to the prohibited services.
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The move comes more than a week after South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem enacted similar measures, prohibiting the use of TikTok by state agencies, and a day after South Carolina's Gov. Henry McMaster also banned the app on state devices and networks.

Noem said accessing TikTok would be a criminal offense because the app poses a threat to the state and the personal data of its residents.

Apple sued by women who claim AirTag devices let stalkers track victims

Apple is being sued by a pair of women who say the company's AirTag tracking devices made it easier for former partners and other stalkers to track victims down.

The proposed class-action suit filed Monday in San Francisco federal court, Hughes et al v. Apple Inc., contends the tech giant has been unable to protect users from unwanted trafficking through AirTag since launching what it called the "stalker proof" device in April 2021.

Lauren Hughes said her boyfriend had tracked her down after placing an AirTag in her car's wheel well. The other plaintiff said her estranged husband tracked her after putting an AirTag in their child's backpack.

While the $29 AirTags are supposed to be used for people to find lost items, law enforcement has said some people use them for criminal or malicious purposes.

The women said AirTags had been linked to murders from Ohio and Indiana earlier in the year and are seeking unspecified damages for U.S. owners of iOS or Android-based accessories who were tracked by AirTag or are "at risk" of being stalked due to the company's alleged negligence.

More than a dozen journalists sue NSO Group in U.S. court over alleged spyware targeting

More than a dozen journalists and staff at the Salvadoran news outlet El Faro filed suit against the embattled Israeli spyware firm NSO Group on Wednesday, alleging that the company violated U.S. state and federal laws by enabling the illegal surveillance of their phones.

At least 22 staffers at the news outlet were targeted by an unknown party using NSO Group’s Pegasus spyware between June 2020 and November 2021, according to the complaint filed in U.S. federal court. If successfully implanted on targeted devices, the malware allowed the attacker to access contact lists, calendar entries, text and instant messages, notes, emails, search histories and GPS locations, the complaint alleges.

The suit — the first of its kind brought by journalists against NSO Group — asks a federal judge to rule that the Israeli firm violated state and federal hacking laws and to require the company to “identify, return, and then delete all information it obtained through these attacks; to prohibit NSO Group from deploying Pegasus again against the plaintiffs; and to require NSO Group to identify the client that ordered the surveillance,” according to a statement from the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, the group representing the journalists.

The Pegasus attacks occurred as the reporters were reporting on “abuses by the Salvadoran government,” the complaint alleges, and while the reporters were communicating with confidential sources, “including U.S. Embassy officials.”
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A joint investigation by the Toronto-based Citizen Lab and digital civil rights group Access Now published in January 2022 alleged that journalists at El Faro and other outlets, along with two independent journalists, were targeted with Pegasus while investigating Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele and the Salvadoran government. The investigation tied the attacks to a “Pegasus customer operating almost exclusively in El Salvador since at least November 2019” dubbed “TOROGOZ.”

FCC faces long road in stripping Chinese tech from US telecom networks

The Federal Communications Commission took its most aggressive step yet to expunge Chinese tech from U.S. telecom networks with its decision late last week to ban the sale of equipment from companies Congress and the Biden administration deem a national security threat.

But gear from the targeted Chinese tech giants Huawei, ZTE, Hytera, Hikvision and Dahua is so deeply embedded within the American telecom and networking landscape, it’ll take years and billions of dollars to effectively eliminate any risk that these companies pose.

While the FCC order is latest in a series of moves that Washington has made to reduce China’s influence, experts say it remains underfunded and offers no clear plan to help telecoms replace existing Chinese parts or find more affordable alternatives.

Friday’s order bans the authorization of selling new equipment from the targeted companies, but equipment already on the market can continue to be sold, blunting the immediate impact of the order.
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It’s difficult to determine exactly how much technology from Huawei, ZTE, Hytera, Hikvision and Dahua exists inside domestic networks. Just considering Huawei and ZTE, which both make an array of networking components, the FCC estimates there are at least 24,000 pieces of equipment from those companies spread across more than 8,000 locations in the U.S. wireless network.

Because of the prevalence of Chinese equipment inside U.S. telecoms, national security officials and China hawks have long warned that Beijing could force Chinese companies to give its security services access to American networks.