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Undercover Agents Target Citizen Lab
- jarym 8y agoEveryone loves a good spy story but this one just misses a lot. Creepy people with seemingly fragile LinkedIn profiles setup meetings to ask questions in fancy hotels and restaurants. It could be something, it could be nothing. Either way the story doesn’t seem to provide much one way or another. Maybe it’s just me, not expecting James Bond but some evidence of something sinister would have made this more compelling
- pdpi 8y agoSome evidence of something sinister would have the other side incompetent. The problem with this sort of smoke and mirrors business is that it's borderline impossible to tell an appropriately-sophisticated adversary from paranoia.
- jarym 8y agoYou put what I was getting at far more eloquently. If there are bad guys up to no good then there needs to be more evidence to counteract the possibility of paranoia.
- nyolfen 8y agoa stranger asking about workplace rivalries and drama suggests to me that they were looking to sow discord between the employees or identify one they could flip for dirt about the others. recording the meeting and asking weird leading questions seems to imply some kind of james o'keefe-style attempt to portray them in a negative light in the press. both together, by someone using a fabricated identity, leaves little ambiguity about ill intent imo.
- devwastaken 8y agoI'm not sure what kind of sinister you're looking for. They're trying to get dirt on academic scholars, I'd call that sinister. Not only that but the specific questions, and the fact they got them into a room, is a warning.
- sigmar 8y ago>It could be something, it could be nothing. Multiple people collaborating in a campaign to collect information or compromising material on Citizen Lab seems like something (regardless of whether they are sophisticated or well funded)
- secfirstmd 8y agoCitizen Lab are an outstanding bunch of people, really love the work that they do. A pity, though not surprising that they are being targeted this way. This sort of thing happens all the time with many of the NGOs we provide security for. Many of the infiltration attempts are much more sophisticated though, with far wider efforts to build better cover.
- Sgt_Apone 8y ago> "I know what I'm doing," Lambert said, as he put his files — and his pen — into a bag. Then he stood up, bumped into a chair and walked off, saying "Ciao" and waving his hand, before returning because he had neglected to pay the bill. > As he paced around the restaurant waiting for the check, Lambert refused to answer questions about who he worked for or why no trace of his firm could be found. My god. This would be perfect comedy if wasn't so concerning that it happened at all.
- jacobolus 8y agoReminds me of the time the Silicon Valley writers met with the head of GoogleX: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/how-silicon-valley-nails-silicon-valley https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/how-silicon-v... > Teller ended the meeting by standing up in a huff, but his attempt at a dramatic exit was marred by the fact that he was wearing Rollerblades. He wobbled to the door in silence. “Then there was this awkward moment of him fumbling with his I.D. badge, trying to get the door to open,” Kemper said. “It felt like it lasted an hour. We were all trying not to laugh. Even while it was happening, I knew we were all thinking the same thing: Can we use this?” In the end, the joke was deemed “too hacky to use on the show.”
- rrggrr 8y agoStates and large companies routinely try to understand who is behind journalistic endeavors, to influence them, and to counter other state's influence over them. This stuff is never going away, and it is very likely to get worse and more complex. Influence and counter-influence operations: https://www.rand.org/topics/information-operations.html https://www.rand.org/topics/information-operations.html
- opportune 8y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird
- onetimemanytime 8y agoThey messed with shady people's livelyhood and with even worse people...like secret services from all corrupt countries that used that spyware. Dangerous. But brave. No matter what we think, for them its perfectly reasonable to get even and to protect their thing. Watch our for drugs slipped in your car or whatever. Setting you up is extremely easy
- zenexer 8y agoThis all started with what I assume was a murder, so they’re well aware of the risks.
- adrianmonk 8y agoThis appears to be an AP news story, so here's a link: https://www.apnews.com/9f31fa2aa72946c694555a5074fc9f42 https://www.apnews.com/9f31fa2aa72946c694555a5074fc9f42 In addition to presumably being a more direct / original source, this doesn't appear to have a paywall like the NY Times site.
- rblatz 8y agoThanks! I routinely avoid articles that I'm interested in, because of the NYT paywall and instead have to ration out my views for the most intriguing stories.
- duxup 8y ago>"Work drama? Tell me, I like drama!" Lambert said at one point Who goes to a meeting with a stranger and spills the beans on "work drama"?
- zenexer 8y agoSomeone with a grudge, I suppose. If you’re not happy with the company for which you work, you might be inclined to voice your dissatisfaction. All it takes is one person to slip up.
- duxup 8y agoI guess from an "investigator" aspect it is wroth a shot but that has to be a long shot to ask at the first meeting when they've got no connection to the other person. A lot of the questions seemed like really obvious "Hey can you give me a list of information that will allow me to manipulate you, and the people around you?" Oddly awkward.
- zenexer 8y agoIt might be more of an attempt to scare them than anything.
- darawk 8y agoProbably a lot of people would talk a bit about it, if they became comfortable with someone and let their guard down.
- NikolaNovak 8y agoDepends on nature of the drama I suppose. In complex corporate environments, I tend to brief new team members on some of the "work drama" background their first week, to equip them to handle, process, and react appropriately.
- AlexCoventry 8y agoHow do you do that without compromising yourself politically?
- walrus01 8y agoOne interesting thing to point out is that all of Canada is a single-party consent jurisdiction for recording of conversations. You do not have to notify the other party. CBC's investigative journalists have used this extensively, in all sorts of scam/fraud/corruption investigations, if you watch the past twenty years of output from The Fifth Estate and other reputable documentary series. The Citizen Lab researchers would be smart to bring pocket sized recording devices with them to meet with these sketchy characters, and then publish the results.
- 3pt14159 8y agoThis isn't quiet as clear cut as you're saying. There are instances where you cannot record conversations. For example, in the bedroom or other places where someone has a reasonable expectation of privacy like a therapist's office. But the general thrust of what you're saying is true. Phone calls, and interviews or conversations in public can be.
- baybal2 8y agoIt will be very easy for Canadian officials to trace the person if they have: 1. Face 2. Assumption that the guy fled the country ASAP as soon a he was spooked
- walrus01 8y agoYou're assuming the person isn't traveling on a totally false passport, Israeli intelligence has been caught in the past stealing identities of real new zealanders to obtain legitimate, issued by NZ government passports, for instance. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_Israel–New_Zealand_passport_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_Israel–New_Zealand_passpo...
- baybal2 8y ago> You're assuming the person isn't traveling on a totally false passport, Face recognition, unless they passed the border at the only remaining paper only checkpoint in the country
- walrus01 8y agoThe Russian intelligence offers traveling on fake passports involved in the recent Skripal poisoning case didn't care one whit about the UK's customs face recognition, or omnipresent camera systems, and they were up to something far more nefarious than this.
- onetimemanytime 8y agoUmmm...the Russians are on a suicide mission of sort. Do this and stay in mother Russia for the rest of your life, if you don't get arrested. They have a powerful nation state behind them and one that does not extradite its citizens. Even if regime changes, its very unlikely that they will be surrendered due to bad precedent.
- keyme 8y agoThey call themselves "academic scholars", however what they did was nothing less than an act of war against sovereign entities and their contractors. They should expect nothing less than retribution. This is just how it works.
- i_am_nomad 8y agoIf investigative journalism is an act of war against you, then you’re fighting on the wrong side.
- keyme 8y agoDoes it matter that it's the wrong side? It's an act of war nonetheless. Retribution usually follows. Was dumping the DNC mail server to Wikileaks investigative journalism? Or an act of war?
- i_am_nomad 8y agoRight, we get it. Never criticize Israel, or you’ll find yourself set up by spies using hidden cameras and shady aliases.
- keyme 8y agoThe sovereign entity I was referring to in this case was Saudi Arabia, but whatever.
- ggggtez 8y agoPlease troll somewhere else.
- afuchs 8y agoIt isn't any more of an act of war than the actions of state actors who target civilians. These researchers are academic scholars. If the UofT's Citizen Lab is committing acts of war by researching how state sponsored malware is used to target civilians, those state actors are already engaging in war against those civilian actors.
- tgragnato 8y ago> Like FlameTech, CPW-Consulting was a fiction. Searches of Orbis and the French commercial court registry Infogreffe turned up no trace of the supposedly Paris-based company or indeed of any Paris-based company bearing the acronym CPW. And when the AP visited CPW's alleged office there was no evidence of the company; the address was home to a mainly residential apartment building. Residents and the building's caretaker said they had never heard of the firm. This obviously doesn't mean anything, but the IPs associated with cpw-consulting.com are riddled with malware. https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/5684892-Gmail-Kite-Aerial-Photography.html https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/5684892-Gmail-Kite-A... http://archive.is/K54Ax http://archive.is/K54Ax https://www.virustotal.com/#/domain/cpw-consulting.com https://www.virustotal.com/#/domain/cpw-consulting.com https://www.virustotal.com/#/ip-address/66.111.4.54 https://www.virustotal.com/#/ip-address/66.111.4.54 https://www.virustotal.com/#/ip-address/209.99.40.222 https://www.virustotal.com/#/ip-address/209.99.40.222 https://www.virustotal.com/#/ip-address/66.111.4.53 https://www.virustotal.com/#/ip-address/66.111.4.53
- bendoernberg 8y agoFrom the Israeli newspaper Haaretz: 'Revealed: Israel's Cyber-spy Industry Helps World Dictators Hunt Dissidents and Gays' "Within a few years, the Israeli espionage industry has become the spearhead of the global commerce in surveillance tools and communications interception. Today, every self-respecting governmental agency that has no respect for the privacy of its citizens, is equipped with spy capabilities created in Herzliya Pituah." https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium.MAGAZINE-israel-s-cyber-spy-industry-aids-dictators-hunt-dissidents-and-gays-1.6573027 https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium.MAGAZINE-israel...
- droopyEyelids 8y agoThere will always be people eager to point out the race of people who do wrong, when those people are Jewish. I understand how it might seem OK to do that because Haaretz did the reporting here, but even leaving aside questions about the motivation of Hagar Shezaf and Jonathan Jacobson, Haaretz is an Israeli paper and I think those sorts of details could be left inside the country. For those of us outside of Israel, it's enough to identify that a tech company is providing this software- without naming the nationality!
- feikname 8y ago> There will always be people eager to point out the race of people who do wrong, when those people are Jewish. What was pointed here was an country government's agency, not ethnicity. I see nothing wrong in including that information and in, in fact, in favor of it. This way, it's possible to have a grasp of what govts. are doing what, even though not much.
- forgotmysn 8y agothis is such a ridiculous perspective. if it were American companies doing this, people wouldn't question the headline. the truth is, nationality matters. not all countries would permit a private intelligence sector to exist like this, or perform these types of services. understanding that the israeli government permits this behavior helps contextualize their complicity.
- throwaway4877 8y ago[FLAGGED]
- scarejunba 8y agoIs it Mossad? Is that because they may randomly kill me thinking I'm a terrorist when I'm just a waiter? I think I can count on US backwater police departments to do that too. Look at these stars of intelligence: > After dessert arrived, the AP reporters approached Lambert at his table and asked him why his company didn't seem to exist. > > He seemed to stiffen. > > "I know what I'm doing," Lambert said, as he put his files — and his pen — into a bag. Then he stood up, bumped into a chair and walked off, saying "Ciao" and waving his hand, before returning because he had neglected to pay the bill. He knows what he's doing hahaha. It's like a scene from Burn After Reading.
- house_atr 8y agoNo mossad is incompetent death squads peddling overrated crappy weapons and "training" to any regime dumb enough to employ them. Mostly African despots. They routinely get away with bad stuff because Western governments choose to turn the other cheek similarly to Saudi Arabia.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- throwaway2872 8y agoI speak is Saudi Araby prince people. You understand is errorly.
- dang 8y agoContinuing to troll HN like this will get your main account banned as well. Please stop now.
- throwaway2837 8y agoYou whole fucking stupid. too stupid. you no have brain. Idiot. Go kill yourself, you stupid dog. Don't put other people life at rist. Stupid idiot. Go die, you stupidl
- CapacitorSet 8y agoIntelligence agents are by far some of the most infamous people.
- kejaed 8y agoIf you’d like to support Citizen Lab you can donate here: https://donate.utoronto.ca/give/show/84 https://donate.utoronto.ca/give/show/84
- xfitm3 8y agoWhy would an agent be afraid of dine & dash?
- MertsA 8y agoIt sounds like that would be a very trivial way to reveal their identity. Get locked up for something minor but now the agent has to go through booking and post bail. I don't think the local police would look too kindly on someone providing a false name either.
- yardie 8y agoBecause this is not the movies. Having a criminal record curtails your ability to travel.
- darkpuma 8y agoSame reason (smart) drug smugglers obey the speed limit.