Open Internet

Russian Film Week is back in London cinemas for 8 days from November 28 – December 5 2021, the annual film festival features the best films produced in Russia or Russia-themed films produced globally. Tomorrow Unlocked Film Festival Finalist Cheat sheet for the princess by Vladimir Bukharov will be screened on Thursday, December 2. To celebrate, check out our favorite films about how technology influences our lives from Russia and beyond.

Cheat sheet for the princess

When an agent introduces his latest star to a film producer, things end bloody. But do they?

Terra Cene

Terra Cene is a remembrance of things past and an observation of the interconnected nature of our time on Earth. Winner, Tomorrow Unlocked Film Festival 2021.  

hacker:HUNTER – Wannacry: The Marcus Hutchins Story

In May 2017, computers around the world suddenly shut down. A malware called WannaCry asks for a ransom. The attack stops when researcher Marcus Hutchins finds the killswitch. What happens next for Marcus has to be seen to be believed.

Defenders of Digital – Inherited bias: The trouble with algorithms

These lawyers from Athens explains the dangers of today’s content moderation systems and explores how discrimination can occur when algorithms inherit the biases of their programmers.

hacker:HUNTER – Cashing In

ATMs hold cash, and that makes them attractive for criminals. While criminals around the world try to get to the money in cash machines with hammers, explosives, excavators, or other heavy gear, the Carbanak gang found a more elegant and stealthy way. 

Defenders of Digital – Fighting every day to keep children safe from exploitation

Susie Hargreaves and her team at the Internet Watch Foundation hunt down child abuse images online and help identify children involved so that law enforcement can intervene.

Visit the Russian Film Week website to see the complete film program along with details of exhibitions, talks, masterclasses, and other special events.

Doxing. Have you heard of it? If not, here’s why you might want to get up to date and some simple tips to keep protected. Essential personal data protection reading.

Open access to data – friend or foe?

The accessibility of information today is one of our most empowering freedoms. But it can also fuel malicious personal attacks, known as doxing or doxxing. We’re about to take you through what doxing is, how criminals do it and how to prevent it.

What is doxing?

Doxing is maliciously revealing personal information online, for example, posting an anonymous blogger’s real name or address. Doxers aim to punish, intimidate or humiliate their target by finding out sensitive information and using it against them, like selling your credit card details or threatening to burgle your home.

The never-ending black hole of personal information that is the internet means anyone with the time, motivation and interest can weaponize your personal data. And doxing is a growing problem.

How does doxing work?

These are the most common ways doxers grab data to expose someone.

Tracking usernames

When someone uses one username across multiple platforms, doxers can follow the trail.

Phishing

Phishing scams are fake emails luring victims to click through to a malicious site where attackers may steal sensitive information.

Stalking social media

Geotagging your photos? Sharing your work location? Doxers can use this to build up a picture of your life and even to deduce the answers to your account security questions.

Is doxing that bad?

Yes. Doxing can have catastrophic consequences.

In 2015, hackers forced entry to dating site for people in committed relationships, Ashley Madison, stealing 32 million users’ data. They demanded payment to return the records but didn’t get it, so published all the data online, causing professional and personal harm, and probably a divorce or two. And then in 2020 Ashley Madison’s attackers came back for more.

Doxing knows no bounds. There are no clear good or bad sides. After an anonymous UK-based security researcher saved the world from a powerful cyberattack, the media outed his real identity and address, leaving him open to a revenge attack from the cybercrime group he went out to stop. Marcus Hutchins’ story is one of a kind.

Protect yourself from doxers with this checklist

Recent research shows more of our data is being sold to organizations and criminals. Cybercriminals could use almost all of it for doxing or cyberbullying.

Credit cards and banking log-ins are the most in-demand. They’re used for extortion, phishing schemes and straight-up money theft. Meanwhile, doxxers use personal account access to cause reputational harm. How do you stop it happening to you? This anti-doxing checklist has everything you need to stay safe.

Keen to learn more about doxing and how to prevent it?

Kaspersky, in collaboration with endtab.org, has just released a free doxing training course. You’ll learn about the dangers of dox attacks, how to protect against them and what to do if you’re a victim.

As the Olympic torch begins its journey to Tokyo 2021’s opening ceremony, we ask, is the Olympic Games a chance for technology to shine or a data breach waiting to happen?

Tech successes and failures at the Olympic Games

In ancient Greece, the Olympics began some 3,000 years ago as a sporting event to honour the god Zeus. As the iconic torch sets off on its journey to the Tokyo 2021 opening ceremony, we ask if the Olympic Games is where new technological standards are set, or a breeding ground for emerging cyber threats.

Tech successes and failures from Olympic history range from robotics to autonomous vehicles, to merciless malware that tried to start a cyberwar.

Highlight: Did this drone display steal the show?

Good Morning America shows us how new drones from Intel will change medal ceremonies forever.

Highlight: Tokyo’s high-tech plan for 2020 Olympics

With the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games just around the corner, here’s a snapshot of the incredible technology the organizers will use to make the event smoother and more enjoyable for everyone.

Lowlight: One of the most deceptive hacks in cyber history?

If successful, the 2018 Pyeongchang Olympics’ cyberattack would have left a geopolitical disaster in its wake. hacker: Hunter Olympic Destroyer is a three-part series exploring the mysterious motives behind the attackers, why it’s one of the most deceptive cyberattacks in history and the ‘extraordinarily brilliant’ response that stopped it in its tracks. Watch the full 2018 Olympic cyberattack series.

The Olympic Games is one of the biggest stages on Earth to champion technology in all forms. But with more than sports at stake if things go wrong – think, mountains of personal data and even competitors’ health – how can businesses and organizations make sure this event and its tech is safe for all to enjoy?

Join presenter Rainer Bock to explore the great privacy challenges we face today, and what we can do to protect ourselves.

Join the privacy debate

Online privacy is more important than ever right now. Given the digital world’s meteoric expansion, the ever-evolving threat landscape and murky data privacy court cases, this is the perfect time to brush up on what we’re up against and how to stay safe.

Rainer Bock meets cybersecurity experts from Kaspersky’s Global Research and Analysis Team, Marco Preuss and Félix Aimé. They discuss the critical stalkerware threat, programs that fight unwanted data sharing, and a bold privacy experiment involving 185 used hard drives, USB sticks and notepads.

What happens when an authoritarian regime that controls every aspect of an economy creates a currency based on decentralization, free movement, and transparency? This is the explosive true story behind the world’s first state-backed cryptocurrency.

A country-wide crypto experiment gone wrong

How many state governments do you know who’d put their faith in a cryptocurrency to level out hyperinflation and stop nation-wide riots? Not many, probably. And yet, that’s exactly what Venezuala did to reinvigorate its economy amid financial carnage. Truthfully though, they didn’t do too many of the hard yards. Instead, they supported entrepreneur Gabriel Jimenez to create the petro (₽), or petromoneda – the world’s first state-backed cryptocurrency.

But as you can expect, when an authoritarian regime meets tech based on decentralization, there will be fireworks. As part of Tomorrow Unlocked’s Coded series three, (now launching on Freethink) episode four focuses on entrepreneur and crypto-expert Gabriel Jimenez’s journey from national hero to enemy of the state. Brace yourself for this one.

The final instalment of our series hacker:HUNTER Olympic Destroyer examines how Pyeongchang winter Olympics hackers put smokescreen to misdirect cybersecurity analysts. But through the fog, analysts realized the culprit wasn’t who you might expect.

“Like placing someone else’s fingerprints at the crime scene.”

If successful, the 2018 Pyeongchang cyberattack could have cost billions of dollars, leaving a canceled Olympics and a geopolitical disaster in its wake. Their deceptive methods meant the cybercriminals nearly got away with it. Why did they want to point the analysts at another group? And who was behind it all?

Threat attribution – what is it?

Cybercriminals don’t leave a calling card, but they do leave evidence. The art of finding and using that evidence to find the culprit is known as threat attribution.

Threat attribution is forensic analysis for advanced persistent threats (APTs). It analyzes the attackers’ ‘fingerprints,’ such as the style of their code, where they attack and what kinds of organizations they target. Attacks can be matched with the fingerprints of other attacks attributed to specific groups.

Cybercriminals carry special ‘fingerprints’

Hackers have their own set of tactics, techniques and procedures. Cybersecurity experts can identify threat actors by studying these elements.

In February 2016, hackers attempted to steal $851 million US dollars and siphoned $81 million US dollars from the Central Bank of Bangladesh. The attack was linked to notorious cyber espionage and sabotage group Lazarus Group. Lazarus attacks casinos, financial institutions, and investment and cryptocurrency software developers.

Lazarus has certain targets and ways of attacking: Infecting a website employees of a targeted organization often visit or finding a vulnerability in one of their servers. These are the ‘fingerprints’ used in threat attribution.

Finding a needle within in a needle in a haystack

Crucially, Lazarus Group is long thought to be linked to North Korea. Olympic Destroyer included a piece of Lazarus’s malware code, but the type of attack didn’t fit. Its fingerprints better matched a cluster of attacks by another group with a very different agenda.

Watch the full video to see if you knew who the hacker was all along.

This APT might not have worked, but over the years, others have. To see what a successful APT looks like, watch Chasing Lazarus: A hunt for the infamous hackers to prevent big bank heists.

By 2023, there could be over three billion gamers worldwide. But for some people with disabilities, taking part in this wildly popular passion can be frustrating to impossible. Now, one piece of tech is out to make slaying dragons and building civilizations accessible to all. Will it change the future of gaming?

The AI-powered voice of a generation’s gamers

Since the world’s first video game ‘Pong’ appeared in 1958, gaming has evolved in ways never imagined. But game accessibility is still a problem for as many as 30 million people in the US, because they have an impairment that means they come up against accessibility barriers when gaming.

Fridai is changing all that. The voice-activated, AI-powered assistant gives advice on anything gamers with disabilities may need, from hands-free options to being reminded of the game’s objective. In Defenders of Digital series two, episode four, Mark Engelhardt, Fridai’s Co-founder and CEO, talks about how the technology uses AI to create a new interface between humans and machines.