Tag: Canada

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FBI watched as hacker dumped Bell Canada passwords online

FBI watched as hacker dumped Bell Canada passwords online:

When Bell Canada’s website was hacked last year — and the accounts and passwords of more than 12,000 Canadians posted online — the Federal Bureau of Investigation was not only watching, but letting the hackers stage the attack from what was secretly an FBI server.

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Christopher Parsons, a postdoctoral fellow who studies state access to telecommunication data at the Citizen Lab at the Munk School of Global Affairs in Toronto, said it made “good tactical sense” that the FBI used confidential informants and an undercover server to build their case.

It was the fact they did nothing to stop the crime before it occurred that makes this case unusual, Parsons said.

“In this case it sounds like the FBI had that ability, had that option to prevent these things from happening, perhaps with a weaker case, but instead they opted to endanger innocents in order to build a stronger case,” said Parsons. “The problem there is there is no indication Bell had been notified. This wasn’t dummy data that was released — this was live, real customer data.”

 

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Police asked telcos for client data in over 80% of criminal probes

Police asked telcos for client data in over 80% of criminal probes:

In recent years, civil liberty advocates, journalists and Canada’s privacy watchdog have repeatedly sought details on the frequency with which telecom companies hand over data to police officers.

Not all are convinced that the 80-95 per cent estimate is accurate.

“How exactly did they derive such high numbers? What is the methodology?” asks Chris Parsons, a post-doctoral fellow at Citizen Lab, an academic unit at the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs.

“If it is sound, that indicates an incredibly high rate, assuming that all crimes or all investigations are some way linked with telecommunications data.”

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Last year, TekSavvy, Rogers and Telus became the first telecommunications companies to release transparency reports — following in the footsteps of their U.S. counterparts and spurred to action by a questionnaire sent by a group of academics led by Parsons. Bell Canada was alone among the large telcos not to issue a report.

Previously released government documents suggested that Public Safety officials worried that the firms might divulge “sensitive operational details” in their reports.

The federal department sought advice on whether any potential legal issues might exist around the disclosure of how telecommunication companies interacted with police, the newly released ministerial briefing says.

“If I were being very charitable, it could be a way to assuage the concerns that ISPs [internet service providers] may have had,” said Parsons. “Less charitably, it could also mean that Public Safety was interested in seeing if there was a way to prevent the reports from coming out.”

Many internet and phone service providers cited potential legal issues — along with a litany of other reasons — as why they failed to disclose any figures.

 

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Evening Brief: Tuesday, May 26, 2015

Evening Brief: Tuesday, May 26, 2015:

A new report from Citizen Lab at the Munk School says “Canadian telecommunications providers have been handing over vast amounts of customer information to law enforcement and government departments and agencies with little transparency or oversight,” reports CBC. “We conclude that serious failures in transparency and accountability indicate that corporations are failing to manage Canadians’ personal information responsibly,” says the report. “Access to our private communications is incredibly sensitive,” said Christopher Parsons, lead author of the study and a postdoctoral researcher at Citizen Lab.

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Christopher Parsons: Canada has a spy problem

I published a comment piece with the National Post today that quickly summarizes the importance and harms of Canada’s signals intelligence activities, especially as it pertains to persons living in Canada.

The key takeaway is:

Canadians are routinely accused of having sleepwalked into a surveillance nation. We haven’t. Instead, the federal government of Canada has secretly deployed mass-surveillance technologies focused on domestic and foreign communications alike and, even when caught red-handed, the government refuses to have a reasonable conversation about the appropriateness or legality of such technologies. Canadians deserve better from their government. More oversight and accountability is needed at a minimum, and cannot be dismissed as “red tape” given the magnitude of the surveillance operations conducted upon the population of Canada by its own government.

You can read the whole piece over at the National Post.

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Documents Reveal Canada’€™s Secret Hacking Tactics – The Intercept

Documents Reveal Canada’€™s Secret Hacking Tactics – The Intercept:

Canada’s electronic surveillance agency has secretly developed an arsenal of cyberweapons capable of stealing data and destroying adversaries’ infrastructure, according to newly revealed classified documents.

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Christopher Parsons, a surveillance expert at the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab, told CBC News that the new revelations showed that Canada’s computer networks had already been “turned into a battlefield without any Canadian being asked: Should it be done? How should it be done?”

 

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Communication Security Establishment’s cyberwarfare toolbox revealed

Communication Security Establishment’s cyberwarfare toolbox revealed :

Top-secret documents obtained by the CBC show Canada’s electronic spy agency has developed a vast arsenal of cyberwarfare tools alongside its U.S. and British counterparts to hack into computers and phones in many parts of the world, including in friendly trade countries like Mexico and hotspots like the Middle East.

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Some of the capabilities mirror what CSE’s U.S. counterpart, the NSA, can do under a powerful hacking program called QUANTUM, which was created by the NSA’s elite cyberwarfare unit, Tailored Access Operations, says Christopher Parsons, a post-doctoral fellow at the Citizen Lab, one of the groups CBC News asked to help decipher the CSE documents. QUANTUM is mentioned in the list of CSE cyber capabilities.

Publicizing details of QUANTUM’s attack techniques fuelled debate south of the border about the project’s constitutionality, says Parsons, who feels a debate is needed here in Canada as well.

“Our network has been turned into a battlefield without any Canadian being asked: Should it be done? How should it be done?” says Parsons.

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“With Bill C-51, we’re seeing increased powers being provided to CSIS, and that could mean that they would be able to more readily use or exploit the latent domestic capabilities that CSE has built up,” says Parsons.

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Leaked documents reveal Canada’s cyber warfare tools

Leaked documents reveal Canada’s cyber warfare tools :

Implanting malware on computer networks, disabling enemy computer systems, disrupting and grabbing control of an adversary’s infrastructure.

It all sounds so un-Canadian, but these are among the cyber warfare tools developed by the country’s Communications Security Establishment (CSE), according to documents obtained by the Canadian Broadcasting Communications. The CSE is Canada’s electronic spy agency.

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The documents indicate that Canada’s computer networks have “been turned into a battlefield without any Canadian being asked: Should it be done? How should it be done?” said Christopher Parsons, surveillance expert with Citizen Lab, an international research group at the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs.

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Toronto Police Chief Bragged About Monitoring Protesters and Anonymous Is Pissed

Toronto Police Chief Bragged About Monitoring Protesters and Anonymous Is Pissed:

In his speech, Blair bragged about the Toronto Police Service’s (TPS) ability to monitor an Israel/Palestine demonstration in 2012, which happened on the same day as Toronto’s Grey Cup celebration.

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VICE contacted Christopher Parsons, a cybersurveillance researcher at the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab, to discuss this line between legality and ethics.

“The legality of monitoring public communications isn’t entirely black and white… but it doesn’t strike me that what [Bill Blair described] was necessarily illegal,” said Parsons in an emailed statement. “That authorities are monitoring public communications, where authorities are not considered to be a ‘member of the audience,’ really gets to the heart of many contemporary privacy debates: under what conditions is something private or not?”

Parsons said the legal situation is similar to the context of a barroom.

“Bars are public places,” he said. “People talk loudly and are overheard by strangers at neighbouring tables. But we have a privacy-based expectation that when we speak to our friends or colleagues the people three tables down aren’t just overhearing (they might have to if I’m being loud!) but recording the communication for purposes I wouldn’t approve of.”

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La NSA espionnerait les communications de Rogers et RBC

L’Agence nationale de sécurité américaine (NSA) tente de tracer la carte du trafic des communications de plusieurs entreprises mondiales, dont le géant des télécommunications canadien Rogers et la Banque Royale du Canada (RBC), selon un document secret, a rapporté le Globe and Mail mardi.

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«C’est une préparation du champ de bataille, afin de pouvoir l’investir plus tard, croit Christopher Parsons, un chercheur de l’université de Toronto interrogé par le quotidien. Il s’agit d’observer l’entrée et la sortie des communications d’un réseau et de dire “Okay, voici les endroits où nous devons entrer.”»

Rogers et RBC disent n’avoir aucune raison de croire que leurs systèmes informatiques ou données de clients ont été compromises. «Si une telle surveillance a réellement lieu, nous trouverions cela très troublant», a néamoins affirmé Patricia Trott, porte-parole pour Rogers.

La NSA espionnerait les communications de Rogers et RBC
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NSA trying to map Rogers, RBC communications traffic, leak shows

NSA trying to map Rogers, RBC communications traffic, leak shows :

The U.S. National Security Agency has been trying to map the communications traffic of corporations around the world, and a classified document reveals that at least two of Canada’s largest companies are included.

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Christopher Parsons, a researcher at the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab, who reviewed the leaked document with The Globe, said the activity described could help determine useful access points in the future: “This is preparing the battlefield so it could later be used.

“This is … watching communications come in and out of a network and saying, ‘Okay, these are the places we need to go in.’”