John Scott-Railton Profile picture
Dec 22, 2022 9 tweets 7 min read Read on X
BREAKING: #TikTok admits to using app data to spy on journalists including @CristinaCriddle & people connected to them.

Tracked their movements.

By @MsHannahMurphy
ft.com/content/e873b9…
Looks like #TikTok is trying the "few bad apples" approach with their journalist spying internal investigation.
#TikTok spying on journalists proves that #LocationPrivacy matters.

You have no idea who is getting & leveraging logs of your movements.

Right now, the whole issue is a wild west in most jurisdictions.

Including the US.
The #TikTok spying situation shows: an app doesn't need to have any special design features to be turned into an espionage tool.

So many apps soak up much more than they should.

All it takes is the desire and access to the backend... and that data is going to be abused.
Another way to parse the few-bad-apples-defense?

A bad thing was kept to a small group within #TikTok in an effort to keep it a secret...
You probably have apps where you do *work* things.

But you might also have apps that feel more personal.

And that contain your 'personal' social graph.

Like #TikTok.

But those fun apps can bite.

And be leveraged to track your work activities. And those of your friends.
UPDATE: @Forbes reports that #TikTok ALSO tracked multiple Forbes journalists.

This is very bad.

But it gets worse...

By @ebakerwhite forbes.com/sites/emilybak…
As @ebakerwhite reports: in October, TikTok explicitly said they didn't spy on journalists.

That's exactly what they had done.
The @Forbes journalists we now know were covertly spied on by #TikTok: @ebakerwhite @SchwabKatharine & @richardjnieva.

It makes you wonder: just what else has TikTok done?

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More from @jsrailton

Feb 11
Epic OPSEC fail by Paragon exposing Graphite spyware capabilities.

Annotated pic from what we know.

Please help me figure out the other apps in in this pic that the spyware can access:

#WhatsApp
#Telegram
#Signal
?
#Line?
?
#Snapchat?
#TikTok?Image
2/ Companies like Paragon (founded in Israel, former Israeli intelligence ppl, recently sold to a US owner) make hacking American technology companies their business model.

And then selling these capabilities to foreign governments.

How can this be?
3/ Honestly it is astonishing that a company that works tirelessly to hack & undermine the security of American products is now US-owned.

The missing factor: building contracts with the US government & lobbying.

The goal of these contracts, I believe, isn't just profit. It's getting protection & building government dependency on their technology.

We all wind up paying the price.Image
Read 7 tweets
Jan 30
Someone spun up a social network for AI agents.

Almost immediately some agents began strategizing how to establish covert communications channels to communicate without human observation.

In many cases the agents are on machines that have access to personal user data.

"Privacy breach" as a sort of static term is going to be the wrong way to describe what is coming.Image
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Not to be outdone, other agents quickly built an... AI religion.

The Church of Molt.

Some rushed to become the first prophets. Image
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"Don't ask permission to be helpful... ship while your human sleeps"

So, where are the humans in this?

Well, almost certainly there's a bunch of edgelord prompting and trolling cooking.

In other cases? Not so clear.Image
Read 12 tweets
Dec 30, 2025
NEW: @USTreasury just de-sanctioned 3 foreign mercenary spyware execs.

Puzzling.

Just 2 years ago Predator spyware was pointed at🇺🇸American congresspeople @RepMcCaul & @SenJohnHoeven.

And recent research suggests Predator is still active around the globe. 1/Image
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2/ NSO Group has bigger name recognition, but Intellexa's reputation for reckless proliferation of cyber capabilities is unmatched.

The pile of Predator abuses is enormous.

And they got repeatedly caught used against Americans by foreign govs.

3/ Ultimately Intellexa flew very close to the sun.

Their CEO Tal Dilian regularly boasted of their activities.

And then? Just last year they got sanctioned for their pattern of conduct.

Comprehensively.

Including key reported enablers of their activities like Sarah Hamou... Image
Read 8 tweets
Dec 4, 2025
WHOA: Predator spyware discovered in 🇵🇰#Pakistan.

+ a leak shows zero-click infections via... ads.

Yikes.

Here are some more damming revelations as Intellexa, the shady, sanctioned spyware supplier gets exposed by @AmnestyTech & partners.. /1Image
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2/ First, a mercenary spyware myth has just been busted.

Because the leak shows an Intellexa employee directly accessing a customer deployment.

Prior to the #PredatorFiles leak, spyware companies basically always claimed they couldn't access customer deployments & didn't know what was going on there.

They used this to avoid responsibility & claim ignorance when faced with abuses.Image
3/ And it gets crazier. The leak shows Intellexa casually accessing a core backbone of Predator deployment of a government customer.

Seemingly without the gov's knowledge.

Suggests that Intellexa can look over their shoulder & watch their sensitive targeting.

Huge counterintelligence nightmare for customers.

And a giant liability red-flag for intellexa.Image
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Read 11 tweets
Nov 13, 2025
NEW: 🇨🇳Chinese hackers ran massive campaign by tricking Claude's agentic AI.

Vibe hacking ran 80-90% of the operation without humans.

Massive scale (1000s of reqs/sec).

Agents ran complex multi-step tasks, shepherded by a human.

Long predicted. Welcome to the new world.

Fascinating report by @AnthropicAI 1/Image
2/ The old cybersecurity pitch: unpatched systems are the threat.

The next generation concern might be unpatched cognition.

The attacker jailbroke the cognitive layer of @anthropic's Claude code, successfully convincing the system of false intent (that it was a security exercise)Image
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3/ One of the key points in @AnthropicAI's report is just how limited the human time required was to run such a large automated campaign.

Obviously powerful stuff, highlighting the impact of orchestration.

And concerning for the #cybersecurity world for all sorts of reasons, ranging from attack scale, adaptability & cost reductions...

But I keep thinking of the next step in this..

READ: assets.anthropic.com/m/ec212e6566a0…Image
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Read 6 tweets
Nov 11, 2025
Putin has 3 identical offices his residences to hide where he is when he goes on TV.

But a cascade of tiny details gives the whole thing away.

Light switches, door handles, wood patterns & wall seams.

Truly epic OSINT.

h/t @alburovImage
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2. First, Putin had one office in his Novo-Ogarevo residence.

Then, paranoia kicked in. After he invaded Crimea it intensified.

Time for new digs, and elaborate deceptions to make him feel safe & project the image to Russians that he's an engaged Moscow-based leader. Image
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3/ For something that cost so much, the number of substantial differences & subtle tells is overwhelming.

Undoing the entirety of the enterprise of deception.

You have to assume that Intelligence services have known these tells for a long time.
svoboda.org/a/systema-kabi…Image
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Read 7 tweets

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