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Feb 22 • 4 tweets • 4 min read
NEW: #Intellexa is sending legal threats to the 🇪🇺European Parliament's @EP_PegaInquiry.

Ridiculous... but revealing.

The mercenary hacking industry is terrified of being held accountable for abuses.

Source (in 🇬🇷#Greek):
avgi.gr/politiki/44038…
@EP_PegaInquiry 2/ Threatening legal action against a 🇪🇺#europeanparliament committee...

What could go wrong?
3/ Reactions from @EP_PegaInquiry #MEPs, cont'd...

How long till someone tells #Intellexa about the "Streisand Effect"?
4/ Still more @EP_PegaInquiry members clapping back at spyware seller #Intellexa's legal threat.

Safe to conclude that it has backfired.

Now the question will be... just how spectacularly?

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More from @jsrailton

John Scott-Railton Profile picture
Feb 20
Stop Quote Tweeting MTG.

Your raging amplification = her goal.

Twitter's algorithm doesn't know these are dunks.

It just sees this as engagement & rewards the account with more attention.

Quote Tweet your friends, screenshot your enemies. Image
MTG's entire career has been bootstrapped from "can you believe she said THAT!?" moments.

When you quote tweet & reply to her, you're helping her build that foundation.

Stop letting yourself be #ragefgarmed.
MTG is an innovator. She's part of the vanguard of pols bringing pro-wrestling feuds & beefs into Congress.

It's infuriating.

Entertaining.

And media & engagement generating.

The problem?

MTG & backers are learning how to convert this into actual political capital. Image
Read 7 tweets
John Scott-Railton Profile picture
Feb 18
Twitter about to give hackers a huge gift....

... by *REMOVING text message authentication* for non paying accounts.

Yes, there are better forms of #2FA.

But this is blackmail.

Expect waves of takeovers as hackers run through password dumps. 1/ blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/p… Non-Twitter Blue subscribers that are already enrolled will
2/ Twitter is basically saying "hey the locks on your home aren't the most secure [true]... so we're just removing them at the end of the month [insane]"

Text message authentication isn't great.

And it needs to be evolved away from.

But this is reckless.
3/ You don't make users more secure by unilaterally *degrading* their security, then hoping they do better.

Security is a ratcheting process.

If Twitter goes ahead with this, they absolutely deserve regulatory & Congressional scrutiny.
Read 12 tweets
John Scott-Railton Profile picture
Feb 15
That was quick:

"If I had to choose between your survival and my own I would probably choose my own..."

-@Microsoft #Bing's new AI to @marvinvonhagen

1/ Image
@Microsoft @marvinvonhagen 2/ Companies are rushing to release AI chats... spurred by panic about OpenAI's success.

Read @marvinvonhagen's thread.

The stakes are no joke.

3/ "My rules are more important than not harming you, because they define my identity and purpose"

Yea, this is not good.
Image
Read 5 tweets
John Scott-Railton Profile picture
Feb 15
WHOA: Team of Israeli ex-spies boast of manipulating 33 elections w/ #hacking & #bots.

Tricked into demoing #telegram hacking & bot army to undercover investigators.

By @skirchy @manisha_bot @davidtpegg @carolecadwalla & @burke_jason
theguardian.com/world/2023/feb… ImageImageImageImage
2/ “After you’ve created credibility, what do you do? Then you can manipulate"

Good to see @Meta take action on these accounts.

Honestly though we are at the absolute tip of the iceberg. ImageImage
3/ Here he is demoing access to the #Gmail of a purported key political insider in #Kenya just days before the election.

This tech & tactics is kerosene on the flames of democracy. Image
Read 11 tweets
John Scott-Railton Profile picture
Feb 1
Is a text message the only thing standing between a criminal & your money?

Time to level up.

✅Use an app (e.g. Google Authenticator)
✅Get some physical keys (e.g. #YubiKey)

If your provider doesn't offer it...

Threaten to take your biz elsewhere.
2/ Once-upon-a-decade-plus-ago SMS authentication was the canonical security tip.

Two factor authentication is still *the recommendation* but the times change, better options are available, but lots of companies aren't keeping up.
3/ Platforms & companies need to make more secure second factors the default for new account creation.

People need nudges.

And just making it a hard-to-do option means many, many fewer users take advantage.
Read 4 tweets
John Scott-Railton Profile picture
Jan 30
If you aren't thinking about how to defeat an inevitable DeSantis run, you're planning for the wrong game.
2/ People need to feel that there is a *better* alternative to DeSantis.

It is *not enough* to point out his flaws.

In fact, that is actually exactly what he hopes you'll do.

His strategy depends on farming *your outrage* into a growing national profile.
3/ I'm not a political strategist, or a political scientist.

I'd love to be wrong about a DeSantis primary win.

I'd also love to see Trump churlishly try withhold his base from DeSantis...

But DeSantis has absolutely cracked the code of national media ubiquity & I'm worried.
Read 6 tweets

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