Android May Soon Warn You About Fake Cell Towers

In recent years, North Korea has deployed thousands of so-called IT workers to infiltrate Western companies, obtain paid wages and return money to support the regime. As the programs have been more effective, they have become more and more elaborate and employed new tactics to escape detection.

But this week, the United States Ministry of Justice has revealed one of its largest operations to combat IT workers to date. The Doj says that he identified six Americans who would have helped allow the plans and stopped one of them. The law enforcement officials searched 29 “laptop fakes” in 16 states and have seized more than 200 computers, as well as web and financial accounts.

Meanwhile, a group of young cybercriminals caused chaos worldwide, leaving empty grocery stores and temporarily ending certain flights following their paralyzing cyber attacks. After a period of calm in 2024, dispersed spiders pirates returned this year and ruthlessly target retailers, insurers and airlines.

This week too, we have detailed how LGBTIQ + organizations in EL Salvador help activists colony attacks against their community and to better protect themselves against state surveillance.

And there is more. Each week, we bring together the news of security and confidentiality that we have not covered in depth ourselves. Click on the titles to read full stories. And stay safe there.

Simulators of cellular sites, often known as stingays or imsi lines, are among the most stealthy and powerful monitoring tools in operation today. The devices, which pretend to be cell tricks and intercept communications, can collect call metadata, location information and other traffic on what you do on your devices. They have been used more and more by officials of the application of laws and immigration.

However, according to Android Authority and Ars Technica reports, the next hardware advances have led Google to increase its efforts to combat potential espionage. From Android 16, compatible devices will be able to identify when networks require apparatus identifiers, such as device IDs or SIMs, and emit alerts when you connect to a network of non -encrypted cells. Examples of alerts show warnings that “calls, messages and data are vulnerable to interception” when connected to unsecured networks. There will also be notifications when you return to a quantified network. An option to activate these notifications appears on a page of mobile network safety settings as well as the option to avoid 2G networks, which could help prevent certain ISSI sensors from connecting to your device. However, although the parameters are available in Android 16, it can take a while for Android devices to largely use the required equipment.

Before the presidential election last November, pirates linked to Iran attacked the presidential campaign of Donald Trump and stole dozens of emails in an apparent offer to influence the results of the elections. Some emails were distributed to journalists and in the Biden campaign. This week, following the Israeli-Iranian conflict and the US intervention with “Bunker-Buster” bombs, the hackers behind the email compromise have been re-emerged, telling Reuters that they can disclose or sell stolen emails more.

Cybercriminals said they stole 100 GB of email, some of which are from Susie Wiles, the Chief of the White House. The email cache would also include those of Lindsey Halligan, a lawyer for Trump, advisor Roger Stone and the adult film star Stormy Daniels. The pirates, who used Robert’s name, told Reuters that they wanted to “disseminate this case”. We do not know if they will act on threats.

In response, US officials said the pirates’ threat was a “scald campaign calculated” by a foreign power. “A hostile foreign opponent threatens to illegally exploit equipment allegedly stolen and not verified in order to distract, discredit and divide,” said Marci McCarthy, spokesperson for the cybersecurity and infrastructure security agency in a statement.

In recent years, the Chinese pirate group Salt Typhoon has been unleashing hacking against American telecommunications networks, has managed to enter at least nine companies and have access to the texts and calls of the Americans. Brett Leatherman, the recently named leader of FBI cyber-division, told Cyberscoop that Chinese pirates are now “widely contained” and lie “dormants” in the networks. The groups have not been expelled from the networks, said Leatherman, since the more they are in the systems, there are more ways to find to “create persistence points”. “Right now, we are very focused on resilience and deterrence and providing significant support for the victims,” ​​said Leatherman.

Deepfake platforms that allow people to create non-consensual, often illegal and harmful images of women without clothes have exploded in recent years. Now, a former denunciator and discloses documents from one of the largest applications supposedly “nudify”, CLOTHOFF, says that the service has a budget of several million euros and provides for an aggressive expansion where he will create explicit images not granted to celebrities and influencers, according to the reports of German publication Der Spiegel. The alleged expansion has a marketing budget of € 150,000 (around $ 176,000) per country to promote images of celebrities and influencers, according to the report. He indicates more than “three dozen people” work for Clothoff, and the publication has identified some of the potential key operators of the platform. The documents exposed online also revealed customer email addresses. A spokesperson who claimed to represent Clothoff denied that there were more than 30 people as part of the central team and told Der Spiegel that he had no several million euros budget.