Black Code Page #4

---

to counter it.

[announcer]

You have new challenges today.

Sensitive data is transmitted

over encrypted channels.

You need more.

You want to look through

your target's eyes.

You have to hack your target.

You have to overcome encryption

and capture relevant data.

Being stealth and untraceable.

Exactly what we do.

The vendors of these products and

services market them to governments,

usually at trade shows

that are only open to accredited law

enforcement and intelligence agencies.

Actually, I've got

a big binder that I can...

So, if you ignore the bag,

actually which...

[chuckling]

someone, uh, deposited

these in as a gift to me,

but I think was hoping to disguise

it in the kindergarten bag.

These are brochures from the type of

trade shows that we're talking about,

products and services that allow

cell phone detection,

uh, insertion of malware...

tracking,

social media monitoring.

In many ways, the way to

think about this market

is that it's the commercialization

of cyber crime.

You trick somebody into

installing a software program

that contains malicious code

that exploits some vulnerability

in the system,

which then allows the attacker

to do anything they want.

Turn on the webcam,

listen in on the microphone,

record keystrokes, record

the location, the movement.

It operates without

much accountability,

certainly no corporate

social responsibility,

ripe for abuse in a place

like Sudan or Ethiopia.

We've seen in one

case after another,

how this ends up being used

to target civil society.

Aha.

Gamma Group.

Maker of the notorious

FinFisher spyware.

[cars honking]

The attacker has to socially

engineer or convince the target

to open a file or to, you know, click

through some security warning,

um, in order to become infected.

We had found a document that had pictures

of Ethiopian opposition leaders in it,

and it looked like it was

targeted and designed to appeal

to members of

the Ethiopian diaspora.

Uh, but in fact,

the file was cleverly disguised

to look like a document that's

actually a computer program,

an executable file.

So when you run this, it will

install software on your computer

even though, you know, they

changed the icon and everything

to make it look like this

is a document or a picture.

This is actually a program.

I was able to look at the memory

of an infected computer.

In other words, what's going on inside

the computer when it's infected.

And I was able to identify several

interesting artifacts in the memory,

including a bunch of strings

that said "FinFisher," "FinSpy,"

very clearly attributing this

to the company.

You don't have to be the NSA to

get inside somebody's computer.

Um, instead you can

exploit their curiosity,

their, um, need to communicate.

And of course, journalists, at

the very heart of what they do,

is engage in communication

with a lot of people

and a lot of people that they

don't know and trust necessarily.

Because they're engaged in outreach and

communicating constantly with sources.

[crowd shouting]

[cheering, whistling]

Fifty years ago, nobody would have

known what happened in Syria.

But in 2011, when it started,

everybody had Facebook.

Everybody has e-mails and

everybody has WhatsApp and Viber.

So you just can't stop people

from telling

what is happening to them.

So when they besieged Daraa

at the beginning,

they shut down communication, Internet,

land lines and even electricity.

But they did not know that in the

21st century, people have their ways.

People were charging their mobiles

from their cars or generators,

hand generators,

um, manual generators.

And people were using

satellite connections.

You don't need to use the country, uh,

Internet to be connected to the Internet.

You can use anything.

And they were able to tell

what was happening to them.

Um, so the story got around.

[man speaking foreign language]

[sirens blaring]

A few years ago many of us

celebrated the Arab Spring

as the paradigm of what

these technologies could do.

Remember we called it at the

time "liberation technologies."

They would bring about the end

of authoritarian rule.

[man speaking Arabic]

Unfortunately, Syria has become

the Arab Spring's dark aftermath.

[explosion]

[boy shouting in Arabic]

As groups

sympathetic to the Assad regime

have employed off-the-shelf malware crime

kits to infiltrate social networks,

arrest, torture and

murder opposition groups

and even target

their air strikes.

[rifles cocking]

[shouting]

[gunshot]

[man] From the beginning, we believed that

the camera is the most powerful weapon,

and it was actually

the only weapon we have

to deliver our own message

to the whole world.

This is interesting.

Baraa?

[speaking Arabic]

It's a pleasure for me to

introduce one of my best friends,

Mr. Baraa, he's one of the most

activist people inside Syria.

He came a few days ago

'cause he has...

He has... many broken

bones on his body.

[gunfire]

He was there and covered

the battle in Daraa City.

And in the afternoon,

they get a tank shell.

[explosion]

He was with his friend,

whom has this camera.

And that good guy, you know,

he gets killed

by one tank shell

from the regime's side.

[gunfire]

This video, you will see now,

a remote control car and

it exploded, a huge explosion.

It was filmed

by this camera.

[explosion]

After that,

the rocket launchers

started to hit the place

from the regime's side.

So our activist, this media guy,

he gets killed in here

in this exact... this place.

Now here.

He was standing here.

And people found

the camera with him.

We took out the memory card,

and we post this...

as, you know,

in memory of Hussain.

[wreckage clattering]

So now, Mr. Baraa here,

just a few days just to heal.

He paid a visit to some

hospitals to check out himself,

then he will go back into Syria

to keep working.

There is a war on Facebook.

Uh, every side is using Facebook

to promote themselves.

[in Arabic]

The other way around,

the regime will say,

"We will occupy this area.

We will take over this area."

Then the FSA would leave because

they're afraid of bombardment.

It's just a game.

Facebook is a game.

[Wjd]

It was just a silly joke I made.

I didn't hurt anybody.

I didn't insult anyone.

It was not political.

It was not racist.

There is nothing

that they could hold against me

with a thing that

I wrote on Facebook.

But still,

at a time of war...

people get crazy.

They did not drag me

in the street or kidnap me.

They just asked me to come

to ask me a few questions.

This is what they said, so I

signed the paper that I'm coming.

I went the next morning at

11:
30, to the detention center.

The security guy came to me.

He's like...

He's like half of my height.

He blindfolded me,

and I was like,

I was okay with that

because I thought, it's some...

it's confidential secrets of the country

that they don't want me to see.

Rate this script:0.0 / 0 votes