mastodon 4.8.0-alpha.3+glitchCybersecurity
It feels like Proton are being intentionally misleading in their statements. They know that most of their customers aren't familiar with how legal process actually works, so are happy to spread half-truths.
Under US law, a US law enforcement agency (LEA) typically has to apply for a subpoena or search warrant with a US court. The court is then responsible for deciding if the legal bar for search a request has been met, then either grants or denies it.
The problem is, if a company has no real US footprint (no US corporate entity, offices, servers, etc.), then a US court typically doesn't have the jurisdiction to compel the company to hand over customer data (except in some rare circumstances). Even if the court approved the warrant anyway, it wouldn't really be legally binding.
Which is why the Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty (MLAT) exists. MLAT enables law enforcement agencies in one company to send requests for information to law enforcement agencies in another. Switzerland has such a treaty with the US. This means that the FBI can request that Swiss authorities hand over a Swiss company's data on their behalf.
Any country requesting information held by a company in a foreign jurisdiction would typically do so via MLAT. Which means from Proton's perspective, the legal request would appear to originate from their local law enforcement, not the FBI. Which they clearly understand based on their Reddit post.
Saying "we don't respond to legal requests from anywhere other than Swiss authorities" seems very intentionally worded to give the impression that the company does not cooperate with foreign law enforcement. But since it'd be the Swiss authorities handling any such requests, they'd have to comply, since as they admitted, they have to comply with local laws.
There is, however, some useful (but more nuanced) information here:
Firstly, MLAT requests are handled by local law enforcement according to local law. So if there is a difference between the law of the sending and recipient country, that might mean the MLAT request is denied. That probably doesn't mean much, because if you're on the FBI's radar, the chances are you did something that is also massively illegal in Switzerland too.
Secondly, they are 100% correct in saying that no other service provider is going to do any better. They're all beholden to local laws, and the ones that think they're not tend to get their doors blown off by SWAT like CyberBunker did. The only exception is if the company resides in a country which does not cooperate with US law enforcement (which Proton does not).
But the part that's extremely disingenuous is that the "we only respond to requests from the Swiss authorities". That statement is likely intended to imply they don't cooperate with law enforcement in any other countries, which is simply not true. Switzerland has MLAT agreements with over 30 counties.
People really need to understand that no company is going to shield you from the FBI (or any reputable law enforcement agency). They'll use misleading statements to make it sounds like they don't cooperate with law enforcement, but they do. They have to.
We plan to decrease operational costs for our AI model by building custom servers that are immune to cosmic radiation, then spending trillions of dollars launching them into space. Yes, our CFO did tech themselves math using ChatGPT, why do you ask?
I can’t believe we’re doing this again. It’s just a bot that generates the text you ask it for. If you put it in charge of critical decisions, it will kill people. Not because it’s secretly evil, but because it’s a word generator. It’s like putting your toaster in charge of air traffic control.
I spent nearly 4 months investigating the inner workings of a North Korean state-sponsored hacking group. Here's what I found:
- The group used generative AI tools to aid in almost every part of their operations.
- They exfiltrated 26,584 cryptocurrency wallets from victim systems, with a combined value totaling as much $12 million dollars.
- In several cases, the threat actors set up entire front companies to lure in developers via fake job posting, then infected them with malware.
- The threat actors successfully pulled off a supply-chain attack by compromising a VS Code extension developer's system.
🔗 Full article: https://expel.com/blog/inside-lazarus-how-north-korea-uses-ai-to-industrialize-attacks-on-developers/
Slowly setting up my video/livestream studio again. The amount of tech required for even a half decent experience is crazy
My thoughts on Microsoft's threat to prosecute researchers for dropping zero day exploits
I'm convinced this technology was invented purely just to troll me
To prove you’re not a robot, please select all the Mar-a-lago SCIFs
It's been a while since I did a vulnerability research article. How about a little DoS zero-day as a treat?
I've been researching some malware that uses Blockchain Smart Contracts as Command-and-Control infrastructure. Since blockchain data is public, I was able to write code to track how many new systems the malware infects each day. Blog post coming next week.
ComoDoS - Exploiting a Remote Kernel Zero-Day Vulnerability in Comodo Internet Security
How an IP parsing vulnerability makes it possible to remotely crash systems with a single TCP/IP packet
After years of planning a potential collab, I finally got to sit down with fellow cybersecurity YouTuber David Bombal for an in person interview! Below you can check out the video from what will hopefully be the first of many more collaborations 😃 :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KsXzTz5H2QQ
Just checking in on my investment portfolio, because apparently computers are appreciating assets now.
Great crowd at Zero Trust World today. Thanks for everyone who came to my keynote and for all the great hallway conversations! 😃
@GossiTheDog@cyberplace.social That is indeed oddly specific
My latest blog post investigating a malware campaign which infects victims by utilizing only legitimate infrastructure. The malicious activity spans hundreds of hacked websites, the BSC blockchain, and a popular CDN.
Since the decline of peer-to-peer botnets it's been difficult to track malware infections externally. But smart contract based C2 infrastructure provided us with unique insights into this campaign.