Of late there is a
lot of heated debate re ( possible ? ) Govt surveillance of public figures,
using a software Pegasus
This software is
made by an Israeli company NSO ( currently being raided / investigated by the
Israel government )
NSO claims :
# Software only meant to survey terrorists /
militants
# Sold only to “ vetted “ governments around the
world
# Costs a few crores of Rupees
# NSO has no access / knowledge of which Govt used it to survey whom and
when
There is a good
chance that Israel may order NSO to stop selling this software outside Israel
In the meantime, our
own Supreme Court is likely to hear a PIL in this regard, filed by Shri N Ram
PIL wants SC to ask
GOI :
# Have any GOI department / agency purchased
Pegasus ( YES – NO ) ?
# Has any GOI department / agency ever used Pegasus to survey any Indian
Citizen ( YES – NO ) ?
# If “
YES “ , who were surveyed ? ( Names of persons )
# If “ YES “ ,
who authorized this action ? ( Name of Officer who authorized )
# If authorized, were the existing rules for such surveillance ( under IT Act )
followed ( YES – NO ) ?
It is quite possible
that GOI may truthfully answer these questions ( the best defense ? )
If current rules
were not followed, GOI may
even admit so and promise to modify / amend these rules ( for better
transparency ) as suggested in :
Ø Who
watches the Watchmen ? ………………………………..( 12 Jan 2019 )
It is
possible that, after getting such assurance / promise from GOI, Supreme Court
may dispose off the PIL with an admonition to the Government
PEGASUS : RIP
MEDUSA :
Welcome
Within next 2 years
, Pegasus will get replaced with Medusa
And here is how :
# Instead of ONE Israeli company making / selling Pegasus, ONE HUNDRED
companies from all over the
making Medusa ( a hundred times more sinister version of Pegasus )
# These companies will “license“ Medusa to anyone (not only governments ) as
SaS ( Software as Service )
# They will license Medusa for a FEW RUPEES per “ Usage Instance “ ( pay per
use )
# If a User explicitly AGREES to enable Medusa to transfer ALL snooped data ( of
those who got surveyed ),
away for FREE ( and make money by selling data )
Those readers who
may think my prediction is unlikely, may want to read :
==================================================
Ø Turn
off, turn on: Simple step can thwart top phone hackers
Extract
:
Ø A robust market
currently exists for hacking tools that can break into phones. Some companies
like Zerodium and Crowdfence publicly offer millions of dollars for zero-click exploits.
Ø "There was
nothing that any of the targets reported seeing on their screen. So that one
was both completely invisible as well as not requiring any user
interaction," Marczak said.
Ø The NSA's guide also
acknowledges that rebooting a phone works only sometimes. The agency's guide
for mobile devices has an even simpler piece of advice to really make sure
hackers aren't secretly turning on your phone's camera or microphone to record
you: don't carry it with you.
Ø IT
staff receive upto 40 targeted phishing attacks a year: Report
Extract
:
Ø Between May 2020 and
June 2021, Barracuda researchers analysed more than 12 million spear phishing
and social engineering attacks impacting more than 3 million mailboxes at over 17,000 organizations.
Ø An average
organisation is targeted by over 700 social engineering attacks each year.
Ø "Cybercriminals
are getting sneakier about who they target with their attacks, often targeting
employees outside the finance and executive teams, looking for a weak link in
your organisation," said Don MacLennan, SVP, Engineering & Product Management, Email
Protection, Barracuda, in a statement.
Extract :
Ø The metaverse is a vision that spans many companies — the whole
industry. You can think about it as the successor
to the mobile internet. And it’s
certainly not something that any one company is going to build, but I think a
big part of our next chapter is going to hopefully be contributing to building
that, in partnership with a lot of other companies and creators and developers.
But you can think about the metaverse
as an embodied internet, where instead of just viewing content — you are in it. And
you feel present with other people as if you were in other places, having
different experiences that you couldn’t necessarily do on a 2D app or webpage,
like dancing, for example, or different types of fitness.
Ø But the metaverse isn’t just virtual reality. It’s going to be accessible across all of our different computing platforms; VR and AR, but also PC, and also mobile devices and game consoles.
Ø So that can be 3D — it doesn’t have to be. You might be
able to jump into an experience, like a 3D concert or something, from your phone, so you can get elements that are 2D or elements
that are 3D.
Ø We have these phones. They’re relatively small. A lot of the
time that we’re spending, we’re
basically mediating our lives and our communication through these small,
glowing rectangles. I think that
that’s not really how people are made to interact. A lot of the meetings that
we have today, you’re looking at a grid of faces on a screen. That’s not how we
process things either. We’re used to
being in a room with people and having a sense of space where if you’re sitting to my right, then that
means I’m also sitting to your left, so we have some shared sense of space in
common. When you speak, it’s coming from my right. It’s not just all coming
from the same place in front of me.
==================================================
Ø
Industry
wants Central Portal for Law Enforcement Agencies ……….[ 21 July 2021
]
Ø Pegasus
: Give it to a Surgeon ………………………………….[20 July 2021 ]
Ø Balancing
: National Security vs Personal Privacy…….[19 July 2021 ]
Ø Digital Dividend from Demographic Data [ 4 D ]………[ 14 Feb 2019 ]
Ø SARAL ( Single Authentic Registration for
Anywhere Login ).[ 10 Feb 2019 ]
Ø Supreme
Surveillance Solution ? ………………………………….[05 Dec 2020 ]
Ø A
Greed-Ship named Facebook …………………………………….[21 Sept 2020 ]
Ø Nostradamus
could have said ? ……………………………………..[08 Nov 2018 ]
Extract :
Read
what Microsoft President Brad Smith said 2 days back :
“For the first time, the world is on the threshold of technology that would give
a government the ability to
anyone anywhere, and everyone
everywhere.
It could know exactly where you are going, where you have been and where
you
were yesterday as
well.
And this has profound potential ramifications for even just the fundamental
civil liberties on which
With regards,
Hemen Parekh / hcp@RecruitGuru.com / 30
July 2021
