How foreign governments spy using PowerPoint and Twitter

The malware known as PowerPoint has infected millions of systems worldwide and has cost businesses, NGO’s and governments untold billions in lost productivity. PowerPoint files seem to be self-spawning and capable of infinite replication in the wild. Small variations in the PowerPoint files forces administrators to keep endless permutations of these highly virulent files.<p>PowerPoint is often introduced into an organization by highly sophisticated threat actors using deeply customized versions of the software. McKinsey, BCG, and Bain deploy the PowerPoint malware to a multiplicity of customers whose human capital and infrastructure become mired in endless recursive loops known as PowerPoint cycles.<p>The actual introduction of PowerPoint is typically merely incidental to these threat actors ambitions. Most often they derive substantial portions of their income by reselling organizations intellectual property which they already own.<p>Once the organizations systems become bogged in ever more bloated PowerPoint files productivity plummets. Morale drops among employees and management often re-engages the threat actors to attempt to right the ship.<p>The PowerPoint Malware is seemingly unstoppable at this point. Any computers that contain it should be air gapped and protected by highly restricted physical access.

I like the word &quot;foreign&quot; in the title, which I assume is to imply the US government is not doing this. It&#x27;s also neat how they point out examples of all the &quot;bad&quot; countries doing this, but of course none of the &quot;good&quot; ones.<p>Given I&#x27;m not American, so the US government is &quot;foreign&quot; to me.

&gt; Among the malware was a malicious spyware, including a remote access tool called “Droidjack,” that allows attackers to silently control a mobile device. When Droidjack is installed, a remote user can turn on the microphone and camera, remove files, read encrypted messages, and send spoofed instant messages and emails.<p>How is this even possible? I have always considered phones to be more secure then PC due to additional security measures (such as sandboxing for every app as well as more fine granted permission systems).<p>I&#x27;m aware that malware can be installed on a phone but I always though I was required to explicitly allow that (at least on android) and I thought it was impossible on iOS without jail breaking.<p>Or does this app use some zero days, that have been discovered years ago but have not been patched because of androids broken update policy?<p>More information on how this works would be highly appreciated.

I&#x27;ve been volunteering teaching Latin American journalists how to research, communicate, and store data privately to protect themselves and their sources against attackers. The threat against freedom of expression there is just as real as it is with oppressive regimes in other parts of the world although they don&#x27;t get nearly as much attention as the Middle East. This article doesn&#x27;t highlight enough the need for volunteers and professionals to lend a hand. Most recently I&#x27;ve been working with journalists in Venezuela. If you know anything about Venezuela you should know that they have an incredibly oppressive government and they also have had massive inflation further eliminating their buying power. Things like a $3 (USD) a month VPN are hard for a middle class citizen to afford.<p>I&#x27;m trying to remember where I saw it, but there was a journalist who showed over the past year how much food 1000 bolivars bought. At the beginning of the photo essay, she could have fed a family for a week. By the end, it was barely enough for 1 person for a meal.<p>Anyone can really help out and make a difference too. Not just in LATAM, but around the world. The amount of knowledge about cybersecurity, threat models, and risks associated with electronic communications spans a wide range. Of course you have civil society groups who know how to use PGP, but there are others who still rely on Facebook Messenger to communicate with sources and keep passwords sticky noted to their computer screen.<p>Edit: Also wanted to note that it&#x27;s pretty great what Citizen Labs is doing. Other great resources for learning&#x2F;teaching&#x2F;staying updated ( in both English and Spanish and several others) can be found on the EFF&#x27;s website - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;ssd.eff.org&#x2F;en&#x2F;playlist&#x2F;journalist-move" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;ssd.eff.org&#x2F;en&#x2F;playlist&#x2F;journalist-move</a>

Took a look at DroidJack[0], and it&#x27;s impressively nefarious. Seems like Android is Windows all over again when it comes to security. I already see people running virus scanners on their phones.<p>[0]: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.symantec.com&#x2F;connect&#x2F;blogs&#x2F;droidjack-rat-tale-how-budding-entrepreneurism-can-turn-cybercrime" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.symantec.com&#x2F;connect&#x2F;blogs&#x2F;droidjack-rat-tale-how...</a>

From an endpoint security perspective, &#x27;activists&#x27; really need to be trained not to just click on everything blindly and to open everything suspicious in a sandbox.<p>Yes it&#x27;s possible to escape from a VM, but it&#x27;s significantly harder to code executable malware that will escape from, for example, a Windows 10 VM running inside Virtualbox on an XUbuntu&#x2F;XFCE4 host laptop.

Exporting software to spy on people should be regulated similarly to weapons exports, I feel.<p>I wonder what kind of programmer works for companies that produce this spyware...

Puff piece. Despite &quot;twitter&quot; being in the title, the article doesn&#x27;t discuss twitter. The title&#x27;s use of the word &quot;how&quot; also suggested i might read something about the technology involved, something like a backdoor in the twitter api. Nope. No discussion whatsoever about the hows. In short: Governments use spyware. Thank you Washington post for that important public service announcement.

How do the Twitter attacks work? Just malware links on the Twitter service that are working via the spear phish? The article didn&#x27;t seem to go into any detail there.

The original report has much detailed explanation with all the facts[1]. I was left wondering how an ppt downloaded an app into an Android phone.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;citizenlab.org&#x2F;2016&#x2F;08&#x2F;group5-syria&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;citizenlab.org&#x2F;2016&#x2F;08&#x2F;group5-syria&#x2F;</a>