spying Archives - usatoday24

Russia wants to end WhatsApp and Telegram. To do so, he will force his own messaging app accused of spying

August 22, 2025 by usatoday24

Russia has just moved a key piece on its digital control board. The government has ordered that all mobile phones and tablets that are marketed in the country They must come with a new pre -installed application: ‘Max’, a messaging service promoted by the State that, according to critics, is designed as a Powerful government surveillance tool. It coincides with other restrictions. This new measure occurs just a week after the Russian regulator, Roskomnadzor, will begin to restrict voice calls in services as popular as WhatsApp and Telegram, punishing them for Your refusal to deliver data of its users to the authorities. ‘Max’, the forced replacement that is integrated with the government. This new application does not start from zero. It will replace another messaging application developed by the Russian technological giant VK, which was already mandatory since 2023. However, ‘Max’ goes one step further, since it will be integrated directly with government services, further centralizing the communication of citizens through a platform controlled by the Kremlin. And now has achieved 18 million downloads According to official sources. This measure is part of a law in force since 2021 that forces Smartphone, tablets and computers to include Software of Russian origin. Although the official justification is the protection of citizens’ data, digital rights organizations have been denouncing that the real objective is limit digital freedoms and monitor population activity. An increased control from the war with Ukraine. The campaign against foreign messaging services have been drastically intensified since 2022. The Russian government repeatedly accuses platforms such as Telegram of being used by Ukraine for Ukraine recruit agents and organize terrorist actors in its territory. In this way, as part of its strategy, the Kremlin has already ordered officials and legislators to leave their telegram channels and migrate to ‘Max’. All for your own safety. Or they sell it. The first blow affected WhatsApp and Telegram. Before imposing his new app, Russia had already begun to degrade the experience of competition. Roskomnadzor announced “measures to counteract criminals”, which translated into a Selective restriction of voice calls In WhatsApp and Telegram. Currently, calls on these platforms barely work, since users in Russia are reporting a dumb -plagued service and distorted audio. It is a subtle, but effective way to make applications less useful and frustrating for its combined base of almost 200 million users in the country. The regulator has affirmed that functionality will be restored when applications “begin to comply with Russian legislation”, something that is considered extremely unlikely. Therefore, the degradation of the service could only be the prelude to a total blockade. The ecosystem closes: Rustore mandatory in Apple. The Kremlin plan is not limited to messaging software. The same date that ‘Max’ becomes mandatory, on September 1, another key imposition also enters into force: Rustore, the Russian National Applications Store, It must be pre -installed on all Apple devices. Until now, it was already mandatory on all Android devices sold in the country. With this movement, Russia ensures not only that your applications are on the devices, but also to control the main software distribution channel, closing the circle of its sovereign digital ecosystem. While the authorities insist that these measures are necessary to prevent terrorism and protect minors, for opponents the reality is another: the construction of a great digital firewall to isolate and monitor their citizens. It is not the only country that applies limitations. China with the Impossibility of accessing Google services From its territory, it is a clear example of how countries try to Apply controls to your citizens. North Korea is also another example where A unique operating system is imposed and access to technology is extremely controlled. Images | Igorn In Xataka | Change WhatsApp and Telegram for a European alternative: how to do it and what you should take into account

Goal has been spying on everything we did when navigating our Android mobiles. They have caught it in fraganti

June 4, 2025 by usatoday24

Billions of users have been exposed to a new system of mass tracking and espionage that both goal and Yandex have used. Both companies have used a technique that took advantage of native applications such as Facebook or Instagram and then monitor everything we did with our mobile browsers. It is a drop more than one glass already Absolutely full: The attack on Our privacy. What happened. A group of researchers from the IMDEA Networks agency and the Universiteit Radboud of the Netherlands, led by teachers Gunes Care and Nerseo Vallina-Rodríguez, published yesterday An extensive technical article. In it they revealed the technique that they have baptized as ‘local Mess’ (‘Lo Local’) and what a goal has been using since September 2024 and Yandex much earlier, since 2017. What does ‘Local Mess’. We will focus on goal and its applications, although the method is analogous in Yandex. Android users who use applications such as Facebook or Instagram could be exposed, because those applications “listened to” what happened in the Browsers installed In our mobile phones using local ports (hence the ‘Local Mess’) with the aim of tracking and monitoring everything we did in our browsers. The user did not know anything. The method allowed these applications to achieve Receive metadata, cookies and commands that were executed in the browsers. The Meta JavaScript code, called Meta Pixel, was loaded silently and without warning as a kind of complement to mobile browsers, and connected to apps such as Facebook or Instagram. Discouraging users. As these researchers explain, the method allowed access device identifiers that are used for advertising systems, called Android Advertising ID (AAID), and that made it possible to associate everything the user did to a real identity (a Facebook or Instagram profile). The result: what we did in the browser was no longer anonymous or private. Neither unknown, nor delete cookies nor anything. This “web-top” method eludes systems that theoretically should protect this type of tracking. Thus, neither Delete cookiesnor navigate in Incognito mode It worked when trying to escape that tracking. In fact, the method “opens the door for potentially malicious applications to fit the user’s web activity,” they explain in the document. Exploiting our “localhost”. Meta and Yandex scripts are slightly different, but both make improper use of unauthorized access to sockets from our localhostthe reserved name that our device has on the local network and that is always the IP 127.0.0.1 (in IPV4) address. The Android operating system allows any application installed with Internet permission to open a listening socket in the Loopback interface (127.0.0.1). The browsers that are executed on the same device also access this interface without the consent of the user or the mediation of the platform. This allows a JavaScript code embedded on web pages to communicate with native Android applications and share identifiers and navigation activity. Millions of affected websites. For the goal to work in the method, he took advantage of his cookie _FBPvery widespread on websites that make use of this platform. According to Builtwith, a website that allows monitoring the adoption of different technologies, that goal Pixel is embedded in more than 5.8 million websites among which are Xataka. There is a search engine in the final part of the study that allows you to know if a website was exposed and the activity in it could be registered by these scripts. Scheme of the attack of the attack. Source: Local Mess. Theoretically, only on Android. The researchers reveal that they only managed to obtain empirical evidence of this technique in Android mobiles. They have not observed such a problem In iOS browsers Or in the applications they evaluated, although they point out that technically achieving something like this on the iPhones is feasible. Browsers protect themselves. Those responsible for the discovery have followed a communication policy responsible for vulnerabilities and have contacted several browse developers. Chrome already has prepared the patchFirefox’s is in development – but it seems not exposed to the problem in the case of goal – Duckdugo has already solved it and Brave was not affected When using a lock list and when required explicit permission of user for communications with the premises. There is no information on the progress of the patch in Microsoft Edge, which was affected. And goal has deactivated that option without further ado. Although browsers have taken measures, they are late. Not because there is no solution or the code has been modified, but because goal has decided to stop using it without saying anything. Yesterday the Meta Pixel script stopped sending packages or making requests to localhost. The code responsible for sending that cookie _fbp, indicate in an update in this report, has been almost completely deleted. Why did this goal? There is a hypothesis about the implementation of this technique by the goal: it could be due to how Google was intended to get rid of third -party cookies in Chrome At some point in 2024. That would have affected companies as a goal, which perhaps would have reacted trying to collect that information with this technique to have a plan B if cookies disappeared. What says goal. In Xataka we have contacted those responsible for the goal in Spain, and we will update this information if we receive an answer. In The Register they indicate that after contacting the company, Meta has indicated that: “We are in conversations with Google to solve a possible communication error in relation to the application of their policies. When we are aware of the concerns, we have decided to pause the function while we work with Google to solve the problem.” What Yandex says. The Russian company has made comments about the problem. Speaking to Android Authority, they explain the following: “Yandex strictly meets the data protection standards and does not discourage user data. The function in question does not collect any sensitive information and its only objective is to improve the customization of our applications. After examining the problems … Read more

In 1956, the US published two maps that showed the contamination of atomic bombs. And they were key to spying on the enemy

January 25, 2025 by usatoday24

On July 16, 1945, it was a historic day: in Alamogordo, in the New Mexico desert, the First nuclear detonation in history. The Trinity test was a success that led to the development of the ‘Little Boy’ and ‘Fat Man’ bombs that, a few days later, They launched on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Before the test, the scientists bet on the results, with some bets that pointed to the destruction of the State of New Mexico, the ignition of the atmosphere and even the incineration of the planet. Obviously, that did not happen, but what did happen is that Each nuclear launch He sent a large number of particles to the atmosphere. And two maps published in 1956 reflected the consequences of these releases. Nuclear tests. Although the world was horrified by what happened in the two Japanese cities when the United States decided launch the only two nuclear bombs Used in combat so far, the powers continued to test the limits of the newly discovered technology. Thus, from the United States they continued with launches in Pacific Islands. Russia also quickly began to develop its nuclear program, with tests such as the ”Tsar pump‘That had about 3,000 times the power of the launched in Hiroshima. These launches by both countries were a muscle sample in full cold war, as well as a deterrent tool. ‘IVY Mike‘. One of the US test releases was that of ‘Mike‘, a bomb launched on November 1, 1952 that vaporized an island, leaving a crater of almost two kilometers and 50 meters deep. It was the first detonation of a hydrogen pump, causing a 3.3 -kilometer radio fire at the time of the explosion, with a fungus -shaped cloud that stabilized 41 kilometers high. Lookout Mountain studies immortalized the moment, adding later sound, since they recorded it without it. The rays were not part of the postproduction, but appeared just after the detonation: Disaster. The consequences for the Eneetak atolón in which it was launched were tremendous. The expansive waves devastated the vegetation not only of the objective island, Elaugelab, but of the closest. In addition, it caused a radioactive rain and ships almost 60 kilometers away saw how pieces of radioactive corals fell on the helmet. The area had remained seriously contaminated And, as we can see in these satellite images, Elfelab simply disappeared. THE ATOLON BEFORE AND AFTER IVI MIKE Atmospheric movement. With the rise of these tests, a team of researchers from the United States Meteorological Service published in the journal Science two maps that immortalized a historical fact: the trip of the radioactive particles around the globe. Declassified in 1956, the first one shows the global and relatively rapid atmospheric diffusion of radioactive particles. The explosion has a very clear starting point, but as soon as the particles enter the atmosphere, they continue their expansion through the rest of the globe thanks to the air currents. Radioactive particle dispersion. It was a very simple map, more than anything visual, but the second was much more explicit. It was a map of isoline Particles even to American and Canadian soil. In Europe, these radioactive particles had been largely diluted. Observation networks. It was not the first time that the movement of pollution had been studied, but it was somewhat reserved for great events, such as Krakatoa volcano explosion in 1883. With these maps, researchers wanted to demonstrate that, with the right tools, it was already easy to track volatile tracers in the atmosphere. And Ivy Mike’s were a good excuse to study. Researcher Sebastian Grevsmühl published the study A few years ago and comments that, apart from satisfying scientific curiosity, maps had a more pragmatic utility. On the one hand, they helped build the idea of the world’s contamination on a global scale thanks to atmospheric movements, developing that everything has consequences. On the other, they were a tool that the nuclear powers had to monitor enemy atomic activities. Nuclear espionage. With these tools, Russian and American researchers could know if the opposite had detonated a nuclear artifact … even if he had not done it public, but also if they were using nuclear reactors or producing plutonium. So much so that, in 1949, the United States sought to determine the progress of the German nuclear bomb measuring Xenon-133 in the air. To do this, they used B-29 bombers and 24 land stations distributed by the planet to collect air samples that would determine if they were developing something. This is how, thanks to the collaboration with the British army, they discovered that, in 1949, the Soviet Union had successfully carried out a first nuclear test. Over the years, the tools evolved to cross radiological, seismic and sonic data that allowed to determine both the presence of radioactive elements and enemy nuclear bombs … and estimate their power. And much of that began with works like the one led to the two previous maps. Images | Sebastian V. Grevsmühl, Mit Press In Xataka | The amazing story of the man who survived the two atomic bombs of Hiroshima and Nagasaki

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