Plus: A Google Chrome patch licks the DevilsTongue spyware, Android’s kernel gets a tune-up, and Microsoft fixes 84 flaws.

July has been a month of important updates, including patches for already-exploited vulnerabilities in Microsoft and Google products. This month also saw the first Apple iOS update in eight weeks, fixing dozens of security flaws in iPhones and iPads.

Security vulnerabilities continue to hit enterprise products, too, with July patches issued for SAP, Cisco, and Oracle software. Here’s what you need to know about the vulnerabilities fixed in July.

Apple iOS 15.6

Apple has released iOS and iPadOS 15.6 to fix 37 security flaws, including an issue in Apple File System (APFS) tracked as CVE-2022-32832. If exploited, the vulnerability could allow an app to execute code with kernel privileges, according to Apple’s support page, giving it deep access to your device.

Other iOS 15.6 patches fix vulnerabilities in the kernel and WebKit browser engine, as well as flaws in IOMobileFrameBuffer, Audio, iCloud Photo Library, ImageIO, Apple Neural Engine, and GPU Drivers.

Apple isn’t aware of any of the patched flaws being used in attacks, but some of the vulnerabilities are pretty serious—especially those affecting the kernel at the heart of the operating system. It’s also possible for vulnerabilities to be chained together in attacks, so make sure you update as soon as possible.

The iOS 15.6 patches were released alongside watchOS 8.7, tvOS 15.6, macOS Monterey 12.5, macOS Big Sur 11.6.8, and macOS Catalina 10.15.7 2022-005.

Google Chrome

Google released an emergency patch for its Chrome browser in July, fixing four issues, including a zero-day flaw that has already been exploited. Tracked as CVE-2022-2294 and reported by Avast Threat Intelligence researchers, the memory corruption vulnerability in WebRTC was abused to achieve shellcode execution in Chrome’s renderer process.

The flaw was used in targeted attacks against Avast users in the Middle East, including journalists in Lebanon, to deliver spyware called DevilsTongue.

Based on the malware and tactics used to carry out the attack, Avast attributes the use of the Chrome zero-day to Candiru, an Israel-based company that sells spyware to governments.

Microsoft’s Patch Tuesday

Microsoft’s July Patch Tuesday is a big one, fixing 84 security issues including a flaw already being used in real-world attacks. The vulnerability, CVE-2022-22047, is a local privilege escalation flaw in the Windows Client/Server Runtime Subsystem (CSRSS) server and client Windows platforms, including the latest Windows 11 and Windows Server 2022 releases. An attacker able to successfully exploit the vulnerability could gain System privileges, according to Microsoft.

Of the 84 issues patched in Microsoft’s July Patch Tuesday, 52 were privilege escalation flaws, four were security feature bypass vulnerabilities, and 12 were remote code execution issues.

Microsoft security patches do sometimes cause other issues, and the July update was no different: Following the release, some users found MS Access runtime applications did not open. Thankfully, the firm is rolling out a fix.

Android July Security Bulletin

Google has released July updates for its Android operating system, including a fix for a critical security vulnerability in the System component that could lead to remote code execution with no additional privileges needed.

Google also fixed serious issues in the kernel–which could result in information disclosure—and the framework, which could lead to local privilege escalation. Meanwhile, vendor-specific patches from MediaTek, Qualcomm, and Unisoc are available if your device is using those chips. Samsung devices are starting to receive the July patch, and Google also released updates for its Pixel range.

SAP

Software maker SAP has issued 27 new and updated security notes as part of its July Security Patch Day, fixing multiple high-severity vulnerabilities. Tracked as CVE-2022-35228, the most serious issue is an information disclosure flaw in the central management console of the vendor’s Business Objects platform.

The vulnerability allows an unauthenticated attacker to gain token information over the network, according to security firm Onapsis. “Fortunately, an attack like this would require a legitimate user to access the application,” the firm adds. However, it’s still important to patch as soon as possible.

Oracle

Oracle has issued 349 patches in its July 2022 Critical Patch Update, including fixes for 230 flaws that can be exploited remotely.

Oracle’s April Patch Update included 520 security fixes, some of which addressed CVE-2022-22965, aka Spring4Shell, a remote code execution flaw in the spring framework. Oracle’s July update continues to address this issue.

Apple Just Patched 37 iPhone Security Bugs

Plus: Google delays the end of cookies (again), EU officials were targeted with Pegasus spyware, and more of the top security news.

Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine has been ongoing for more than 150 days, with no end to the conflict in sight. While Ukrainian troops are having some success with counteroffensives in the south of the country, the war is having long-lasting impacts on freedom of speech and online censorship.

This week, we documented how a flurry of more than half a dozen new Russian laws, all proposed or passed in recent months, will help to separate Russia from the global internet. The move, if successful, could damage the very idea of the free and open internet and have global ramifications. But it is not all bad news. Russia’s attempts to block and censor people’s online lives are hitting some stumbling blocks: Its long-held ambition to block anonymity service Tor is faltering.

Last month, Joe Biden signed the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, the first major federal gun law passed in years. However, senators lacked any real government data on gun violence when they were drafting the law, in part because, until 2019, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was banned for decades from studying gun violence in America. As a result, much of the data used to inform the Act came from elsewhere. We also looked at whether states could legally block people seeking abortions from crossing state lines to do so following the fall of _Roe v. Wade_.

Elsewhere, we’ve also put together a guide to how you can safely lend your phone to someone else, whether to a friend who wants to look at your holiday photos or a stranger who needs to make an emergency phone call. A few simple tweaks to your iPhone or Android settings can quickly help to secure your data.

And there’s more. Each week we round up the news that we didn’t break or cover in depth. Click on the headlines to read the full stories. And stay safe out there!

Every year, the list of companies getting hacked or suffering data breaches continues to grow. These incidents are often the result of businesses’ technical misconfigurations or poor security practices. While each incident is different, it is undeniable that data breaches can have huge impacts on those impacted: individuals who have their data leaked, for example, and companies who have to deal with reputation and financial damage. This week, an IBM report revealed that the cost of a data breach in 2022 has reached an “all-time high,” averaging $4.35 million. That’s a 2.6 percent increase from last year.

Perhaps more salient, according to IBM’s data, is that companies are hitting their customers with the costs of data breaches. The company surveyed 550 organizations that had suffered a data breach between March 2021 and March 2022, and 60 percent of them said they had increased their prices as a result of the breach. No specific examples were given in the report. And it’s unclear whether companies passing on the costs of cybersecurity incidents are investing that extra income into better protecting their customer’s data in the future. However, according to IBM, only 17 percent of the 550 companies surveyed said it was the first data breach they had suffered.

Another week, another set of spyware bombshells. This week Reuters revealed that the European Union found evidence that phones belonging to its staff were targeted with Pegasus, the powerful hacking tool of Israeli firm NSO Group. EU Justice Commissioner Didier Reynders was apparently told by Apple that his iPhone may have been hacked in 2021. An ongoing EU investigation, according to Reuters, found indicators of compromise on some devices. It follows officials announcing that 14 EU member states have purchased Pegasus in the past.

That was not the only spyware revelation this week. The leader of Greece’s opposition political party launched a complaint alleging his phone had been targeted with Israeli-made Predator spyware, developed by Cytrox. Microsoft also linked spyware, dubbed Subzero, to European firm DSIRF. The details, published to coincide with a spyware hearing of the House Intelligence Committee, claimed Subzero had been used to target banks and consultancy firms in Austria, the UK, and Panama.

If technology companies want to operate in China and sell their products to a market of more than a billion people, they’re going to have to bend to the rules. Firms are required to store data locally and, as Apple learned, may have to compromise the security protections they put in place around people’s data. As the video game _Roblox_ prepared to launch in China in 2017 and 2018, its developer was well aware of the potential consequences.

According to _Roblox_ documents obtained by VICE, the company believed it could be hacked if it entered China and that rivals would create their own version of its game. “Expect that hacking has already started,” an internal presentation in 2017 said. The documents also show how _Roblox_ applied Chinese censorship laws—“illegal content” included tampering with historical facts and misrepresenting Chinese territories on maps—and other local laws, such as collecting players’ real names. _Roblox_ eventually launched its Chinese app LuoBuLesi in July 2021, but shut it down at the start of this year.

For years, Apple’s Safari and Mozilla’s Firefox browsers have limited how third-party cookies can track you across the web. These small snippets of code, which are saved to your device when you visit websites, are able to track your browsing history and show you ads based on what you’ve seen. They’re widely considered a privacy nightmare. So when Google announced, in January 2020, that Chrome would finally ditch creepy third-party cookies by 2022, the move was a big deal. However, in practice, Google has struggled to make the change. This week, Google announced its plan has been delayed for a second time. Third-party cookies have been given a stay of execution until at least the backend of 2024, when they will start to be phased out. So far, Google’s efforts to replace third-party cookies have been turbulent, with privacy advocates claiming the replacements are worse than cookies, and the advertising industry saying they’ll decrease competition.

You Pay More When Companies Get Hacked

Russia has been trying to block the anonymous browser since December—with mixed results.

For years, the anonymity service Tor has been the best way to stay private online and dodge web censorship. Much to the ire of governments and law enforcement agencies, Tor encrypts your web traffic and sends it through a chain of computers, making it very hard for people to track you online. Authoritarian governments see it as a particular threat to their longevity, and in recent months, Russia has stepped up its long-term ambition to block Tor—although not without a fight.

In December 2021, Russia’s media regulator, Roskomnadzor, enacted a 4-year-old court order that allows it to order internet service providers (ISPs) to block the Tor Project website, where the Tor Browser can be downloaded, and restrict access to its services. Since then, censors have been locked in a battle with Tor’s technical team and users in Russia, who are pushing to keep the Tor network online and allow people to access the uncensored web, which is otherwise heavily restricted in the country.

Russia’s efforts to block Tor come in two flavors: the technical and the political. So far, Tor has had some success on both fronts. It has found ways to avoid Russian blocking efforts, and this month, it was removed from Russia’s list of blocked websites following a legal challenge. (Although this doesn’t mean blocking efforts will instantly end.)

“We are being attacked by the Russian government, they are trying to block Tor,” says Gustavo Gus, community team lead of the Tor Project. The past few months have seen Russian officials adapt their tactics, Gus says, while the Tor Project’s anti-censorship engineers have successfully launched updates to stop its services from being blocked. “The fight is not over,” Gus says. “People can connect to Tor. People can easily bypass censorship.”

In Russia, the internet infrastructure is relatively decentralized: ISPs can receive blocking orders from Roskomnadzor, but it’s up to individual companies to implement them. (China is the only country to have effectively blocked Tor, which was possible due to more centralized internet control). While Russian authorities have been installing new equipment that uses deep packet inspection to monitor and block online services, the effectiveness of these blocks is mixed.

“The censorship that’s happening in Russia is not constant and uniform,” Gus says. Gus explains that because of different ISPs, Tor may be blocked for some people but not others, even those in the same city. Both Tor’s metrics and external analysis appear to show the dwindling effectiveness of Russian censorship.

Tor’s data shows that since the end of 2021 there has been a big drop in the number of people directly connecting to Tor in Russia. However, people are able to connect to its services using volunteer-run bridges—entry points to the network that can’t easily be blocked, as their details aren’t public—and Tor’s anti-censorship tool Snowflake. External data from the internet monitoring group Open Observatory of Network Interference shows a big rise in people in Russia accessing Tor using Snowflake.

Since the start of Russia’s war with Ukraine in February, Russian officials have introduced a slurry of new laws to control the internet and have clamped down on civil society groups. Natalia Krapiva, tech legal counsel at NGO Access Now, says Russia blocking Tor is part of larger efforts to control people’s access to information, such as the Kremlin’s VPN clampdown. “Russia is trying to eliminate any possible sources of truthful alternative information about the war and about what is going on in Russia internally,” Krapiva says. This feeds into a “chilling effect,” where people change their behavior or self-censor. “Certain measures, even if they don’t directly block or censor, create this fear of retaliation and fear of consequences coming later on.”

There have been two major incidents against Tor’s Snowflake, Gus says. The first, in December, was fixed within 10 days. The second, in May of this year, was also patched shortly after it was discovered. “They were blocking Snowflake in different ways,” Gus says. These attacks against Snowflake often involve fingerprinting, which uses small details about browsers and internet connections to try and uniquely identify the technology that someone is using. For instance, the number of times a browser connects with an external source may make it stand out from other browsers. If Snowflake can be identified, it is easier to block.

Gus claims that some of the censorship efforts are being conducted by hand. “I have some evidence that they are doing that manually,” he says. Gus claims it is likely that some officials in Russia appear to be downloading Tor and then fetching bridges so they can then take steps to block access. “They try to simulate that they are a user so they can get the bridge address, and then they block it,” he says. Roskomnadzor, the Russian internet regulator, had not replied to a request for comment at the time of publication.

The latest version of the Tor browser, 11.5, which was released last week, introduces new features to automatically try to help people circumvent censorship based on their location. In addition to issuing updates to circumvent the way Tor is being blocked, the nonprofit technology organization has also been directly gathering information from people in Russia. Gus says it has introduced more support for Russian users, who can report back if they are being blocked. There are also more volunteer-run bridges that people in Russia can use to access Tor.

Gus also says that using Telegram to share details of Tor bridges has been effective in fighting blocks. “The bridges that they were blocking were not the same bridges that we were sharing with users,” Gus says, adding that Tor has plans to share bridges via Signal and WhatsApp in the future.

Tor is also working to stop the potential abuse of bridges. In 2016, researchers proposed a system called Salmon that aims to weed out those accessing bridge details with the intent of blocking or abusing them. Gus says the Tor team is working to turn this proposal into reality, and it would essentially assign “reliability” scores around the use of bridges. If someone requests a bridge and it ends up getting blocked, they may be considered less trustworthy. “If I give you another bridge and it gets blocked again, then you will get another bad score,” Gus says.

Russia’s efforts to block Tor aren’t just confined to within its own borders, though. In some areas of occupied Ukraine, such as the city of Kherson, Ukrainian internet connections are being rerouted through Russian networks, and that brings censorship and surveillance with it. Gus says that as this shift has started to happen—signaling a potential long-term occupation and “Russification” of the areas—people using Tor in Ukraine have reported it not working and websites not loading. “They are being affected by the same censorship that people in other places in Russia were reporting to us,” Gus says.

If people are able to access Tor—both in Russia and occupied Ukraine—they will be able to access news and information that isn’t controlled by the Russian government. Sarkis Darbinyan, head of legal practice of Russian digital rights group Roskomsvoboda, says more than 5,500 websites have been blocked in Russia since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February. “For getting access to truthful information for Russian users, it is now critical to have tools like VPN and Tor, which let people quickly and effectively restore their violated rights,” Darbinyan says.

Roskomsvoboda has been representing Tor in its legal cases against Russian authorities pro bono. So far it has successfully overturned Roskomnadzor’s December decision to block Tor—in part because of procedural issues. Although other related legal proceedings are ongoing, Darbinyan says Roskomsvoboda is seeking a “complete cancel” of the decision that Tor should be blocked.

Krapiva describes the court case against Tor as a “rare victory” for digital and human rights in Russia. However, she cautions that it is likely to be a “temporary” win, and that Russian authorities may try to legally block Tor again. But this doesn’t mean it will be able to stop people from using Tor. “We’re still seeing that the technologies they have can be quite effective for blocking some things, but are not 100 percent effective,” Krapiva says. “In practice, whether Tor will be fully blocked—I doubt it, to be honest. But legally, I think they will try again, and might eventually succeed.”

How Tor Is Fighting—and Beating—Russian Censorship

Democratic senators lacked actionable gun data for their negotiations—so they passed mental health reform instead.

“Yeah, I think that was,” Republican senator Thom Tillis says of Cornyn’s unscientific news clipping.

JFK’s Legacy

For Tillis, what truly unified the disparate group of progressives and conservatives was data—just not gun data. Instead, he says, their negotiations were most influenced by former president John F. Kennedy.

On October 31, 1963, Kennedy signed into law the Community Mental Health Act, a measure aimed at replacing asylums with community-based mental health clinics. Three weeks later, Kennedy was gunned down, burying the promise of his vision to reform mental health care in the US. In the ensuing decades, communities nationwide ditched asylums, but robust funding for local clinics never materialized.

In 2014, Congress passed the Excellence in Mental Health Act, which promised to be the realization of JFK’s now half-century-old dream. Republican senator Roy Blunt of Missouri and Democratic senator Debbie Stabenow of Michigan teamed up to pass those mental health reforms, and they have since tracked the pilot programs their law set up, initially, in eight states. Over a five-year period, these federally supported Certified Community Behavioral Health Clinics “had 63.2% fewer emergency department visits for behavioral health issues, saw a 40.7% decrease in homelessness and spent 60.3% less time in correctional facilities,” according to the Department of Health and Human Services.

Those results and related stats proved magnetic to Washington’s fiscal conservatives and defund-the-police progressives alike.

“It was critical because other people wanted to do something and had ideas, yet none of it was developed or actionable,” Stabenow says. “People felt like it was real. It was tangible.”

A huge selling point is that to be eligible for the federal program, states are required to set up 24-hour psychiatric crisis centers. That reduces police responsibility, which was appreciated by law enforcement groups nationwide, who don’t want officers charged with mental health duties. Hence, these local efforts were nationalized this summer as a part of the compromise measure.

“There were a few around the country, but no national effort to make this happen,” Blunt says. “We had a program working, producing significant results, widely supported by law enforcement, by emergency rooms, by families who didn't have the kind of relief they needed to the mental health problems peaceful people were facing.”

The Blunt-Stabenow mental health program provided Senate negotiators with around five years of unambiguous data from states as different as Oklahoma and New York. That proved essential to its inclusion.

“We started using as much data as we could to say, ‘This is a hypothetical, this is measurable,’” Tillis says. “It was tangible.”

That’s also why Cornyn’s not wrong when he bristles at the “gun control” label. Roughly two-thirds of the funding tucked into the new federal “gun” law goes to behavioral health. Lawmakers expect, based on results from those local pilot programs, to see a trickle-up effect nationwide as cops are (on paper, at least) replaced with much-needed mental health workers.

“We ended up going, ‘What are the root causes?’” Tillis says. “If we're taking a look at reducing gun deaths and taking a look at behavioral health, which is linked to a lot of these active shooter environments, it was using data to say, ‘What decisions could we make that would most likely make the best outcome?’”

Heavy Traffic

Then there’s the US-Mexico border. Mexico estimates that some 2 million proudly made-in-America guns have flooded its streets and those of its own southern neighbors, fueling incomprehensible—and unquantifiable—bloodshed. And the violence, in return, causes hundreds of thousands to flee their homes and risk death to head north annually.

One of the most dramatic changes tucked into the new law fundamentally alters the relationship between the United States and Mexico, as well as Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras (aka the Northern Triangle).

Don’t Call the New Federal Gun Law a Gun Law

The DOJ vows to protect people’s ability to travel out of state for abortion care, but legal experts warn we can’t take it for granted.

Now that Congress has failed to pass a bill that would guarantee a right to travel across state lines to obtain an abortion, many are worried that conservative states that have started restricting abortion rights could soon decide to block people seeking abortions from leaving their own state for that purpose. Many Republican lawmakers are already discussing this possibility. But would such drastic restrictions even be possible—or, at the very least, legal?

The Biden administration, aware that Congress will likely not act on abortion rights before the November midterms, has been making efforts to determine what the executive branch can do to protect abortion access on its own. President Joe Biden signed an executive order at the beginning of the month that directed the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to expand access to abortion pills, protect patient privacy, and more.

Following that executive order, the US Department of Justice announced the establishment of a Reproductive Rights Task Force, which will “monitor and evaluate” efforts to ban abortion pills, prevent someone from obtaining an abortion in a state where it is legal, or punish federal employees who provide health care that is legal at the federal level. How much the Department of Justice can do to protect the right to travel across state lines for an abortion, and whether states can ban people from doing so remain glaring unknowns.

In terms of what the Justice Department can do if a state were to ban traveling to obtain an abortion, the most likely response would be a lawsuit against that state. Mary Ziegler, a law professor at UC Davis, says the agency would argue that such a ban is unconstitutional. (The DOJ itself did not respond to a request for comment.)

Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote in his concurring opinion in _Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization_, which overturned _Roe v. Wade_, that states may not ban people from traveling across state lines to get an abortion. That being said, Ziegler isn’t exactly confident the right to travel will remain protected.

“What Kavanaugh said was really vague. It’s true there’s a right to travel, but I don’t know how much that gets you,” says Ziegler. “There used to be a right to abortion, and now there is not. When the court is talking about unenumerated rights, that can change. Even if you take Kavanaugh at his word about this, that doesn’t answer all of the questions.”

The right to travel is generally seen as protected by the Fourteenth Amendment, and this has been upheld by the Supreme Court in the past. However, the right to an abortion was also seen as something that was protected by the Fourteenth Amendment until _Roe_ was overturned.

“I think efforts to try and deal with the right to travel—this is uncharted territory in a lot of ways. There’s not a lot of broad precedent about the right to travel,” says Melissa Murray, a law professor at New York University. “A lot of it is going to present issues that for some courts will feel or seem like a first impression.”

In order to avoid an anti-travel law being struck down by the courts, a state could craft legislation that effectively but not explicitly bans interstate travel. Texas’ SB 8, which banned abortion after six weeks prior to _Roe_ being struck down, was able to survive judicial review because it is effectively enforced by private individuals or groups, in the form of lawsuits, instead of the state. Interestingly enough, research from the University of Texas at Austin found that out-of-state travel dramatically increased following the passage of SB 8.

Rachel Rebouché, interim dean and a professor of law at the Temple University School of Law, says a lawsuit from the Department of Justice over anti-travel legislation may not be successful.

“SB 8 in Texas was unconstitutional, and it’s still in force. It was in force while there was _Roe_ on the books. I’m not sure we can predict with any certainty what future courts are going to hold,” says Rebouché. “There’s already case law of a law that a court could interpret as unconstitutional at the time it was passed being shielded from federal court review because of the kind of enforcement mechanism it has.”

Without Congress passing a law to protect the right to travel, it will likely be difficult for the Department of Justice to defend that right. Rebouché says the department needs to look at all of the laws that are already on the books, such as laws related to interstate commerce or civil rights, and see if there are any that would allow it to enforce the right to travel.

“The DOJ is a huge entity with so many moving parts, so many different kinds of powers and responsibilities. Thinking about how it could intervene means thinking creatively about where are these touch points of DOJ powers and duties that might touch on abortion access,” Rebouché says.

What is clear is that a showdown between the Department of Justice, states, and the courts is likely fast approaching. If the DOJ is going to prioritize protecting abortion access, it will have to do a full survey of every power it has available and hope the Supreme Court doesn’t decide that it doesn’t, in fact, have those powers.

Interstate Travel Post-Roe Isn’t as Secure as You May Think

Since Vladimir Putin blocked Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter in March, Russia has been pushing away from the global internet at a rapid pace.

Finally, Shakirov says, there is the “restriction of access to information”—blocking websites. The legal ability to block websites was implemented through the adoption of Russia’s sovereign internet law in 2016, and since then, Russia has been expanding its technical capabilities to block sites. “Now the possibilities for restricting access are developing by leaps and bounds,” Shakirov says.

The sovereign internet law helps to build upon the idea of the RuNet, a Russian internet that can be disconnected from the rest of the world. Since the start of the war against Ukraine in late February, more than 2,384 sites have been blocked within Russia, according to an analysis by Top10 VPN. These range from independent Russian news websites and Ukrainian domains to Big Tech and foreign news sites.

“The Russian government is continually trying to have more control over the content that people are able to access,” says Grant Baker, a technology and democracy research associate at nonprofit Freedom House. (Roskomnadzor, the country’s media and communications regulator, did not respond to a request for comment from WIRED.) All the internet control measures and surveillance systems, Baker says, are coupled with wider societal clampdowns, including the detention of more than 16,000 peaceful protestors and the increased use of face recognition.

But building a surveillance empire isn’t straightforward. China is widely considered the most restrictive online nation in the world, with its Great Firewall blocking websites that fall outside its political vision. This Chinese “sovereign” model of the internet took years to flourish, with even the creator of China's firewall reportedly getting around it using a VPN.

As Russia has aimed to emulate this Chinese model to some degree, it’s faltered. When officials tried to block messaging app Telegram in 2018, they failed miserably and gave up two years later. Building Russia’s vision of the RuNet has faced multiple delays. However, many of Russia's most recent policy announcements aren’t designed for the short term—controlling the internet is a long-term project. Some of the measures may never exist at all.

“It is still difficult to assess in detail the impact of all these measures, given the often-blurred distinction between a clear political signal and ambition from the Kremlin, and its effective translation into concrete projects and changes,” says Julien Nocetti, senior associate fellow at the French Institute of International Relations, who studies Russia’s internet.

For instance, multiple Russian language app stores have appeared in recent months, but many of them have few apps available for download. According to the independent newspaper _The Moscow Times_, one leading app store contender, RuStore, has fewer than 1,000 apps available to download.

Other sovereign internet efforts have floundered too. RuTube, Russia’s equivalent to YouTube, has failed to gain popularity despite officials pushing its use. Meanwhile, the website of Rossgram, a potential Instagram alternative that hasn’t launched yet, displays a message saying it is “under development” and warns people not to download versions of the app they may find online as they “come from scammers.”

While many of Russia’s sovereign internet measures have struggled to get off the ground, its ability to block websites has improved since it first tried to throttle Twitter in March 2021. And other nations are watching. “Countries are learning various internet regulation practices from each other,” Shakirov says. “Russia decided to make a Chinese version of its internet, and now other countries of the post-Soviet space, Africa, or Latin America can follow this example.”

Lokot says that as more nations look to regulate the internet and do so with their national security in mind, the internet itself is put at risk. “When the conversation changes from ‘the internet as a public good’ to the ‘internet, and internet access, as a matter of national security,’ the questions change,” Lokot says. “We will potentially see some really problematic choices made by states—and not just by authoritarian states, but also by democratic states.”

Russia Is Quietly Ramping Up Its Internet Censorship Machine

The next time someone wants to borrow your device to make a call or take a picture, take these steps to protect your privacy.

From the nephew who wants to play games for a few minutes, to the friend who wants to see your vacation snaps, to the stranger who needs to make a call, there are going to be people who want to borrow your phone.

That's quite a privacy and security risk if you think about everything that your phone gives you access to: social media profiles, banking details, instant messenger conversations, photos and videos that you'd rather the world didn't see, and so on.

However, there are ways to hand over your phone to someone else without having to worry about what they might get up to on it. You just need to make sure that you've taken a few precautions before the exchange takes place.

iPhone

Guided Access is built into iOS.

Apple via David Nield

(Apple via David Nield)

The feature you need to know about on the iPhone is called Guided Access, and you can enable it by opening up iOS Settings and choosing **Accessibility** and **Guided Access**. Turn the **Guided Access** toggle switch on and the feature is ready to go—just make sure you use **Passcode Settings** to set a passcode to protect Guided Access mode.

To actually turn Guided Access on, you need to triple-tap the home button if your iPhone has one, or the side button if it doesn't. You can then tap **Options** to configure how Guided Access is going to work: You're able to restrict access to the volume buttons, for example, and the software keyboard. You can even turn off touchscreen functionality and put a limit on Guided Access mode. Tapping **Start** launches Guided Access.

Whoever is using the iPhone is then locked into the current app, so you need to open up the app in question—the Phone app, a particular game, or whatever it is—before you triple-tap the button on your device to launch Guided Access. You get out of Guided Access with another triple-tap of the same button, at which point you'll need the passcode that you set at the start.

The idea is that without the passcode, the person using your iPhone can't get out of the app you've put them in—there's no way to switch apps, open up the Control Center, or even turn the phone off. It's worth being aware of the app that they're in, though, and what they can do inside that app: If you're showing someone your photos, they'll be able to access all of them.

One extra option in the Photos app is to hide photos and videos by opening them, tapping the share button (bottom left), and choosing **Hide**. This hides these pictures and clips in a special Hidden folder. They won't be visible in normal view in the Photos app, and they won't appear in searches, but the person borrowing your smartphone can still get at them by choosing **Hidden** from the **Albums** tab.

Android

Apps can be pinned inside Android.

Google via David Nield

If you're using an Android device, you can take advantage of a feature similar to Guided Access on iOS. It's called App Pinning, and again the idea is that the person borrowing your phone is limited to one app. They're not able to get to another app or access the phone's settings without a PIN code set by you.

There are certain software variations among Android phone makers when it comes to finding and enabling App Pinning, but you should be able to find it without too much trouble. On the stock version of Android that Google puts in its Pixel phones, you can enable it by going to the main Android Settings menu, then choosing **Security**, **Advanced Settings** and **App Pinning**.

Turn on the **Use App Pinning** toggle switch, and make sure that **Ask for PIN Before Unpinning** is enabled as well—this prevents everyone but you from switching apps. To find the app you want to pin, swipe up and hold from the bottom of the screen until you see thumbnails of your recently used apps. Find the one you want, tap the app icon at the top, and choose **Pin** from the drop-down menu. 

To get out of app pinning, swipe up and hold from the bottom of the screen again. The phone will be locked, and your PIN code will be required to regain access and move between apps. Assuming that the person borrowing your phone doesn't know your PIN, you'll be able to keep them in one app.

Like Apple Photos, Google Photos can also hide photos and videos, which can help if someone is browsing through your pictures. Open an image or clip, tap the three dots (top right), then choose **Move to Locked Folder**—the photos and videos that you send here can't be accessed without unlocking your phone first, which will require a PIN, a fingerprint scan, or a face scan, depending on how you've set it up.

How to Safely Lend Someone Else Your Phone

Plus: The FCC cracks down on car warranty robocalls, Thai activists get targeted by NSO's Pegasus, and the Russia-Ukraine cyberwar continues.

As the United States midterm elections near, lawmakers and law enforcement officials are on high alert about violent threats targeted at election officials across the country—domestic threats that have taken first billing over foreign influence operations and meddling as the primary concern for the 2022 elections. In another arena, though, Congress is making progress on generating bipartisan support for sorely needed and overdue privacy legislation in the form of the American Data Privacy and Protection Act.

Iranian women’s rights activists sounded the alarm this week that Meta has not been responsive to their concerns about targeted bot campaigns flooding their Instagram accounts during a crucial moment for the country’s feminist movement. And investigators looking at attacks on internet cables in Paris have still not determined who was behind the vandalism or what their motive was, but new details have emerged about the extent of the sabotage, making the situation all the more concerning and intriguing. 

The ACLU released documents this week that detail the Department of Homeland Security’s contracts with phone-tracking data brokers who peddle location information. And if you’re worried about Big Brother snooping on your reproductive data, we have a ranking of the most popular period-tracking apps by their data privacy protections. 

And there’s more. Each week we round up the news that we didn’t break or cover in-depth. Click on the headlines to read the full stories. And stay safe out there!

The Department of Homeland Security Inspector General told the Secret Service on Thursday to halt its investigation into the deletion of January 6 insurrection-related text messages because of an “ongoing criminal investigation” into the situation. Secret Service spokespeople have said conflicting things: that data on the phones was erased during a planned phone migration or factory reset, and that the erased messages were not relevant to the January 6 investigation. The Secret Service said it provided agents with a guide to backing up their data before initiating the overhaul process, but noted that it was up to the individuals to complete this backup. 

Zero Day spoke to Robert Osgood, director of the forensics and telecommunications program at George Mason University and a former FBI digital forensics examiner, about the situation. “Osgood said that telling agents to back up their own phones ‘makes absolutely no sense’— particularly for a government agency engaged in the kind of work the Secret Service does and required to retain records. The agency is not only charged with protecting the president, vice president and others, it also investigates financial crimes and cybercrime,” reports Zero Day author Kim Zetter. “I’m pro-government, and \[telling agents to back up their own phones\] sounds strange,” Osgood told Zetter. “If that did happen, the IT manager that’s responsible for that should be censured. Something should happen to that person because that’s one of the dumbest things I’ve ever heard in my life.'”

The Federal Communications Commission’s Robocall Response Team said on Thursday that it is ordering phone companies to block robocalls that warn about expiring car warranties and offer renewal deals. The FCC said that the calls, which are familiar to people around the US, have come from “Roy Cox Jr., Aaron Michael Jones, their Sumco Panama companies, and international associates.” Since 2018 or possibly earlier, their operations have resulted in more than 8 billion prerecorded message calls to Americans, the FCC said. “We are not going to tolerate robocall scammers or those that help make their scams possible," FCC chairperson Jessica Rosenworcel said in a statement. “Consumers are out of patience and I’m right there with them.”

After Apple warned a number of Thai activists and their associates in November that their devices might have been targeted with NSO Group’s notorious Pegasus spyware, a number of them reached out to human rights groups and researchers who established a broader picture of a campaign in Thailand. In all, more than 30 Thai victims have been identified. The targets worked with the local human rights group iLaw, which found that two of its own members had been victims of the campaign, as well as University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab and Amnesty International. The researchers did not provide attribution for who was behind the Pegasus campaigns, but found that a lot of the targeting occurred in the same general time when the targets were participating in protests against government policies.

Google’s Threat Analysis Group reported this week that it has seen Russia’s digital meddling continue apace, both in Ukraine as the Kremlin’s invasion rages on and in Eastern Europe more broadly. TAG detected the Russia-linked hacking group Turla attempting to spread two different malicious Android apps through sites that masqueraded as being Ukrainian. The group tried to market the apps by claiming that downloading them would play a role in launching denial of service attacks on Russian websites, an interesting twist given the civilian efforts in Ukraine to mount cyberattacks against Russia. TAG also detected activity from other known Russian hacking groups that were exploiting vulnerabilities to target Ukrainian systems and launching disinformation campaigns in the region.

Ukrainian officials also said this week that Russia had conducted an attack on Ukraine’s TAVR Media, hacking nine popular radio stations to spread false information that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was in intensive care because of a critical ailment. The broadcast further claimed that Ruslan Stefanchuk, chairperson of the Verkhovna Rada, was in command in Zelensky’s stead. TAVR put out a statement on Facebook saying that the broadcasts did “not correspond to reality.” And Zelensky posted a video on his Instagram attributing the attack to Russia and saying that he is in good health.

The January 6 Secret Service Text Scandal Turns Criminal

As new details about the scope of the sabotage emerge, the perpetrators—and the reason for their vandalism—remain unknown.

At present, there’s little information about who may have been behind the attacks. No groups or individuals have claimed responsibility for the damage, and French police have not announced any arrests linked to the cuts. Neither the Paris Public Prosecutor’s Office nor Anssi, the French cybersecurity agency, responded to WIRED’s requests for comment.

In June, CyberScoop reported claims that “radical ecologists” who oppose digitalization may be behind the attacks. However, multiple experts speaking to WIRED were skeptical of the suggestion. “It’s quite unlikely,” Combot says. Instead, in many potential sabotage instances he has seen, those who attack telecom infrastructure aim to target cell phone towers where damage is obvious and claim responsibility for their actions.

In France—and more widely around the world—there’s been an increase in attacks against telecom towers in recent years, including cutting cables, setting fire to cell phone towers, and attacking engineers. When the Covid-19 pandemic started in early 2020, there was an uptick in attacks against 5G equipment as conspiracy theorists falsely believed the network standard could be dangerous to people’s health.

While some caution against assuming environmentalist groups were behind the April attacks, there is a precedent for such actions in France: A December 2021 investigation by environmental news outlet _Reporterre_, as noted by CyberScoop, documented more than 140 attacks against 5G equipment and telecom infrastructure. The attacks were said to show a pattern based on “refusal of a digitized society.”

In one of the other biggest attacks against French networks, more than 100,000 people found themselves struggling to get online in May 2020 after several cables were cut. During the past three months, there have been an estimated 75 attacks against telecom networks in France. The total number of attacks has declined since 2020, however.

Combot says the April attack was one of the “biggest incidents” targeting telecom infrastructure in recent years. It also highlights the fragility of local internet cables. “Breaking the internet is not a good thing for those who have the idea to do so, because the internet is locally vulnerable but globally resilient,” Guillaume says.

While cutting cables and setting fire to cell phone towers can cause temporary internet outages or slowdowns, internet traffic can usually be rerouted relatively quickly. In short: It’s very hard to take the internet offline at scale. The internet can largely withstand human sabotage, damage from natural events, and Canadian beavers chomping through cables.

This doesn’t mean threats to connectivity can’t cause widespread disruption. “I fear that these attacks, in France and elsewhere in the world, will happen again,” Combot says. “There are vulnerable points everywhere in the world,” he adds, highlighting Egypt, where subsea cables pass between Europe and Asia. In June the EU published an in-depth review of subsea internet cables that says more should be done to protect them.

DE-CIX’s King says that most incidents around cables are usually accidents, such as damage from roadworks or earthquakes. “The solution is to introduce redundancy in the design of connectivity,” King says. This means having more connections in the internet’s backbone and systems to replace others in case of potential failures or attacks. Every system should have a backup.

Political and technical measures could decrease the chances of attacks on network connections. “The best way to fight against these attacks is to have a better threat intelligence,” says Oxford’s Laudrain. The French Telecoms Federation says it is working more closely with law enforcement to try to stop those who would attack cables. “Some companies publish confidential network information on their websites,” Lumen’s Modlin says. “They should seriously consider removing exact location data, given its sensitive nature.” (She did not name the companies.)

Meanwhile, Guillame says simple physical security measures can be taken, such as ensuring that areas where cables are accessible through the ground are covered by security cameras. Others suggest adding movement sensors to these locations. Preventing internet cables and equipment from damage and destruction is crucial, Guillame says. “Behind the digital economy, there are small businesses, artisans, schools, emergency services hard hit when they can no longer connect their service. It’s not acceptable.”

The Unsolved Mystery Attack on Internet Cables in Paris

While cybersecurity and foreign meddling remain priorities, domestic threats against election workers have risen to the top of the list.

In the lead-up to the 2018 midterm elections in the United States, law enforcement, intelligence, and election officials were on high alert for digital attacks and influence operations after Russia demonstrated the reality of these threats by targeting the presidential elections in 2016. Six years later, the threat of hacking and malign foreign influence remain, but 2022 is a different time and a new top-line risk has emerged: physical safety threats to election officials, their families, and their workplaces.

In July 2021 the Department of Justice launched a task force to counter threats against election workers, and the US Election Assistance Commission released security guidance for election professionals. But in public comments this week, lawmakers, top national security officials, and election administrators themselves all expressed concern that misinformation about the security and validity of US voting continues to shape a new threat landscape going into the midterms.

“In New Mexico, the conspiracies about our voting and election systems have gripped a certain portion of the electorate and have caused people to act,” New Mexico’s Secretary of State and top election official Maggie Toulouse Oliver testified before the House of Representatives Homeland Security Committee yesterday. “During the 2020 election cycle, I was doxxed and had to leave my home for weeks under state police protection. Since 2020, my office has certainly seen an uptick in social media trolling, aggrieved emails, and calls into our office, and other communications that parrot the misinformation circulating widely in the national discourse. But more recently, especially since our June 2022 primary election, my office has experienced pointed threats serious enough to be referred to law enforcement.”

In a discussion on Tuesday about midterm election security at the Fordham International Conference on Cyber Security in New York City, FBI director Christopher Wray and NSA director Paul Nakasone emphasized that federal intelligence and law enforcement view foreign adversaries that have been active during past US elections—including Russia, China, and Iran—as potential threats heading into the 2022 midterms. But threats against election workers now appear at the top of their list.

“We are … positioning ourselves to understand our adversaries better, so we do have a series of operations that we’re conducting now and in the future as we approach the fall,” Nakasone said on Tuesday. “But I think the other piece of it is, this isn’t episodic, this for us is a persistent engagement that we have across time, in terms of being able to understand where our adversaries are at, what they’re trying to do, where we need to impact them, understanding how they’re getting better.”

When asked how the FBI handles misinformation that stems from foreign influence operations but ultimately embeds itself in the domestic psyche, Wray said that the Bureau simply has a set of enforcement mandates around elections that it focuses on carrying out.

“We’re not the truth police,” he told the conference. “It’s not to say there isn’t an important role for calling out falsity versus truth, it’s just that our contributions are fairly specific. We’re targeting foreign malign influence. We are investigating malicious cyber actors, whether they are foreign or otherwise, that target election infrastructure—so cyber activity. We are investigating federal election crimes, and that covers everything from campaign finance violations, to voter fraud and voter suppression, to something that we’ve seen an alarming amount of over the last little bit—threats of violence against election workers, which we’re not going to tolerate.”

Wray added that threats against election officials are currently a priority for the FBI. “These are people who are engaging in tireless and really, frankly, selfless work to ensure free and fair elections for all of us, and the idea that they would become the target of threats of violence is totally unacceptable,” Wray said.

In a US Election Assistance Commission discussion on election official security last week, Sheriff Peter Koutoujian of the Middlesex Sheriff’s Office in Massachusetts noted that state and local law enforcement are also dealing with questions of how best to protect election officials.

“We all witnessed the rhetoric and the threats leveled towards officials … during the 2020 election,” he said. “You can see them still being leveled against election officials this past spring during local elections as well as in reference to upcoming state and federal elections this fall. In law enforcement, we need to make sure that we’re following up on threats of violence as appropriate and protecting these individuals and thus protecting our democracy.”

The shift in the threat landscape is significant. Election officials and security researchers have focused over the past two decades on raising awareness about the need for better coordination and stronger digital security protections across the diverse patchwork of local election systems that is a hallmark of US voting. But with that work still in progress and in need of funding, threats to election officials could undercut hard-won progress.

“While we are now on the right track to secure our election infrastructure against cyberattacks, new and different threats, many with domestic roots, have arisen, including threats of physical harm to our election officials, their families, and their staff," Elizabeth Howard, senior counsel at New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice, told the House Homeland Security Committee during yesterday's hearing. “Not surprisingly, these threats are leading to additional serious concerns, such as an alarming number of election officials leaving the profession, which are contributing to the fragility of our democracy."

In her testimony, Howard urged Congress to allocate more funds for protecting election officials and to direct federal agencies to focus on the issue and combat misinformation about election integrity in any way possible. 

John Katko, a Republican from New York and ranking member of the House Homeland Security Committee, summed up the challenge bluntly: “A lot of the problems with election security are generated, it seems like to me, from the internet and the ability of cowards to hide behind the internet and foment discontent online, and then make that discontent actionable by nutjobs locally.”

With the November midterms less than four months away, the need to protect election officials grows more urgent by the day, not only for workers and their families but also for US stability more broadly. As Koutoujian put it, “If we’re not protective and careful of what we do now—I believe we’re more fragile than we think we are.”

Source

Wired