Spyware in The Time of COVID-19

Name: Spyware in The Time of COVID-19
Start: 2020-04-09T12:00:00-0400
End: 2020-04-09T13:00:00-0400

Harvard Faculty, Fellows, Staff, and Students

Citizen Lab Senior Researcher John Scott-Railton will speak on the growing market for commercial spyware, which is fueling surveillance abuses around the world. This event will be moderated by Bruce Schneier, Adjunct Lecturer in Public Policy, Harvard Kennedy School. It is sponsored by the Belfer Center's Science, Technology and Public Policy Program and the Council for the Responsible Use of AI.

Date: Thu, Apr 9, 2020 Time: 12:00pm - 01:00pm Location: Online

Despite growing notoriety, the spyware industry is more successful than ever. Using cases drawn from recent work investigating the hacking of WhatsApp, this talk will illustrate the scale of the problem, the human impact of the hacking, and some of the techniques that the spies are using to "go dark." In a troubling twist, spyware companies that once avoided the limelight have begun putting themselves forward as a 'solution' to the COVID-19 pandemic. Scott-Railton will evaluate these recent efforts, and discuss what the pandemic means for efforts to limit surveillance harms.

John Scott-Railton is a Senior Researcher at Citizen Lab at The University of Toronto. His work focuses on technological threats to civil society, including targeted malware operations and online disinformation. His greatest hits include a collaboration with colleague Bill Marczak that uncovered the first iPhone zero-day and remote jailbreak seen in the wild, as well as the use of NSO Group's Pegasus spyware to human rights defenders, journalists, and opposition figures in around the globe. Other investigations with Citizen Lab colleagues include the first report of ISIS-led malware operations, and China's "Great Cannon," the Government of China's nation-scale DDoS attack. He is completing a PhD at UCLA. Previously he founded The Voices Projects, collaborative information feeds that bypassed internet shutdowns in Libya and Egypt.