Category Archives: Internet Security
From Instagram to Paypal, Russia’s internet is being dismantled as a digital iron curtain descends – ABC News
On February 24 in Moscow, when social media was full of the news that Russia had broken its promise and invadedUkraine overnight, Oleg Shakirov noticed that Facebook wasn't loading properly.
The text appeared fine but there were just grey squares where the images and videos should have been.
"First they started slowing down Facebook," the internet security expert said.
"Then after a week, they blocked it completely."
Until recently, Russia's internet looked, at least on the surface, something like Australia's: Russians posted videos on Instagram andTikTok, paid for Netflix and Spotify with PayPal, advertised their business on Facebook, sold goods on Etsy, and used Microsoft Office at work.
Now, all of these areunavailable as a result of the war, with foreign companies withdrawingservices and thestate looking to increase itscontrol over howRussians use the internet.
A digital iron curtain is falling on Russia the equivalent of the political boundary dividing Europe during the Cold War.
Here's what happens when the internet gets dismantled.
Though many first noticed the changes on February 24, in fact the Russian government began actively slowingthe country'sinternet the night before the invasion of Ukraine.
This is the conclusionof Melbourne'sMonashIP Observatory, which remotely monitors the activity and quality of the internet, and can target any location around the world at any given time.
On February 23, the night before the invasion, Russia's internet saw a sharp spike in latency, or the amount of time it takes for a data packet to travel from one designated point to another.
The spike points to congestion, which suggests the Russian state was either censoring online content or deliberately slowing the internet to restrict access to news media, says Simon Angus, a Monash University data scientist and director of the observatory.
"This isn't merely that people suddenly got interested in an invasion. It hadn't occurred yet," Dr Angus said.
"These are actions taken by the Russian government knowing that an invasion the next morning would occur."
Russia had done this before, saidPaul Raschky, another member of the Monash IP Observatory.
WithTV, radio and newspapers now "more or less state-controlled", throttling internet speeds has proved an effective way of preventingcivilians reporting on what washappening in their region, Professor Raschkysaid.
"The internet is the one source left where you can get diverse opinion."
In the first week of the invasion,Russia's warwent badly, with high losses, a failure to meet stated objectives, and an online barrage ofvideos showing destroyed Russian tanks, trucks and aircraft.
At the same time, Ukraine assembled a largeglobal army of volunteer hackers that tookthe fight to the aggressor.
This "IT army"temporarily disabledmany Russian government websites in the first week, Mr Shakirov said.
"They also targeted Russian banks, Russian media companies, and there is now a disruption of one major Russian ecommerce website."
In response to the military setbacks and cyber attacks, the Russian government tightened the screws.
By the end of the first week, it had blocked Facebook andTwitter as well asforeign news services including BBC Russia, Voice of America, Deutsche Welle and Radio Free Europe.
Russian president Vladimir Putinsigned a law punishing "fake news", especially about the invasion,with up to 15 years in prison.
Next, the government warned that it would block Instagram, which is far more widely used in Russia than Facebook.
Russian Instagram was flooded with farewells as users posted linksto their profiles on other platforms, such as Telegram.
Loading
By platform and by website, the internet was dismantled, Mr Shakirov said.
This unprecedentedchange appeared to Russians as aseries of error messages, stalled loading screens and email updates.
Spotify emailedMr Shakirov to say it had cancelled his premium service, since the payment systems it used were withdrawing from Russia.
Microsoft said it wassuspending new sales to Russians, which could apply to Russians renewing their subscriptions.
"I know of one organisation that completely switched from Office365 to the Russian domestic alternative," Mr Shakirov said.
"Regular people who are young and active users of internet, they feel the effects inone way or another."
Dmitry Kornouhovsold wooden paddleboardsto Europeans on Etsyuntil PayPal withdrew from Russia on March 6.
"We can't sell anything," he said.
"I'm just sitting at my laptop and looking for solutions."
Many relying on the internethave tried to emigrate,saidIgor Baikov, a young tech company founder in Moscow.
"Some flee to neighbouring countries which were cheap a couple weeks ago, now there are lines to open bank accounts and the Airbnbs have almost the same prices as Moscow."
Businesses have especially struggled with the loss of Instagram, he said.
"These businesses bought ads and used Instagram to get clients, now it's all gone."
VPNs,or virtual private networks,are a cheap piece of software that masks online behaviour as away of evading internet restrictions.
In Australia, they're typically used for pirating movies.In Russia, you now need a VPN to do the most basic things online.
After the invasion, VPN downloads surged more than 1,000 per cent in Russia.
Despite this, they're still relatively uncommon,Mr Shakirov said.
"Most people do not go tosuch lengths to install additional software."
They're also a pain to use, he added.
"Many Russian government sites and news sites, they now basically filter international traffic, due to the [Ukraine IT army] attacks.
"So when you use a VPN, you cannot go to a Russian website."
And VPNs don'tsolve the problem of the platforms themselves blocking Russian accounts, Mr Kornouhov said.
"I can use a VPN to open the page, but Facebook has closed the advertising to Russians," he said.
"There's not much market here inside the country, so for years we've advertised inEurope.And that'sclosed now."
After one week, Russia's internet was both slow and patchy, with websites under attack and platforms either blocked or withdrawing their services.
Then it got worse.
In the second week, there was a second,larger spike in latency.
This time it wasn't the Russian government throttling speeds, but external companies withdrawing bandwidth.
Cogent, a US backbone provider operating thousands of kilometres worth of fibre optic links that carry a quarter of the world's internet traffic,cut its internet service to Russia on March 5.
"And exactly at that hour, those of us in the measurement community saw significant changes in latency in Russia," Dr Angus said.
A few days later, Lumen, a second US backbone provider, also pulled out.
More Russian internet traffic had to be routed through theremainingconnections, which caused congestion and higher latency.
This made it difficult tohold conversations on Zoom, to stream foreign TV news services, or to send large videos.
"We know in these situations the potent form of citizen reporting and truth telling is video," Dr Angus said.
"The amount of information that citizens could actually get out to journalists or even friends and family is going to be very challenging under that kind of situation."
Now, with each passing day, the quality of internet traffic is deteriorating.
The peak latency has gone down, butthe periodof high latency begins atan earlier timeeach day, Dr Angus said.
"The trajectory is a negative one for the internet experiencein Russia."
It's likely more services will be blocked.
On the weekend, Russia warned YouTube to stop "anti-Russian" ads, accusing its owner, Google, of acts "of a terrorist nature".
"There are rumours they're going to block YouTube next," Mr Shakirov said.
There are alsofears that Russia may go even further.
The Kremlin recently orderedRussian websites to switch from foreign hosting services to Russian-owned ones, and to begin using domain name systemservices located in Russia.
The government says this is to protect websites from attack, but it also makes it easier todisconnect Russia from the internet.
If that happened, the Russian internet would resemble a vast intranet, with some moderated connections to the wider world.
Russia could become "something similar to a North Korean dark spot on the internet" Dr Angus said.
"I hope a digital iron curtain doesn't occur for the sake of Russia and her people."
Many Russians hopethe restrictions are temporary, Mr Shakirov said.
But even if peace breaks out, he doubts thegovernment will quickly wind back its "information control".
"This will require some kind of change in the political situation."
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Women make up just 24% of the cyber workforce. CISA wants to fix that. – CBS News
As the race to recruit female talent in STEM continues moving ahead with steady progress, stunning statistics still wrack the cybersecurity sector: Women working in cybersecurity currently account forless than one quarter of the overall workforce.
Megan Rapinoe. Sister Rosetta Tharpe. Shirley Chisholm. Donning jeans and a Ukrainian flag t-shirt, the director of the nation's lead cybersecurity agency ticked through PowerPoint slides of women "who took a sledgehammer to the glass ceiling."
"I need your help," said Jen Easterly, director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, on Friday to an audience of 1,700 female cybersecurity professionals assembled for a three-day technical conference in Cleveland. "We need to get to 50% of cybersecurity by the year 2030. Think we can do it?" Someone whistled. ACDC pulsed through the speakers. "Come on!" Easterly rallied.
After exiting the stage, Easterly told CBS News she has become accustomed to setting "unreasonable" goals. "That's been sort of my [modus operandi] my entire life," she quipped. "And I honestly believe if you set a super ambitious goal, and you as a leader inspire and empower people, and look at that goal as something that may be challenging, highly ambitious, but is in fact achievable, you can get there."
Pressed on how close America's cyber defense agency is to "getting there," Easterly responded down to the decimal. "Right now, we're at 36.4% women at CISA's workforce, but I think we can get to 50% before 2030." She paused before adding, "Actually, I'm hoping we can get there before 2025."
Easterly says she hopes colleagues across the federal workforce including FBI, NSA, U.S. Secret Service make similar pledges. The Army veteran-turned-corporate leader came close to "getting there" in her previous stint as head of Firm Resilience at Morgan Stanley, where she oversaw a team that was roughly 48% women.
Currently, there's just one woman serving as chief information security officer, or "CISO," among the top 10 largest companies nationwide: Chandra McMahon, CISO of CVS Health. The former executive at Verizon and Lockheed Martin can remember what it was like to be the only woman in the room.
"Cybersecurity is not well understood as a career or as an opportunity," McMahon said during an interview with CBS News on Friday. "What most people don't realize is that there's a spectrum of roles and careers that you can have." McMahon rattled them off: "Penetration testers, ethical hackers, the cyber security engineers and architects."
But the gender gap marks just one of the cybersecurity workforce's persistent challenges. Hispanic, African American, Asian and American Indian/Native Alaskan workers made up just 4%, 9%, 8% and 1% respectively of the cyber security workforce, according to the Aspen Institute.
An estimated 3.7 million cybersecurity jobs are available but unfilled, according to the latest (ISC) Cybersecurity Workforce Study, with 377,000 of those vacancies located in the United States. By that measure, the global cybersecurity workforce will need to grow 65% in 2022 to effectively defend organizations' critical assets.
Last week, Microsoft called recruitment of women "mission-critical" to filling the worldwide cyber vacancies. A survey commissioned by Microsoft Security found that only 44% of female respondents felt sufficiently represented in their industry.
Not all "black hoodies" and "dungeons"
Part of the federal government's cyber strategy is just showing up. Easterly, who ditched plans to appear via video at Friday's Women in Cybersecurity Conference only to instead dance onto stage to the tune of ACDC, recounted the thrill of manning CISA's booth at the conference.
"At the end of the day, if people can see me as the director of America's Cyber Defense Agency, then there are women out there who can say I can be her," she told CBS News.
A decade ago, that lack of visibility in a security field known for operating behind the scenes served as the inspiration for the group behind Friday's conference, Women in Cybersecurity, or "WiCyS."
"I think people have to understand that even though cybersecurity works best when it's invisible, there are so many people behind it," said WiCyS founder Dr. Ambareen Siraj.
"There's this stereotypical notion about cybersecurity that it's all about fighting. And we're all working in some sort of dungeon in black hoodies. But it is really not the case," Siraj said.
Unclogging the cyber talent pipeline will require more than just breaking a stereotype though, with experts advocating for more outreach to non-traditional candidates.
"Some of the best talent we have in cyber did not come from a background in cybersecurity," McMahon said.
Just 38% of women came from an IT background, compared to half of men in today's cybersecurity workforce. According to the (ISC) report, women also have higher rates of entry from self-learning (20%) compared to male counterparts (14%).
"We're now seeing an opening in the market for cyber skills. It's not so siloed in that you must have a cybersecurity degree," McMahon added.
Mind the gap: reshaping the federal workforce
Just 25.2% of the full-time federal cyber workforce is female, compared to 43.6% of government workers nationwide, according to the non-profit Partnership for Public Service, which assesses data from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management and U.S. Census Bureau.
The federal cybersecurity workforce is also decades older than the U.S. labor force. The percent of full-time cyber employees under the age of 30 steadily increased from 4.1% to 6.3% between September 2014 and September 2021. But it still lags behind the almost 20% of the employed U.S. labor force in 2021 that is under age 30. In the federal IT workforce, there are 15 times more employees over the age of 50 than under age 30.
"I think the most fundamental problem in the federal workforce is the lack of generational diversity," said Max Stier, head of the Partnership for Public Service. "There are very, very few young people in the federal technology and cyber workforce. And it becomes this self-fulfilling prophecy: the absence of young talent makes it harder for new young talent to want to come in or stay."
Data on the federal government's cybersecurity workforce vacancies remains scarce, but Stier estimates a "minimum of tens of thousands of jobs" is needed to bolster U.S. cyber defenses.
A 47-page audit by the Senate Homeland Security Committee last year found federal agencies responsible for safeguarding the security and personal data of millions of Americans earned a C- report card in talent recruiting.
Since 2014, the Department of Homeland Security has received a whopping $76 million to create a new cyber talent recruiting system, which launched with 150 job postings, last November. DHS received 650 applications in its first 48 hours of operation but has not released further progress reports on hiring. There are currently five positions posted on the Cyber Talent Management System's dashboard.
Easterly says CISA, an agency of approximately 5,000 full and part time employees, plans to hire between 500-1000 more in the next few years.
In an effort to reach young talent, the agency has also formed partnership programs with the Girl Scouts, Cyber Corps, and Historically Black Colleges and Universities.
But among career leaders in the government's Senior Executive Service (SES), just 28% of STEM leaders are female, and only 19% are people of color.
"It's not just women, but it's all types of diversity. Whether that's neuro diversity, diversity of gender identity, of sexual orientation of race, of national origin," Easterly said.
Leaders from across the federal government and private sector have likened diversity initiatives to a national security imperative.
"What we would like to see is a strong, adequate cybersecurity workforce that has people of all kinds, different racial backgrounds, ethnicity, gender," said Siraj. "When we have diverse people working in cyber, which is an extremely complex place, then it is more likely that we are going to bring the different perspectives and skills necessary to solve complex problems."
No room for "vigilance fatigue" amid Ukraine-Russia crisis
As information warfare plays out in the shadows of the Ukraine-Russia crisis, Easterly worries about "vigilance fatigue."
"It is hard to maintain a very high tempo of extreme preparedness," she conceded. "But we are not even a month into this unjust illegal, unprovoked invasion of a democracy and we need to continue to keep our shields up," Easterly told CBS News.
CISA and the FBI have released two alerts this week alone, including a joint bulletin to satellite communication (SATCOM) networks just days after the hack of telecommunications firm Viasat by unidentified actors disrupted broadband satellite internet access at the start of the Russian invasion.
That fatigue is further punctuated by a cybersecurity workforce shortage that sees more than just the federal government working overtime to monitor potential threats.
CISA and FBI "have not identified cyber activity in the US Homeland attributable to Russian state actors since the invasion commenced," an NYPD intelligence bulletin obtained by CBS News and published last week indicated.
But since November, the Department of Homeland Security has overseen more than 80 briefings, table exercises and informational sessions with the private sector designed to bolster U.S. cyber defenses in the event of Russian malicious cyber activity.
Through its Joint Cyber Defense Collaborative, CISA administers a Slack channel dedicated to information sharing with tech and cybersecurity giants, including Cloudflare, CrowdStrike, Mandiant, Microsoft, Verizon, Google, and Amazon Web Services, along with the NSA, the FBI, and US Cyber Command.
Still, cybersecurity advocates worry that a lack of investment in cybersecurity extends to the larger workforce, with compromises a few clicks away from unwitting employees scanning through email inboxes. "You actually need the broader workforce familiar and capable of addressing these cyber challenges in the context of their normal, daily jobs," Stier said. "Consider the classic phishing incident."
"We are putting out more and more information so that the public understands the nature of the threat environment," Easterly said, Friday. "We have said consistently, that every business large and small remains at risk and is vulnerable to Russian malicious cyber activity. That's why we need to continue to keep our shields up to be prepared to be vigilant, to keep our thresholds low for sharing information about anomalous activity, and to ensure that we are working together for the collective cyber defense of the nation."
Catherine Herridge contributed to this report.
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Women make up just 24% of the cyber workforce. CISA wants to fix that. - CBS News
Telecoms security and the Russia-Ukraine crisis – Capacity Media
Michaela Lodlov, consultant at Wiggin LLP, a UK-based law firm that specialises in media, technology and IP, explains that new telecoms security & cybersecurity obligations caused by the ongoing conflict may result in increased compliance costs for operators.
"Since 2019 we have witnessed, as part of our detailed monitoring of the international regulatory landscape, increasing nationalisation and tight national security restrictions in the communications regulatory and wider technology space in Russia," says Lodlov.
By May 2019, the country adopted a law on Russian Internet (Runet) that laid the foundations for isolating internet traffic in Russia from the rest of the world, as evidenced by the recent blocking of certain social networks.
"This has allowed full scope filtering of the Internet content with the Russian regulator Roskomnadzor requiring all ISPs to interconnect technically with its facilities and run all traffic destined to the World Wide Web via it," adds Lodlov.
At the same time, strict requirements were put in place for pre-installed Russian software on all devices imported and sold, including PCs, laptops and handsets. By 11th March, all servers and domains were due to be transferred to the Russian zone in readiness for of the cut off from the global Internet.
"We expect that western foreign operators will now face their licences being reworked, their assets nationalised or expropriated, and their operations effectively ceased," explains Lodlov.
"Furthermore, telecommunications operators offering global or international services to Russia (or countries that may yet fall under similar international sanctions), will face challenging situations. This is especially true as they try to comply with the constantly increasing sanctions, comprising of bans on technologies and services including entities with Russian ownership or capital (where such fact may be far from obvious)."
She adds that there is also the perennial issue of which services to take down, as one circuit to one sanctioned customer may be fairly simple but taking down a common network element can be very challenging. As such, "a lot of work will be needed to coordinate network and sanctions teams in order to ensure pragmatic decisions are made".
This will require significant work on the part of "key individuals" as well as import teams who will need to adapt to and keep up to date with the increasing restrictions on the types of equipment/ technology that can be imported into the countries.
Sanctions and networking aside, Lodlov says that the home countries of large, international organisations that provide telecoms services are also likely to tighten national security and cybersecurity requirements to protect against cybercrime.
"This includes targeted attacks on critical infrastructure in these countries, the spread of fake news and the prevalence of propaganda. Tightened cyber security rules are well under way in the Western world and will intensify," she says.
This will result in additional costs in not only reinforcing critical infrastructure but also in "ensuring the administration of content mediation, filtering and blocking services that the service providers already face. We are seeing large numbers of new rules in this regard appearing across multiple jurisdictions".
Interestingly, Lodlov points to subsea cables as an area of particular concern describing it as "essential communication pathways from the East to the West and especially between Europe and Northern America".
In light of these repercussions, its unsurprising to learn that new compliance rules and legislation are likely to come about as a result of these threats.
Firstly, Lodlov says that eome countries that were traditionally very open to the global economy, like the UK, the Netherlands or Denmark, recently introduced government scrutiny of foreign direct investment in strategic infrastructure sectors like communications networks & services, data centres or infrastructure for digital and cloud services.
"This will, in our view, gain momentum and more European countries will follow suit," she says. "We also expect that there will be further scrutiny and new rules regarding anonymous use of services and many jurisdictions which currently do not have strict rules on customer or SIM registrations will introduce these in some shape or form."
There is also scope for similar discussions in the areas of social networks, particularly regarding fake accounts, sponsored by state terrorism or aimed at incentivising hatred or harmful content.
Data sovereignty is also likely to be affected, with Lodlov having seen an increasing trend of data localisation in Russia and other countries in the region over the last two years.
"This is likely to continue, with more countries imposing strict data localisation rules not only for the communications sector but for wider personal data processing requirements," she adds.
"We expect to see more national versions of the global Internet as seen in other regions, like the Middle East or China, where a significant portion of information & content is either blocked or filtered."
For its part, she says that Russia has already introduced full-scope data sovereignty for all communications sector data and any personal data processing.
If data sovereignty is likely to become more prevalent, then countries and jurisdictions that are governed by GDPR, UK GDPR regime or similar regimes, "will impose absolute restrictions on data transfers to jurisdictions like Russia. This will increase the geopolitical isolation and economic sanctions put on the nation," Lodlov says.
The downside to this as she points out, is that data protection rules in different countries are likely to become more "incompatible" and "giving rise to new partitioning in the digital space".
What is further concerning is that this could lead to technical and other incompatibility issues regarding standards "which would break the current globalised world into nationsal or regional silos limiting the scope for big data, data economy or open data initiatives".
With a plethora of clients and partners across the TMT space, Lodlov says that the firm has already begun seeing a number of the aforementioned topics being discussed as areas of concern, indicating that many are preparing for what likely to come.
Of the ones not previously mentioned these include, greater restrictions on network service offerings requiring more filtering and blocking as well as more foreign direct investment rules.
Regulation failing to keep pace with new technologies leading to ever increasing rules on enterprise customers, which are more customer centric and the expansion of some of those rules to OTT providers but little consistency on some.
And an ever more patchwork quilt of regulation requiring hugely detailed analysis to allow any cross-border application and risk of more fines for any cross jurisdictional service offering.
Continued here:
Telecoms security and the Russia-Ukraine crisis - Capacity Media
Anonymous declared a ‘cyber war’ against Russia. Here are the results – CNBC
Though a flood of claims by hacking groups followed Russia's invasion of Ukraine, one study shows most made by Anonymous check out.
Nurphoto | Nurphoto | Getty Images
More than three weeks ago, a popular Twitter account named "Anonymous" declared that the shadowy activist group was waging a "cyber war" against Russia.
Since then, the account which has more than 7.9 million followers, with some 500,000 gained since Russia's invasion of Ukraine has claimed responsibility for disabling prominent Russian government, news and corporate websites and leaking data from entities such as Roskomnadzor, the federal agency responsible for censoring Russian media.
But is any of that true?
It appears it is, says Jeremiah Fowler, a co-founder of the cybersecurity company Security Discovery, who worked with researchers at the web company Website Planet to attempt to verify the group's claims.
"Anonymous has proven to be a very capable group that has penetrated some high value targets, records and databases in the Russian Federation," he wrote in a report summarizing the findings.
Of 100 Russian databases that were analyzed, 92 had been compromised, said Fowler.
They belonged to retailers, Russian internet providers and intergovernmental websites, including the Commonwealth of Independent States, or CIS, an organization made up of Russia and other former Soviet nations that was created in 1991 following the fall of the Soviet Union.
Many CIS files were erased, hundreds of folders were renamed to "putin_stop_this_war" and email addresses and administrative credentials were exposed, said Fowler, who likened it to 2020's malicious "MeowBot" attacks, which "had no purpose except for a malicious script that wiped out data and renamed all the files."
Another hacked database contained more than 270,000 names and email addresses.
"We know for a fact that hackers found and probably accessed these systems," said Fowler. "We do not know if data was downloaded or what the hackers plan to do with this information."
Other databases contained security information, internal passwords and a "very large number" of secret keys, which unlock encrypted data, said Fowler.
As to whether this was the work of Anonymous, Fowler said he followed Anonymous' claims "and the timeline matches perfect," he said.
The Twitter account, named @YourAnonNews, has also claimed to have hacked into Russian state TV stations.
"I would mark that as true if I were a factchecker," said Fowler. "My partner at Security Discovery, Bob Diachenko, actually captured a state news live feed from a website and filmed the screen, so we were able to validate that they had hacked at least one live feed [with] a pro-Ukrainian message in Russian."
The English-language Russian news website RT "is for a western audience, and so what what's being shown on RT is not what's being told in Russia," said Security Discovery's Jeremiah Fowler.
Lionel Bonaventure | AFP | Getty Images
The account has also claimed to have disrupted websites of major Russian organizations and media agencies, such as the energy company Gazprom and state-sponsored news agency RT.
"Many of these agencies have admitted that they were attacked," said Fowler.
He called denial of service attacks which aim to disable websites by flooding them with traffic "super easy." Those websites, and many others, have been shuttered at various points in recent weeks, but they are also reportedly being targeted by other groups as well, including some 310,000 digital volunteers who have signed up for the "IT Army of Ukraine" Telegram account.
Fowler said he didn't find any instances where Anonymous had overstated its claims.
But that is happening with other hacktivist groups, said Lotem Finkelstein, head of threat intelligence and research at the cybersecurity company Check Point Software Technologies.
In recent weeks, a pro-Ukrainian group claimed it breached a Russian nuclear reactor, and a pro-Russian group said it shut down Anonymous' website. Check Point concluded both claims were false.
"As there is no real official Anonymous website, this attack appears to be more of a morale booster for the pro-Russian side, and a publicity event," CPR said, a fact which did not go unnoticed by Anonymous affiliates, who mocked the claim on social media.
Groups are making fake claims by posting old or publicly available information to gain popularity or glory, said Finkelstein.
Fowler said he feels Anonymous is, however, dedicated more to the "cause" than to notoriety.
"In what I saw in these databases, it was more about the messaging than saying 'hey, you know, Anonymous troop No. 21, group five, did this,'" he said. "It was more about the end result."
Hacktivists who conduct offensive cyber warfare-like activities without government authority are engaging in criminal acts, said Paul de Souza, the founder of the non-profit Cyber Security Forum Initiative.
Despite this, many social media users are cheering Anonymous' efforts on, with many posts receiving thousands of likes and messages of support.
"They're almost like a cyber Robin Hood, when it comes to causes that people really care about, that no one else can really do anything about," said Fowler. "You want action now, you want justice now, and I think groups like Anonymous and hacktivists give people that immediate satisfaction."
Many hacktivist groups have strong values, said Marianne Bailey, a cybersecurity partner at the consulting firm Guidehouse and former cybersecurity executive with the U.S. National Security Agency. Cyber activism is a low-cost way for them to influence governmental and corporate actions, she said.
"It is protesting in the 21st century," said Bailey.
Yet cheering them on can be dangerous in the "fog of war," she said.
"A cyberattack has the potential for such an immediate impact, in most cases well before any accurate attribution can be determined," she said. "A cyber strike back or even kinetic strike back could be directed to the wrong place.And what if that misattribution is intentional? What if someone makes the attack appear from a specific country when that's not true?"
She said cyber warfare can be cheaper, easier, more effective and easier to deny than traditional military warfare, and that it will only increase with time.
"With more devices connected to this global digital ecosystem the opportunity for impact continues to expand," she said. "It will undoubtedly be used more often in future conflicts."
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Anonymous declared a 'cyber war' against Russia. Here are the results - CNBC
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Internet Of Things (Iot) Security Market by Top Manufacturers with Production, Price, Revenue (value) and Market Share to 2029 The Sabre - The Sabre
What Higher Education Institutions Need to Know About Cyber Insurance – EdTech Magazine: Focus on K-12
Colleges and universities have a great deal of valuable and private data in their systems. Personnel, academic, financial and administrative systems hold everything from research data to student medical records. It all adds up to a lot of sensitive information that requires protection.
This is where cyber insurance comes in: an insurance product that shields the school from the financial disaster that comes with data breach lawsuits, liability findings, regulatory failure fines, and huge legal costs associated with a failure to protect that information and keep it private. Read on for some facts and fallacies about cyber insurance.
DISCOVER: What one university learned after a ransomware attack.
Cyber insurance isnt designed to handle the case of someone losing a laptop or having it stolen. Cyber insurance covers the case in which the laptop loss turns into a data breach and then the university must pay for fraud monitoring for 3,000 students who had their personal financial information exposed as part of the breach.
Of course, cyber insurance isnt all the same, and every institution will have a policy customized for its own requirements. The point of cyber insurance is to cover the cases that are handled poorly by other types of insurance, such as paying for legal costs and fines related to a regulatory action that came out of a cyber incident: device loss, system break-in, the wrong email going to the wrong person, and so on. Cyber insurance policies can cover liability costs, costs to replace lost data, even loss of income.
One of the most popular coverages in cyber insurance is for ransomware attacks. This insurance is designed to reduce financial risk related to cyber extortion.
Click the banner belowfor exclusive insights about cybersecurity in higher ed.
Cyber insurance isnt like fire or theft insurance you dont just pick a dollar amount and send in a check. Because the cyber risk landscape is constantly changing and because cyber security is such a complicated area for IT teams, cyber insurance doesnt come with a one-size-fits-all rate sheet.
To make a fair price, the insurance company needs to be able to estimate the risk: the likelihood of loss and the amount of money at stake. That means the process of buying cyber insurance is going to require a lot of in-depth disclosure from your institution, along with very clear lines delineating what kind of coverage is needed and what is excluded.
FIND OUT: How to support mental health for university cybersecurity professionals.
In fact, the exact opposite is true. When you buy cyber insurance, the underwriter becomes very interested in your security profile and the attack surface you present to the world. Insurance companies may perform regular vulnerability scans permitted as part of the policy on all your internet-connected systems. If they find something they dont like, youll hear about it, first from an automated system and, if you dont do anything about it, from a human who wants to know when youre going to solve the problem thats been identified.
Your security team will be partially beholden to the standards set by the insurance company as well. What your team may have considered reasonable configurations or optimizations for usability, such as allowing old encryption algorithms, may suddenly show up on the insurance companys radar as a problem that you must solve, lest you see higher premiums or even lose insurance entirely. Cyber insurance underwriters will also want to look at your incident response plan and may insist on changes, especially in areas such as reporting and timelines.
The percentage of education IT decision-makers who falsely believe cybersecurity insurance protects them from ransomware (insurance helps cover the cost of an attack but does not stop the attack itself)
Source: Sophos, The State of Ransomware in Education 2021, July 2021
Theres a good side to all this too: Cyber insurance underwriters are interested in reducing risk, so youll gain a new partner when it comes to implementing these new security controls. Consulting services, training and automated assessments may all be part of the benefits that come with cyber insurance.
When its time to measure risk and make decisions about security investments, insurance companies have in-house experts that you can call on to help understand what types of investments have the best cybersecurity cost-benefit ratios.
EXPLORE: How to avoid security breaches within the IT department.
Insurance is all about risk transfer: A breach may or may not happen, but if it does, it will be expensive, so youll pay an insurance company to take that risk off your shoulders. This means that its the CFO who is responsible for buying insurance of all types. Insurance doesnt solve any problem other than a financial one, so the CFO is the person most interested in reducing the risk to the institution.
However, CIOs and their teams are the ones with the expertise and knowledge in this area. The CIO and CISO will be able to read policies and understand the specific terms of art used in a way that the CFO cant. The security team will be able to understand what is and isnt excluded and put it into context for the CFO. Thats a critical step, because if the important risks are not covered properly, then the insurance isnt meeting the goals of the institution or the CFO.
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What Higher Education Institutions Need to Know About Cyber Insurance - EdTech Magazine: Focus on K-12
Cyber Security Today, Feb. 21, 2022 – Data on Internet Society members exposed, an alert to Linux administrators, Microsoft Teams users get tricked…
Data on Internet Society members exposed, an alert to Linux administrators, Microsoft Teams users get tricked and more.
Welcome to Cyber Security Today. Its Monday February 21st. Im Howard Solomon, contributing reporter on cybersecurity for ITWorldCanada.com.
People are still being clumsy with the way data is stored on the internet. The latest example: Files with names, email addresses and login details of thousands of members of the Internet Society were recently found in an unsecured Microsoft Azure blob. The Internet Society is an international non-profit that lobbies for a resilient internet. What happened? According to security researchers who found the flaw, the Internet Society blames the association management software it uses. That software, which allows membership information to be stored in the cloud, was configured incorrectly. As a result, if someone knew where to look the information was open to be copied. It isnt known if anyone other than the researchers found those open files. Misconfigurations are a prime cause of data exposures. Credit for the discovery goes to researchers at Clario and independent researcher Bob Diachenko.
Last week I reported on a vulnerability in Adobe Commerce and Magento e-commerce platforms. However, the patch Adobe issued to fix this flaw wasnt enough. A new security update has been released for some versions of Commerce and Magento. Check with the Adobe website to see if your implementation needs this patch.
Attention Linux administrators: Security researchers at Qualys have discovered multiple vulnerabilities in the snap-confine function on Linux operating systems. One of them can be exploited to escalate privileges to gain root privileges. And once an attacker has root privileges they can do pretty much anything. Snapis a software packaging and deployment system allowing software developers to distribute their applications directly to Linux systems. Administrators are urged to apply security patches from their Linux distributions as soon as possible to plug this hole.
Researchers at Avanan have detailed a scam for tricking people using the Microsoft Teams collaboration service into downloading malware. It works like this: A hacker gets into a Teams discussion by one of several ways. If it involves people in two companies, one of the firms might have been hacked. Or the hacker has compromised a persons email address or Microsoft password to access Teams. Then in the middle of a conversation they attach a compromised file to one or all of the participants. This is a trick that can work with any collaboration or chat application. But hackers often chose Microsoft Teams because Microsoft products are widely used by organizations. To defend against this IT administrators need to add anti-malware protection that sandboxes and scans attachments in collaboration software.
Canadians are getting recorded phone calls from someone claiming to be from the the department of Service Canada. This is a fraud. The goal is to get your government of Canada or bank passwords and then your personal information. Just hang up.
Attention WordPress administrators: If you use the free or paid UpdraftPlus backup and recovery plugin, install the latest security patch fast. It fixes a serious vulnerability that allows anyone not just an administrator who logs into a WordPress console to compromise a backup. The developer says it would take a very skilled hacker to do that, but assume a few of them are around. Administrators using UpdraftPlus Premiums feature for encrypting a database backup are protected against data theft.
Finally, The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency is making it easier for IT and business leaders to access its free cybersecurity resources. The agency has created a new online portal. It has resources under titles like Fix the known security flaws in software, and Halt bad practices. If you type CISA free youll find the link. Its also included here. The government of Canadas free online advisory resources are at the Canadian Centre for Cyber Security. The U.K. resources are at the National Cyber Security Centre. All three are great places to start looking for advice on everything from stopping ransomware to setting up a cybersecurity program.
Remember links to details about podcast stories are in the text version at ITWorldCanada.com. Thats where youll also find other stories of mine.
You can follow Cyber Security Today on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts or add us to your Flash Briefing on your smart speaker.
Psaki won’t comment on Clinton-linked tech exec ‘mining’ WH records – New York Post
White House press secretary Jen Psaki declined to comment Wednesday on special counsel John Durhams allegation that tech executive Rodney Joffe mined non-public White House internet records to find dirt on former President Donald Trump.
Fox News correspondent Jacqui Heinrich asked Psaki during her regular briefing if there was still a DNS resolver server extracting White House data and whether its alleged review by a Hillary Clinton ally constituted spying.
Durham says there was an outside company with ties to the Clinton camp monitoring server data info on the Executive Office of the President through the Obama administration, possibly into the Trump administration, Heinrich began her questioning.
Do you know if theres still a system picking up server data on the EOP and if not, when it stopped?
I know you asked my colleague a few questions about this the other day, but I would point you any questions about this to the Department of Justice, replied Psaki, referencing Heinrich raising the matter at a Monday briefing with deputy press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre.
Is what was described in the filings there monitoring internet traffic is that generally speaking, would that be considered something along the lines of spying? Heinrich followed up.
Again, I would point you to the Department of Justice, Psaki said.
Trump cited Durhams Friday filing as evidence that he was the victim of a hoax linking him to Russia in the 2016 election. However, Joffe said through a spokesperson he did nothing wrong.
Joffe, a now-retired senior vice president at Virginia-based company Neustar who is identified as Tech Executive-1, exploited domain name system (DNS) Internet traffic pertaining to the Executive Office of the President, as well as two Trump properties and a healthcare provider, the Durham filing said.
[Neustar] had come to access and maintain dedicated servers for the EOP as part of a sensitive arrangement whereby it provided DNS resolution services to the EOP, the filing went on. [Joffe] and his associates exploited this arrangement by mining the EOPs DNS traffic and other data for the purpose of gathering derogatory information about Donald Trump.
Clinton campaign attorney Michael Sussmann allegedly gave the DNS records to the CIA in early 2017. Sussmann is awaiting trial for allegedly lying to the FBI about his links to the Clinton campaign while hawking a later-debunked theory linking Trump to Russia-based Alfa-Bank.
The Friday court filing alleged that [Joffe] indicated that he was seeking to please certain VIPs referring to individuals at [Sussmanns law firm] and the Clinton Campaign.
A DNS resolver server helps fulfill computer requests to visit websites such as WhiteHouse.gov. But the precise data points analyzed and circulated by Joffe and Sussmann have not been divulged.
A spokesperson for Joffe said Monday that he is an apolitical internet security expert who legally provided access to DNS data obtained from a private client that separately was providing DNS services to the Executive Office of the President (EOP).
Under the terms of the contract, the data could be accessed to identify and analyze any security breaches or threats, Joffes rep said.
As a result of the hacks of EOP and DNC servers in 2015 and 2016, respectively, there were serious and legitimate national security concerns about Russian attempts to infiltrate the 2016 election, the statement continued. Upon identifying DNS queries from Russian-made Yota phones in proximity to the Trump campaign and the EOP, respected cyber-security researchers were deeply concerned about the anomalies they found in the data and prepared a report of their findings, which was subsequently shared with theCIA.
Sussmanns legal team said in a court filing Monday that the DNS records in question dated to former President Barack Obamas administrations and not Trumps, which began on Jan. 20, 2017. The rebuttal also said Sussmann never billed the Clinton Campaign for the Feb. 9, 2017, meeting where he gave the records to the CIA.
The significance of Joffes access to DNS records and potential privacy concerns remain murky, in part because its unclear what exactly was accessed and shared. Joffe has declined The Posts request for an interview.
A 2020 document from the federal Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency emphasized that US agencies should pursue encryption when selecting from private-sector DNS resolver servers to enhance user security and privacy by preventing eavesdropping and manipulation of DNS data.
In recent years, the government has taken an increasingly active role in the process of hardening the security of federal DNS services.
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Psaki won't comment on Clinton-linked tech exec 'mining' WH records - New York Post
Grand Junction man negotiates with ransomware bad guys’ – The Grand Junction Daily Sentinel
Eastern Europe can be perilous if you have the kind of job Kurtis Minder has.
Its a line of work featuring regular correspondence with the FBI and familiarity with the U.S. Treasury Departments Office of Foreign Asset Control Sanctions list.
Minder operates in the sprawling world of cybersecurity, drawing interest for his work in ransomware negotiation. Ransomware, the cybercrime du jour that shut down Colonial Pipeline last May and ground the city of Atlanta to a halt in 2018, refers to bad actors infiltrating businesses, nonprofit agencies or government services, encrypting important data and then demanding payment to unlock the files.
Its an interesting field in which to hang a shingle.
A local friend made the introduction, recalled John Marshall, president of Colorado Mesa University, of the first time he met Minder. And he told me this wild story about how hes grown this wild business.
We just fortuitously stumbled across literally the world expert in this hot field.
NOT VERY FRIENDLY
After a ransomware victim gets a demand from the attackers is where Minder, who co-founded the company GroupSense, steps in. He specializes in a sort of cyber reconnaissance, in addition to the negotiation work. He closed his first such negotiation in July 2020 and has become a significant figure in the world of ransomware negotiations and cybersecurity, having been interviewed in outlets ranging from The New Yorker, to Vice on HBO.
Of course, that notoriety extends to the world of cybercriminals, who Minder discusses the way a football coach might talk about a division rival.
They dont generally like firms like us, so its generally not very friendly. Theyre not saying, like, Im going to go get Kurtis or something like that, Minder told The Daily Sentinel, before offering this caveat: Although, there has been dark web chatter to that degree. But I dont know if theyre ransomware actors or just other bad guys. Because we make enemies of a lot of bad guys other than just ransomware.
Minder doesnt boast of the dangers of his job the way those who meet him might. He also regularly credits his staff, many of whom are former law enforcement or intelligence professionals.
Still, its not a boring job, either, and Minder tells a good story, be it about the curious world of cybercrime or a recent motorcycle ride down Colorado Highway 141 to Gateway.
Take for example the firm Minders company owns in Sofia, which he wont be visiting for awhile for decidedly non-COVID-19 reasons.
That team, I wanted to go see them and I was sort of told off the record to stay out of Bulgaria for right now, Minder said. Its weird. I never imagined myself getting pushed into a white van or anything.
While he doesnt see himself as a future tenant of the back of a van, Minder does know the same people hacking into companies he works with are always trying to embarrass him. Minder jokes that his security team hates me.
It does make us a target and were paranoid sufficiently, he said.
Though international, corporate and legal intrigue headline Minders profile, in person hes a polite character who loves BMW motorcycles and earnestly wants to help his clients as well as nonprofits or small businesses who happen to open the wrong email.
I dont poke the bear, Minder said, referring to his digital opponents in the cyber underground. Im just trying to help people.
HOW IT WORKS
GroupSense sports an impressive list of clients that includes some major companies, but not every problem needs the attention of the companys co-founder. Minder, who is partnering with Colorado Mesa University on a nonprofit aimed at helping small organizations with cybersecurity, now works on two ends of the negotiation spectrum.
If the asking price for the bad guy is above eight figures, so above $10 million, then Im involved, Minder said. And then the only other time is when the company is so small that they cant afford to pay our fees and I do it for free.
That pro bono work is valuable in a realm as specialized as this. Beyond ransomware negotiation, GroupSense helps companies know what they might be vulnerable to. Minder compares it to intelligence agencies spying on foreign countries to find out what they might be capable of and what they might attack.
Intelligence in business, and specifically in cyber, is the exact same thing. What are the bad guys doing right now, what kinds of tools are they using? Minder said.
Ransomware attacks, like the Colonial Pipeline attack that threatened one of the nations largest fuel providers, often target internet carelessness.
An employee might use their work email to sign up for something at a different website Minder, when explaining the problem, cites iloveknitting.com as an example, since the domain doesnt exist yet. If that other website is hacked, that email and the password are compromised and, since people often reuse passwords, its easy enough for a hacker to use the credentials they found at iloveknitting.com to log into the company they can extort.
That site gets hacked opportunistically Minder said. Theyre not targeting the knitting lady; she just has a site with some vulnerabilities.
Once the bad actors have access, they lock down important files and demand payment in the form of cryptocurrency like Bitcoin.
GroupSense helps clients first determine if its even worth it to retrieve the lost information. If a company can recover their data, or do without, for less than the cost of the ransom, theyll cut their losses.
If, however, the locked information is valuable enough, then Minder will go to work using a handful of tactics that he certainly didnt learn in school and that, until recently, had not been used in this application. Its something GroupSense has gotten pretty good at.
We traditionally get the rate down below 10% of the original asking on a pretty regular basis. Or below, Minder said, adding that the cyber insurance companies he talks with note that success rate to be pretty ing good.
Minder, 44, grew up in central Illinois Not near Chicago, hell preemptively quip and spent about a semester and a half in community college before ditching the pursuit altogether.
We were poor. I was not a great student in high school so I didnt get any scholarships. I was about a C/D student. I did start going to the local community college with the intent of getting to the point where I might do a four-year degree, Minder said.
But, by that time Minder was well into his tech career, having gotten a job when he was 16 working nearly full time at an internet service provider. In high school he was writing papers about how users could fake their identity in the early days of the internet and, after reading one of the preeminent books on computer hacking at the time, Minder was already combing through logs at his internet company and kicking out early hackers.
By the time he was taking classes, he was well ahead of what most universities were capable of teaching at the time.
The stuff I was doing at work wasnt slightly ahead of what they were teaching, it was years ahead of what they were teaching, Minder said.
That knack for independent learning carried through Minders career all the way into his evolution as a negotiator, where he picked up tips from his colleagues as well as former FBI negotiator Chris Voss, whose book Minder read and who Minder now texts regarding negotiating tactics.
However, what Minder was dealing with talking someone on another continent down off their opening offer does not conform to the standards that negotiating dogma relies on.
They rely on the ability to see my opponent or hear them so eye contact, body language, tone. Thats not true here, Minder said.
And its not just that millions of dollars are being discussed via keyboard.
It also assumes that theres some asymmetry to the leverage. Not true. Bad guy has almost all the leverage. Especially if they took a copy of your financials. Cant even lie about how much money you have.
Then theres the most basic of differences.
It assumes you speak the same language, Minder said. Not true.
As Minder adapted the craft with, as he often credits, help from others at his company the work he was doing drew interest from the Harvard Negotiation Project, which is more or less exactly what it sounds like.
Minder worked with the Harvard Negotiation Project on translating that analog field of study into a digital world. The effort culminated in a presentation Minder did with Voss, the ex-negotiator whose book Minder read when he was starting out.
KARMA AND THE WESTERN SLOPE
Minder believes both that you get out of the universe what you put into it and that BMW produces some of the finest motorcycles around.
While those principles have little in common, Minder is living them both in Grand Junction, having left his GroupSense headquarters outside of Washington D.C. during the pandemic.
We had this amazing office. Such a bummer, Minder said of the Ballston, Virginia location. Super startup-y with the concrete floors and all that.
After enough days skateboarding around an empty office, Minder mentioned on a conference call that he was moving west, possibly Arizona. Thankfully for the Grand Valley, GroupSense Chief Operating Officer Kelly Milan had just added another property to his Grand Junction real estate portfolio, and he was looking to rent it out.
I was like, give me the keys. And that was it. And I still rent that house, Minder said.
After the move, Minder needed a few things that his home office didnt yet afford and in that, Marshall, the CMU president, saw opportunity.
It started with, he needed a room for a zoom call, Marshall said. And the president was happy to oblige, hoping that the right background and a goodbye from Grand Junction and CMU, send off from the conference call might get the Mavericks in front of a bigger tech audience.
It started as a cheap publicity stunt and just kind of grew, Marshall said.
What its grown into is a partnership for a long-running GroupSense effort. Minder is looking to park the philanthropic arm of his work, dubbed GoodSense, in Grand Junction and Colorado Mesa University is ready to help.
The 501c3 non-profit paperwork for GoodSense is now wending its way through the system, but the spirit of providing pro bono help on cyber security matters has a track record at Minders company.
Were all very altruistic in nature, Minder said, adding that staffers at GroupSense will bring up different organizations or groups to help and be empowered to do so. Essentially, GoodSense will formalize that effort and allow Minder and his colleagues to continue helping out small organizations, something hes already started to do through some relationships in Grand Junction.
And Minder builds these relationships quickly. He has a knack for getting to know people he doesnt just know who he might see on a motorcycle trip to Gateway, but also how many miles theyve got on their Indian Chieftain and has already provided some help for companies and organizations in Grand Junction.
Cyber security changes quickly and Minder doesnt scoff at those who arent sufficiently protected because, he says, the scope of the problem is such that no one person could be expected to stay on top of it.
Fortunately, he thinks theres some low-hanging solutions to the issue that dont involve FBI investigations or international diplomacy.
A common refrain about cybersecurity is to describe it as a war, which Minder says is only partially true.
Its kind of a weird war. The bad guys have a bunch of spears, and theyre going to throw the spears at us, and we have a bunch of shields on the ground.
Much like the axiom that most burglaries are crimes of opportunity targeting unlocked houses or cars left running in the driveway cybercrimes go after easy targets and picking up the shields in Minders metaphor is a good place to start.
Eventually theyd run out of spears or theyd throw spears at someone else, Minder said.
GoodSense will help do that. The idea melds the acumen and resources of GroupSense with the talent pool at CMU to create a nonprofit that can scale up to help Main Street America become as savvy to the perils of the online world as Fortune 500 companies have.
Were going to provide ransomware (help) but also cyber hygiene instruction and services for small businesses that meet a certain criteria for free, Minder said, adding that the board of the nonprofit will range from Grand Junction locals to big names in the cyber security industry.
The nonprofit organization creates enormous potential for CMU and Grand Junction, from protecting local businesses from dubious emails all the way up to a pipeline of future cyber experts graduating from CMU.
Marshall, who is used to partnering with experts across industry, said an opportunity like this is difficult to fathom for a place like CMU.
To state the obvious, Kurtis doesnt really need us, Marshall quipped.
But for Minder, a believer in karma, the priority is the same whether its a $10 million negotiation for a top client or creating an opportunity for a junior in college.
Hes just trying to help.
Read the rest here:
Grand Junction man negotiates with ransomware bad guys' - The Grand Junction Daily Sentinel
Why is S.F. Chinatowns internet so bad? Its racism, says the person trying to fix it – San Francisco Chronicle
Ho, a 39-year-old banker who grew up attending weekly language classes in Chinatown, thought sending more video documentation to the cloud could help bridge the gulf between authorities and disenchanted locals who felt like their safety concerns werent being taken seriously enough.
Its not rocket science, Ho remembered thinking at the time. Just arm a bunch of storefronts with security cameras. How hard could it be?
According to the team of technology consultants she hired, very.
Block after block, merchants and residents revealed that, if they had any internet at all, they were relying on ancient dial-up or slow DSL connections. In the tech capital of the world, Chinatown appeared to be an internet dead zone.
Ten months later, Hos team managed to install cameras on only one of the historic districts 30 blocks. The districts digital divide has ramifications beyond public safety. Ho said she heard from restaurants that were unable to transition to online deliveries during the roving lockdowns, from parents whose children couldnt log onto remote learning, from residents incapable of scheduling tele-health appointments, and from business owners, residents and others who simply gave up on connecting to the World Wide Web whatsoever.
In a historic district with origins in government-sanctioned isolation, Ho found herself going up against internet giants.
This is wrong, she said she thought in early 2021. So who do we talk to about this?
First settled in 1848, Chinatown has always been ghettoized, said Justin Hoover, executive director of the Chinese Historical Society of America.
The history of the Chinese in Chinatown is one of exclusion and inequity, he told The Chronicle.
Joel Hernandez, chief technology officer of IT Jockeys, takes a photograph of a security camera outside Charity Cultural Services Center in Chinatown. The buildings windows were smashed twice in the past year, but its security cameras were not high-quality enough to record the attacks.
In the mid-1800s, city ordinances limited where Chinese immigrants could live and work while their children were forbidden from attending public schools. During the 1900 bubonic plague, police officers sealed off Chinatown, preventing people from coming or going.
Today, low-income families cram into rooms designed for one person in Chinatowns numerous single-room occupancy hotels, and there are few parklets or outdoor spaces for recreation, Hoover said. Not being able to access a critical utility like high-speed internet is just the latest hardship.
Were each left to fight our own battle to get better internet or get left behind, said Hoover, whose office is in the the former YWCA building, where single Chinese women found a social outlet from the 1930s to the 1980s.
And yet, the states broadband map shows parts of Chinatown to be among the areas most wired for fast internet, performing much better than the neighboring financial district. Points on the map directly contradict what merchants and residents say they experience on a daily basis.
Terrie Prosper, a spokesperson for the California Public Utility Commission, told The Chronicle the broadband map represents the maximum possible speed for the area, not what speed users will sign up for. Many businesses opt for a lower plan and would get slower speed than the maximum for that reason, Prosper said.
Ho thinks the technical explanations dont take into account Chinatowns history of exclusion.
Its racism, Ho said. There is literally a (digital) infrastructure line around Chinatown.
Laura Li, a partner in the Waverly Services and Print shop, points to her computer as it undergoes speed testing in Chinatown. Li pays $150 a month for AT&T internet, which she said was unreliable and slow, a common issue within the historic and dense neighborhood.
Ho requested meetings with the areas major service providers, AT&T and Comcast. Comcast met with community leaders in July 2021 and sent a team to walk the district that September.
The company acknowledged issues with high-speed internet in the neighborhood and challenges to improving it, telling The Chronicle its technicians have been denied access to buildings by owners, and that the community does not want its sidewalks dug up to lay new fiber optic cables.
Ho acknowledged these as legitimate challenges, but said it sounded like Comcast was blaming the community instead of finding ways to work with it. She noted that there is no Chinese language option when calling the company.
Joan Hammel, senior director of external communications for Comcast in California, said in an email that her company has a deep, sincere commitment to finding solutions to serve Chinatown.
For a district that has been hit hard by the loss of tourism and day-to-day foot traffic, the struggle to connect with the world outside its boundaries has been acute.
On Feb. 13, The Chronicle accompanied Ho as she checked internet speeds door to door on a block of Clay Street opposite Portsmouth Square. Of the 10 open businesses, the average download speed was 12.85 megabits per second and average upload speed was 0.89 Mbps.
The Federal Communications Commission sets the baseline for adequate broadband coverage at 25 Mbps for downloads and 3 Mbps for uploads.
Three businesses had no internet service at all.
The Powell Trading Co. jewelry store registered 0.94 Mbps upload and 9.4 Mbps download, while a bookkeeping office a few doors down had the fastest speeds of the day 0.78 Mbps upload and 16.2 Mbps download.
Waverly Services and Print shop registered an upload speed of 0.82 Mbps and a download speed of 15.2 Mbps. Laura Lis store is one of the businesses Ho was hoping to outfit with a security camera. In June 2021, Li said her windows were smashed along with others on the block.
Everybody started putting (up) cardboard, which makes this place look junky because everything is boarded up, Li said. Everybody is scared.
Communication cables for a security camera outside the Charity Cultural Services Center in Chinatown. The organization seeks to upgrade its security cameras after several incidents of vandalism in the past year, but the neighborhoods slow internet speeds could hamper that goal.
Chinatown saw 57 reported incidents of malicious mischief-breaking windows last year, more than double than either of the previous three years, according to San Francisco Police Department incident data.
Last month, on the same block, Vivian Lo, manager of the Chen Tseng Trading Co., said she arrived at work to find a bullet hole in her front window.
The lack of adequate internet speed has hindered other aspects of daily life in Chinatown. Sam Wo restaurant worker Ms. Ju, who did not give her first name, said her children could not access the internet during the pandemic and fell behind in school.
The school gave my kids two computers and two hotspots but we could not use the computers because the hotspots did not work, she said.
Ho does believe Comcast is more serious about fixing the internet issues in Chinatown than its competitor, AT&T, which has not met with community leaders. Of the six merchants with internet service that The Chronicle spoke to on Clay Street, all had AT&T and paid between $65 and $75 per month. Upload speeds were consistently zero and download speeds ranged from 9 Mbps to 16.2 Mbps.
When a reporter visited AT&Ts website and entered an address of a Clay Street business that did not currently have internet service, the only plan offered was Internet Basic 6 with Speeds up to 6Mbps for $60 per month. Ho said such plans are overpriced for the speed offered, and wishes AT&T would do better. They cant even say they are trying, Ho said.
AT&T declined interview requests for this story and referred comment to USTelecom, a broadband industry group.
The group provided The Chronicle with a statement saying there are a variety of reasons internet speed may vary, including the condition of an individuals home computer and router; traffic congestion at points outside of the local connection; and multiple devices sharing a Wi-Fi connection.
Supervisor Aaron Peskin, who represents the district, said the cost of upgrading Chinatowns older buildings to accommodate faster internet should not fall on the community alone. In October, his office and the city Department of Technology launched a $200,000 pilot project that outfitted five SRO buildings with high-speed internet.
The effort started after Peskin heard from residents at the pandemics outset how the lack of reliable internet created new barriers to accessing lifeline services, including getting groceries.
Our high-speed internet pilot program for SRO residents proved that we can actually bridge the access gap when we invest real dollars in communities where the highest need is, rather than where profit lies, he wrote in an email to The Chronicle.
A recent internet speed test at one of the newly wired buildings registered a download speed of 31.3 Mbps and an upload speed of 34.1 Mbps more than enough to run a security camera and provide satisfactory internet to residents, Ho said.
Ashley Cheng found a different way around the slow internet speeds for her nonprofit organization, the Charity Cultural Services Center. She sought out Monkey Brains, an internet service provider that installs antennas on its customers roofs to transmit data wirelessly through radio waves from a main tower site connected to a fiber-optic network. The company started in 1998 as a disruptor to the lock that the telecommunications giants had on the market, said Carlos Michaud, a company spokesperson.
We are very far removed from the limitations of having to run a ground cable, Michaud said. No digging up the sidewalk to lay cables, no opening interior walls in buildings to pass wires through. The company does need the permission of building owners to install antennas on the roofs.
The company provides free internet to many low-income housing complexes in San Francisco, and in return the city allows Monkey Brains to utilize some of their fiber-optic cables in the ground, Michaud said.
Ho believes this could be a viable solution for much of Chinatown. Her ultimate goal is to improve internet access for the whole neighborhood.
High-speed internet is an essential part of (Chinatowns) survival, she said.
San Francisco Chronicle data reporter Susie Neilson contributed to this report.
Deepa Fernandes is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: deepa.fernandes@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @deepafern