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risingpakistan · 4 months

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سائبر اور فون کال فراڈ؛ محتاط رہیے

پاکستان میں جہاں لوگ ڈکیتی کی وارداتوں سے پریشان ہیں، وہیں سائبر کرائمز میں بھی بہت تیزی سے اضافہ ہو رہا ہے۔ ان دنوں ایک نئے قسم کے فراڈ سے لٹیروں نے کئی لوگوں کو اپنی رقم سے محروم کر دیا۔ اس نئی طرز کے فراڈ میں ملوث افراد واردات کے لیے عام شہریوں کو کال کرتے ہیں۔ انتہائی تشویشناک بات یہ ہے کہ ان لوگوں کے پاس عوام کا ڈیٹا بھی موجود ہوتا ہے جس سے یہ بات ظاہر ہوتی ہے کہ ان کا ریکی کا نظام بہت منظم ہے یا پھر ان افراد کی موبائل ریکارڈز تک رسائی ہے۔ ٹیلی فونک فراڈ میں ملوث نوسرباز اکثر اپنے آپ کو پولیس افسر ظاہر کرتے ہیں۔ یہ کسی بھی شخص کو کال ملا کر اسے اس کے نام سے پکارتے ہیں اور بعد ازاں اسے یہ بتاتے ہیں کہ ’’آپ کے خاندان کا کوئی فرد ہمارے قبضے میں ہے، ہم تھانے سے بات کررہے ہیں‘‘۔ یہ گروہ اس قدر پلاننگ سے کام کرتا ہے کہ جس شخص کے متعلق یہ بتارہے ہوتے ہیں یہ افراد کال پر اس کی آواز بھی سناتے ہیں، جس میں وہ رو رو کر خود کو بچانے کی درخواست کر رہا ہوتا ہے۔ ایسی صورتحال میں جسے کال کی جاتی ہے اس کے اعصاب پر مکمل طور پر قابو پانے کے بعد اس سے پیسوں کو مطالبہ کیا جاتا ہے اور اسے یہ کہا جاتا ہے کہ اگر مقدمہ درج نہیں کرانا چاہتے تو پیسوں کا انتظام کرو ورنہ یا تو اسے مار دیا جائے گا یا اس کیس میں حوالات میں ڈال دیا جائے گا۔

اس فراڈ میں ملوث افراد شہریوں سے ان کی حیثیت کے مطابق لاکھوں روپے تک بٹورنے کی کوشش کرتے ہیں۔ کراچی جیسے بڑے شہر میں بھی کئی افراد اس فراڈ کا شکار ہو چکے ہیں۔ انجان کال کا یہ طریقہ واردات اس طرح سے ترتیب دیا گیا ہے کہ متاثرہ شخص کو سوچنے سمجھنے کا وقت ہی نہیں ملتا اور اس سے اچھی خاصی رقم بٹور لی جاتی ہے۔ بین الاقوامی ادارے کی تحقیق کے مطابق ایف آئی اے اہلکاروں کا کہنا ہے کہ اس نوعیت کے فراڈ میں ملوث اس گروہ میں سے اکثر افراد کا تعلق حافظ آباد، فیصل آباد، سرگودھا اور لاہور سے ہے۔ سرکاری ریکارڈ کے مطابق فون کالز سے کیے جانے فراڈ کے کیسوں کی تعداد اب ہزاروں میں پہنچ چکی ہے۔ واضح رہے کہ سائبر کرائم ونگ میں اب فائیننشل فراڈ کے کیسوں کی تعداد میں اضافہ ہو رہا ہے۔ ایسے کیس جعلی سم اور جعلی اکاؤنٹس کی وجہ سے بڑھ رہے ہیں، جن کی بدولت یہ گروہ شہریوں کا ریکارڈ باآسانی حاصل کر لیتے ہیں۔ سائبر کرائم نے ٹیلی کام کمپینوں کے عملے کے ایسے کئی افراد کو گرفتار بھی کیا ہے جو ڈیٹا فراہم کرنے میں ملوث ہیں۔

یہ فراڈیئے کال کرتے ہوئے وی پی این ایپلی کیشن سے اپنی کالر لوکیشن تبدیل کر لیتے ہیں جس کے باعث ان کے مقام کا معلوم کرنا کسی حد تک مشکل ہو جاتا ہے۔ ایسا بھی ہوتا ہے کہ یہ لوگ اسمارٹ فون کے بجائے سادہ فون کا استعمال کرتے ہیں اور واردات کے بعد اسے ضائع کر دیا جاتا ہے۔ یہ لوگ ایک ہی دن میں سیکڑوں نمبرز پر کال کرتے ہیں جبکہ ان کی کامیابی کی شرح 8 سے دس فیصد ہے۔ ٹیلی فون کال سے فراڈ کرنے والے کئی افراد جنھیں ایف آئی اے نے گرفتار بھی کیا اور انہیں سزائیں بھی ہوئی ہیں۔ صرف گزشتہ سال 500 سے زیادہ افراد کو گرفتار کیا گیا لیکن اس کے باوجود ان وارداتوں میں کمی نہیں آرہی۔ یقینی طور پر اس فراڈ میں ملوث افراد کا تعلق بھی آئی ٹی کے شعبوں سے ہو گا۔ ملک میں بے روزگاری کی وجہ سے جرائم کی شرح بڑھ رہی ہے۔ حکومتی سطح پر نوجوانوں کو تکنیکی تعلیم تو دی جارہی ہے لیکن ملازمت کے مواقعے موجود نہیں، جس کے نتائج اسی طرح نکلیں گے۔ جہاں حکومت اور ادارے ان افراد کو گرفتار کر کے کڑی سے کڑی سزا دیں، وہیں اس بات کی بھی کوشش کریں کہ آئی ٹی اور ہیکنگ کے ماہر نوجوانوں کو ملازمت کی فراہمی کو بھی یقینی بنایا جائے تاکہ وہ کسی منفی سرگرمی میں شامل نہ ہوں۔

یہاں یہ بات اہم ہے کہ عام شہری اس فراڈ سے کیسے بچیں؟ شہریوں کو اس طرح کے فراڈ سے بچنے کےلیے خود بھی محتاط رہنا ہو گا۔ شہریوں کو چاہیے کہ فون کال پر کسی بھی قسم کی ذاتی معلومات فراہم نہ کریں اور اگر کسی کے اغوا یا گرفتاری کے متعلق کوئی کال آئے تو سب سے پہلے اس شخص سے رابطہ کریں اور تصدیق کے بعد قانون نافذ کرنے والے اداروں سے رابطہ کریں۔ یہ افراد ایسے سافٹ ویئرز کا استعمال بھی کرتے ہیں جس سے نمبر بظاہر یو اے این لگتا ہے۔ اس حوالے سے بینک انتظامیہ کئی بار ہدایات جاری کر چکی ہیں کہ بینک کسی قسم کی ذاتی معلومات ٹیلی فون پر نہیں لیتا۔ شہریوں کو اس بات کو ذہن نشین کرنا ہو گا۔ آج کے اس جدید دور میں بھی معصوم لوگ ٹی وی چینلز کے گیم شو کے نام پر لٹ رہے ہیں، عوام کو اب احتیاط سے کام لینا ہو گا ورنہ مشکل حالات میں مزید پریشانی کا سامنا کرنا پڑسکتا ہے۔

شہریار شوکت

بشکریہ ایکسپریس نیوز

#Cyber crimes #Cyber fraud #Fraud #Internet #Internet fraud #Phone call fraud #World

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mostlysignssomeportents · 8 months

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How I got scammed

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/05/cyber-dunning-kruger/#swiss-cheese-security

I wuz robbed.

More specifically, I was tricked by a phone-phisher pretending to be from my bank, and he convinced me to hand over my credit-card number, then did $8,000+ worth of fraud with it before I figured out what happened. And then he tried to do it again, a week later!

Here's what happened. Over the Christmas holiday, I traveled to New Orleans. The day we landed, I hit a Chase ATM in the French Quarter for some cash, but the machine declined the transaction. Later in the day, we passed a little credit-union's ATM and I used that one instead (I bank with a one-branch credit union and generally there's no fee to use another CU's ATM).

A couple days later, I got a call from my credit union. It was a weekend, during the holiday, and the guy who called was obviously working for my little CU's after-hours fraud contractor. I'd dealt with these folks before – they service a ton of little credit unions, and generally the call quality isn't great and the staff will often make mistakes like mispronouncing my credit union's name.

That's what happened here – the guy was on a terrible VOIP line and I had to ask him to readjust his mic before I could even understand him. He mispronounced my bank's name and then asked if I'd attempted to spend $1,000 at an Apple Store in NYC that day. No, I said, and groaned inwardly. What a pain in the ass. Obviously, I'd had my ATM card skimmed – either at the Chase ATM (maybe that was why the transaction failed), or at the other credit union's ATM (it had been a very cheap looking system).

I told the guy to block my card and we started going through the tedious business of running through recent transactions, verifying my identity, and so on. It dragged on and on. These were my last hours in New Orleans, and I'd left my family at home and gone out to see some of the pre-Mardi Gras krewe celebrations and get a muffalata, and I could tell that I was going to run out of time before I finished talking to this guy.

"Look," I said, "you've got all my details, you've frozen the card. I gotta go home and meet my family and head to the airport. I'll call you back on the after-hours number once I'm through security, all right?"

He was frustrated, but that was his problem. I hung up, got my sandwich, went to the airport, and we checked in. It was total chaos: an Alaska Air 737 Max had just lost its door-plug in mid-air and every Max in every airline's fleet had been grounded, so the check in was crammed with people trying to rebook. We got through to the gate and I sat down to call the CU's after-hours line. The person on the other end told me that she could only handle lost and stolen cards, not fraud, and given that I'd already frozen the card, I should just drop by the branch on Monday to get a new card.

We flew home, and later the next day, I logged into my account and made a list of all the fraudulent transactions and printed them out, and on Monday morning, I drove to the bank to deal with all the paperwork. The folks at the CU were even more pissed than I was. The fraud that run up to more than $8,000, and if Visa refused to take it out of the merchants where the card had been used, my little credit union would have to eat the loss.

I agreed and commiserated. I also pointed out that their outsource, after-hours fraud center bore some blame here: I'd canceled the card on Saturday but most of the fraud had taken place on Sunday. Something had gone wrong.

One cool thing about banking at a tiny credit-union is that you end up talking to people who have actual authority, responsibility and agency. It turned out the the woman who was processing my fraud paperwork was a VP, and she decided to look into it. A few minutes later she came back and told me that the fraud center had no record of having called me on Saturday.

"That was the fraudster," she said.

Oh, shit. I frantically rewound my conversation, trying to figure out if this could possibly be true. I hadn't given him anything apart from some very anodyne info, like what city I live in (which is in my Wikipedia entry), my date of birth (ditto), and the last four digits of my card.

Wait a sec.

He hadn't asked for the last four digits. He'd asked for the last seven digits. At the time, I'd found that very frustrating, but now – "The first nine digits are the same for every card you issue, right?" I asked the VP.

I'd given him my entire card number.

Goddammit.

The thing is, I know a lot about fraud. I'm writing an entire series of novels about this kind of scam:

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865878/thebezzle

And most summers, I go to Defcon, and I always go to the "social engineering" competitions where an audience listens as a hacker in a soundproof booth cold-calls merchants (with the owner's permission) and tries to con whoever answers the phone into giving up important information.

But I'd been conned.

Now look, I knew I could be conned. I'd been conned before, 13 years ago, by a Twitter worm that successfully phished out of my password via DM:

https://locusmag.com/2010/05/cory-doctorow-persistence-pays-parasites/

That scam had required a miracle of timing. It started the day before, when I'd reset my phone to factory defaults and reinstalled all my apps. That same day, I'd published two big online features that a lot of people were talking about. The next morning, we were late getting out of the house, so by the time my wife and I dropped the kid at daycare and went to the coffee shop, it had a long line. Rather than wait in line with me, my wife sat down to read a newspaper, and so I pulled out my phone and found a Twitter DM from a friend asking "is this you?" with a URL.

Assuming this was something to do with those articles I'd published the day before, I clicked the link and got prompted for my Twitter login again. This had been happening all day because I'd done that mobile reinstall the day before and all my stored passwords had been wiped. I entered it but the page timed out. By that time, the coffees were ready. We sat and chatted for a bit, then went our own ways.

I was on my way to the office when I checked my phone again. I had a whole string of DMs from other friends. Each one read "is this you?" and had a URL.

Oh, shit, I'd been phished.

If I hadn't reinstalled my mobile OS the day before. If I hadn't published a pair of big articles the day before. If we hadn't been late getting out the door. If we had been a little more late getting out the door (so that I'd have seen the multiple DMs, which would have tipped me off).

There's a name for this in security circles: "Swiss-cheese security." Imagine multiple slices of Swiss cheese all stacked up, the holes in one slice blocked by the slice below it. All the slices move around and every now and again, a hole opens up that goes all the way through the stack. Zap!

The fraudster who tricked me out of my credit card number had Swiss cheese security on his side. Yes, he spoofed my bank's caller ID, but that wouldn't have been enough to fool me if I hadn't been on vacation, having just used a pair of dodgy ATMs, in a hurry and distracted. If the 737 Max disaster hadn't happened that day and I'd had more time at the gate, I'd have called my bank back. If my bank didn't use a slightly crappy outsource/out-of-hours fraud center that I'd already had sub-par experiences with. If, if, if.

The next Friday night, at 5:30PM, the fraudster called me back, pretending to be the bank's after-hours center. He told me my card had been compromised again. But: I hadn't removed my card from my wallet since I'd had it replaced. Also, it was half an hour after the bank closed for the long weekend, a very fraud-friendly time. And when I told him I'd call him back and asked for the after-hours fraud number, he got very threatening and warned me that because I'd now been notified about the fraud that any losses the bank suffered after I hung up the phone without completing the fraud protocol would be billed to me. I hung up on him. He called me back immediately. I hung up on him again and put my phone into do-not-disturb.

The following Tuesday, I called my bank and spoke to their head of risk-management. I went through everything I'd figured out about the fraudsters, and she told me that credit unions across America were being hit by this scam, by fraudsters who somehow knew CU customers' phone numbers and names, and which CU they banked at. This was key: my phone number is a reasonably well-kept secret. You can get it by spending money with Equifax or another nonconsensual doxing giant, but you can't just google it or get it at any of the free services. The fact that the fraudsters knew where I banked, knew my name, and had my phone number had really caused me to let down my guard.

The risk management person and I talked about how the credit union could mitigate this attack: for example, by better-training the after-hours card-loss staff to be on the alert for calls from people who had been contacted about supposed card fraud. We also went through the confusing phone-menu that had funneled me to the wrong department when I called in, and worked through alternate wording for the menu system that would be clearer (this is the best part about banking with a small CU – you can talk directly to the responsible person and have a productive discussion!). I even convinced her to buy a ticket to next summer's Defcon to attend the social engineering competitions.

There's a leak somewhere in the CU systems' supply chain. Maybe it's Zelle, or the small number of corresponding banks that CUs rely on for SWIFT transaction forwarding. Maybe it's even those after-hours fraud/card-loss centers. But all across the USA, CU customers are getting calls with spoofed caller IDs from fraudsters who know their registered phone numbers and where they bank.

I've been mulling this over for most of a month now, and one thing has really been eating at me: the way that AI is going to make this kind of problem much worse.

Not because AI is going to commit fraud, though.

One of the truest things I know about AI is: "we're nowhere near a place where bots can steal your job, we're certainly at the point where your boss can be suckered into firing you and replacing you with a bot that fails at doing your job":

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/15/passive-income-brainworms/#four-hour-work-week

I trusted this fraudster specifically because I knew that the outsource, out-of-hours contractors my bank uses have crummy headsets, don't know how to pronounce my bank's name, and have long-ass, tedious, and pointless standardized questionnaires they run through when taking fraud reports. All of this created cover for the fraudster, whose plausibility was enhanced by the rough edges in his pitch - they didn't raise red flags.

As this kind of fraud reporting and fraud contacting is increasingly outsourced to AI, bank customers will be conditioned to dealing with semi-automated systems that make stupid mistakes, force you to repeat yourself, ask you questions they should already know the answers to, and so on. In other words, AI will groom bank customers to be phishing victims.

This is a mistake the finance sector keeps making. 15 years ago, Ben Laurie excoriated the UK banks for their "Verified By Visa" system, which validated credit card transactions by taking users to a third party site and requiring them to re-enter parts of their password there:

https://web.archive.org/web/20090331094020/http://www.links.org/?p=591

This is exactly how a phishing attack works. As Laurie pointed out, this was the banks training their customers to be phished.

I came close to getting phished again today, as it happens. I got back from Berlin on Friday and my suitcase was damaged in transit. I've been dealing with the airline, which means I've really been dealing with their third-party, outsource luggage-damage service. They have a terrible website, their emails are incoherent, and they officiously demand the same information over and over again.

This morning, I got a scam email asking me for more information to complete my damaged luggage claim. It was a terrible email, from a noreply@ email address, and it was vague, officious, and dishearteningly bureaucratic. For just a moment, my finger hovered over the phishing link, and then I looked a little closer.

On any other day, it wouldn't have had a chance. Today – right after I had my luggage wrecked, while I'm still jetlagged, and after days of dealing with my airline's terrible outsource partner – it almost worked.

So much fraud is a Swiss-cheese attack, and while companies can't close all the holes, they can stop creating new ones.

Meanwhile, I'll continue to post about it whenever I get scammed. I find the inner workings of scams to be fascinating, and it's also important to remind people that everyone is vulnerable sometimes, and scammers are willing to try endless variations until an attack lands at just the right place, at just the right time, in just the right way. If you think you can't get scammed, that makes you especially vulnerable:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/24/passive-income/#swiss-cheese-security

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

#pluralistic #social engineering #phishing #ai #swiss cheese security #infosec #finance #fraud #carding

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infocoverage · 2 years

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5 Safety Tips to Prevent Online Banking Fraud

5 Safety Tips to Prevent Online Banking Fraud: Financial transactions through online net banking or mobile banking are now available at your fingertips, but they come with significant risks as well. It could be challenging to differentiate between a real website and a phoney one because many fraudsters create pages or websites that seem remarkably similar to the bank’s official website. Every…

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#ATM Pin #Avoid fake answering scams calls #Banks India #Be Aware of Fake KYC Update #Cyber Crime #Cyber Crime India #Never share your OTP #Online Banking Fraud #Online Fraud #Prevent Online Fraud

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republicansaredomesticterrorists · 1 month

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“Back in February, a federal judge approved a $5 million award against Lindell’s company in the so-called Prove Mike Wrong challenge. Lindell Management LLC had hosted a cyber symposium in which a participant could win $5 million if they proved that certain data Lindell had wasn’t valid election data. Robert Zeidman effectively succeeded in that task, and a federal judge ordered the award to be paid. Lindell Management has filed an appeal seeking to vacate the award.

Meanwhile, a federal magistrate judge on Thursday ordered the company to pay another, much smaller amount. The latest litigation concerned Zeidman’s request for attorney’s fees connected with bringing a motion to compel responses during discovery.”

#mike lindell #my pillow #prove Mike wrong #election denial #the big lie #republican assholes #maga morons #trump sycophants #traitor trump #crooked donald #traitor #republican hypocrisy #resist #never trump #republican values #republican family values

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brf-rumortrackinganon · 5 months

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Why doesn’t Meghan ever get called out on being such a massive, massive FRAUD? Or her extremely dodgy (at best 🙄) activities disguised as ‘work’ or ‘philanthropy’… it annoys me immensely. I have never seen a con artist and grifter of this level, who isn’t even that intelligent or sly, I might add, that gets away with all of her intentional wrongdoings. It’s beyond vile that somebody so grossly undeserving of what she has cheated her way into just keeps getting to go on unscathed like nothing ever happened. She’s blatantly ripping off Martha Stewart, Goop/ Gwyneth and flamingo estate - and probably many other smaller influencers or companies and trying to make a profit. It just absolutely speaks to her disgusting, never ending black hole of greed that consumes her. It seems like she is beyond desperate to become mega wealthy and has tunnel vision no matter how delusional and futile it is. ARO will fail like it deserves to, but she will never take the hint 🙄

Why Meghan hasn't met her maker yet:

She's protected by a hugely toxic fanbase that is known to dox, cyber-bully, and cyber-stalk accounts/people that speak out against her.

Her race card is still packs a punch. (It might be a weak punch, but it's still a punch nonetheless.)

The BRF's continued protection of Harry also covers Meghan.

#ask #brf #sussexes

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darkmaga-retard · 24 days

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Mark Wauck

Aug 26, 2024

I’ve been looking for something sensible to say about the arrest of Telegram CEO Pavel Durov by Macron in France. I’ve read the arguments that this is all political, directed by the fact that Telegram is one of, perhaps the, most important platforms for getting out reliable information regarding the Anglo-Zionist wars against Russia and Palestine. In other words, Durov is being pressured to submit to censorship demands, under the pretext of cooperating with criminal investigations. I find those arguments persuasive, but I’m hampered by the complexity of some of the issues involved, including matters involving international legal cooperation. This morning commenter Brother Ass provided a link to Robert Barnes discussing the matter—I highly recommend it.

However, I’d like to turn to another legal commentator, Jonathan Turley. Turley did and interview on Fox News, but still hasn’t written about the Telegram matter. Fortunately, Daily Caller has an article that provides a substantial transcript of what Turley has to say, which I’ll quote at length:

Jonathan Turley Slams ‘Global Censors,’ Says Americans Should Be Afraid After Telegram Founder’s Arrest

“So, the authorities say the app was being used for organized crime, drug trafficking, fraud, cyber bullying and promotion of terrorism. Despite all of that, you’re still against his arrest. Why?” Earhardt asked. “I am. People need to realize what’s really going on here. We haven’t seen anything akin to a charging sheet, but it appears that he’s being arrested under these European laws that are designed to force social media companies to engage in censorship,” Turley said. [Turley called the European] … Digital Services Act (DSA) … “one of the greatest threats to free speech that we have today around the world.”

Turley goes on to argue that, as with the previous confrontation with Elon Musk, the US—which lacks the kind of anti-free speech laws that Europe has in the DSA—is using Europe as a proxy to attack free speech and the free flow of information in America.

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warningsine · 2 months

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Venezuelan security forces fired tear gas and rubber bullets Monday at protesters challenging the reelection victory claimed by President Nicolás Maduro but disputed by the opposition and questioned abroad.

Thousands of people flooded the streets of several neighborhoods of the capital, chanting "Freedom, freedom!" and "This government is going to fall!"

Some ripped Maduro campaign posters from street posts and burned them.

AFP observed members of the national guard firing tear gas and rubber bullets at protesters, some wearing motorbike helmets and bandannas tied over their faces for protection. Some responded by throwing rocks back.

Maduro, 61, attended a meeting Monday at which the National Electoral Council (CNE) certified his reelection to a third six-year term until 2031.

He dismissed international criticism and doubts about the result of Sunday's voting, claiming Venezuela was the target of an attempted "coup d'etat" of a "fascist and counter-revolutionary" nature.

But opposition leader Maria Corina Machado later told reporters that a review of voting records available so far clearly showed that the next president "will be Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia," who took her place on the ballot after she was barred by Maduro-aligned courts.

The records showed a "mathematically irreversible" lead for Gonzalez Urrutia, she said, with 6.27 million votes to only 2.75 million for Maduro.

The elections were held amid widespread fears of fraud by the government and a campaign tainted by accusations of political intimidation.

Pollsters had predicted a resounding victory for the opposition.

In the early hours of Monday, the CNE said Maduro had won 51.2 percent of votes cast compared to 44.2 percent for Gonzalez Urrutia.

The opposition cried foul, prompting Attorney General Tarek William Saab to link Machado to an alleged cyber "attack" seeking to "adulterate" the results.

'Another fraud'

The outcome sparked concern and calls for a "transparent" process from the United Nations, United States, European Union and several countries in Latin America.

The CNE has not provided a detailed breakdown of the result.

Allies including China, Russia and Cuba congratulated Maduro.

Gonzalez Urrutia, a 74-year-old former diplomat, on Monday acknowledged the deep discontent in society with the CNE results and vowed that "we will fight for our liberty."

Machado assured Venezuelans that "the leaders of the world" are validating the results, and called families to turn out Tuesday for "popular assemblies" nationwide to show support for a peaceful transition of power.

Nine Latin American countries called in a joint statement Monday for a "complete review of the results with the presence of independent electoral observers."

The US-based Carter Center, one of a few organizations allowed to bring observers into Venezuela, urged the CNE to immediately publish detailed polling station-level results.

Brazil and Colombia also urged a review of the numbers while Chile's president said the outcome was "hard to believe."

Peru recalled its ambassador and Panama said it was suspending relations with Venezuela.

Caracas hit back Monday, saying it was withdrawing diplomatic staff from Argentina, Chile, Costa Rica, Panama, Peru, the Dominican Republic and Uruguay for "interventionist actions and statements."

'Bloodbath' warning

Independent polls had predicted Sunday's vote would end 25 years of "Chavismo," the populist movement founded by Maduro's socialist predecessor and mentor, the late Hugo Chavez.

Maduro has been at the helm of the once-wealthy oil-rich country since 2013. The last decade has seen GDP drop by 80 percent, pushing more than seven million of its 30 million citizens to emigrate.

He is accused of locking up critics and harassing the opposition in a climate of rising authoritarianism.

In the run-up to the election, he had warned of a "bloodbath" if he lost.

Ballots were cast on machines that sent electronic votes directly to a centralized CNE database.

The machines printed out paper receipts that were placed in a container and counted by hand as a backup measure meant to be open to public scrutiny.

The opposition had deployed about 90,000 volunteer election monitors nationwide.

Economic misery

Sunday's election was the product of a deal reached last year between the government and opposition.

That agreement led the United States to temporarily ease sanctions imposed after Maduro's 2018 reelection, rejected as a sham by dozens of Latin American and other countries.

Sanctions were snapped back after Maduro reneged on agreed conditions.

Venezuela boasts the world's largest oil reserves but has seen severely diminished production capacity in recent years.

Most Venezuelans live on just a few dollars a month, and endure biting shortages of electricity and fuel.

Economic misery in the South American nation has been a major source of migration pressure on the southern border of the United States, where immigration is a major presidential election issue.

(AFP)

#venezuela #protests #politics #news tag

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mariacallous · 6 months

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The Arizona primary is today, and there have already been allegations of voter fraud. Last month, a woman from Arizona who works with the right-wing group Turning Point USA posted a picture to X (formerly Twitter) of two mail-in ballots along with two early voting packets for the primary.

“Maricopa county at its finest, my first time ever voting in a presidential preference election and I received not one but two mail-in ballots” Aubrey Savela wrote in the accompanying caption, suggesting the situation was proof of voter fraud in Arizona.

Savela’s post would likely have been lost in the flood of election conspiracies posted on the platform had she not added another line: “Thank you @stephen_richer.”

Stephen Richer is the Maricopa County Recorder and is responsible for the administration of early voting and mail-in ballots for today’s primaries and November’s election. Richer, a Republican, responded to Savela quickly on X: In just 178 words, Richer laid out exactly why Savela had received two ballots. It turned out that she had changed her voter registration on the final day of allowed before the election, and her original ballot had already been posted. Richer also explained that it wasn’t voter fraud, as Savela claimed, since the first ballot automatically becomes redundant when a second ballot is issued and would not be counted even if used. His tweet has been viewed over 3 million times and has received 55,000 likes.

“We always research it,” Richer tells WIRED from his office in Maricopa County. “I had my suspicions, and my suspicions turned out to be exactly right, which was that this person made a last-minute voter registration change and that the system worked exactly as it did, and then I just spent maybe two minutes typing out that explanation.”

The replies were ecstatic: “This Richer guy is an assassin,” one of many positive responses reads. “I’m hiring him to tweet [at] all my ex boyfriends. Be better, Aubrey.”

This isn’t the first time Richer has done something like this. From his very first days in office in January 2021, Richer has tackled disinformation about the voting process in Arizona head on by using X to directly debunk conspiracies and respond to posts on the platform. Richer also shares updates about how many people have voted in elections, posts information about voting dates and locations, and even keeps his DMs open, as he believes the people of Maricopa County should have the opportunity to ask him questions directly.

Richer’s work seems necessary, as Arizona has been ground zero for election conspiracists ever since the 2020 election when the bogus recount run by Cyber Ninjas found that President Joe Biden did actually win. Since then, election deniers have become household names in the state, like former TV star Kari Lake, who failed to win the governor’s race in 2022 but continues to claim the election was stolen. Lake is now seeking the GOP nomination to run for Senate—and has been floated as a possible vice presidential pick for former president Donald Trump. Lake is joined on the ballot by Wendy Rogers, a member of the Oath Keepers who is running for reelection to the Arizona state senate, and Mark Finchem, who lost his secretary of state race in 2022 and is now seeking reelection to the state senate. Rogers and Finchem, like at least 38 elected officials across the state, have both claimed that Trump won the 2020 election.

Election conspiracists haven’t quit since the election, either: A Maricopa Board of Supervisors ended in chaos last month after a group of election conspiracists rushed the dais at the end of the meeting shouting that a “revolution” was underway. Board members had to be ushered out a side door by security guards. Threats and harassment from Trump supporters have driven hundreds of election officials to resign, and thousands more to go silent over fears of being attacked.

This all makes Richer an outlier. Richer has continued to speak out against allegations of election fraud and insecurity, despite ongoing threats and harassment. Richer does it, he tells WIRED, because he still believes he’s best-placed to counter disinformation being spread online. And Richer has thrown his hat into the ring once again and is seeking reelection for Maricopa County Recorder in November. In the Republican primary, Richer faces Justin Heap, a state representative who has been a vocal critic of election administration in Maricopa County and is aligned with numerous election deniers.

“Going online and engaging on Twitter does open you up to a certain amount of return fire, which might not be something that some people want to have in their lives,” Richers says. “Our approach in Maricopa County has been to put out as much information as we can in lots of different mediums, and then hope that some of it yields dividends.”

He also knows he has an uphill battle ahead of November. Recently, a survey from the Bipartisan Policy Center found that just 18 percent of Americans look to local election administrators for information. “This is a notable decline,” the report states.

“I do find myself often reflecting, what am I doing here? Am I doing it to correct the record? Am I doing it to win an argument?,” Richer said. “I need to keep in mind is winning an argument is not the same as persuading people.”

Richer, a former corporate lawyer, was elected Maricopa County Recorder in November 2020 following his defeat of Democratic incumbent Adrian Fontes, who is now secretary of state. As Maricopa County became ground zero of the newly emerging election denial movement, Richer became the focus of attacks, despite having nothing to do with the administration of the election.

After criticizing the so-called election audit approved by the Arizona senate, Richer received a death threat via voicemail, and in 2022 a Missouri man was indicted on federal charges linked to the call. Richer received scores of threatening calls during this period and says the threats came from people in half a dozen states. Many of the callers, he adds, have been arrested for making threats, including a man from Alabama who was arrested just last week.

The accusations of election fraud weren’t just anonymous, however: In 2022, Lake accused Richer of sabotaging her campaign for governor by incorrectly printing 300,000 ballots that were subsequently discounted. Richer sued her; Lake’s lawyers tried to get the lawsuit dismissed in December by claiming their client’s comments about Richer were simply “her opinions about the facts” and therefore protected speech.

Despite this, Richer continues to speak out and continues to tweet. Not everyone hates him: In 2021, he was named Arizonan of the Year by the Arizona Republic. In the same year, The Phoenix New Times named him the Best Republican Politician of the Year for his willingness to speak the truth about the integrity of the state’s election processes.

And he often thinks about what allegations of fraud are worth responding to and amplifying. “At what point do you engage and then risk promoting it to a larger audience? Or do you just let it die a natural death in another four or five hours, because most of the stuff has a pretty short shelf life on social media,” Richer tells WIRED. “The calculus for [responding to Savela’s tweet] was that she's a political actor who works with a political organization that was seemingly trying to spread this to try to hurt people's confidence in the system, so that's why I chose to engage.”

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codenamed-queenie · 2 years

Conversation

Barbara: All these women out here saying they want equal pay, equal rights, equal opportunities, blah, blah, blah--

Barbara: And yet none of them are stepping up to commit 50% of phishing scams.

Barbara: None of them are stepping up to commit 50% of the cyber attacks against the Russian government.

Barbara: None of them are stepping up to commit 50% of Twitter account fraud, calling big corporations out on their greedy bullshit economics.

Barbara: It's literally just. Me.

Dick: *Just trying to enjoy his evening coffee in peace*

#batfam #dc #birds of prey #barbara gordon #oracle #batgirl #dick grayson #nightwing #robin #dickbabs #just a hint #as a treat

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collapsedsquid · 11 months

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A week of fighting between armed groups and Myanmar’s military on the northern border with China has left dozens dead, displaced thousands and prompted surviving cyber scam centres to shift operations further along a dangerous frontier controlled by crime gangs and warlords. A trio of armed ethnic groups under the banner of the “Three Brotherhood Alliance” launched artillery strikes and ground offensives on October 27, taking strategic border towns and hitting Myanmar junta posts across a large swathe of Shan State. Videos of hundreds of RPGs, rifles and motors apparently seized from junta forces in the so-called Operation 1027, have been shared across their Facebook page The Kokang, in operations which they say aim to stop “the Burmese military’s non-stop airstrikes” and “eradicate the internet fraud rings and their protective networks”.

Demand that the US step up support for the rebels fighting the Tatmadaw so I can stop receiving the endless text messages about packages that USPS has for me

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contemplatingoutlander · 2 years

Video

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Excerpt of Kari Lake interview with 60 Minutes Australia

Kari Lake is a dangerous, dangerous politician.

And she might become the governor of Arizona.

Above is an excerpt from Kari Lake’s off-the-wall interview with Liam Bartlett for 60 Minutes Australia. It is worth your time to watch the entire interview, which you can see HERE (at these video times: 12:37 - 14:23, 16:17 -19:07, 20:14 - 20:33).

During the interview, Lake uses the Trumpian defense techniques of lying, grossly exaggerating, attacking others, and projecting what the GQP does onto others.

In the video clip above, we see that when Lake doesn't like the direction the interview is going in, she accuses the mainstream media (and Bartlett) of being "conspiracy theorists." The interview goes downhill from there. Here’s part of the video transcript:

LAKE: Maybe they get away with that stuff in Australia. Perhaps in Australia because you've given your rights away; you melted down all of your guns, and you guys have no freedom that you find that okay. But here in America we do things differently. We have something called the U.S. Constitution and we have rights.”

BARTLETT: So we’d be better off having more guns here. I mean, what? You would be better off—

LAKE: Yeah, you would. You absolutely would, sir. You absolutely would. I feel so sorry for the people in Australia have no power. The only thing keeping us from being Australia right now is our second Amendment, and we will never, ever let that go. Mark my words. What we saw happening in Australia where you have internment camps, and people are being forced, if they've encountered anybody with COVID, to be locked into a quarantine camp is the most horrifying thing I think I've ever seen a government do.

BARTLETT (Cross-talking): Would it—

LAKE (Cross-talking): It's frightening, and if you if you can't see that I feel sorry for you.

BARTLETT (Cross-talking): Would it have been better--

LAKE (Cross-talking): This is our last question Liam. We have to run but thank you for your time.

BARTLETT (Cross-talking): Just, just answer me this one question. One, one more question, Kari--

LAKE(Cross-talking): Well, no, I've already told you we're done. Thank you so much.

BARTLETT (Cross-talking): Well, just-

LAKE (As an aside as she is getting up to leave): That guy's a complete nut. Seriously, a complete insane person.

I have honestly never seen a less professional and over-the-top interview by a politician as this one (and that’s saying something, given some of Trump’s interviews).

Heaven forbid Lake ever makes it into federal politics where she has to deal with international representatives.

I mean, accusing Australia of having COVID “internment camps”!😱 It’s not surprising that Kari’s statement is based on right-wing misinformation. Australia built a quarantine facility for travelers coming into the country, whether or not they were vaxxed. Most countries during the deadly COVID pandemic had quarantine requirements for incoming travelers. Kari’s comment was completely outrageous given the reality of what was actually happening in Australia.

Clearly Lake is used to American journalists who don’t push back on politicians who lie or try to evade answering questions. Lake’s meltdown in the above video in part was probably triggered by Bartlett’s previous confrontation of Lake’s claims that the 2020 election was “stolen” (shown in an earlier part of the interview not included in the above video).

When Bartlett pushed her, Lake had the audacity to say that the bogus “forensic” Cyber Ninja Arizona audit proved that the election was stolen. Uh, no. In fact, it supported the fact that Biden won Arizona and that there was no substantial voter fraud in Arizona’s 2020 election.

Unfortunately, Lake is charismatic and there has been some talk of her being a VP candidate if Trump runs for president in 2024.

Let’s pray that she loses Arizona and is also ignored for federal office.

[edited]

#gop #us politics #kari lake #liam bartlett #60 minutes australia #video #arizona #2022 election #transcript

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iimtcollege · 29 days

Text

Uttar Pradesh's Transport Minister, Daya Shankar Singh, praised IIMT College for promoting cyber safety. Online fraud is a common issue, and COE-DFIR, a collaboration between IIMT College and Future Crime Research Foundation, aims to train future cyber defenders.

Call Us: 9520886860

#IIMTIndia #IIMTian #IIMTNoida #IIMTGreaterNoida #IIMTDelhiNCR

#CyberSafety #IIMTCollege #COEDFIR #CyberDefense #DigitalSecurity #OnlineFraudPrevention #FutureCyberDefenders #UPTransportMinister #TechEducation #SafeOnline #CyberAwareness

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australianwomensnews · 4 months

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When it comes to Australia’s national regulators, women rule.

Women now dominate the leadership of federal regulatory and oversight agencies that enforce rules for business and the economy, with 33 women holding chief executive or chair roles. This signals a profound shift for the nation’s top watchdogs, once almost solely the domain of male enforcers.

Rapid digitisation and rising globalisation are making traditional black letter enforcement approaches less effective, leading to women with so-called solid soft skills, such as influence, collaboration and communication, winning top-tier regulatory roles.

Women are now at the front line of the battles against scams, identity and data theft, cyber ransomware attacks, electronic espionage, digital surveillance, misinformation, social media abuse and dark web criminality.

“It’s very different to the skills base you needed a decade or two ago where it was just about telling people what to do, and they would toe the line,” says Ann Sherry, a former head of the Office of Status of Women in the Hawke and Keating governments.

“Those jobs were filled by a particular sort of person cast as a regulator. So, in a way, it was almost an enforcement role, whereas the jobs have changed.”

The leadership of the federal public service reached gender equilibrium last year.

Sherry, who is now QUT chancellor and chairs Queensland Airports, digital marketing firm Enero and UNICEF Australia, says that the public sector has been better at promoting women through the ranks but that many women have also built relevant skills in the private sector.

“Many women have had to broaden their careers and build a broad set of skills to be successful. There is now a body of capability to draw up. The talent pool has changed, and the jobs require broader skills. It is a confluence of events,” she says.

The surge in women leading federal regulators compares with 19 women (10 per cent) chairing ASX200 companies and 26 women (9 per cent) who are CEOs across the ASX300, as at the end of 2023.

Competition chief Gina Cass-Gottlieb and Reserve Bank of Australia governor Michele Bullock (who also chairs the Payments System Board) are the first women to lead their institutions. Others, such as media watchdog Nerida O’Loughlin and energy regulator Clare Savage, have won second appointments.

A push to bring in new blood from outside the Australian public service helped veteran NSW regulator Elizabeth Tydd win an appointment as head of the Australian Information Commission. Carly Kind was tapped from a London think tank to be the new privacy commissioner.

They join a swag of women now overseeing vast swaths of the economy, including infrastructure (Gabrielle Trainor), aviation (Pip Spence), food (Sandra Cuthbert), petroleum (Sue McCarrey) and fisheries (Helen Kroger).

Others such as Rachel Noble (espionage), Julie Inman Grant (e-safety), Jayde Richmond (anti-scams centre) and Michelle McGuinness (cyber co-ordinator) are focused on rapidly emerging harms, including national security threats, identity and data theft, consumer abuse, online scams and fraud.

Workplace and safety regulators are now dominated by women too, including Anna Booth (Fair Work Ombudsman), Joanne Farrell (Safe Work Australia), Jeanine Drummond (maritime safety), Natalie Pelham (rail safety) and Janet Anderson (aged care).

The dominant role female regulators play has been part of a profound shift in the number of women in leadership roles in the Australian government. This has risen from a quarter of executive roles being held by women 20 years ago to over 50 per cent last year.

Battle ready

Australian Competition and Consumer Commission chair Gina Cass-Gottlieb, who rose through the ranks as a competition lawyer at law firm Gilbert and Tobin, says her generation of leaders had battled their way through male-dominated workplaces.

“In those workplaces, to get ahead, we needed to target the areas we thought were most important to make an intervention and where we could most effectively make an impact.

“We actually had to build skills to succeed, which are beneficial skills in these roles.”

Ms Cass-Gottlieb says women have also had to differentiate themselves. “You needed to point to other ways of working, including creative and different solutions that drew from experience in various areas rather than a pure step-by-step standard career path.”

Australian Information Commissioner Tydd points to Columbia University research that measured creativity by analysing songs, finding that women created more songs than men.

“Digital government requires a creative use of proactive tools to identify and mitigate future harm. It’s the unforeseen or latent harms that are the most refractory and so we’ve got to look at diagnosis and predictive tools, and that’s where you start to get a bit creative.”

Tydd says she was attracted to regulatory work because of the value of promoting open government, transparency and accountability.

“I think that seeking service and purpose orientation are factors that drive people into this work and I do think seeking service is a very comfortable and well-established motivation within women.”

Demand for new approaches

According to ANU Crawford School of Public Policy director Professor Janine O’Flynn, the data on the importance of public motivation for women is mixed. However, she suggests that women’s more attuned risk and relationship skills help them to be more effective regulators.

“We certainly know that the most effective models of regulation are around how you can think about risk and how you build relationships with the parties that have been regulated.

“I don’t mean that in a sort of dodgy way. The higher the trust relationships you can get between regulators and those who are regulated, the more likely you are to get the outcomes that you’re looking for.”

Read the full article in the link above!

#auspol #feminism #australia #good news #women in politics #women in leadership

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