Best Infosec Long-Reads of the Week, 8/6/22

Cynthia B Brumfield

— 2 min read
Best Infosec Long-Reads of the Week, 8/6/22

How the Jester created CounterSocial, High-tech surveillance along the Arizona border is deadly, Faux CIA operative and cyber firm owner scammed victims, Why ransomware persists

Metacurity is pleased to offer our free and paid subscribers this weekly digest of long-form infosec pieces and related articles that we couldn’t properly fit into our daily crush of news. Let us know what you think, and feel free to let us know if we missed something important by sending us a note to info@metacurity.com. Happy reading!

Spider-Man leaning on concrete brick while reading book
  • Lucas Ropek in Gizmodo explores how the pseudonymous hacktivist known as The Jester became concerned about the prevalence of “influence operations” on social media and created CounterSocial, an alternative social media site designed to counter the disinformation, trolls, influence operations, and harassment prevalent on other platforms. Ropek managed to wrangle the mysterious, sh*t-posting Jester for a wide-ranging conversation about his vision for his pet project, which has garnered 100,000 users and counting.
  • Gaby Del Valle in The Verge delves into the high-tech surveillance built by U.S. border patrol in the Sonoran desert in Arizona, “the most surveilled place in America,” where a heavily concentrated workforce and surveillance technology in highly trafficked areas leave migrants no choice but to travel through “more hostile terrain, less suited for crossing and more suited for enforcement.” Instead of discouraging migrants from making the journey to the U.S. altogether, the policy of “prevention through deterrence,” with its associated build-up in surveillance, pushed them into more barren areas, leading to higher migrant death tolls.
  • Kate Briquelet and Justin Rohrlich in the Daily Beast tell the tale of Kiernan Major, a 26-year-old Marine Corps washout who, while pretending to be a CIA operative who ran his own cyber security firm, scammed victims into investing in his string of sham businesses. One acquaintance said that Major seemed to target kids from relatively affluent families in his alleged scams and that he’d take as much as $10,000 from unsuspecting pals.
  • Rosie Bradbury and Majd Al-Waheid in Business Insider tell the tale of nine current and former content moderators in Morocco who worked on a contract for TikTok via Luxembourg-based outsourcing firm Majorel and how they experienced severe psychological distress as a result of their jobs. They all said that Majorel and TikTok took few steps to mitigate the effects of their work while imposing a workplace environment of near-constant surveillance and near-impossible metric goals.
  • John Sakellariadis produced an issue brief for the Atlantic Council that investigates the drivers of the ransomware surge that menaced the United States in the summer of 2021, explaining why these attacks remain a persistent threat today and offering recommendations for mitigating the problem in the future.” Two recommendations outline mechanisms for spurring better cybersecurity practices among small businesses, including a tax relief program for small- to medium-sized organizations that implement a series of security best practices and granting federal tax credits to small- to medium-sized organizations that hire or retain employees with cybersecurity expertise.

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