Morse Code - Old is New Again

Wapack Labs assesses, with high confidence, that Morse code was used to encode the planning of the recent attack in London, U.K. Researchers uncovered bad actors involved in the planning of the Westminster attack utilized Morse code within an imageboard. This was used to communicate and plan details to Khalid Masood’s WhatsApp account, three minutes before the attack. A 2014 imageboard exposes a tutorial of Morse code. This indicates Morse code use is more prevalent than realized. Morse code is now being utilized because of how difficult it can be to parse via automated means. By changing the characters used, but still following Morse code precepts, a conventional Morse code parser will not pick up on a message. This makes Morse code ideal for hiding information in plain sight, without being caught by an automated script scanning for nefarious activities.

Wapack Labs has reported on encoding in the past. An archive of related reporting can be found in the Red Sky Alliance Portal.

WWW.WAPACKLABS.COM

WhatsApp - What’s up?

It has been demonstrated that a deliberate design decision for the WhatsApp messaging application created a vulnerable condition that could allow for entire conversations or calls to be intercepted. Exploitation of this condition would require a very highly skilled threat actor to access to WhatsApp servers in order to execute a man-in-the-middle attack.

Wapack Labs has reported on WhatsApp privacy in the past. An archive of related reporting can be found in the Red Sky Alliance portal. 

TLP: GREEN
ACTOR TYPE: (V)
SERIAL: TIR-016-2017
COUNTRIES: All
REPORT DATE: 20170125

Facebook and WhatsApp - Part II

In the United Kingdom, Facebook is once again being prevented from sharing data with their subsidiary WhatsApp.  This is signaling future internationally focused privacy law actions against cyber companies; chiefly due to the October 2016 U.S. Federal Communications Commission  (FCC) surrender of Internet control.  These legal decisions could significantly affect future data sharing.    This information is being provided for your situational awareness.

• 27 September 2016: Facebook was blocked by a German court from collecting user data from WhatsApp.  Facebook, the parent company of WhatsApp, is appealing the order.

• 1 October 2016: The U.S. FCC relinquished control over the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), enabling international regulation of ICANN under the Net Neutrality doctrine.

• Legal action against Facebook by the UK and Spanish governments is underway, which could set a precedence for future privacy rights actions against cyber companies internationally.