Barely a week has passed from the last attempt to hide a backdoor in a code library, and we have a new case today. This time around, the backdoor was found in a Python module, and not an npm (JavaScript) package. The module’s name is SSH Decorator (ssh-decorate), developed by Israeli developer Uri Goren, a library for handling SSH connections from Python code.
Huawei was widely expected to announce a partnership with AT&T in January at CES to carry the Mate 10 Pro smartphone, but the carrier reportedly backed out because of political pressure. A few days later, Verizon reportedly nixed its own plans to sell Huawei phones. Instead, Richard Yu, CEO of the company’s consumer business, spent his time talking about the phones, which were already in the market elsewhere, as well as touting the Porsche Design variant of the smartphone.
On 12 January, a Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) rocket blasted off from India’s eastern coast. While its primary cargo was a large Indian mapping satellite, dozens of secondary CubeSats from other countries travelled along with it. Seattle-based Planetary Resources supplied a spacecraft that will test prospecting tools for future asteroid miners, Canadian company Telesat launched a broadband communications satellite, and a British Earth-observation mission called Carbonite will capture high-definition video of the planet’s surface.
The “SIGINT Seniors” is a spy agency coalition that meets annually to collaborate on global security issues. It has two divisions, each focusing on different parts of the world: SIGINT Seniors Europe and SIGINT Seniors Pacific. Both are led by the U.S. National Security Agency, and together they include representatives from at least 17 other countries.
Members of the group are from spy agencies that eavesdrop on communications – a practice known as “signals intelligence,” or SIGINT.
Behind an abandoned military facility 40 miles northwest of Oslo, Norway built a surveillance base in close collaboration with the National Security Agency. Its bright, white satellite dishes, some of them 60 feet in diameter, stand out against the backdrop of pine-covered hills and red-roofed buildings that scatter the area.
Source: theintercept.com