On The Wire

Law Enforcement Disrupts LockBit and Taunts Administrator

A sprawling operation by an international consortium of law enforcement agencies has seized the infrastructure and website of the notorious LockBit ransomware group. Over the last five years the seemingly untouchable purveyor of ransomware-as-a-service rapidly grew into one of the most prolific hacking enterprises in the dark web ecosystem infiltrating ...
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On the Cybersecurity Front: Volt Typhoon and Warzone RAT

The disruption of a botnet and the seizure of internet domains selling a remote access trojan have recently turned the cybersecurity focus on the detection of stealth methods deployed by state sponsored and financially motivated actors. Described as the defining threat of our generation a botnet known as Volt Typhoon ...
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Search Warrants and the Doctrine of Severance

The right of all Canadians to be secure against unreasonable search and seizure protects the right to privacy from unjustified state intrusion. The purpose of the right requires that unjustified searches be prevented before they happen and not merely condemned after the fact. This can only be accomplished by a ...
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Purpose and Prejudice in Charter Litigation

The meaning of a constitutional right is ascertained by an analysis of the purpose underpinning the right. Purpose is understood in light of the interests a right is meant to protect. In a case winding its way through the Court of King's Bench of Alberta at Calgary, Alberta, an application ...
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The Spy Hunter and a Russian Oligarch

A former counterspy has been sentenced to prison by a New York court for his unlawful work for Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska. When he entered the guilty plea to violating U.S. sanctions against Russia stemming from its aggression in Ukraine he told the court he knew his investigative work for ...
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The Dangers of QR Codes

A jumble of squares in a grid is what the consumer sees when looking at QR codes. The simplicity makes them attractive to scammers who embed them with URLs containing custom malware or direct the user to a phishing site. But QR codes serve another purpose beyond facilitating consumer transactions ...
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Canadian Crypto King Pleads Guilty to Money Laundering Violations

The founder of crypto giant Binance has pleaded guilty to money laundering violations following an investigation spearheaded by the U.S. Department of Justice, the U.S. Department of the Treasury and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. Changpeng Zhao, a Canadian national, agreed to pay a fine of $50 million and to ...
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Canadian Judge Violated Fair Trial Rights

A fair trial is not a judicial inquest. In the Canadian adversarial system trial judges do not conduct inquiries on behalf of society at large. Although trial judges may assert trial management authority they must not descend into the arena and enter the fray. The Saskatchewan Court of Appeal has ...
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Russian-Canadians Charged in Smuggling Scheme to Aid Moscow’s War on Ukraine

A criminal complaint was unsealed yesterday in Brooklyn, New York, charging three people with conspiracy to commit wire fraud stemming from a global procurement scheme on behalf of sanctioned Russian entities including companies affiliated with the Russian military. Some of the technology was found in seized Russian weapons platforms and ...
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Search of Journalists’ Devices at Polish Border Violated Privacy Rights

The detention of two journalists by Polish military officers and the searches of their cellphones and cameras for information documenting events near Poland's border with Belarus has reached the European Court of Human Rights. The case presents an opportunity to consider again the highly intrusive nature of digital searches and ...
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