Best Infosec-Related Long Reads of the Week, 7/22/23

TheTruthSpy's web of fake sellers, China and Russia use intel agencies in cold war revisionism, Twitter's disinformation sewer, The 50-year crypto war, Video codec tool nails police abuse, more

Metacurity is pleased to offer our free and paid subscribers this weekly digest of the best long-form infosec-related pieces we couldn’t properly fit into our daily crush of news. So tell us what you think, and feel free to share your favorite long reads via email at info@metacurity.com. We’ll gladly credit you with a hat tip. Happy reading!

Source: Dall-E2

Fake passports, real bank accounts: How TheTruthSpy stalkerware made its millions

TechCrunch’s Zack Whittaker painstakingly investigated how Vietnamese-owned 1Byte’s TheTruthSpy, a collection of Android so-called “stalkerware” surveillance apps, including Copy9 and MxSpy, used a network of fake sellers that compromised hundreds of thousands of people’s phones around the world helping to conceal the sellers.

For years, TheTruthSpy brought 1Byte tens of thousands of dollars in monthly PayPal transactions from customers. But its rising popularity brought new problems. Selling spyware is fraught with legal and reputational risks, especiall…