While you were tweeting

The idea for this comic came to me during an intriguing session on cyberwarfare and repression 2.0 at the recent Mesh 11 Conference. I was struck at how much we typical Internet users don’t know all the nasty stuff that is going on online 24/7 right under our noses. Along with the cyberspying and cyberwarfare case studies, we also got a good dose of how repressive regimes trick their people into giving access to, say, their Facebook profiles, dating sites, etc. That invitation to a Facebook game can really be built by the regime to steal your username and password and take a look at all the anti-government friends you associate with.

It struck me how the same tools we use every day for socializing, banking, networking, etc. are being used against a regime’s own people. The same tools we use to share photos, make video calls and live stream weddings, are used to trick us into handing over our credit cards. The same tools we use to connect to one another are being used to hack into our government computers. The Internet truly is a white label.