It is the name for perhaps the most powerful piece of spyware ever developed – certainly by a private company. Once it has wormed its way on to your phone, without you noticing, it can turn it into a 24-hour surveillance device. It can copy messages you send or receive, harvest your photos and record your calls. It might secretly film you through your phone’s camera, or activate the microphone to record your conversations. It can potentially pinpoint where you are, where you’ve been, and who you’ve met.

Huawei began building its own phone-testing system, xDeviceRobot, in early 2012. The Chinese company hoped to improve the quality of its mobile hardware, which tended to fail far more often than competitors' devices in third-party trials. In May 2012, Huawei China asked T-Mobile if it could license or flat-out buy the company's phone-testing robot, Tappy, which served as a standard for much of the industry. T-Mobile said no.

Convicted in the Cold War spy trial that delivered Julius and Ethel Rosenberg to their deaths and divided the nation, he later admitted that he had been a spy.

IN DECEMBER, RESEARCHERS spotted a new family of industrial control malware that had been used in an attack on a Middle Eastern energy plant. Known as Triton, or Trisis, the suite of hacking tools is one of only a handful of known cyberweapons developed specifically to undermine or destroy industrial equipment. Now, new research from security firm FireEye suggests that at least one element of the Triton campaign originated from Russia. And the tipoff ultimately came from some pretty boneheaded mistakes.

It is hard to argue that you cannot trust the government when the government isn’t really all that bad. This is the problem facing the small but growing number of Swedes anxious about their country’s rush to embrace a cash-free society. Most consumers already say they manage without cash altogether, while shops and cafes increasingly refuse to accept notes and coins because of the costs and risk involved. Until recently, however, it has been hard for critics to find a hearing.

The author of the famous Trump dossier provided a secret report to the FBI asserting that RT founder Mikhail Lesin was bludgeoned to death by thugs hired by an oligarch close to Putin. Three other sources independently told the FBI the same basic story, contradicting the government’s finding that Lesin’s death was accidental.

Declassified documents from the 1970s have revealed the US government were certain the Soviet Union had mastered telepathy, hypnosis and dream infiltration, a la Hollywood blockbuster Inception. A recently declassified Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) report documents the numerous ways the US government believed the Soviet Union could attack or influence small groups of people via paranormal means.

How does someone get away with helping a foreign adversary? Writer Sarah Laskow digs into the gonzo story of an American acquitted of spying for the Soviets—even after he confessed to it.

The U.S. government on Wednesday moved to ban the use of a Russian brand of security software by federal agencies amid concerns the company has ties to state-sponsored cyberespionage activities. In a binding directive, acting homeland security secretary Elaine Duke ordered that federal civilian agencies identify Kaspersky Lab software on their networks. After 90 days, unless otherwise directed, they must remove the software, on the grounds that the company has connections to the Russian government and its software poses a security risk.

In 1777, George Washington faced a losing war. Then he created America's first espionage operation.

Turla uses social media and clever programming techniques to cover its tracks. By Dan Goodin.

In this week’s most shared tweets: Reported hate crimes against Muslims in the United States rose dramatically, again; Trump fires Comey; in a boost for rights, France elected Emmanuel Macron to the presidency, but the far-right’s unprecedented share of the vote should be a wake-up call for France; the crisis in Venezuela deepens; worrying trends in Indonesia; and a campaign to stop anti-gay attacks in Chechnya – get the background from HRW’s Facebook Live Q & A.

An interactive documentary that shines a light on a global Spy Network Between Five Countries. Created by Jam3, Fumes and The Docufactory, with support from CMF, NZ On Air and Take Part.

Outcry follows plans to radically increase prison terms for revealing state secrets and prosecute journalists. The government’s legal advisers have been accused of launching a “full-frontal attack” on whistleblowers over proposals to radically increase prison sentences for revealing state secrets and prosecute journalists. Downing Street believes a major overhaul of existing secrecy legislation is necessary because it has become outdated in a digital age when government employees can easily disclose vast amounts of sensitive information.

Brian Regan pulled off the largest theft of U.S. government secrets before Edward Snowden—and he nearly got away with it. The idea of committing espionage began taking shape in Brian Regan’s mind through the early months of 1999 as he found himself in the vortex of a perfect storm created by the continuing humiliations at work, the worsening of his financial situation and the growing rift in his marriage.

On a chilly morning in December 1988, computer analyst Jack Barsky embarked on his usual morning commute to his office on Madison Avenue in Manhattan, leaving his wife and baby daughter at home in Queens. As he entered the subway, he caught sight of something startling: a daub of red paint on a metal beam. Barsky had looked for it every morning for years; it meant he had a life-changing decision to make, and fast.

In the days since it emerged that four men had been arrested on treason charges linked to cyber intelligence and Russia's domestic security agency, conspiracy theories and speculation about the case have swept through Moscow. Was it some fallout from the alleged Russian hacking of the U.S. presidential election? Were they part of a hunt for a possible mole who tipped off American intelligence agencies? Was it a power struggle within Russia's security services?

Yuri Bezmenov (alias Tomas Schuman), a Soviet KGB defector, explains in detail his scheme for the KGB process of subversion and takeover of target societies at a lecture in Los Angeles, 1983.

His indomitable will steeled by a dozen years in the Soviet gulag, decades of sparring with the K.G.B. and a bout of near fatal heart disease, Vladimir K. Bukovsky, a tireless opponent of Soviet leaders and President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, is not a man easily put off his stride. But he got knocked sideways when British police officers banged on the front door of his home on a sedate suburban street here early one morning while he lay sick in bed and informed him that they had “received information about forbidden images” in his possession.

AS I READ The Devil’s Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America’s Secret Government, a new book by Salon founder David Talbot, I couldn’t help thinking of an obscure corner of 1970s history: the Safari Club. Dulles — the Princeton man and white shoe corporate lawyer who served as CIA director from 1953 to 1961, still the longest tenure in agency history — died in 1969 before the Safari Club was conceived. And nothing about it appears in The Devil’s Chessboard. But to understand the Safari Club is to understand Allen Dulles and his milieu.