The Star of Surveillance Has Fallen on Aleppo: The Assad Regime and the Dawn of Black Shades (2011-)

The Star of Surveillance Has Fallen on Aleppo: The Assad Regime and the Dawn of Black Shades (2011-)

Spring did not come to Syria in 2011. In response to the calls for freedom that the Arab Spring had aroused, Bashar al-Assad's regime spread an invisible web of surveillance along with the muzzle of its gun. Its shadow weapon is a remote-access malware called "Black Shades" or "Dark Comet. It circulated on the world's back markets, masquerading as ordinary files and sneaking into the computers of democratic activists.

Disguised as Skype, an image file, or a pdf, the program arrived under the guise of a letter from a friend, reading keyboards, peering into webcams, and recording secret conversations. Everything flows quietly but surely into the hands of the Assad regime.

When Citizen Lab's investigation uncovered that the communications were with a Syrian state-run agency, spying in the name of the state could no longer be denied. Exiled engineer Dilshad Osman rose up to shed light on this darkness, working with human rights groups outside the country to expand defenses.

When a single star of hope fell in the distant sky of Aleppo, those who looked up at it were left with only quiet anger and a thirst for freedom.