Our team had the opportunity to present a talk at the Chaos West stage on the 36th Chaos Communication Congress (36c3) in Leipzig. The 36c3 is the biggest hacker conference in Europe and it gathers every year more than 16,000 attendees from all over the world.

Veronica and Sebastian presented the Emergency VPN at the 36c3 Chaos West.

Sebastian Garcia, director of Civilsphere and Veronica Valeros, project leader of Civilsphere, presented the Emergency VPN in the Chaos West stay on December 27th. In their talk they emphasized the increased use of surveillance technology such as spyware by governments to surveil and abuse journalists, activists and human rights defenders. However, as Veronica Valeros mentioned in the talk, governments have crossed the line and have used this spyware also to target civilians, including, children.

The Emergency VPN is a service that allows users to obtain a free security analysis of the network traffic of the mobile device. This works based on the assumption that spyware or other digital threats will attempt to steal information and send it back to the attackers. Through the use of a VPN “researchers can analyze the data and send back a report with any suspicious or malicious activity that is putting you at risk”, says Sebastian Garcia director of the project.

“Right now we need your help”, indicates Veronica, “we need your help to be able to reach the right people at the right time. Are you at risk? Is people you know at risk? Please reach out to us, we can help. ”

The slides are available for download HERE and the video HERE.