Beijing advocates free speech (in a way). A look at the Silence gang. Credit cards hacked in South Korea. Gaming search results.

After Twitter on Monday identified and suspended 936 accounts it determined were conducting information operations against the ongoing protests in Hong Kong (and modified its advertising policy to no longer accept paid advertising from state-controlled media), and after Facebook took down seven pages, three groups, and five accounts for the same coordinated inauthenticity, China's government protested the companies' actions. Beijing says the accounts belonged to Chinese living temporarily overseas: they were expressing their patriotic outrage over the Hong Kong protests. China's government added, Reuters reports, that it also had a "right to tell its story."

Group-IB has a follow-up report on Silence, the Russian-speaking criminal gang they've tracked for the last three years. Initially marked by slovenly opsec and a target set largely confined to Russia, Silence has upgraded its security game and expanded internationally. Their expansion and improvement seem opportunistic and derivative, repurposing code and perhaps personnel from other gangs, notably TA505. Their customary infection technique is phishing, beginning with a reconnaissance phase that sends bogus email delivery failure notices.

Stars and Stripes reports that US servicemembers are caught up in a large South Korean credit card breach.

Scammers are gaming search engine results with paid advertising to display their own phone numbers at the top of search results for help lines belonging to well-known brands, Naked Security reports. The ads seem to make economic sense for the criminals: they get a solid return on their marketing investment. Voice assistants have proven particularly vulnerable to this form of deception.