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News you may have missed #439

October 18, 2010 by intelNews Leave a comment

Book critical of Russian FSB published. In a new book entitled The New Nobility, Russian journalists Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan claim that the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) is less repressive but ultimately more dangerous than its predecessor, the Soviet KGB.
Senior-most North Korean defector dies. Hwang Jang-yop, the theoretician behind North Korea’s Songun and Juche state doctrines, who defected to South Korea in 1997, has died at his home in Seoul, aged 87. Last April, South Korea charged two North Korean government agents with attempting to assassinate Hwang.
‘Low morale’ leads MI6 spies to apply for Australian jobs. More than 50 spies at Britain’s MI6 have allegedly responded to a recruitment drive by the Australian Secret Intelligence Service (ASIS). According to insiders, there has been growing uncertainty among MI6’s 2,600 staff over looming budget cuts and inquiries into alleged complicity in the torture of terrorism suspects.

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Israel may have helped FBI nab American Jewish informant

October 18, 2010 by intelNews Leave a comment

Akamai logo

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
The government of Israel may have tipped off US federal agents about the activities of an American Jew, who was arrested by the FBI earlier this month for sharing confidential information with an undercover FBI agent. Elliot Doxer, a 42-year-old finance department employee of Massachusetts-based Akamai Technologies, is charged with providing inside company information to a Bureau agent posing as an Israeli spy. According to court papers, the FBI counterintelligence operation against Doxer began after he emailed Israel’s consulate in Boston, in 2006, identifying himself as a Jewish American “offering the little [information] I may have […] to help our homeland and our war against our enemies”. A year later, an FBI counterintelligence team posing as Israeli Mossad operatives contacted Doxer and offered to satisfy his request for $3,000 in return for inside information on Akamai, a company whose role in the architecture of Internet’s worldwide infrastructure is instrumental. But how did the FBI know about Doxer’s attempt to contact the Israeli consulate in Boston? Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #438 (Stuxnet edition)

October 5, 2010 by intelNews Leave a comment

Stuxnet cyber superweapon moves to China. The Stuxnet computer virus, dubbed the world’s “first cyber superweapon” by experts, and which may have been designed to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities, has found a new target: China. The computer worm has infecting millions of computers around the country, Chinese state media reported this week.
Stuxnet worm heralds new era of global cyberwar. The Stuxnet worm, which Iran admits has affected 30,000 of its computers, was a sophisticated attack almost certainly orchestrated by a state. It also appears that intelligence operatives were used to deliver the worm to its goal.
Israeli cyber unit allegedly responsible for Iran computer worm. Some experts claim that Unit 8200, an elite Israeli military group responsible for cyberwarfare, has been accused of creating a virus that has crippled Iran’s computer systems and stopped work at its newest nuclear power station.

[Research credit to Arthur Sbygniew]

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Iran announces arrests of alleged nuclear spies

October 4, 2010 by intelNews Leave a comment

Heidar Moslehi

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
The Iranian government has announced the arrest of an unspecified number of alleged nuclear spies, reportedly in connection with a sophisticated virus that infected computers used in Iran’s nuclear energy program. The arrests were publicized on Sunday by Heidar Moslehi, Iran’s Minister of Intelligence, who said those arrested had helped facilitate the spread of the so-called Stuxnet virus last June. The malicious program, which appears to have been designed to sabotage sensitive hardware components found specifically in nuclear centrifuges, has infected at least 100,000 computer systems worldwide, most of which are located in Iran. Speaking to Iranian media, Moslehi accused Israel and the United States of trying to sabotage the Iranian nuclear energy program, but noted that Iran’s intelligence services have resumed “complete supervision of cyberspace” and will successfully prevent “any leak or destruction” of the Islamic Republic’s nuclear research and development program by outside forces. But elsewhere in Tehran, Hamid Alipour, an Iranian government Senior Information and Technology official, admitted that technical experts are still working on containing the virus, which appears to be mutating. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #437

October 1, 2010 by intelNews Leave a comment

Huge demand for spy balloons in Afghan war. The hottest US weapon in Afghanistan lacks a lethal capability, floats thousands of feet in the air and doesn’t carry troops. It’s a spy balloon. Similar contraptions have been making appearances at the Lebanese-Israeli border.
One, two, many WikiLeaks. Daniel Domscheit-Berg, a defector from the WikiLeaks website has said he has decided to jump ship and is thinking of creating a competitor site to Julian Assange’s whistleblower platform.
Is publication of classified info a criminal act? When WikiLeaks published tens of thousands of classified US military records concerning the war in Afghanistan last July, did it commit a criminal act under US law? A US Congressional Research Service report argues that it did not.

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News you may have missed #436

September 30, 2010 by intelNews 1 Comment

Iran crosses into Iraq to hit bombing suspects. Iranian forces crossed into neighboring Iraq and killed 30 Kurdish fighters from a group it says was involved in last week’s bombing of a military parade, Iran’s state TV reported Sunday. The group in Iran is a wing of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and sometimes operates inside friendly territory in Iraqi Kurdistan.
German trial of Libyan spies starts in Berlin. Two Libyans, identified only as 42-year-old ‘Adel Ab’ and 46-year-old ‘Adel Al’, have gone on trial in Berlin, accused of gathering information on Libyan opposition members living in Germany. Prosecutors say the spying was “on a personal level” and “there was no technical eavesdropping involved”.
Nine years after 9/11, US intel sharing still hobbled. More than nine years after 9/11, America’s intelligence-sharing system continues to be impeded by legal and technical difficulties. The newly created National Counterterrorism Center

(NCTC) is a good case in point.

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Experts see nation-state behind sophisticated computer virus attack

September 29, 2010 by intelNews 2 Comments

Ahmadinejad

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
Computer forensics specialists are split as to the purpose and initial target of a sophisticated computer virus that infected computers used in the Iranian government’s nuclear energy program. The virus, named Stuxnet, was discovered in Iran in June by a Belarusian computer security firm doing business in the Islamic Republic. It has since infected at least 100,000 computer systems in countries such as Brazil, India, Russia and the United States. But the primary target of the virus appears to have been the Iranian nuclear energy program, specifically computers located at the Islamic Republic’s nuclear reactor facility in Bushehr and the uranium enrichment plant in Natanz. Several commentators, including Wired magazine, dispute the existence of any evidence pointing to a clear target inside Iran. But Israeli media maintain that computers at Natanz were the primary target of Stuxnet, and that subsequent infections at computer labs at Bushehr were in fact an unintended side effect. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #435 (cyberwarfare edition)

September 28, 2010 by intelNews Leave a comment

Analysis: Cyber attacks test US Pentagon. US military and civilian networks are probed thousands of times a day, and the systems of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization headquarters are attacked at least 100 times a day. Meanwhile, more than 100 countries are currently trying to break into US defense networks.
US should be able to shut Internet, ex-CIA chief says. Cyberterrorism is such a threat that the US President should have the authority to shut down the Internet in the event of an attack, Former CIA Director Michael Hayden has said.
Iran battling alleged ‘spy virus’. Iranian officials have confirmed reports that a malicious computer code, called Stuxnet, was spreading throughout the nation’s nuclear infrastructure. But they have given differing accounts of the damage, said to be capable of taking over computers that operate huge facilities, including nuclear energy reactors. Did someone say ‘Israel‘?

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Lawsuit claims CIA uses pirate software in drone assassinations

September 28, 2010 by intelNews 1 Comment

Predator drone

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
The Central Intelligence Agency is using stolen software code in its covert Predator drone assassination program in Afghanistan and Pakistan, according to a lawsuit filed by a software company in the US state of Massachusetts. The software company, Intelligent Integration Systems, Inc. (IISi), which is based in Boston, accuses the CIA of unlawfully using proprietary coding, purchased through Netezza Corporation, a former partner of IISi. The latter claims Netezza sold the CIA a software application called Spatial, which the CIA uses to perform targeted killings through its unmanned drone program. But IISi alleges that Spatial contains stolen coding initially developed by its programmers. What is more, the company claims that the pirated coding is in fact defective, and that the CIA runs the risk of its unmanned Predator drone strikes “being off by about 40 feet”. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #434 (book news edition)

September 27, 2010 by intelNews Leave a comment

CIA drone strikes have killed Americans, claims journalist. In his new book, Obama’s Wars, veteran US journalist Bob Woodward claims that CIA drone strikes in Pakistan have killed many Westerners, including some US citizens.
Norway’s greatest spy case to be re-examined. The case of former Norwegian diplomat Arne Treholt, who was sentenced during the end of the Cold War in Norway’s most famous spy case, is to be re-opened, after the publication of book called Counterfeit, whose authors charge that Norwegian police fabricated evidence against Treholt.
US Pentagon censors widely used acronyms in book. Pentagon censors, who recently struck a deal to redact portions of Operation Dark Heart, a book written by US Army Reserve Lieutenant Colonel Anthony Shaffer, have blacked out from the text widely used terms such as SIGINT, which means signals intelligence.

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Lebanon charges PKK Kurds with spying for Israel

September 27, 2010 by intelNews 5 Comments

PKK banner

By IAN ALLEN| intelNews.org |
Lebanese authorities have detained three alleged members of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) on charges of spying for Israel. The three arrestees, whose names have not been released to the media, were reportedly arrested last week by Lebanese military intelligence forces in Jounieh, a town located on the Mediterranean coast, about 15 kilometers north of Beirut. The arrests form part of a wider Lebanese counterintelligence offensive that has netted over 100 alleged Israeli agents in Lebanon since April of 2009. But news of the detentions have inflamed an ongoing discussion in Turkey about alleged covert links between Israeli intelligence agencies and Kurdish separatists operating in Turkey, Iraq and Syria. Read more of this post

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Analysis: Deadly conflict inside Iraqi spy service goes unmentioned

September 23, 2010 by intelNews Leave a comment

Iraq

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Amidst the chaos of post-Ba’athist Iraqi politics, a deadly sectarian conflict is raging within Iraq’s powerful spy agency. Employees inside Iraq’s National Intelligence Service (INIS) are split along religious sectarian lines, with Sunni and Shiite officers battling for control of the organization. The warring factions are directly affiliated with opposing political parties, and represent various political interests. Shiite officers are seen as aligned with Tehran, whereas Sunnis are close to Washington and –ironically– to the remnants of Saddam Hussein’s Ba’ath party. The conflict has resulted in the assassination of several INIS officers, mostly by their colleagues in the Service, according to two anonymous Iraqi security officials, who spoke to The National, an English-language newspaper published in the United Arab Emirates. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #433

September 22, 2010 by intelNews Leave a comment

White House quiet on Pollard release speculation. The Barack Obama administration is staying silent on a reported offer from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to extend a settlements freeze in the occupied areas, in exchange for the release of Jonathan Pollard, currently held in a US prison for spying on America for Israel.
‘The Secret History of MI6’ published. An authorized history of the first forty years of Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service, MI6, has been published by Bloomsbury. The book is written by Professor Keith Jeffery, of Queen’s University, Belfast, based on his unrestricted access to SIS archives of the period.
Pakistan accuses Briton of spying. Authorities in Pakistan are holding a 70-year-old Briton on suspicion of spying for almost a month in the country’s lawless tribal areas. Nicholas Bain, who claims he is an author researching a book, is suspected of “working for a British intelligence agency”, according to a Pakistani official.

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Israel offers settlement freeze in exchange for US spy’s release

September 21, 2010 by intelNews 5 Comments

Jonathan Pollard

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Israeli government officials are considering extending a settlement freeze in Israeli-occupied territories in exchange for the release of an American citizen serving a life sentence for spying on the US for Israel. Laura Rozen over at Politico reports that a representative of the embassy of Israel in Washington DC has denied knowledge of the rumored deal. But according to Israel Army Radio, an envoy of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has already “unofficially” passed the proposal along to US government officials. If accepted by the White House, the deal would involve the freezing of all new construction of illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank, in exchange for the release of Jonathan Jay Pollard, a US Navy intelligence analyst who in 1987 was sentenced to life imprisonment for spying on the US on behalf of Israel. Pollard, who has since been awarded honorary Israeli citizenship, and is considered a hero in Israel, has so far served 25 years in prison. Read more of this post

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Swiss army planned covert operations in Libya

September 20, 2010 by intelNews 2 Comments

Hannibal Gaddafi

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Swiss intelligence planned three separate covert missions to Libya in 2008 and 2009 in order to free two Swiss businessmen held by Libyan authorities, according to a Swiss newspaper. Citing a confidential document drafted by Switzerland’s ministry of foreign affairs, the Sunday edition of Neue Zürcher Zeitung revealed that one of the three planned missions involved an exploratory visit to Libya by an unnamed Swiss undercover officer. The operative, reportedly an employee of AAD-10, an elite intelligence unit in the Swiss Land Forces, visited Libya in civilian disguise, after legally receiving a visa permit from the government of Libya. According to Neue Zürcher Zeitung, his mission was to prepare an operation to abduct from the hands of Libyan authorities two Swiss citizens, Max Goeldi and Rachid Hamdani. Read more of this post