News you may have missed #912: Analysis edition

July 5, 2021 by 1 Comment

Trojan Shield

• SolarWinds: How Russian spies hacked US government departments. Last year, in perhaps the most audacious cyber attack in history, Russian military hackers sabotaged a tiny piece of computer code buried in a popular piece of software called SolarWinds. After it was installed, Russian agents went rummaging through the digital files of the US departments of Justice, State, Treasury, Energy, and Commerce —among others— and for nine months, they had unfettered access to top-level communications, court documents, even nuclear secrets. On July 4, the CBS television show 60 Minutes aired a special segment on this topic.

• Why did the FBI’s encrypted phone sting not target US suspects? In 2018, a San Diego-led federal sting secretly launched an encrypted communications company as part of Operation TROJAN SHIELD (pictured). Over the next few years, FBI agents, working with law enforcement partners in Australia, New Zealand and Europe, seeded thousands of spyware-infected phones into the hands of criminals and used them to build cases against 300 organized crime groups around the world, from Australian biker gangs to Italian mafia cells. But one country was off limits for investigating agents: the United States. The San Diego Union-Tribune’s Kristina Davis explains why.

• Opinion: Clearance holders need to protect America by studying espionage. John William Davis, retired counterintelligence officer who instructed the threat portion of the US Department of the Army’s Operations Security Course, argues that “many, many techniques for recruiting spies continue much as they did over preceding years. We can learn from the past and apply what we learn to the future.”

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News you may have missed #911

July 19, 2020 by Leave a comment

Hamas• Analysis: The outstanding issue of the Libyan intelligence services. The post of Chief of the Libyan Intelligence Service of Tripoli’s Government of National Accord (GNA) is still vacant. Therefore, this is an optimal situation for the Head of Tripoli’s government, who is currently pro tempore Director of the GNA agencies, while the struggle for the next Intelligence Service director is intensifying.

• Hamas admits one of its number spied for Israel before defecting. Hamas deputy leader Moussa Abu Marzouk has confirmed Arabic media reports that Hamas commander Mohammad Abu Ajwa collaborated with and subsequently defected to Israel. The defection was first reported by Al-Arabiya, which said that Israel’s Mossad spy agency had recently facilitated the escape of senior commander Mohammad Abu Ajwa. According to Al-Arabiya, Abu Ajwa had previously led Hamas’s naval special forces.

• Russia used US intelligence to target dissidents in Europe. Russia routinely exploited a US policy of increased information sharing to target Chechen dissidents, according to three law-enforcement and intelligence officials in Europe. The practice emerged after the Trump administration backed a policy of sharing more secret information with Russia, in hope of strengthening relations.

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News you may have missed #910

July 11, 2020 by Leave a comment

Ajit Doval• In-fighting erupts between Syrian intelligence and army in Damascus. Violent clashes broke out between Syrian regime intelligence forces and local militias affiliated with the army’s 4th Division and national defense in Damascus’ countryside, local media sources reported. Sporadic fighting reportedlhy broke out for the third consecutive day in the Daf Al-Shouk region between militiamen affiliated with the 4th Division and the national defense on the one hand, and security formations from the Palestine Branch of the Syrian military intelligence on the other. This came after the 4th Division and the national defense refused to hand over their weapons and end the military tasks assigned to them in the region.

• India gold smuggling case sparks political row. A political row has broken out in India after gold was found being smuggled into the country in diplomatic baggage. Customs officials at the international airport in the southern state of Kerala found more than 30kg (66lb) of gold hidden inside bathroom fittings. The package was addressed to the United Arab Emirates’ consulate in Thiruvananthapuram. The UAE has denied any knowledge of the package and said a former local employee had been arrested. Local reports suggest another person has also been detained.

• The ex-spy who brought India and China back from the brink. It takes nerves of steel and a cool wit to negotiate a truce in the face of a grave provocation – such as the brutal killing of 20 soldiers – and getting two nuclear-armed rivals to pull back from the brink of a full-scale confrontation. But that’s what Ajit Doval (pictured), India’s national security adviser, managed to do as he walked a diplomatic tightrope in recent talks with Chinese officials.

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News you may have missed #909 – Insurgency edition

June 28, 2020 by Leave a comment

Al-Hawl refugee camp• South African intelligence concerned about spread of insurgency in Mozambique. This is the first public expression of concern from the South African government that the violence in neighboring Mozambique could spread. Previously, the South African Parliament was informed the matter was only to be discussed behind closed doors. Earlier in June, the South African military reportedly participated in Operation COPPER, in support of the Mozambican Defense Force.

• US intelligence says Russia offered Afghans Bounties to kill US troops. American intelligence officials have concluded that a Russian military intelligence unit secretly offered bounties to Taliban-linked militants for killing coalition forces in Afghanistan — including targeting American troops — amid the peace talks to end the long-running war there, according to officials briefed on the matter. The intelligence finding was briefed to President Trump, and the White House’s National Security Council discussed the problem at an interagency meeting in late March, the officials said.

• Analysis: The security risk posed by ISIS women smuggling their way out of camp Hol. While a debate rages in Europe over whether or not ISIS women and their children can be repatriated to their European home countries, some women have been taking things into their own hands and returning via illegal smuggling networks, creating new and serious security issues with which European officials must now grapple.

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News you may have missed #908

June 27, 2020 by 2 Comments

Sergei Naryshkin• Russian spy chief in rare interview with the BBC. In an exclusive interview, Sergei Naryshkin (pictured), the head of Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) has told the BBC that America has been trying to “rule the world” and this could lead to “disaster”. Russia’s spy chief, who was talking to the BBC’s Steve Rosenberg on the occasion of the 75th anniversary of the end of World War Two, also said that Russia doesn’t trust what the British government says about the Salisbury poisonings.

• India and Pakistan embassies to cut staff by half over spy row. India is expelling close to half of the staff at Pakistan’s embassy in New Delhi over espionage claims. Islamabad has reciprocated with the same orders for the Indian High Commission. Notably, both commissions do not have a permanent ambassador in place. Tensions have remained high since India scrapped Kashmir’s semi-autonomous status last year.

• Israel moves to redeploy spy agency to track surging virus cases. Israel’s parliament gave initial approval Wednesday to a controversial bill enabling the government to use its domestic security agency to track cases of coronavirus, which are rising again. Cabinet mandated Shin Bet to use cell phone surveillance as an emergency measure to combat the virus in mid-March as mounting numbers of Israelis tested positive for the novel coronavirus. The specifics were kept secret, but security officials said the agency had tracked virus carriers’ movements through their phones. The measure was discontinued on June 10 as infection rates dropped. But following two weeks that have seen growing numbers of Israelis infected with the virus, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu decided to table the bill.

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News you may have missed #907

June 21, 2020 by 1 Comment

India External Affairs Ministry• Pakistan releases two Indian diplomats. Pakistan has released two employees of rival India’s embassy in Islamabad after briefly detaining them in connection with a hit-and-run road accident in the capital. A city police report noted the Indian officials were taken into custody on Monday morning after their “reckless driving” injured a pedestrian. The Indian External Affairs Ministry on Monday summoned the deputy chief of the Pakistani High Commission in New Delhi to protest the detention of its officials and demanded their immediate release. Pakistani authorities familiar with the incident argued the detainees were released to the Indian High Commission in Islamabad within hours because they held diplomatic immunity.

• As US intelligence community returns to work, employees confront new anxieties. More US federal employees and contractors in the intelligence community have been gradually returning to their office spaces in the past two weeks. But for IC leadership, “reopening” isn’t only about rearranging office spaces and cobbling together cleaning supplies and hand sanitizer, it’s also about easing the concerns of their employees and contractors who are uneasy or nervous to return to the physical workplace.

• Belgian police officer convicted of spying for terrorist network. A police officer in Brussels has been jailed for four years after prosecutors found he had acted as an informant for the brother of a man seen as the mastermind of the Brussels and Paris attacks. The 53-year-old officer with the Brussels North police zone was sentenced to 50 months imprisonment, his lawyers confirmed on Friday.

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News you may have missed #906

June 20, 2020 by Leave a comment

Gustavo Arribas• Turkish court jails US consulate employee for terrorism offenses. A Turkish employee of the US consulate in Istanbul has been sentenced to almost nine years in prison, allegedly for aiding a terrorist organisation. Metin Topuz was arrested in 2017 and accused of having links to an “armed terror group” that Turkey blames for a failed coup the previous year. Topuz is reported to have spent decades working as a translator and fixer for the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) in Istanbul. He denies the allegations. The US has said there is “no credible evidence” to support his conviction.

• India arrests LeT female spy ring. India’s National Investigation Agency has busted an alleged female spy racket in the country and taken a 22-year-old Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) handler into 10-day custody. The female spy was allegedly in touch with many handlers in Pakistan, including 26/11 Mumbai terror attack mastermind Hafiz Mohammed Sayeed. Sources also claimed that Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence was honey-trapping Indian officials through the female spy, in order to gain sensitive information.

• Illegal espionage claims put former Argentine president in spotlight. Argentina’s former president, Mauricio Macri, has found himself back in the national spotlight after the emergence of extraordinary claims alleging the Federal Intelligence Agency (AFI) –-headed at the time by his close ally Gustavo Arribas (pictured) during the former president’s 2015-2019 administration-– carried out illegal espionage more than 500 journalists, academics, politicians and business leaders. Prior to heading the federal intelligence agency, Arribas had no prior public service, having worked as a notary and a football agent. He is a close personal friend of Macri.

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News you may have missed #905

June 14, 2020 by Leave a comment

Twitter IA• French forces kill al-Qaeda head and capture ISIS leader in Mali. In the past few days, the French military successfully conducted two key operations in the Sahel, killing the emir of al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQMI), Abdelmalek Droukdal, and capturing Mohamed el Mrabat, a leader of the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara (EIGS) group. The US military assisted the French special operations forces by providing intelligence that helped locate the target.

• Isis operations increase in Iraq as coalition withdraws. The Islamic State staged at least 566 attacks in Iraq in the first three months of the year and 1,669 during 2019, a 13 per cent increase from the previous year, according to security analysts who track the group’s activities. The jihadists have exploited a partial drawdown of the international anti-Isis coalition, analysts said, while tensions between the US and Iran, disruption caused by the coronavirus pandemic, and political paralysis in Baghdad, have also combined to provide an opportunity for the insurgents to regroup.

• Twitter removes more than 170,000 pro-China accounts. Twitter has removed more than 170,000 accounts it says were tied to an operation to spread pro-China messages. Some of those posts were about the coronavirus outbreak, the social media platform has announced. The firm said the Chinese network, which was based in the People’s Republic of China, had links to an earlier state-backed operation it broke up alongside Facebook and YouTube last year.

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News you may have missed #904

June 13, 2020 by Leave a comment

Al-Qaeda Afghanistan• UN report says Afghan Taliban still maintain ties with al-Qaida. The Taliban in Afghanistan still maintain close ties with the al-Qaida terror network, despite signing a peace deal with the United States in which they committed to fight militant groups, a UN report said. The U.N. committee behind the report said several significant al-Qaida figures were killed over the past months but a number of prominent leaders of the group, once led by Osama bin Laden, remain in Afghanistan. The report said they maintain links with the feared Haqqani network, an ally of the Taliban, and still play a significant role in Taliban operations.

• Britain’s SIGINT agency sees workload spike amid COVID-19 vaccine hunt. Britain is one of the leading countries developing a COVID-19 vaccine with Oxford University and Imperial College London at the forefront, along with Sinovac in China. Whoever develops it first will reap billions from global sales, making research information highly valuable. This is having a major impact on the workload of the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), its director, Jeremy Fleming, said last week.

• Indian IT firm spied on politicians and Investors around the world. New Delhi-based BellTroX InfoTech offered its hacking services to help clients spy on more than 10,000 email accounts over a period of seven years. During that time, the firm targeted government officials in Europe, gambling tycoons in the Bahamas, and well-known investors in the United States including private equity giant KKR and short seller Muddy Waters, according to three former employees, outside researchers, and a trail of online evidence.

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News you may have missed #903

June 7, 2020 by Leave a comment

Israel Lebanon border• State-level espionage on EU a ‘very high threat’ says report. The most successful attempts of espionage at a top EU institution are state sponsored, according to an internal document produced by a subcommittee of the European Council, which is composed of heads of state or government of all European Union member-states. The restricted document presents an analysis of threats to the security of information at the General Secretariat of the Council.
• Man shot after crossing into Israel, apparently to spy, returned to Lebanon. A Syrian national who was shot after he crossed the border into Israel from Lebanon last month, apparently to perform reconnaissance for Hezbollah, was sent back to Lebanon on Tuesday, the Israel Defense Forces said. According to the IDF, the International Red Cross transported him back to Lebanon through the rarely used Rosh Hanikra border crossing.
• As virus toll preoccupies US, rivals test limits of American power. The coronavirus may have changed almost everything, but it did not change this: global challenges to the United States spin ahead, with America’s adversaries testing the limits and seeing what gains they can make with minimal pushback. A New York Times analysis claims that COVID-19 has not created a new reality as much as it has widened divisions that existed before the pandemic. And with the United States looking inward, preoccupied by the fear of more viral waves, unemployment soaring over 20% and nationwide protests ignited by deadly police brutality, its competitors are moving to fill the vacuum, and quickly.

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News you may have missed #902

June 6, 2020 by Leave a comment

asio australia• Australian spy agency seeks expanded powers. The Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) says it needs expanded powers to question suspected foreign spies and their helpers, because there are more currently operating in the country than at the height of the Cold War. A bill introduced to parliament this month would expand ASIO’s existing powers to subject people to compulsory questioning, which it has used 16 times since 2003 but only for terrorism-related intelligence gathering. “The threats posed today by espionage and foreign interference operate at a scale, breadth and ambition that has not previously been seen in Australia”, ASIO says in its submission to parliament.
• US Intelligence Community seeks new COIVD-19 tracking tools. In a call issued last week, the US Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Agency, or IARPA, said it is seeking new tools for rapidly diagnosing COVID in people with and without symptoms, via contact-less methods such as breath analysis. IARPA, which operates as the US Intelligence Community’s search lab, says it is also seeking tools for contact tracing among populations without mobile phones, via the Internet-of-things or other means -and do it while preserving privacy.
• Why printers add secret tracking dots. These “microdots” are well known to security researchers and civil liberties campaigners. Many color printers add them to documents without people ever knowing they’re there. There is a long-running debate over whether it is ethical for printers to be attaching this information to documents without users knowing. In fact, there has even been a suggestion that it is a violation of human rights. Still, many believe that the use of covert measures to ensure the secrecy of classified documents remains necessary in some cases.

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News you may have missed #901

May 31, 2020 by Leave a comment

Michal Garbovitz• US Army already looking to future pandemics. While still in the midst of the COVID-19 crisis, the US Army is already thinking ahead about the impacts of future pandemics and how they will affect the service, according to the head of Army Futures Command. General John Murray, Futures Command’s commanding general, said on May 27 that “The chances of this happening again are not zero for sure”. “It’s demographics, it’s urbanization, it’s economies, it’s pandemics,” he said during a teleconference with reporters hosted by George Washington University’s Project for Media and National Security.
• The sex worker who spied for Israel’s pre-state militia. Once a disregarded sex worker, today Michal Garbovitz is hailed for aiding the Haganah, a Jewish paramilitary organization in British-Mandate Palestine between 1920 and 1948. Described in contemporary accounts as a “good-looking and handsome” woman, Garbovitz was estranged by her Jewish family for fraternizing with Arabs. However, during the Arab Revolt of 1936-39 against the Mandatory forces, she “exploited her contacts with Arabs and British police officers to extract vital information and transfer it to the Haganah”.
• Should COVID-19 status be a protected classification? People who have recovered from COVID-19 already face significant disadvantages, even if they have fully recuperated from the virus. For instance, the military announced several weeks ago that recovering from COVID-19 would be a permanently disqualifying condition for entrance into the armed services. Although the military later clarified that such a disqualification would only apply to individuals hospitalized because of COVID-19, many people who have recovered from the virus will face obstacles to joining the military due to these restrictions.

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News you may have missed #900

May 30, 2020 by Leave a comment

Marco Rubio• China may set up Hong Kong spy agency under new law. China’s new national security legislation may be used to establish a domestic intelligence agency in Hong Kong similar to the British colonial-era’s Special Branch, according the territory’s former leader Leung Chun Ying. Leung’s comments could give weight to concern among some Hong Kongers and Western governments that national security legislation will herald a new era of political surveillance and law enforcement controlled from the mainland.
• Islamic State is back and this time the west is ill-prepared to take it on. Hassan Hassan, of the Center for Global Policy, and co-author of ISIS: Inside the Army of Terror, argues that “the current trends seem more favourable to the Islamic State than to local forces in Iraq”. Additionally, “tensions between the US and Iraqi forces also make it harder for the two partners to work in harmony as they did during the fight against Isis in places like Mosul”.
• New Senate intelligence committee director warns against virus conspiracies. Senator Marco Rubio (pictured), the new Republican chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, has warned that foreign actors will seek to amplify conspiracy theories about the coronavirus and find new ways to interfere in the 2020 presidential election. The Florida Republican said in an interview with The Associated Press on Tuesday that one possibility could be an effort to convince people that a new vaccine against the virus, once created, would be more harmful than helpful.

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News you may have missed #899

May 24, 2020 by Leave a comment

Kevin Rudd• Dutch spies helped Britain break Argentine crypto during Falklands War. Flowing from revelations made earlier this year that Swiss cipher machine company Crypto AG was owned by the CIA and its German counterpart the BND during most of the Cold War, an academic paper has described the Maximator alliance which grew from the Crypto AG compromise. Authored by Professor Bart Jacobs of Radboud University Nijmegen in the Netherlands, the article argues that Dutch spies operating as a part of the Maximator alliance helped Britain’s GCHQ break Argentinian codes during the Falklands War.
• The Pandemic’s Geopolitical Aftershocks Are Coming. With most European countries confident that they are past the worst of the coronavirus pandemic, their attention is turning to the chance of its resurgence once society returns to some semblance of normal. But beyond the epidemiological challenges lies a slowly amassing threat that is not pathological in nature, but economic, political, and military. This is the geopolitical second wave, and its power is already starting to concern Western leaders.
• The coming post-COVID anarchy. The former prime minister of Australia, Kevin Rudd (pictured), argues in this article that “China and the United States are both likely to emerge from this crisis significantly diminished […]. Both powers will be weakened, at home and abroad”, he opines. And he goes on to suggest that “the result will be a continued slow but steady drift toward international anarchy across everything from international security to trade to pandemic management […]. The chaotic nature of national and global responses to the pandemic thus stands as a warning of what could come on an even broader scale”.

Author: Ian Allen | Date: 24 May 2020 | Permalink

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News you may have missed #898

May 23, 2020 by Leave a comment

Félicien Kabuga• Major suspect in Rwanda genocide arrested in France using fake identity. Félicien Kabuga (pictured), one of the most wanted suspects of the Rwandan genocide, was arrested last week in a dawn raid in Asnières-sur-Seine, near Paris, where he had been living under a false identity. The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda accuses him of having been the main financier of the ethnic Hutu extremists who slaughtered 800,000 people in 1994. The United States had offered a $5 million reward for information leading to his arrest.
• US and Afghan officials disagree over whether Taliban or ISIS was behind hospital massacre. Afghan officials on Friday blamed the Taliban for a bloody attack on a maternity hospital in the capital, Kabul, this week, rejecting a US assertion that it was carried out by ISIS militants. The Taliban, who struck a deal with the United States in February clearing the way for the withdrawal of U.S. troops and the end of America’s longest war, denied responsibility.
• Thousands defer plans to leave the US military during coronavirus crisis. Across the US military, uncertainty about future jobs or college opportunities is driving more service members to re-enlist or at least postpone their scheduled departures. As unemployment, layoffs and a historic economic downturn grip the nation, the military —with its job security, steady paycheck and benefits— is looking much more appealing. The influx of people re-enlisting will offset any shortfalls in recruiting, which has been hampered by the outbreak. And that will help the services meet their total required troop levels for the end of the year.

Author: Ian Allen | Date: 23 May 2020 | Permalink

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