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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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Iran factory blast coincides with reported bomb attack on Ahmadinejad

August 6, 2010 by intelNews 3 Comments

Ahmadinejad

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Official Iranian denials of an alleged bomb attack on the life of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Wednesday have been followed by reports of a simultaneous attack on a state-of-the-art Iranian petrochemicals complex. Specifically, on August 4, Reuters news agency cited an Iranian “presidential office source” in reporting a strong blast “500 meters from Ahmadinejad’s motorcade”. The blast, which Reuters attributed to either a hand grenade or a homemade explosive device, occurred as the Iranian President was being transported from the regional airport of Hamadan, in western Iran, to the city’s sports complex, where he was scheduled to deliver a speech. Reuters’ unnamed source said the President escaped unhurt, but subsequent reports indicated that several other passengers on the motorcade were injured. Interestingly, President Ahmadinejad’s office initially appeared to confirm the assassination attempt, but soon afterwards official state news agency IRNA attributed the blast on “an excited young man from Hamadan [who] exploded a firecracker in order to express his happiness”. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #373 (CIA edition)

June 11, 2010 by intelNews 2 Comments

CIA forerunner’s sabotage manual released. Here is the Simple Sabotage Field Manual (.pdf) of the Office of Strategic Services (wartime forerunner of the CIA), dating from 1944. Via Bruce Schneier’s blog.
CIA misread South Korea signs, documents show. Declassified CIA documents on South Korea show that the US spy agency was surprised by the 1979 assassination of dictator Pak Chung Hee, by his intelligence chief, did not anticipate the ensuring military coup d’etat, and dismissed the growing unrest that eventually led to a near-civil war in the country.
Ex-CIA top official’s op-ed supports Miranda rights. In an op-ed in The Washington Post, Philip Mudd, a former senior official at the CIA and the FBI, argues that reading terrorist suspects their Miranda rights has never impeded an intelligence investigation.

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News you may have missed #368 (Gaza flotilla edition V)

June 3, 2010 by intelNews 6 Comments

Israelis sabotaged flotilla ships before departure. Israel gave strong indications today that its forces had secretly sabotaged some of the ships bound for Gaza as part of the Gaza Freedom Flotilla. Comments to that effect by Israeli deputy defense minister Matan Vilnai appeared to dovetail with reports that two of the vessels malfunctioned at the same time and in the same way.
Activist website downed before Israeli attack on flotilla. The online home of the Humanitarian Aid Foundation (İHH), one of the organizers of a convoy of six aid vessels bound for the Gaza Strip, was hit by a denial-of-service (DoS) attack moments before the Israel military brutally attacked the convoy in international waters on Monday.

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Author gets subpoenaed to reveal CIA sources

April 30, 2010 by intelNews Leave a comment

James Risen

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
The US government has issued a subpoena against a journalist who authored a book on the CIA’s operations during the years of the Bush administration. The move has surprised many, because the book in question, State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration, by New York Times journalist James Risen, has been out since 2006. The subpoena, which Risen received last Monday, requests him to testify before a grand jury about his confidential sources for chapter 9 of his book (pages 193-218), entitled “A Rogue Operation”, in which he describes in relative detail an attempt by the CIA to sabotage the Iranian nuclear weapons program. In the chapter, Risen writes of a thwarted CIA operation to pass to the Iranians a series of faulty nuclear bomb design documents. To do this, the Agency apparently recruited a Russian former nuclear scientist, who had defected to the United States. The unnamed scientist was told to travel to Vienna, Austria, in early 2000, and offer to sell the documents to the Iranians. Read more of this post

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News you may have missed #0039

July 24, 2009 by intelNews Leave a comment

Russians suspect sabotage behind ICBM test failure. The FSB is investigating the reasons behind the test failure earlier this month of a Russian Navy Bulava-30 (SS-NX-30) sea-based intercontinental ballistic missile, which disintegrated 28 seconds after launch. The Russian Navy developed the ICBM specifically to avoid future US ballistic missile defenses.
CIA kept bin Laden son’s death secret for months. US officials think that Saad bin Laden was killed in a Predator drone strike earlier this year in Pakistan, but CIA has tried to keep the news secret, allegedly in an attempt to confuse al-Qaeda. You may recall that some time ago intelNews reported that some in US intelligence believed Saad had been given government protection in Iran.
US DNI sees signs of North Korean succession. The Open Source Center of the US Directorate of National Intelligence adds its voice to widespread speculation that Kim Jong il may be preparing to hand power to his third son, Kim Jong Un.

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Intelligence sources say US electric grid hacked by foreign spies

April 9, 2009 by intelNews Leave a comment

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
In yesterday’s edition, The Wall Street Journal quoted senior US intelligence sources, including former Homeland Security Department officials, who said that foreign spies have penetrated the electronic infrastructure of America’s electrical supply grid. The officials said the hackers, who have reportedly been traced to Russia and China, among other countries, do not currently appear intent on disrupting the system. Instead, they seem to be “on a mission to navigate [and map] the US electrical system and its controls”, allegedly so that they can sabotage it “during a crisis or war”. Interestingly, the discovery was reportedly made not by utility company technicians, but by US intelligence agents engaged in monitoring cyber-intrusions into the nation’s electronic infrastructure. Read more of this post