Posts

Showing posts from September 2, 2018

Basra airport targeted by rocket fire as violent protests grip Iraq

Iraqi security sources said three Katyusha rockets fired by unknown assailants had hit the perimeter of the airport, although no damage or casualties had been reported Reuters Basra airport was targeted by rocket fire on Saturday after another night of protests against Iraq’s political elite during which demonstrators torched the Iranian consulate and briefly took oilfield workers hostage. Iraqi security sources said three Katyusha rockets fired by unknown assailants had hit the perimeter of the airport, although no damage or casualties had been reported. The U.S. consulate is adjacent to Basra’s airport. An official at the Iraqi airport said there was no disruption to operations, and flights were taking off and landing as normal. The attack came shortly after a citywide curfew was lifted and hours after the reopening of Iraq’s main seaport of Umm Qasr where protesters had blocked the port’s entrance, forcing a halt to all operations. Basra’s streets were quiet and emptyi

'Islamic State' Militant Shot Dead by Unidentified Gunmen in Srinagar

According to police Asif Nazir Darl, a resident of Awantipora, was killed on being fired upon in Hazratbal, Srinagar and a pistol was also recovered from the spot. Srinagar:  A militant, apparently belonging to Islamic State in Jammu and Kashmir (IS-JK), was shot dead by unidentified gunmen here in the summer capital of Jammu and Kashmir on Saturday, police said. "An Individual was today (Saturday) killed when he was fired upon in Hazratbal area of Srinagar district. A pistol was also recovered from the spot. Consequently he was identified as Asif Nazir Dar, a resident of Panzgam area of Awantipora (in south Kashmir's Pulwama district)," a police spokesman said. He said the Dar was active since January 2017. "Initially he had joined the proscribed terror outfit HM (Hizbul Mujahideen) but later got associated with the Eisa Fazili group of terrorists," the spokesman said. He said police have registered a case in this regard and the investigation has been initia

Delhi police nabs two terror suspects related to Islamic State near Red Fort

Image
The two accused were identified as Parvez Ahmad Lone (24) and Jamshed (19), both belonging to Shopian, Jammu and Kashmir . Terror suspects Parwez and Jamshed. ( Express Photo) The Delhi Police Special Cell on Friday nabbed two terror suspects from the Inter-State Bus Terminus at Kashmiri Gate, near Red Fort on charges of transporting weapons to the Islamic State in Jammu and Kashmir (ISJK). The two youths were enroute to Kashmir after procuring sophisticated weapons from Amroha District in Uttar Pradesh under directions from the top level operatives from ISJK, police claimed. “ We recovered two sophisticated pistols and ten cartridges that the two accused were taken to Kashmir. Delhi was the transit point they used to supply the weapons,” said Deputy Commissioner of Police (special cell) PS Kushwaha. The two accused were identified as Parvez Ahmad Lone (24) and Jamshed (19), both belonging to Shopian, Jammu and Kashmir. The police claimed that they have recovered four mobile ph

25-year-old Indian Banker Among Three Killed in Cincinnati Bank Shooting

Pruthviraj Kandepi was killed when 29-year-old Omar Enrique Santa Perez opened fire at the headquarters for the Fifth Third Bank, where the deceased worked. New York:  A 25-year-old Indian man was among three people killed when a gunman opened fire in a bank building in the US city of Cincinnati before police shot him dead on Thursday.  Pruthviraj Kandepi, who hailed from Guntur district of Andhra Pradesh, was killed when 29-year-old Omar Enrique Santa Perez from the town of North Bend, Ohio, opened fire at the headquarters for the Fifth Third Bank near Fountain Square in downtown Cincinnati, police said.   India's Consul General in New York Ambassador Sandeep Chakravorty told PTI that the Consulate is in touch with the police, Kandepi's family as well as members of the community. An official of the Telugu Association of North America (TANA) said that Kandepi was working with the bank as a consultant. Arrangements were being made to send his body to India, he added.  The oth

Cyber Security In The Cloud: Are You ‘Flying Blind’?

Today’s  cloud-powered enterprises need to gain visibility of threats beyond the network perimeter and implement  As revealed by a recent  Bitglass study  of 135,000 companies around the world, cloud adoption has reached an all-time high. 81% of organisations now use cloud apps – up from 59% in 2016 and just 24% in 2014. As this momentum for cloud computing continues to build, relying upon traditional IT security strategies means ‘flying blind’ in the cloud. In a survey of  over 570 cybersecurity  and IT security leaders, 84% of respondents admitted that conventional security tools couldn’t adequately protect data in the cloud. Unfortunately, a mere 44% of respondents had visibility over external sharing and data leakage policy violations; additionally, only 15% had solutions capable of detecting abnormal user behaviours across cloud applications. In a world where employees are performing more and more of their work in the cloud and outside of corporate headquarters, it’s time

US puts Mali al-Qaida affiliate on terrorism blacklist

The Trump administration has put al-Qaida affiliate in the west African nation of Mali on its terrorism blacklist. The State Department said Wednesday it had added Jama'at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin, or JNIM, to its list of foreign terrorist organizations. The step freezes any assets it may have in U.S. jurisdictions and bars American from doing business with it or providing the group with any material support. Mali has faced a wave of violence by groups linked to al-Qaida and Tuareg separatist rebels since 2012, and JNIM has emerged as a leader of extremist violence since it was formed in 2017. It carried out a June 2017 attack at a resort frequented by Westerners in Mali as well as large-scale coordinated attacks in Burkina Faso in March of this year. Source:  http://www.foxnews.com/us/2018/09/05/us-puts-mali-al-qaida-affiliate-on-terrorism-blacklist.html

For 2nd Time in 3 Years, Mobile Spyware Maker mSpy Leaks Millions of Sensitive Records

Image
mSpy , the makers of a software-as-a-service product that claims to help more than a million paying customers spy on the mobile devices of their kids and partners, has leaked millions of sensitive records online, including passwords, call logs, text messages, contacts, notes and location data secretly collected from phones running the stealthy spyware. Less than a week ago, security researcher  Nitish Shah  directed KrebsOnSecurity to an open database on the Web that allowed anyone to query up-to-the-minute mSpy records for both customer transactions at mSpy’s site and for mobile phone data collected by mSpy’s software. The database required no authentication. A list of data points that can be slurped from a mobile device that is secretly running mSpy’s software. Before it was taken offline sometime in the past 12 hours, the database contained millions of records, including the username, password and private encryption key of each mSpy customer who logged in to the mSpy site or

Indonesia And The Fight Against Terrorism

Over the last decade, many people in the international community have reportedly asked how Indonesia, a country with the largest population of Muslims (255 million in 2016), has successfully dealt with terrorism relative to other countries in the Muslim world. Although South East Asia and Indonesia in particular, have been in the grip of terrorist attacks, nevertheless, such violence has not reached the scale or persistence of terrorist violence in the Middle East and North Africa. As the international community grapples with the problem of religion-inspired terrorism, experts, academics, and pundits have identified Indonesia as a country from which the world can learn lessons about how to defeat terrorists and build a true democracy. Some analysts have opined that the success story and giant strides of Indonesia can be attributed to a deliberate government action, restraint, resilience and existing social, economic, and political factors that have relentlessly coalesced to stem the

Cybersecurity: A Major Concern And A Great Business Opportunity

Image
Getty Connectivity through the Internet has yielded businesses everywhere tremendous productivity and profitability opportunities. The hitch in this otherwise welcome world is great vulnerability to cyberattacks. The same electronic avenue that makes business more profitable and life so convenient and easy also enables those who would disrupt and frequently steal.  Since this evil has grown along with this otherwise marvelous structure, spending on cybersecurity has skyrocketed, bringing many legitimate business opportunities with it. Even without statistics, just the accumulated memories of headlines should convince anyone that cybersecurity incidents have exploded. Global business recorded almost 23 million significant security breaches in 2011. By 2013, the number approached 30 million, a 12.8% annualized growth. Since, the number of incidents has accelerated, growing over 33% a year on average. Though data are spotty for this year, the number of such incidents is on tra

House reaffirms Indonesia's attitude regarding Rohingnya crisis

Jakarta (ANTARA News) - House Speaker Bambang Soesatyo reaffirmed Indonesia`s attitude toward the Rohingya humanitarian crisis in Myanmar, which needed immediate settlement. "If not resolved properly, Rohingya`s humanitarian problem is feared to disrupt the stability in the ASEAN region," the House Speaker said in a press statement. Soesatyo, who is popularly called Bamsoet, made the statement during a meeting with Singapore`s President Halimah Yacob, and the chairmen of parliament of the ASEAN Inter-Parliamentary Assembly (AIPA) at the Singapore Presidential Palace in Singapore on Wednesday. The chairmen of the parliaments of Singapore, Myanmar, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Brunei Darussalam, Philippines, and Indonesia attended the meeting. On this occasion, Bamsoet invited ASEAN member countries to help find the best solution for the humanitarian crisis in Myanmar. "If this problem is not resolved immediately, it is feared to disrupt ASEAN`

Expert panel calls for sweeping election security measures

Image
A woman voting at an electronic voting machine station, Photo Date: Mar 27, 2006 / Cropped Photo: Joebeone / Wikipedia / CC BY 2.5 / (MGN) BOSTON (AP) —  An expert panel of the National Academy of Sciences called for fundamental reforms to ensure the integrity of the U.S. election system, which is handicapped by antiquated technology and under stress from foreign destabilization efforts. The cautiously worded report calls for conducting all federal, state and local elections on paper ballots by 2020. Its other top recommendation would require nationwide use of a specific form of routine postelection audit to ensure votes have been accurately counted. The panel did not offer a price tag for its recommended overhaul. New York University's Brennan Center has estimated that replacing aging voting machines over the next few years could cost well over $1 billion. "The extraordinary threat from foreign actors has profound implications for the future of voting and obliges

Facebook ‘terrorism’ definition ‘overly broad’, says UN expert

Image
A UN rights expert says Facebook’s definition of ‘terrorism’ may lead to discriminatory implementation and over-censoring. (Reuters pic) GENEVA: Facebook’s definition of what constitutes “terrorism” is “overly broad” and risks leading to censorship and the arbitrary denial of access to its services, a UN rights expert warned Monday. The UN Special Rapporteur on promoting and protecting human rights while countering terrorism has written to Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg to express concern about the company’s efforts to block “terrorists” from using its platform, according to a statement. “The use of overly broad and imprecise definitions as the basis for regulating access to and the use of Facebook’s platform may lead to discriminatory implementation, over-censoring and arbitrary denial of access to and use of Facebook’s services,” Fionnuala Ni Aolain warned. Facebook’s definition, she said, equates all non-state groups that use violence in pursuit of any goals or ends to terr

North Korean charged over WannaCry cyber attack

Image
Charged: Park Jin Hyok  ( PA ) A  North Korean  computer programmer has been charged over the  WannaCry  cyber attack that hit NHS trusts across the UK. Park Jin Hyok is accused of participating in the attacks on multiple victims in the entertainment and financial sectors across the globe.  It comes after an international investigation by authorities including the UK’s National Crime Agency (NCA), Europol and the FBI. Dozens of UK hospitals were disrupted when the attack took place last May, as well as organisations in more than 100 other countries. Park was charged by the US justice department. The " WannaCry " attack paralysed computers running Britain's hospital network, Germany's national railway and scores of other companies and government agencies around the world (AP) Steve Rodhouse, NCA director general of operations, said: "The collaboration between UK and US law enforcement has been strong and effective and these charges show that

Malaysian Al Qaeda scientist who tried to produce WMD to be released from jail next year

KUALA LUMPUR: A Malaysian scientist who once led Al Qaeda’s quest to produce weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in Afghanistan will be released from prison next year, according to Malaysian police, who warn that he remains a security risk. Yazid Sufaat, 54, an Al Qaeda operative who helped set up a laboratory in Kandahar, Afghanistan where he tried to cultivate anthrax, has been jailed three times by Malaysian authorities for terror-related offences in the past 16 years. “He (Yazid) will be released in the middle of next year,” Ayob Khan Mydin Pitchay, head of Malaysian police's Special Branch counterterrorism division, told the International Association for Counterterrorism and Security Professionals (IACSP) on Monday (Aug 27). The Special Branch is the intelligence arm of the Royal Malaysian Police and the leading agency in counter-terrorism operations in the country. Yazid, a former army captain, was detained for eight years under the Internal Security Act (ISA) between

More and more banks take insurance route to ease the impact of cyberattacks

MUMBAI: Demand for  insurance  against online frauds is rising steeply and likely to spike further after the personal data protection laws are in place. Having paid heavily for  cyberattacks  like the one on  Cosmos Co-operative Bank , lenders are buying higher insurance cover. When most private sector banks are incuring $10-50 million, one public sector bank bought a cover of $100 million.  The number of cases are also on the rise. Last year, around 3,000 online banking frauds took place. According to industry estimates, one cyberattack happens every 10 minutes with most cybercrimes reported in Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh.  “Indian companies are increasingly seen opting for cyber insurance to get aspects like forensic costs, cyber extortion costs and other first-party expenses covered,” said Manoj Kumar AS, senior vice-president, Global Insurance Brokers. “There has been a growth in the number of policies by almost 25% cumulatively over the past four years and we expect this figure