Islam - Current Day > Islamists Kill 4 Cops, Injure 100s in Pakistan; Car-burning Starts Again in France; Hackers Close All Gas Stations in Iran

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Pakistan will treat banned Islamist party as militant group,

govt says as 4 police officers killed, hundreds injured in clashes

27 Oct, 2021 17:26

FILE PHOTO: Supporters of the banned Islamist political TLP party run during a protest in Lahore, Pakistan,

on October 23, 2021. ©  Reuters / Mohsin Raza

At least four police officers have been killed and hundreds more injured in massive clashes that erupted in Pakistan's north-eastern Punjab province, as law enforcement sought to stop an Islamist protest march on Islamabad.

Punjab's Chief Minister Usman Buzdar confirmed casualties on Twitter on Wednesday, saying at least four officers had been killed and over 250 people injured. There, law enforcement faced fierce resistance from the members and supporters of the banned Islamist Tehreek-i-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP) party as the police sought to disperse their march on the capital.

The TLP orchestrated the protests, demanding the release of one of its leaders, Hafiz Saad Hussain Rizvi, who has been in custody since April. On Wednesday, it also accused the government of "lying" about an agreement supposedly reached with the party to end the demonstrations.

Other demands included "respect for the Holy Prophet" Mohammed and the expulsion of France's ambassador to Pakistan over the publication of "blasphemous" cartoons of the prophet by French satirical outlet, Charlie Hebdo.

TLP members and their supporters used submachine guns, AK-47 assault rifles and pistols against the police, a Punjab police spokesman told Reuters.

Pakistan's Interior Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed confirmed at a press conference that at least three officers were killed and 70 injured in the clashes, adding that eight are now in critical condition. He also said that he was sending the Rangers – a federal paramilitary force – to Punjab, adding that the local government may use the unit "wherever it wants."

Federal Information Minister Fawad Chaudhry said on Wednesday that the government would from now on treat the party, banned in April, as a militant group and not a political force. "There is a limit to the state's patience," he said, adding that, although everyone has a right to express their ideas, no one can take up arms if these ideas are not heard.

"No one should make the mistake of thinking that the state is weak. Those who made this mistake later realized they were wrong," Chaudry said, adding that Islamabad "will not tolerate those who challenge the writ of the state."

The information minister also said that the government does not want "blood to be spilled," and blamed the violence on the TLP.

Party members, meanwhile, told Reuters that some of their activists had also been killed and injured by the police. The group also accused Rashid Ahmed of "lying" about settling all the matters with the party, adding that no government officials had contacted them.

On Tuesday, Rashid said the government was willing to consider all the party's demands, bar the French diplomat's expulsion.

Authorities blocked roads leading to Islamabad on Tuesday night in a bid to prevent the marchers from entering the city. According to some Pakistani media, additional police could be deployed to the city and roads might be barricaded with containers and barbed wire.

Founded in 2015, the TLP is known for its hardline stance on Islam. It fiercely opposed any changes to Pakistan's blasphemy law and demanded the nation adopt Sharia as its fundamental law. In 2018, it did not get into the Pakistani parliament but still received the support of more than two million people.

The TLP found itself on a collision course with the government in April 2021 when it organized protests to pressure Islamabad into expelling the French envoy. At that time, one of the party's leaders – Rizvi – was arrested by the Punjab government to maintain "public order." Several people, including police officers, were killed during the April unrest, though tensions eased after the government reportedly agreed to take the issue of the ambassador's expulsion to the national assembly.

Though banned in April, the TLP was still allowed to contest elections. The government has engaged in talks with the party, which continues to demand the release of its leader and of another 1,400 activists. It also demanded the party ban be lifted and that the French envoy deported.

Of course, French media would not indicate that this was a Muslim-led riot, but no other demographic would start a riot because a drug dealer got arrested.

15 vehicles torched in night of violence in Alencon, France

after teen's arrest for allegedly dealing drugs

27 Oct, 2021 15:56

© Twitter / @NicolasBay_

Over a dozen vehicles were left burnt out on Tuesday night in France's Alençon and police and firefighters came under fire from incendiaries and other projectiles, after a 16-year-old was arrested on suspicion of selling drugs.

A group of some 20 young people took to the streets in the town of Alençon in Normandy, torching cars and attacking emergency-services personnel with an array of projectiles and fireworks.  

"We deplore this night of urban violence in Perseigne, in Alençon, in which there were a dozen vehicles set on fire," Françoise Tahéri, prefect of the Orne district, told BFMTV. Tahéri added that the police intervened quickly to stabilize the situation and were reinforced by gendarmes. 

Firefighters and police officers intervened around midnight, after being notified that several private vehicles had been set on fire. Upon arriving at the scene, they came under fire from around 20 youths positioned in different places around the neighborhood, according to BFMTV. Thirteen gendarmes were sent in as reinforcements, and the clashes concluded around 3:30am.

Tahéri said she was delighted that nobody was injured and praised the intervention of law enforcement. Town major Joaquim Pueyo described the events as "extremely serious." In footage shared online, passing cars can be seen coming under attack from mortars. 

Images posted on social media on Wednesday morning show the extent of the devastation, with numerous burnt-out cars being transported for scrapping. 

The unrest was apparently prompted by the arrest of a 16-year-old boy who was allegedly caught selling drugs to a woman in the area. During a press conference on Wednesday, Tahéri stated the authorities believed the violence was related to Tuesday's arrest of a suspected drug dealer.

Iran’s president claims cyberattackers crippled every gas station

in the country to create ‘disorder’ but fails to assign blame

27 Oct, 2021 14:25

Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi has said a cyberattack targeted every gas station in the country in an attempt to spark anger and create “disorder and disruption,” but he failed to say who the government believes was behind it.

The comments, which were broadcast on Iranian state television, saw the country’s president announce that a cyberattack had crippled every gas station in the republic, making the government-issued cards used by citizens to buy fuel useless.

“There should be serious readiness in the field of cyberwar, and related bodies should not allow the enemy to follow their ominous aims to make problem in the trend of people's life,” Raisi stated, adding that the attack had been aimed at making “people angry by creating disorder and disruption.”

Despite announcing the vast cyberattack on the Islamic Republic, Raisi did not blame a country or group for the incident, though he did indicate that anti-Iranian forces were trying to inflame tensions. A group of hackers did claim responsibility for the attack on the gas stations late on Tuesday, but they have yet to provide any evidence that they were behind it.

Digital systems used for purchasing fuel showed a message reading “cyberattack 64411,” according to reports, bearing similarities to another incident which hit the country’s rail system back in July. The July attack was blamed by Israeli cybersecurity firm Check Point on a group of hackers known as Indra.

Iran has been subjected to multiple cyberattacks in recent times, with an August incident exposing a video that reportedly showed abusive behavior at the country’s Evin prison. Another attack, which saw the Stuxnet computer virus infect devices, forced the government to disconnect infrastructure from the internet while it sought to contain the spread of that cyberattack.

USA Intel Vets Challenge ‘Russia Hack’ Evidence

In a memo to President Trump, a group of former U.S. intelligence officers, including NSA specialists, cite new forensic studies to challenge the claim of the key Jan. 6 “assessment” that Russia “hacked” Democratic emails last year. 

MEMORANDUM FOR: The President

FROM: Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS)

SUBJECT: Was the “Russian Hack” an Inside Job?

Executive Summary

Forensic studies of “Russian hacking” into Democratic National Committee computers last year reveal that on July 5, 2016, data was leaked (not hacked) by a person with physical access to DNC computers, and then doctored to incriminate Russia.

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper (right) talks with President Barack Obama in the Oval Office, with John Brennan and other national security aides present. (Photo credit: Office of Director of National Intelligence)

After examining metadata from the “Guccifer 2.0” July 5, 2016 intrusion into the DNC server, independent cyber investigators have concluded that an insider copied DNC data onto an external storage device, and that “telltale signs” implicating Russia were then inserted.

Key among the findings of the independent forensic investigations is the conclusion that the DNC data was copied onto a storage device at a speed that far exceeds an Internet capability for a remote hack. Of equal importance, the forensics show that the copying and doctoring were performed on the East coast of the U.S. Thus far, mainstream media have ignored the findings of these independent studies [see here and here].

Independent analyst Skip Folden, a retired IBM Program Manager for Information Technology US, who examined the recent forensic findings, is a co-author of this Memorandum. He has drafted a more detailed technical report titled “Cyber-Forensic Investigation of ‘Russian Hack’ and Missing Intelligence Community Disclaimers,” and sent it to the offices of the Special Counsel and the Attorney General. VIPS member William Binney, a former Technical Director at the National Security Agency, and other senior NSA “alumni” in VIPS attest to the professionalism of the independent forensic findings.

The recent forensic studies fill in a critical gap. Why the FBI neglected to perform any independent forensics on the original “Guccifer 2.0” material remains a mystery – as does the lack of any sign that the “hand-picked analysts” from the FBI, CIA, and NSA, who wrote the “Intelligence Community Assessment” dated January 6, 2017, gave any attention to forensics.

NOTE: There has been so much conflation of charges about hacking that we wish to make very clear the primary focus of this Memorandum. We focus specifically on the July 5, 2016 alleged Guccifer 2.0 “hack” of the DNC server. In earlier VIPS memoranda we addressed the lack of any evidence connecting the Guccifer 2.0 alleged hacks and WikiLeaks, and we asked President Obama specifically to disclose any evidence that WikiLeaks received DNC data from the Russians [see here and here].

Addressing this point at his last press conference (January 18), he described “the conclusions of the intelligence community” as “not conclusive,” even though the Intelligence Community Assessment of January 6 expressed “high confidence” that Russian intelligence “relayed material it acquired from the DNC … to WikiLeaks.”

Obama’s admission came as no surprise to us. It has long been clear to us that the reason the U.S. government lacks conclusive evidence of a transfer of a “Russian hack” to WikiLeaks is because there was no such transfer. Based mostly on the cumulatively unique technical experience of our ex-NSA colleagues, we have been saying for almost a year that the DNC data reached WikiLeaks via a copy/leak by a DNC insider (but almost certainly not the same person who copied DNC data on July 5, 2016).

From the information available, we conclude that the same inside-DNC, copy/leak process was used at two different times, by two different entities, for two distinctly different purposes:

-(1) an inside leak to WikiLeaks before Julian Assange announced on June 12, 2016, that he had DNC documents and planned to publish them (which he did on July 22) – the presumed objective being to expose strong DNC bias toward the Clinton candidacy; and

-(2) a separate leak on July 5, 2016, to pre-emptively taint anything WikiLeaks might later publish by “showing” it came from a “Russian hack.”

*  *  *

Mr. President:

This is our first VIPS Memorandum for you, but we have a history of letting U.S. Presidents know when we think our former intelligence colleagues have gotten something important wrong, and why. For example, our first such memorandum, a same-day commentary for President George W. Bush on Colin Powell’s U.N. speech on February 5, 2003, warned that the “unintended consequences were likely to be catastrophic,” should the U.S. attack Iraq and “justify” the war on intelligence that we retired intelligence officers could readily see as fraudulent and driven by a war agenda.

Secretary of State Colin Powell addressed the United Nations on Feb. 5. 2003, citing satellite photos which supposedly proved that Iraq had WMD, but the evidence proved bogus

The January 6 “Intelligence Community Assessment” by “hand-picked” analysts from the FBI, CIA, and NSA seems to fit into the same agenda-driven category. It is largely based on an “assessment,” not supported by any apparent evidence, that a shadowy entity with the moniker “Guccifer 2.0” hacked the DNC on behalf of Russian intelligence and gave DNC emails to WikiLeaks.

The recent forensic findings mentioned above have put a huge dent in that assessment and cast serious doubt on the underpinnings of the extraordinarily successful campaign to blame the Russian government for hacking. The pundits and politicians who have led the charge against Russian “meddling” in the U.S. election can be expected to try to cast doubt on the forensic findings, if they ever do bubble up into the mainstream media. But the principles of physics don’t lie; and the technical limitations of today’s Internet are widely understood. We are prepared to answer any substantive challenges on their merits.

You may wish to ask CIA Director Mike Pompeo what he knows about this. Our own lengthy intelligence community experience suggests that it is possible that neither former CIA Director John Brennan, nor the cyber-warriors who worked for him, have been completely candid with their new director regarding how this all went down.

Copied, Not Hacked

As indicated above, the independent forensic work just completed focused on data copied (not hacked) by a shadowy persona named “Guccifer 2.0.” The forensics reflect what seems to have been a desperate effort to “blame the Russians” for publishing highly embarrassing DNC emails three days before the Democratic convention last July. Since the content of the DNC emails reeked of pro-Clinton bias, her campaign saw an overriding need to divert attention from content to provenance – as in, who “hacked” those DNC emails? The campaign was enthusiastically supported by a compliant “mainstream” media; they are still on a roll.

“The Russians” were the ideal culprit. And, after WikiLeaks editor Julian Assange announced on June 12, 2016, “We have emails related to Hillary Clinton which are pending publication,” her campaign had more than a month before the convention to insert its own “forensic facts” and prime the media pump to put the blame on “Russian meddling.” Mrs. Clinton’s PR chief Jennifer Palmieri has explained how she used golf carts to make the rounds at the convention. She wrote that her “mission was to get the press to focus on something even we found difficult to process: the prospect that Russia had not only hacked and stolen emails from the DNC, but that it had done so to help Donald Trump and hurt Hillary Clinton.”

Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton at the third debate with Republican nominee Donald Trump. (Photo credit: hillaryclinton.com)

Independent cyber-investigators have now completed the kind of forensic work that the intelligence assessment did not do. Oddly, the “hand-picked” intelligence analysts contented themselves with “assessing” this and “assessing” that. In contrast, the investigators dug deep and came up with verifiable evidence from metadata found in the record of the alleged Russian hack.

They found that the purported “hack” of the DNC by Guccifer 2.0 was not a hack, by Russia or anyone else. Rather it originated with a copy (onto an external storage device – a thumb drive, for example) by an insider. The data was leaked after being doctored with a cut-and-paste job to implicate Russia. We do not know who or what the murky Guccifer 2.0 is. You may wish to ask the FBI.

The Time Sequence

June 12, 2016: Assange announces WikiLeaks is about to publish “emails related to Hillary Clinton.”

June 15, 2016: DNC contractor Crowdstrike, (with a dubious professional record and multiple conflicts of interest) announces that malware has been found on the DNC server and claims there is evidence it was injected by Russians.

June 15, 2016: On the same day, “Guccifer 2.0” affirms the DNC statement; claims responsibility for the “hack;” claims to be a WikiLeaks source; and posts a document that the forensics show was synthetically tainted with “Russian fingerprints.”

We do not think that the June 12 & 15 timing was pure coincidence. Rather, it suggests the start of a pre-emptive move to associate Russia with anything WikiLeaks might have been about to publish and to “show” that it came from a Russian hack.

The Key Event

July 5, 2016: In the early evening, Eastern Daylight Time, someone working in the EDT time zone with a computer directly connected to the DNC server or DNC Local Area Network, copied 1,976 MegaBytes of data in 87 seconds onto an external storage device. That speed is many times faster than what is physically possible with a hack.

It thus appears that the purported “hack” of the DNC by Guccifer 2.0 (the self-proclaimed WikiLeaks source) was not a hack by Russia or anyone else, but was rather a copy of DNC data onto an external storage device. Moreover, the forensics performed on the metadata reveal there was a subsequent synthetic insertion – a cut-and-paste job using a Russian template, with the clear aim of attributing the data to a “Russian hack.” This was all performed in the East Coast time zone.

“Obfuscation & De-obfuscation”

Mr. President, the disclosure described below may be related. Even if it is not, it is something we think you should be made aware of in this general connection. On March 7, 2017, WikiLeaks began to publish a trove of original CIA documents that WikiLeaks labeled “Vault 7.” WikiLeaks said it got the trove from a current or former CIA contractor and described it as comparable in scale and significance to the information Edward Snowden gave to reporters in 2013.

No one has challenged the authenticity of the original documents of Vault 7, which disclosed a vast array of cyber warfare tools developed, probably with help from NSA, by CIA’s Engineering Development Group. That Group was part of the sprawling CIA Directorate of Digital Innovation – a growth industry established by John Brennan in 2015.

Scarcely imaginable digital tools – that can take control of your car and make it race over 100 mph, for example, or can enable remote spying through a TV – were described and duly reported in the New York Times and other media throughout March. But the Vault 7, part 3 release on March 31 that exposed the “Marble Framework” program apparently was judged too delicate to qualify as “news fit to print” and was kept out of the Times.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange at a media conference in Copenhagen, Denmark. 

(Photo credit: New Media Days / Peter Erichsen)

The Washington Post’s Ellen Nakashima, it seems, “did not get the memo” in time. Her March 31 article bore the catching (and accurate) headline: “WikiLeaks’ latest release of CIA cyber-tools could blow the cover on agency hacking operations.”

The WikiLeaks release indicated that Marble was designed for flexible and easy-to-use “obfuscation,” and that Marble source code includes a “deobfuscator” to reverse CIA text obfuscation.

More important, the CIA reportedly used Marble during 2016. In her Washington Post report, Nakashima left that out, but did include another significant point made by WikiLeaks; namely, that the obfuscation tool could be used to conduct a “forensic attribution double game” or false-flag operation because it included test samples in Chinese, Russian, Korean, Arabic and Farsi.

The CIA’s reaction was neuralgic. Director Mike Pompeo lashed out two weeks later, calling Assange and his associates “demons,” and insisting, “It’s time to call out WikiLeaks for what it really is, a non-state hostile intelligence service, often abetted by state actors like Russia.”

Mr. President, we do not know if CIA’s Marble Framework, or tools like it, played some kind of role in the campaign to blame Russia for hacking the DNC. Nor do we know how candid the denizens of CIA’s Digital Innovation Directorate have been with you and with Director Pompeo. These are areas that might profit from early White House review.

Putin and the Technology

We also do not know if you have discussed cyber issues in any detail with President Putin. In his interview with NBC’s Megyn Kelly, he seemed quite willing – perhaps even eager – to address issues related to the kind of cyber tools revealed in the Vault 7 disclosures, if only to indicate he has been briefed on them. Putin pointed out that today’s technology enables hacking to be “masked and camouflaged to an extent that no one can understand the origin” [of the hack] … And, vice versa, it is possible to set up any entity or any individual that everyone will think that they are the exact source of that attack.”

“Hackers may be anywhere,” he said. “There may be hackers, by the way, in the United States who very craftily and professionally passed the buck to Russia. Can’t you imagine such a scenario? … I can.”

Full Disclosure: Over recent decades the ethos of our intelligence profession has eroded in the public mind to the point that agenda-free analysis is deemed well nigh impossible. Thus, we add this disclaimer, which applies to everything we in VIPS say and do: We have no political agenda; our sole purpose is to spread truth around and, when necessary, hold to account our former intelligence colleagues.

We speak and write without fear or favor. Consequently, any resemblance between what we say and what presidents, politicians and pundits say is purely coincidental. The fact we find it is necessary to include that reminder speaks volumes about these highly politicized times. This is our 50th VIPS Memorandum since the afternoon of Powell’s speech at the UN. Live links to the 49 past memos can be found at https://consortiumnews.com/vips-memos/.

FOR THE STEERING GROUP, VETERAN INTELLIGENCE PROFESSIONALS FOR SANITY

William Binney, former NSA Technical Director for World Geopolitical & Military Analysis; Co-founder of NSA’s Signals Intelligence Automation Research Center

Skip Folden, independent analyst, retired IBM Program Manager for Information Technology US (Associate VIPS)

Matthew Hoh, former Capt., USMC, Iraq & Foreign Service Officer, Afghanistan (associate VIPS)

Larry C Johnson, CIA & State Department (ret.)

Michael S. Kearns, Air Force Intelligence Officer (Ret.), Master SERE Resistance to Interrogation Instructor

John Kiriakou, Former CIA Counterterrorism Officer and former Senior Investigator, Senate Foreign Relations Committee

Linda Lewis, WMD preparedness policy analyst, USDA (ret.)

Lisa Ling, TSgt USAF (ret.) (associate VIPS)

Edward Loomis, Jr., former NSA Technical Director for the Office of Signals Processing

David MacMichael, National Intelligence Council (ret.)

Ray McGovern, former U.S. Army Infantry/Intelligence officer and CIA analyst

Elizabeth Murray, former Deputy National Intelligence Officer for Middle East, CIA

Coleen Rowley, FBI Special Agent and former Minneapolis Division Legal Counsel (ret.)

Cian Westmoreland, former USAF Radio Frequency Transmission Systems Technician and Unmanned Aircraft Systems whistleblower (Associate VIPS)

Kirk Wiebe, former Senior Analyst, SIGINT Automation Research Center, NSA

Sarah G. Wilton, Intelligence Officer, DIA (ret.); Commander, US Naval Reserve (ret.)

Ann Wright, U.S. Army Reserve Colonel (ret) and former U.S. Diplomat

Murder Leads to Fears of Another Rigged Election in Kenya

Kenyan election manager Chris Msando

found dead days before election

By Ed Adamczyk

The body of Chris Msando, IT manager of Kenya's Information and Boundaries Commission and spokesman for Kenya's electronic voting system, was found dead on Saturday, days before a presidential election. Screenshot courtesy of IEBC

UPI -- A co-developer of Kenya's allegedly hackproof voting system was found dead with one arm cut off, police said, days before a federal election.

Chris Msando, information technology director for the Kenyan government's regulatory agency known as the Independent Electrical and Boundaries Commission, had been missing since Friday. His body, and that of an unidentified woman, was found on the outskirts of Nairobi, the capital, on Saturday.

In anticipation of an Aug. 9 presidential election, expected to be a close contest between incumbent Uhuru Kenyatta and challenger Raila Odinga, Msando was a frequent guest on Kenyan media. He aimed to assure voters that IEBC's new electronic voting machines could not be hacked or that vote counts could not be duplicated. Msando was one of the few people in Kenya who knew the location of the IEBC's servers.

Problems with electronic voting in the closely contested 2013 election led to accusations the vote was rigged. Over 1,200 people died in ethnic, post-election violence in 2007.

Big-Time Spy Thriller Playing Out in Public in Russia

Russia charges four top intelligence officials

with treason

By Eric DuVall 

Russian President Vladimir Putin's government arrested four top intelligence officials and charged

them with treason. U.S. analysts speculated the treason charges could be in response to Russian

cooperation with an investigation by U.S. officials into whether Russia intentionally meddled in

the presidential election on behalf of Donald Trump. Photo by Sergei Ilnitsky/EPA

Jan. 28 (UPI) -- The Russian government arrested four men for treason after an investigation that U.S. intelligence officials speculated was in response to their own inquiry about Russia's hacking of the U.S. presidential election.

The men arrested include three high profile leaders of its intelligence agency and a contractor working for the cyber security office of the Russian national intelligence agency FSB, the successor to the KGB.

U.S. officials said they could not be certain whether the arrests are in response to U.S. officials citing with "high confidence" that Russia intentionally interfered with the election to help Donald Trump win. However, for Director of National Intelligence James Clapper to make the proclamation the U.S. government is as close to certain as it can be of Russia's role in hacking Democratic groups and Hillary Clinton's campaign, it likely would require human intelligence in addition to Russia's electronic fingerprints.

If the United States did obtain confirmation about Russian hacking from a mole inside the FSB, it would have had to been a source high up in the power structure because knowledge of such an operation would likely not have spread beyond the senior-most officials there.

U.S. analysts cautioned it was also possible the FSB was using the existence of a potential leak to the United States as cover to purge itself of members involved in an internal power struggle.

Though the reason for the arrests remains unclear, one thing appears certain: The Russian government wanted news of the charges to become public. As opposed to handling the matter internally, the arrests were reported almost simultaneously by multiple Russian media outlets on Thursday.

Russian officials went so far as to arrest one of the suspects, Sergei Mikhailov, a deputy director of the Center for Information Security, in a scene that could have been torn out of a spy novel. They barged into a meeting between senior intelligence officials, put a bag over Mikhailov's head and hauled him out of the room, according to multiple accounts in the Russian media.

The arrests are believed to have taken place in early December, just days after the U.S. intelligence report was published.

Analysts told The New York Times there could be several reasons the Kremlin would want the information public. If the arrests are indeed tied to the U.S. intelligence report, it would be a tacit acknowledgment Russia successfully meddled in a U.S. presidential election -- a way to take credit and show other foreign governments the Kremlin has the ability to do so again. Analysts also speculated a public treason trial could serve as a venue to air more potentially damaging information gleaned about the United States -- and new President Donald Trump -- without using back channels such as the website WikiLeaks to make it public.

Or, it could be a way for Putin to distance himself from the mess. Who knows. But it should be fun finding out.

Anonymous Hijacked by Anti-Israeli Mob

Cyber attack on Israeli targets expected for tomorrow

Israeli security forces are reinforcing protective measures in preparation for a cyber attack, which the hacker group “Anonymous” claims it will carry out tomorrow against Israeli and Jewish targets online.

Apr 06, 2015, 04:24PM | Tom Dolev
Israel News

Smartphones and tablets will also be targeted 

Photo Credit: Reuters / Channel 2 News

Based on the claims of the “Anonymous” group, tomorrow (Tuesday) Israeli and Jewish online sites are expected to be under a heavy online attack lead by pro-Palestinian hackers.

The frequent cyber threat on Israeli targets is expected to intensify tomorrow, according to the announcement by pro-Palestinian groups and hackers that an integrated and timed attack will take place tomorrow on the virtual scene.

For the past few days, the Israel Security Agency (Shin Bet) and National Cyber Bureau have been preparing for the attack, which is expected to also target smartphones and tablets, in addition to Israeli government and military offices. Initial signs of the online attack were recorded several days ago, as the official website of the “Meretz” party was vandalized.

“The attacks focus on organizations identified with the target country, whether because they provide services to it or whether they are bodies representing the government,” explained “2BSecure” CEO, Alon Mantsur. “The declared goal is to try and damage Israeli websites by harming secrecy, availability or the completeness of information, and thus disrupting the lifestyle of residents of the State of Israel and spreading panic.”

Most of the participants in the attack are activists protesting against Israeli actions and policies in the occupied territories. Most of them are not considered regular hackers, but can still cause heavy damage using several automatic tools. Amongst the declared attackers are several teams to which previous successful attacks are attributed, including “AnonSec”, “Meca”, “Anonymous Arab” and “AnonGhost”.

The politicization of Anonymous is an unfortunate development that will utterly destroy the credibility that Anonymous has built up with its 'good deeds'.