Category Archives: middle east

What we know (and don’t know) about a rash of Middle East mystery hacks

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A spate of apparent security breaches has intensified what was already a tense geopolitical situation among the Persian Gulf states. Over the last two weeks, the following incidents have allegedly occurred: a Qatari government media outlet was supposedly hacked to plant bogus quotes attributed to current Qatari Emir Sheikh Tamim; damaging emails belonging to UAE’s ambassador to the U.S. Yousef Al-Otaiba were leaked, and someone hacked the Twitter account of Bahrain’s Foreign Minister Khalid Al Khalifa to post propaganda associated with a Shiite militant group. Evidence is lacking for some of those claims, and the degree to which the events are related is not clear, but hackers are taking the blame, and the allegations alone have been enough to amplify tensions. All three storylines have been prominent in regional press outlets and are now being used as supporting evidence for the breakdown of relations between Qatar and the other Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) nations. […]

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Cyber Command head: We are not prepared to counter info operations

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U.S. Cyber Command is not “optimized” today to combat information operations orchestrated by foreign powers, NSA Director and U.S. Cyber Command head Adm. Michael Rogers said during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing Tuesday. “It right now is not in our defined set of responsibilities per say,” Rogers told lawmakers. “I would be the first to admit that [information warfare] is not what our workforce is optimized for … we are certainly not where we need to be.” Even so, Cyber Command is concurrently engaged in an expansive counter-messaging campaign against ISIS, Rogers acknowledged. The Washington Post reported Tuesday that the clandestine hacking operation is aimed at the areas surrounding Syria and largely focused on compromising electronic devices belonging to terrorists, which carry content typically shared online. Depending on one’s definition of “information warfare,” it’s arguable that Cyber Command is already involved in such efforts. “I think one of our […]

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Cyber Command head: We are not prepared to counter info operations

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U.S. Cyber Command is not “optimized” today to combat information operations orchestrated by foreign powers, NSA Director and U.S. Cyber Command head Adm. Michael Rogers said during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing Tuesday. “It right now is not in our defined set of responsibilities per say,” Rogers told lawmakers. “I would be the first to admit that [information warfare] is not what our workforce is optimized for … we are certainly not where we need to be.” Even so, Cyber Command is concurrently engaged in an expansive counter-messaging campaign against ISIS, Rogers acknowledged. The Washington Post reported Tuesday that the clandestine hacking operation is aimed at the areas surrounding Syria and largely focused on compromising electronic devices belonging to terrorists, which carry content typically shared online. Depending on one’s definition of “information warfare,” it’s arguable that Cyber Command is already involved in such efforts. “I think one of our […]

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Shadow Brokers leak NSA documents that may reveal operation aimed at Middle Eastern banks

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The Shadow Brokers published a cache Friday of supposed NSA documents, 23 executable hacking tools targeting Windows and perhaps most notably, evidence showing the secretive agency compromised offices connected to a global banking transaction system in order to spy on Middle Eastern banks. The cache holds authentic NSA documents and contains legitimate information, according to former intelligence officials who spoke on condition of anonymity. “TheShadowBrokers showing you cards theshadowbrokers wanting you to be seeing. Sometime peoples not being target audience. Follow the links for new dumps. Windows. Swift. Oddjob. Oh you thought that was it? Some of you peoples is needing reading comprehension,” a message written by the group reads. After publishing and promoting leaked documents for several months, Friday’s release by the mysterious group is the first to contain NSA Powerpoint presentation slides — prior to today, only files released by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden offered such material. Security researchers […]

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Operation Ghoul Targeting Middle Eastern Industrial, Engineering Organizations

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Researchers at Kaspersky Lab identified an ongoing series of targeted attacks primarily designed to steal sensitive corporate account data from industrial and engineering organizations in the Middle East.

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Dodging Stray Bullets in Lebanon With The World’s First Bulletproof Headscarf

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As a way to avoid casualties in celebratory gunfire, Beirut designer Salim Kadi has made a keffiyeh from Kevlar, the same plastic material used for bulletproof vests. Continue reading Dodging Stray Bullets in Lebanon With The World’s First Bulletproof Headscarf→