Bankrolling Terror

Sanchita Bhattacharya 

Research Associate, Institute for Conflict Managemen

http://www.satp.org/satporgtp/sair/Archives/sair13/13_4.htm 

Islamist terror outfits operating on the Indian soil, aided and abetted by Pakistan’s external intelligence agency, the Inter Services Intelligence (ISI), have adopted various ways to fill their coffers. Prominent avenues of terrorist finance include the Banking sector, extortion, hawala (illegal money transfers), funding from various Non-Governmental Organisations (NGO), money generated through Narcotics, rampant circulation of Fake Indian Currency Notes (FICN) printed in Government Security Presses in Pakistan, as well as direct funding from the ISI.

In one of the more disturbing trends, a July 21, 2014, news report indicated that Pakistan based terror groups were increasingly targeting the Indian Banking sector. An alert from the Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW, India's external intelligence agency) noted that, “349 bank accounts are being used/operated by Indian associates for facilitating Pakistan-based groups running fake lottery rackets.” The country-wide network operated by Indian associates of Pakistani terrorist formations included at least 133 bank accounts in the State Bank of India (SBI), 33 in ICICI bank, 18 in Punjab National Bank (PNB); and another 26 accounts in Bank of Baroda, Oriental Bank of Commerce, Union Bank of India, Central Bank of India and the United Commercial Bank of India (bank wise numbers not available). Details of another 139 such accounts are being scrutinized, but are not publicly available. 99 users of Indian telephone numbers who are the local collaborators of the Pakistani groups “are under watch”, the note added.

Further, apprehensive of terrorists using the capital market to fund themselves, market regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI), on March 12, 2014, tightened norms aimed at countering money laundering and terror financing through the capital markets and asked market entities to conduct detailed risk assessment of their clients, including those linked to countries facing international sanctions. There have been several reports in the past indicating that Pakistan-backed Islamist terrorists have been playing the stock market to augment their revenues.

Bank robberies have also become a significant source of funding. Investigations by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) into the October 27, 2013, Patna bomb blasts, in which eight persons were killed, have exposed the manner in which Indian Mujahideen (IM) has been utilizing bank robberies to fund its activities. An unnamed investigator disclosed, "Robberies and bank dacoities were being carried out to generate funds." Further, Abu Faisal aka Doctor, a prominent IM cadre and suspected mastermind of the December 23, 2013, Khandwa, Madhya Pradesh (MP), jailbreak incident, reportedly revealed that five bank robberies across MP in 2009-2010, as well as the INR 25 million in gold looted in Bhopal on August 23, 2010, were executed to raise funds for terrorist attacks. An unnamed Police officer disclosed, "In 2009, Faisal's group entered the Narmada Rural Bank [in Dewas] with firearms and robbed it. Later, they targeted other banks in Dewas and Itarsi. This group had also robbed 10 kilograms of gold from a gold finance company."

Nato 'unprepared' for Russia threat, say MPs

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-28577904

Pro-Russian militants in Ukraine. The MPs warned about the use of irregular militias.

Nato is poorly prepared for an attack on a member state from Russia, an influential group of MPs has warned.

The Commons Defence Committee said the recent Ukraine conflict showed "serious deficiencies" in Nato's preparedness to counter threats - and "radical reform" was needed.

The MPs said the risk of a conventional assault remained low - but warned over methods such as cyber-attacks and the use of irregular militias.

Nato said it would study the findings.

The committee called for changes including: 

Establishing a continuous presence of Nato troops and military equipment in "vulnerable" Baltic states, including Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania 

Adding unconventional threats such as irregular militia and cyber-attacks to Nato's Article 5 commitment for all members to come to the aid of a member which is attacked 

"Dramatic" improvements to existing rapid reaction forces. 

Large-scale exercises involving military and political leaders from all Nato states 

The MPs also warned Nato "may not have the collective political will to take concerted action to deter attack".

And they said public opinion may not support the use of military force to honour Article 5 commitments in a confrontation with Russia.

China Announces LimitedHukou Reform

By Ankit Panda

July 31, 2014

http://thediplomat.com/2014/07/china-announces-limited-hukou-reform/

China’s government is reforming its hukoupermit system in an “orderly” manner. 

On Wednesday, China’s government announced that it would reform its controversial hukou system of household registration that has traditionally inhibited large-scale migration from the country’s rural areas into its urban centers. The reform has long been expected, but was not announced to the degree that many hoped at last year’s Third Plenum. Currently, the CCP has set a goal of urbanizing 100 million rural Chinese. Doing so without reforming the cumbersome hukou system would have proven impossible. Additionally, hukou reform plays a part in the CCP’s bid to shift China’s economic growth model into a more consumption-focused, demand-driven one. Urban Chinese play an important role in increasing the country’s aggregate demand.

Wednesday’s statement built on last November’s announcement that the government would relax residency restrictions under the hukou permit system for China’s smaller cities. The statement, posted online by the State Council, does not immediately expand the reform to China’s larger cities but adds additional details about the impending liberalization of the hukou system. Liberalizing the urbanization permit system to China’s smaller cities first makes sense insofar as it promotes more even rural-to-urban migration. If the reform had allowed urbanization to all of China’s cities, it is likelier that most rural migrants would have preferred larger, more established metropolises.

According to Xinhua, “the government will remove the limits on hukou registration in townships and small cities, relax restrictions in medium-sized cities, and set qualifications for registration in big cities.” Additionally, the State Council document notes that “the rights and benefits of residents who do not have urban ID records in the city where they live should be safeguarded.” Significantly, there will be no limits for settlers moving to small cities. Medium cities, defined as cities with populations between one and three million, will have a low barrier to entry. Large megacities, defined as cities with over 5 million residents, will still have a fair amount of restrictions and aspiring residents will have to qualify under a “points system” that takes into consideration a variety of individual factors including “seniority in employment, their accommodation and social security.”

China remains extremely cautious about any sudden reforms to its hukou system. As Reuters notes, much of the focus today is on ensuring “orderly” rural-to-urban migration. Hukou reform has also encountered significant resistance from local government leaders who are mostly unwilling to take on the additional public services burdens that increased urbanization is sure to bring to China’s smaller cities. The new regulations do a little to placate local governments. Cities that clearly have the ability to accept more residents will be allowed to do away with all regulations, but should local governments feel that regulating incoming migrants will be useful, they will be allowed to do so (with some constraints).

Netanyahu Wants Hamas to Stay

WRITTEN BY Eli LakeJosh Rogin

07.31.14 

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/07/31/bibi-wants-hamas-to-stay.html 

Israel's prime minister accuses them of being as bad as al Qaeda, but he isn’t trying to run the group out of Gaza. There’s a good reason why. 

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said his military will not stop until it dismantles a labyrinth of tunnels often burrowed under private homes and even beneath Gaza’s mosques. But Netanyahu has not called for destroying the organization that built those tunnels: Hamas—and he won’t, multiple Israeli officials told The Daily Beast. Which raises the question: Why are Israeli forces in Gaza—at the cost of more than 1,300 lives and a rising tide of global condemnation—in the first place? 

“You have to think through what comes next,” a senior Israeli official said this month when asked why Israel was not pursuing regime change against Hamas. “You don’t want to actually administer Gaza and you don’t want someone worse taking over.” 

Another senior Israeli official said that Jerusalem’s military did not even seek to take out the entire stockpile of Hamas rockets. Instead, he said, this latest round of fighting was aimed at creating deterrence and destroying the tunnels. More recently, Israeli officials have said they also seek to demilitarize Hamas. 

The modest goal of Netanyahu’s current war contrasts with his government’s rhetoric about its target. Last month, Israel’s Minister of Intelligence compared Hamas to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Sham (ISIS), the Jihadist fanatics rampaging through Syria and Iraq. 

Netanyahu himself has made similar comparisons. “Hamas is like ISIS, Hamas is like al Qaeda,” he said during a press conference on July 22. 

But it’s not the first time the rhetoric about Hamas and reality of Israel’s war aims haven’t quite matched. At the end of Operation Cast Lead, in 2008 and 2009, Israeli troops stopped short of attacking Hamas leadership who were camped underneath al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City for the war. The brief skirmish between Hamas and Israel in 2012 also ended with Hamas still in place. While the terms of the ceasefire and an agreement between Israel and the United States to cooperate on interdicting illicit arms shipments to Gaza was supposed to defang Hamas, the deal didn’t work. 

As Israel learned this month, Hamas improved the range of its rockets since its last war, even though its southern border with Egypt has been closed for a year. 

The problem for Israel is that it’s stuck. Many top U.S. officials now concede that as bad as Hamas is for both Palestinians and Israelis, it’s the least bad alternative. Gen. Michael Flynn, the outgoing director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, told an audience at the Aspen Security Forum on July 26 that Hamas rule of Gaza was something he believed should continue. 

“If Hamas were destroyed and gone, we would probably end up with something much worse. The region would end up with something much worse,” he said. “A worse threat that would come into the sort of ecosystem there…something like ISIS.” 

China Centric Orgns BRICS & SCO: How Advantageous to India?

By Dr Subhash Kapila

30-Jul-2014

BRICS and SCO are basically China-Centric multilateral organisations. They perceptionaly stand designed to counter United States and Western domination of the global geopolitical space and of global financial institutions.

India is one of the founder member states of BRICS which now six years old comprises Brazil, Russia, India and China originally, and with South Africa as a recent entry.

SCO membership comprises China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. Observer States Status was extended to India, Pakistan, Iran, Mongolia and Pakistan. SCO has three Dialogue Partners ---Turkey, Belarus and Sri Lanka.

SCO is headquartered in Beijing and the BRICS Bank finalised in BRICS Summit 2014 is to be located ate Shanghai. In essence therefore, the alternatives to US-dominated geopolitical and financial groupings/organisations will be headquartered in China.

BRICS advocates cite statistical evidence and a very impressive list too, of the combined weight of the six-member economically vibrant nations. However what is lost sight of is that in terms of economic systems, economic policies and strategies all six member-states are widely divergent. Economic integration is a far cry and even the recently announced BRICS Bank and BRICS Contingent Reserve Fund materialisation would take years to fructify.

Besides in India where strategic vision of the policy establishment is confined to economics and economic gains linked to development and infrastructure plans it needs to be reminded that economic strategies of countries like China are determined by geopolitical priorities. China is prone to jettison any economic collaboration/cooperation in any bilateral or multilateral system if China’s strategic aims are not met.

Within BRICS, China economically stands out in asymmetric proportions with Russia, India and the others. At the recent 2014Summit India is reported to have blocked China to contribute the maximum contribution of $41 billion initially in one go as against the $ 5 billion each to the BRICS Bank that was agreed to. The Chinese aim was clear --to gain initially the upper hand in controlling the BRICS Bank and this needs to be taken as a trend that would be repeated by China in the coming years.

How advantageous it is for India to be a member of BRICS as a global alternative to the IMF and World Bank? Would it lead India not to go to World Bank or IMF for diversified financial needs? Would membership of BRICS lead to India exercising greater leverages in terms of its financial dealings with the global economic powers and global financial institutions?

One is afraid that no advantages accrue to India other than sitting at the same table with two Permanent Members of the UN Security Council, namely Russia and China who today are at loggerheads with the United States and which on its own is seeking to restore impetus in the US-India Strategic Partnership independent of India’s association with BRICS or SCO.

The only beneficiary of BRICS is China which needs respectable avenues to channelize its vast US Dollars reserves in trillions. The BRICS route offers that advantage. Its predominance in BRICS may add certain leverages to China at the global level both geopolitically and financially.

Through the BRICS route Chin could muscle into India’s economy even in sensitive sectors which ordinarily would stand greater scrutiny. Though not related to BRICS but as an example of Chinese investments economic penetration has been the reported news of Anil Ambani’s Reliance Communications w securing a $1.9 billion loan advance from a Chinese bank. This also has strings attached in that the PLA owned Huawei Technologies emerges as the main actor from the Chinese side. It needs to be recalled that Indian intelligence agencies have opposed HUAWEI entering sensitive sectors in India like digital communications.

Ukraine’s War of Independence

By Lucian Kim

Source Link

Vladimir Putin has unleashed forces that even he can’t control. 

Armed pro-Russian separatists stand guard in the suburbs of Shakhtarsk in the Donetsk region of Ukraine on July 28, 2014.

The latest round of economic sanctions against Russia is an act of desperation by Western leaders, baffled by Vladimir Putin’s intransigence over the conflict in Ukraine. Pleas and threats—voiced in backroom meetings and countless phone calls with the Russian president—failed to move Putin to publicly disown the pro-Russian rebels. Even the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 over eastern Ukraine didn’t sway the Kremlin leader. The sanctions announced by the U.S. and European Union on Tuesday are an admission that the diplomatic toolkit is officially empty.

The West has miscalculated Putin’s machinations ever since his Ukrainian proxy, then-President Viktor Yanukovych, fled to Russia in February after three months of pro-EU protests ended in a massacre on Kiev’s Maidan square. To most Western Europeans at the time, Ukraine was an annoyingly large, poor country whose aspirations for EU membership caused more headaches than jubilation. But to Putin, Ukraine signified a strategically vital buffer zone whose sovereignty came only second to Russia’s national security. He was playing the highest stakes from the very start.

When pro-Western politicians formed a provisional government in the power vacuum that Yanukovych left behind, Putin was convinced that a U.S.-funded regime change had returned to Russia’s doorstep. Without hesitation he annexed Crimea—home to the Russian Black Sea Fleet—to forestall any future NATO expansion. Then Putin encouraged pro-Russian protests in eastern Ukraine in an effort to throw the new Kiev authorities farther off balance.

Saving Ukraine’s Defense Industry

Eugene Rumer

JULY 30, 2014 

http://carnegieendowment.org/2014/07/30/saving-ukraine-s-defense-industry/hiyrAlexandra

Defense-industrial cooperation between Ukraine and Russia is in jeopardy. Washington and Moscow need to act now to help Kyiv secure its most sensitive defense resources.

http://carnegieendowment.org/2014/07/30/saving-ukraine-s-defense-industry/hiyr Alexandra McLees, Eugene RumerARTICLE JULY 30, 2014 

The crisis in Ukraine has put defense-industrial cooperation between Moscow and Kyiv at risk. An abrupt loss of defense-industrial ties with Russia would cause more damage to Ukraine’s economy, particularly in eastern Ukraine, which has already suffered greatly in the ongoing conflict. The Ukrainian defense industry includes enterprises crucial to the economic survival of some of the biggest cities there. 

However, the damage would likely be felt well beyond the borders of Ukraine, due to the proliferation risks should Ukrainian defense factories lose Russia as a customer. Ukraine’s defense industry, which is second in size only to that of Russia in the former Soviet Union, is home to many scientists and engineers with critical expertise in sensitive areas that pose grave proliferation risks—nuclear and missile technology, to name just two at the top of the list. A breakdown in Russian-Ukrainian cooperation would leave these experts out of work and could expose their crucial know-how to rogue regimes and proliferators. 

Preventing such a loss of high-level knowledge is a task that cannot wait until the conflict between Russia and Ukraine is settled. The government of Ukraine needs help now to secure the most critical resources in its defense industry and to comply with its international nonproliferation commitments. The two countries best placed to support Kyiv in those endeavors, having provided similar assistance in the past, are the United States and Russia. 

As of mid-2014, the idea of U.S.-Russian cooperation on anything to do with Ukraine seems impossible. However, considering the Ukrainian, U.S., and Russian interests at stake, such cooperation is urgently needed. Unless Moscow and Washington agree to fence off defense-industrial cooperation from the rest of their relationship and offer a helping hand to Ukraine now, all parties will have to contend with the consequences of their inaction later. 

A VAST, EXPORT-DRIVEN EMPIRE 

Defense-industrial relations between Moscow and Kyiv have a long history. When the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991, Ukraine was left with about 30 percent of the Soviet defense industry on its territory, including about 750 factories and 140 scientific and technical institutions. At the time of the breakup of the Soviet Union, these institutions employed over 1 million people. In the early 1990s, a number of efforts were made to convert Ukrainian defense industries to civilian production, but they were soon abandoned. 

In the two decades after the Soviet Union collapsed, Soviet-era technology was losing its competitiveness in world markets. Ukraine experienced a severe economic contraction and did not have a large enough military to sustain its oversized defense industry. As a result, companies that managed to survive became increasingly dependent on contracts from Russia. 

An Evil Wind 14 18 39 Will the Americans and Europeans flocking to ISIS return as hardened terrorists?

By Brian Michael Jenkins

Source Link

Volunteers from the Badr Organization, who have joined the Iraqi army to fight militants from the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, chant slogans in Basra on June 14, 2014. Will their opponents attempt to wreak havok in the West next?

Global terrorist enterprises inspired by al-Qaida’s ideology pose a continuing threat to the United States. That threat has been enhanced by the presence of thousands of foreign fighters who have joined al-Qaida offshoots Jabhat al-Nusra and the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, now known as the Islamic State.

Armed with Western passports and “clean skins,” these Western volunteers can more easily get past security measures to threaten commercial aircraft or carry out other terrorist operations in the West. When these battle-hardened veterans come marching home, will they seek to bring the violent jihad with them?

The United States has some historical experience. Since 9/11, 111 Americans have gone overseas to join jihadist fronts or seek training from terrorist groups abroad. Forty-seven were arrested on the way, 64 of them connected with jihadist groups abroad. Fewer than half of these returned; some were arrested abroad, some remain at large. The rest were killed—some in suicide bombings, two by U.S. airstrikes, at least two by their terrorist comrades.

So far, training abroad has not been a significant factor in motivating post-9/11 terrorist attacks. Only six of those who received training abroad plotted terrorist attacks after their return to the United States, and only one actually carried out an attack, which failed. Individuals who spent time in Yemen and Russia carried out attacks in the United States, but there is no evidence that they ever hooked up with any terrorist group during their travels. The deadliest attack since 9/11 was the shooting at Fort Hood by Army Maj. Nidal Hasan, whose only connection with terrorists was through the Internet.

Author: Stephen D. Biddle, Adjunct Senior Fellow for Defense Policy

July 29, 2014

Evaluating U.S. Options for Iraq

In his testimony before the House Armed Services Committee, Stephen Biddle assesses the U.S. government's options for responding to the advances made by Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in Iraq. 

Click Here to Download the Full Testimony

A Strategy for Defeating ISIS in Syria and Iraq 

Author: Max Boot, Jeane J. Kirkpatrick Senior Fellow for National Security Studies

July 29, 2014 

In his testimony before the House Armed Services Committee, Max Boot advocates for a prudent and limited deployment of American trainers, special operators, air controllers and intelligence agents to mobilize indigenous opposition to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). 

Click Here to Download the Full Testimony

No War Is an Island When Middle East Conflicts Become One

David Brooks 

JULY 28, 2014

Source Link

It’s amazing how much of the discussion of the Gaza war is based on the supposition that it is still 1979. It’s based on the supposition that the Israeli-Palestinian dispute is a self-contained struggle being run by the two parties most directly involved. It’s based on the supposition that the horror could be ended if only deft negotiators could achieve a “breakthrough” and a path toward a two-state agreement.

But it is not 1979. People’s mental categories may be stuck in the past, but reality has moved on. The violence between Israel and Hamas, which controls Gaza, may look superficially like past campaigns, but the surrounding context is transformed.

What’s happened, of course, is that the Middle East has begun what Richard Haass of the Council on Foreign Relations has called its 30 Years’ War — an overlapping series of clashes and proxy wars that could go on for decades and transform identities, maps and the political contours of the region.

The Sunni-Shiite rivalry is at full boil. Torn by sectarian violence, the nation of Iraq no longer exists in its old form.

The rivalry between Arab authoritarians and Islamists is at full boil. More than 170,000 Syrians have been killed in a horrific civil war, including 700 in two days alone, the weekend before last, while the world was watching Gaza.

The Sunni vs. Sunni rivalry is boiling, too. Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey and other nations are in the midst of an intra-Sunni cold war, sending out surrogates that distort every other tension in the region.

The Saudi-Iranian rivalry is going strong, too, as those two powers maneuver for regional hegemony and contemplate a nuclear arms race.

In 1979, the Israeli-Palestinian situation was fluid, but the surrounding Arab world was relatively stagnant. Now the surrounding region is a cauldron of convulsive change, while the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a repetitive Groundhog Day.

Here’s the result: The big regional convulsions are driving events, including the conflict in Gaza. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has become just a stage on which the regional clashes in the Arab world are being expressed. When Middle Eastern powers clash, they take shots at Israel to gain advantage over each other.

Look at how the current fighting in Gaza got stoked. Authoritarians and Islamists have been waging a fight for control of Egypt. After the Arab Spring, the Islamists briefly gained the upper hand. But when the Muslim Brotherhood government fell, the military leaders cracked down. They sentenced hundreds of the Brotherhood’s leadership class to death. They also closed roughly 95 percent of the tunnels that connected Egypt to Gaza, where the Brotherhood’s offshoot, Hamas, had gained power.

More Than Apologies Needed from CIA for Breach of Trust

August 1, 2014

The C.I.A.’s Reckless Breach of Trust

In March, John Brennan, the C.I.A. director, was indignant when Senator Dianne Feinstein charged that the agency had broken into computers used by staff investigators from the Senate Intelligence Committee, which she leads. “As far as the allegations of C.I.A. hacking into Senate computers,” he said, “nothing could be further from the truth. I mean, we wouldn’t do that. I mean, that’s just beyond the scope of reason.”

But reason seems to have little to do with the C.I.A.’s operations, as Mr. Brennan apparently discovered far too late. On Thursday, the Central Intelligence Agency admitted that it did, indeed, use a fake online identity to break into the Senate’s computers, where documents connected to a secret report on the agency’s detention and torture program were being stored. Mr. Brennan apologized privately to Ms. Feinstein and to Senator Saxby Chambliss, the vice chairman of the intelligence committee, and promised to set up an accountability board to determine who did the hacking and whether and how they should be punished.

The accountability and the apologies, however, will have to go much further. It’s not just two senators that the C.I.A. has offended by this shocking action. It is all of Congress and, by extension, the American public, which is paying for an intelligence agency that does not seem to understand the most fundamental concept of separation of powers. That concept means that Congress is supposed to oversee the intelligence community and rein in its excesses. It cannot possibly do so effectively if it is being spied on by the spy agency, which is supposed to be directing its efforts against foreign terrorists and other threats to national security.

The committee has been working since 2009 on a comprehensive history of the agency’s antiterror program during the George W. Bush administration, which involved illegal rendition to other countries, detention, and torture of suspects, all producing little useful intelligence. It has been frustrated at many points by stonewalling from the agency, which provided misleading information, hid important facts inside a blizzard of excess documents, and forced endless delays in the declassification process. The 6,300-page report still has not been made public, though parts of it may be released later this month, and it is expected to undercut the Bush administration’s claims that its actions were both legal and effective.

Late last year, the agency suspected that Senate investigators had obtained an internal C.I.A. review of the torture program. Senate officials said the review was in a database they were allowed to see, but realized that the C.I.A. had broken into a private Senate computer server and found the review. A summary of an agency inspector general’s report, released Thursday, said C.I.A. hackers even read the emails of Senate staffers. Then they exhibited a “lack of candor” to agency investigators.

In an extraordinary speech on the Senate floor in March, Ms. Feinstein accused the agency of having “undermined the constitutional framework essential to effective congressional oversight of intelligence activities or any other government function.” The institutional affront even drew Republican criticism. If the charge was true, said Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, “heads should roll, and people should go to jail.”

One of those heads may need to be Mr. Brennan’s. If he knew about the break-in, then he blatantly lied. If he did not, then apparently he was unaware of the lawless culture that has festered within the C.I.A. since the moment it was encouraged by George W. Bush and Dick Cheney to torture suspects and then lie about it. That recklessness extended to the point where agency officials thought nothing of burglarizing their own overseer. Senator Mark Udall of Colorado said the action was illegal and required the resignation of Mr. Brennan.

The C.I.A. needs far more than a few quiet personnel changes, however. Its very core, and basic culture, needs a thorough overhaul.

This Map Shows You How Miserable the Weather Is Around the World

BY LIZ STINSON

Source Link

A Portrait of Priests and Nuns, Watching the Decline of Catholic Culture 

Report: USB devices such as mice, keyboards and thumb-drives can be used to hack into personal computers

Hackers can tap USB devices in new attacks, researcher warns

July 31, 2014

A man poses holding a USB datastick in his hand in front of the Swiss flag in this photo illustration taken in the central Bosnian town of Zenica, August 29, 2013. DATATHEFT

(Reuters) - USB devices such as mice, keyboards and thumb-drives can be used to hack into personal computers in a potential new class of attacks that evade all known security protections, a top computer researcher revealed on Thursday.

Karsten Nohl, chief scientist with Berlin’s SR Labs, noted that hackers could load malicious software onto tiny, low-cost computer chips that control functions of USB devices but which have no built-in shields against tampering with their code.

"You cannot tell where the virus came from. It is almost like a magic trick," said Nohl, whose research firm is known for uncovering major flaws in mobile phone technology.

The finding shows that bugs in software used to run tiny electronics components that are invisible to the average computer user can be extremely dangerous when hackers figure out how to exploit them. Security researchers have increasingly turned their attention to uncovering such flaws.

Nohl said his firm has performed attacks by writing malicious code onto USB control chips used in thumb drives and smartphones. Once the USB device is attached to a computer, the malicious software can log keystrokes, spy on communications and destroy data, he said.

Computers do not detect the infections when tainted devices are inserted into a PC because anti-virus programs are only designed to scan for software written onto memory and do not scan the “firmware” that controls the functioning of those devices, he said.

Hackers Can Control Your Phone Using a Tool That’s Already Built Into It

BY KIM ZETTER

07.31.14

Source Link

One of the vulnerable phones: the HTC One M7. Ariel Zambelich/WIRED 

A lot of concern about the NSA’s seemingly omnipresent surveillance over the last year has focused on the agency’s efforts to install back doors in software and hardware. Those efforts are greatly aided, however, if the agency can piggyback on embedded software already on a system that can be exploited. 

Two researchers have uncovered such built-in vulnerabilities in a large number of smartphones that would allow government spies and sophisticated hackers to install malicious code and take control of the device. 

The attacks would require proximity to the phones, using a rogue base station or femtocell, and a high level of skill to pull off. But it took Mathew Solnik and Marc Blanchou, two research consultants with Accuvant Labs, just a few months to discover the vulnerabilities and exploit them. 

The vulnerabilities lie within a device management tool carriers and manufacturers embed in handsets and tablets to remotely configure them. Though some design their own tool, most use a tool developed by a specific third-party vendor—which the researchers will not identify until they present their findings next week at theBlack Hat security conference in Las Vegas. The tool is used in some form in more than 2 billion phones worldwide, they say, including Android and BlackBerry devices and a small number of Apple iPhones used by Sprint customers. They haven’t looked at Windows Mobile devices yet. 

Why the Security of USB Is Fundamentally Broken

BY ANDY GREENBERG

http://www.wired.com/2014/07/usb-security/ 

Computer users pass around USB sticks like silicon business cards. Although we know they often carry malware infections, we depend on antivirus scans and the occasional reformatting to keep our thumbdrives from becoming the carrier for the next digital epidemic. But the security problems with USB devices run deeper than you think: Their risk isn’t just in what they carry, it’s built into the core of how they work. 

That’s the takeaway from findings security researchers Karsten Nohl and Jakob Lell plan to present next week, demonstrating a collection of proof-of-concept malicious software that highlights how the security of USB devices has long been fundamentally broken. The malware they created, called BadUSB, can be installed on a USB device to completely take over a PC, invisibly alter files installed from the memory stick, or even redirect the user’s internet traffic. Because BadUSB resides not in the flash memory storage of USB devices, but in the firmware that controls their basic functions, the attack code can remain hidden long after the contents of the device’s memory would appear to the average user to be deleted. And the two researchers say there’s no easy fix: The kind of compromise they’re demonstrating is nearly impossible to counter without banning the sharing of USB devices or filling your port with superglue. 

“These problems can’t be patched,” says Nohl, who will join Lell in presenting the research at the Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas. “We’re exploiting the very way that USB is designed.” 

‘IN THIS NEW WAY OF THINKING, YOU HAVE TO CONSIDER A USB INFECTED AND THROW IT AWAY AS SOON AS IT TOUCHES A NON-TRUSTED COMPUTER.’ 

Nohl and Lell, researchers for the security consultancy SR Labs, are hardly the first to point out that USB devices can store and spread malware. But the two hackers didn’t merely copy their own custom-coded infections into USB devices’ memory. They spent months reverse engineering the firmware that runs the basic communication functions of USB devices—the controller chips that allow the devices to communicate with a PC and let users move files on and off of them. Their central finding is that USB firmware, which exists in varying forms in all USB devices, can be reprogrammed to hide attack code. “You can give it to your IT security people, they scan it, delete some files, and give it back to you telling you it’s ‘clean,’” says Nohl. But unless the IT guy has the reverse engineering skills to find and analyze that firmware, “the cleaning process doesn’t even touch the files we’re talking about.” 

Cyberspace and the Nature of Warfare

The hyper-connected world has not chanprinciples of warfare. 

The principles of war that have been developed over the centuries remain fundamentally unaltered by the development of advanced systems that operate within cyberspace. This is despite US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta warning of a possible “cyber-Pearl Harbor” in 2012 and the elevation of cyber-threat to the top of national security agendas across the globe. 

The broadening and deepening of security threats since the end of the Cold War has helped to open new avenues for the military-industrial complex to pursue funding even in these austere times. Cyber-security is not an exception to these pressures. However, analyzing whether the nature of warfare has changed by examining the conceptual understanding of cyberspace and developing historical examples of Revolutions in Military Affairs (RMA) some of the worst excesses of hyperbole can be alleviated. Furthermore, it will become clear that the world, as well as warfare, has not really changed that much. 

What is Cyberspace? 

A cursory examination of history across the globe reveals that people fear what they do not understand. The simplest question often turns out to be the most complex and fully understanding cyberspace is no exception. The majority of readers will identify the Internet as synonymous with cyberspace. However, cyberspace is constructed of four layers. The Internet, along with other computer networks, forms part of the logical layers, with the cables and servers completing the physical layer, and with information being the third. Therefore, in terms of cyber-security computer network security is just a small part of an overall security strategy. Perhaps the most controversial and not universally accepted concept is the inclusion of the top layer of this hierarchical nexus, namely us as humans. 

The human interface provides instructions to the network and receives data. The network develops according to how the user interacts with it. For example, consider how a private hire vehicle was ordered five years ago, most likely via telephone booking, to the development of companies like Uber and Hailo, who utilize cyberspace to enhance the booking procedure. In essence this is the difference between the web of documents that we have become acquainted with and the web of data that the future heralds for us, the Internet of things that is mentioned in the press is somewhere in between. 

This Is Why Ex-NSA Chief Keith Alexander Can Charge $1 Million A Month For Cyber-Security

Giuseppe Macri 

 07/29/2014

Former U.S. Cyber Command and National Security Agency head Gen. Keith Alexander has been lambasted by lawmakers and the media since his seven-figure cyber-security consulting fee got out — now he’s explaining the price. 

In a Monday interview with Foreign Policy, Alexander explained that he and his IronNet Cybersecurity Inc. firm have created their own “unique” method for detecting and preventing hacks and cyber attacks. Such so-called “advanced persistent threats,” which can target government agencies and private companies for months or years undetected, have been a concern of Alexander’s for years — especially in regard to the financial industry.

Alexander said he plans to patent the technology behind the revolutionary cyber-security — a move that could raise even more allegations of turning a profit from his tenure in public service, with the addition of the intimate classified intelligence knowledge afforded to Alexander by his direct placement on the U.S.’s cyber-war front.

An upper-hand like Alexander’s is likely to attract accusations of misguided ethics, profiteering and foul play from other cyber-security firms in the industry — especially in light of the retired general’s recent ouster amidst the ethically and legally questionable NSA bulk surveillance practices leaked by former signals intelligence agency contractor Edward Snowden.

The former spy chief claims his patentable tech is recognizably different from his work at NSA, which holds intellectual property rights over other tech developed at the agency under Alexander’s tenure.

Earlier this month Bloomberg reported Alexander was partnering with the financial industry’s biggest trade group, the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association, to create a “government-industry cyber-war council” to protect the U.S. economy from terrorist attacks targeting financial firms.

Such an attack could start a financial panic by temporarily erasing the balances of major accounts and throwing U.S. markets into chaos.

Alexander has reportedly been retained to “facilitate” such a team, which would include deputies from NSA, the Department of Homeland Security, the Treasury Department and the White House, among others. Such an effort will require the private sector to reach out to former top-secret security clearance holders like Alexander in order to coordinate a defense, while retaining intelligence security restrictions.

Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2014/07/29/this-is-why-ex-nsa-chief-keith-alexander-can-charge-1-million-a-month-for-cyber-security/#ixzz38yJzNAjU

Rethinking Professional Military Education

Kevin P. Kelley

http://www.fpri.org/articles/2013/10/rethinking-professional-military-education

Kevin P. Kelley is a Professor of National Security Affairs at the U.S. Naval War College, Newport, RI. Prof. Kelley’s expertise lies in the areas of strategic leadership, the U.S. defense resource allocation systems, and in the way national security policy making, and its implementation, are influenced.

Joan Johnson-Freese has been a member of the faculty of the Naval War College since 2002. Previously, she was on the faculty at the Asia Pacific Center for Security Studies in Honolulu, HI; the Air War College in Montgomery, AL; and Director of the Center for Space Policy & Law at the University of Central Florida.

This article is a condensed version of an essay coming out in the Winter 2014 issue of Orbis  

Professional Military Education (PME), the Department of Defense (DOD) funded system through which most military officers receive their mandated post-commission education, has recently been the focus of considerable scrutiny, including assertions that PME is broken. Journalist Tom Ricks suggested potentially shutting the Air War College in 2011, referencing it as “an expensive joke” consequent to an 18-year faculty veteran raising issues regarding lax academic standards and unqualified faculty.[1] Zealous discussions of nuclear war with Islam at the Joint Forces Staff College were brought to the attention of and addressed by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (CJCS), General Martin Dempsey’s office, with findings of “institutional failures” allowing the “inflammatory” course to be taught, with the instructor consequently relieved and reprimanded.[2] Faculty at the National Defense University (NDU) have been targeted by the J-7, the directorate in the Joint Chiefs of Staff office responsible for force development, for pruning. Perhaps, however, that pruning would not be inappropriate as NDU has long been known to host a significant number of Senior Executive Service (SES) deadwood parachuted there by the Pentagon when administrations change. Equally likely, however, is that one-year contracts being offered to faculty will drive out the qualified academic professionals who remain.An investigation by the Navy Inspector General’s office at the Naval Postgraduate School (NPS) resulted in the firing of the President and the Provost for financial mismanagement.All of these incidents are indicative of a larger crisis in PME.

But PME and the War Colleges specifically serve as a valuable and irreplaceable experience for senior military leaders. The security practitioner-oriented curriculum and the inter-service mix of students in the classrooms cannot be duplicated in civilian institutions, the best of which would not have room to incorporate the large numbers of officers mandated to attend senior service school in any event. Further, it is within the seminar rooms of PME institutions that military officers interact with members of other services, or even different branches of their own service, toward gaining better understanding of their various cultures and modes of operation, essential in a joint, interoperable world. In addition, military officers also engage in PME seminars with their civilian counterparts from various federal agencies such as DoD, Homeland Security, the State department, and intelligence agencies. Though these civilians are a small minority at PME institutions, they play a key role in expanding the perspectives military officers are exposed to during their PME educational process. The PME learning experience is not duplicable in civilian institutions. Therefore, it is imperative that the value of the War Colleges be recognized and the best practices employed to achieve the stated goals. 

Though PME and War Colleges have been faced with budget cuts in the past, former Army War College Professor Steve Metz explains the difference between then, and now.

Finding the Path Towards Mission Command: An Exercise

by Joe Byerly

July 29, 2014

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Finding the Path Towards Mission Command: An Exercise

Following my time in company command, I had the privilege of teaching future company commanders and first sergeants at the Cavalry Leader’s Course at Fort Benning, GA. During this assignment, I quickly learned that one of the most misunderstood and mystifying concepts in our doctrine is the mission command philosophy. While the associated doctrinal publications on this concept provide an explanation of mission command’s basic constructs, they don’t provide us with a tangible pathway for actually developing a culture of mission command in our units. As a result, many of the students I encountered were jaded or skeptical about the idea of mission command being successfully implemented throughout the U.S. Army. A common theme throughout these conversations was the belief that successfully adopting mission command sits only on the shoulders of the commander, and is not the responsibility of all members of the organization. A simple exercise may offer leaders an azimuth for creating a culture of mission command, and give subordinates the buy-in required to make it happen.

In Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard, authors Chip and Dan Heath offer some excellent insight into the process of individual and organizational change. In their research they found that even when armed with information, individuals and organizations struggle implementing new ideas or concepts when the path to the goal is not clear. I believe this is one of the issues with leaders embracing mission command.

ADRP 6-0, Mission Command defines the six principles of mission command as the following: 

Build Cohesive teams through mutual trust 

Create shared understanding 

Provide clear commander’s intent 

Exercise disciplined initiative 

Use mission orders 

Accept prudent risk 

How do we take these principles and make them a reality in our organizations? How can we clearly articulate an identifiable path towards mission command?

My personal belief is that mission command is a mindset we have to embrace long before the outset of a large-scale training exercise or real-world operations. It must first be nurtured in garrison, and become an inherent part of the culture of the organization. Based on some of the ideas expressed in the Heath brothers’ book, as well as my own experiences, I’ve developed an exercise that leaders can do with their organizations which may help take mission command from an abstract concept, and provide leaders and subordinates with daily behaviors that everyone can see and feel.

Step 1: Educate your unit on the philosophy of mission command. Whether through a leader professional development (LPD) program or train the trainer, everyone in the organization (down to the private) needs to understand why we need mission command, what it is, and what it isn’t.

In my conversations with future company commanders and first sergeants, I found that very few of them actually read any of the published doctrine on mission command; therefore their understanding of the concept was superficial at best.

Step 2: Give a homework assignment. Ask every member of the organization to imagine that overnight the unit whole heartedly embraced the philosophy of mission command, and everyone came into work the next day acting and behaving differently. Based on that premise, answer the following:

MORE DISSENT NEEDED: CRITICAL THINKING AND PME

Nicholas Murray

July 29, 2014

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Editor’s note: This is the latest offering from our Charlie Mike blog, a place to engage on issues important to service members, military leaders, veterans, and others. We want an active and robust dialog, so please read, comment, share, and email us at Charlie.Mike@warontherocks.com!

“Shut up and color.” Anybody who has donned a military uniform knows this sentiment well (and has almost certainly had it directed at them in some form). These are your orders; now salute and execute. It’s a seemingly natural element of military life. If not a facilitator of discipline within the hierarchical organization of command relationships, it is at least an inevitable byproduct of it. But when this attitude is carried over into Professional Military Education (PME), it has serious ramifications. At best, it discourages dissent; at worst, it eliminates it. And dissent is crucial to the development of critical thinking, which is in turn essential for all leaders in the armed services. Indeed, that is why the development of critical thinking is one of the key goals of PME at every level. It is also why the intolerance of dissent is problematic.

Dissent, in this context, means to hold or express an informed opinion that is at variance with an official view or dominant ways of thinking. Without an environment committed to the open exchange of these dissenting views, PME schools cannot expect to produce the levels of critical thinking called for by their congressional masters (see the Ike Skelton Report of 1989 and the House Armed Services Committee report of 2010). Furthermore, a free academic environment is a requirement for accreditation. Thus, one should ask not why there is dissent within PME, but rather, why there is so little. Part of the answer is found in the ”shut up and color” attitude that exists across the armed services. The rest needs some more explanation.

Last year, John R. Schindler and Joan Johnson-Freese wrote a piece on Tom Ricks’ Best Defense blog that addressed the state of academic freedom within PME, and why the issue was important. They also spoke of the need for a tenure system for faculty, in order to promote the type of open exchange essential for the most effective development of critical thinking. There is an ongoing debate about the merits of tenure, but that is outside the scope of this article. That being said, tenure is the norm at the civilian universities upon which many senior civilian and service leaders think PME schools should be modeled. Of course, one might disagree, and argue that PME schools are military in nature and are thus fundamentally different from those in the civilian world.

That’s certainly a common criticism made of those calling for reform within the PME system. It also seemed to be the implication of an op-ed written amid a discussion triggered by an article by General Robert Cone, then commander of TRADOC, about his expectations for PME quality. However, let us be clear, General Cone was not arguing that PME and the civilian system were identical. He did, however, state in the article that, “there is no reason not to demand the equivalent of Harvard on the Missouri at Leavenworth….” He’s right, there is no reason not to. Nevertheless, there are some barriers in the way: one of them is the argument that education in the military is somehow different from that which takes place elsewhere; another is a culture that generally seeks to crush dissent.

The problem with the idea that civilian and military education are fundamentally different essentially ignores the fact that most civilian programs ultimately seek to encourage the development of critical and creative thinking, much as PME schools claim to. Of course there are differences, and a key one is discussed later, but the way the human brain learns does not change because someone has put on a uniform. To argue otherwise would, simply put, be absurd.