‘Chaos agent’: Suspected Trump hack comes as Iran flexes digital muscles ahead of US election

‘Chaos agent’: Suspected Trump hack comes as Iran flexes digital muscles ahead of US election
Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump talks at the Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections, Wednesday, Aug. 14, 2024, in West Palm Beach, Fla., as he votes early in person in the Florida primary. (AP)
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Updated 15 August 2024
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‘Chaos agent’: Suspected Trump hack comes as Iran flexes digital muscles ahead of US election

‘Chaos agent’: Suspected Trump hack comes as Iran flexes digital muscles ahead of US election
  • Iran has denied any involvement in the hack and said it has no interest in meddling with US politics

WASHINGTON: With less than three months before the US election, Iran is intensifying its efforts to meddle in American politics, US officials and private cybersecurity firms say, with the suspected hack of Donald Trump’s campaign being only the latest and most brazen example.
Iran has long been described as a “chaos agent” when it comes to cyberattacks and disinformation campaigns and in recent months groups linked to the government in Tehran have covertly encouraged protests over Israel’s war in Gaza, impersonated American activists and created networks of fake news websites and social media accounts primed to spread false and misleading information to audiences in the US
While Russia and China remain bigger cyber threats against the US, experts and intelligence officials say Iran’s increasingly aggressive stance marks a significant escalation of efforts to confuse, deceive and frighten American voters ahead of the election.
The pace will likely continue to increase as the election nears and America’s adversaries exploit the Internet and advancements in artificial intelligence to sow discord and confusion.
“We’re starting to really see that uptick and it makes sense, 90 days out from the election,” said Sean Minor, a former information warfare expert for the US Army who now analyzes online threats for the cybersecurity firm Recorded Future, which has seen a sharp increase in cyber operations from Iran and other nations. “As we get closer, we suspect that these networks will get more aggressive.”
The FBI is investigating the suspected hack of the Trump campaign as well as efforts to infiltrate the campaign of President Joe Biden, which became Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign when Biden dropped out. Trump’s campaign announced Saturday that someone illegally accessed and retrieved internal documents, later distributed to three news outlets. The campaign blamed Iran, noting a recent Microsoft report revealing an attempt by Iranian military intelligence to hack into the systems of one of the presidential campaigns.
“A lot of people think it was Iran. Probably was,” Trump said Tuesday on Univision before shrugging off the value of the leaked material. “I think it’s pretty boring information.”
Iran has denied any involvement in the hack and said it has no interest in meddling with US politics.
That denial is disputed by US intelligence officials and private cybersecurity firms who have linked Iran’s government and military to several recent campaigns targeting the US, saying they reflect Iran’s growing capabilities and its increasing willingness to use them.
On Wednesday Google announced it had uncovered a group linked to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard that it said had tried to infiltrate the personal email accounts of roughly a dozen people linked to Biden and Trump since May.
The company, which contacted law enforcement with its suspicions, said the group is still targeting people associated with Biden, Trump and Harris. It wasn’t clear whether the network identified by Google was connected to the attempt that Trump and Microsoft reported, or were part of a second attempt to infiltrate the campaign’s systems.
Iran has a few different motives in seeking to influence US elections, intelligence officials and cybersecurity analysts say. The country seeks to spread confusion and increase polarization in the US while undermining support for Israel. Iran also aims to hurt candidates that it believes would increase tension between Washington and Tehran.
That’s a description that fits Trump, whose administration ended a nuclear deal with Iran, reimposed sanctions and ordered the killing of an Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani, an act that prompted Iran’s leaders to vow revenge.
The two leaders of the Senate intelligence committee issued a joint letter on Wednesday warning Tehran and other governments hostile to the US that attempts to deceive Americans or disrupt the election will not be tolerated.
“There will be consequences to interfering in the American democratic process,” wrote the committee’s chairman, Democratic Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, along with Republican Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, the vice chairman.
In 2021, federal authorities charged two Iranian nationals with attempting to interfere with the election the year before. As part of the plot, the men wrote emails claiming to be members of the far-right Proud Boys in which they threatened Democratic voters with violence.
Last month, Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines said the Iranian government had covertly supported American protests against Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza. Groups linked to Iran’s government also posed as online activists, encouraged campus protests and provided financial support to some protest groups, Haines said.
Recent reports from Microsoft and Recorded Future have also linked Iran’s government to networks of fake news websites and social media accounts posing as Americans. The networks were discovered before they gained much influence and analysts say they may have been created ahead of time, to be activated in the weeks immediately before the election.
The final weeks before an election may be the most dangerous when it comes to foreign efforts to impact voting. That’s when voters pay the most attention to politics and when false claims about candidates or voting can do the most damage.
So-called ‘hack-and-leak’ attacks like the one reported by Trump’s campaign involve a hacker obtaining sensitive information from a private network and then releasing it, either to select individuals, the news media or to the public. Such attacks not only expose confidential information but can also raise questions about cybersecurity and the vulnerability of critical networks and systems.
Especially concerning for elections, authorities say, would be an attack targeting a state or local election office that reveals sensitive information or disables election operations. Such an incursion could undermine trust in voting, even if the information exposed is worthless. Experts refer to this last possibility as a “perception hack,” when hackers steal information not because of its value, but because they want to flaunt their capabilities while spreading fear and confusion among their adversaries.
“That can actually be more of a threat — the spectacle, the marketing this gives foreign adversaries — than the actual hack,” said Gavin Wilde, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and former National Security Council analyst who specializes in cyber threats.
In 2016, Russian hackers infiltrated Hillary Clinton’s campaign emails, ultimately obtaining and releasing some of the campaign’s most protected information in a hack-and-leak that upended the campaign in its final weeks.
Recent advances in artificial intelligence have made it easier than ever to create and spread disinformation, including lifelike video and audio allowing hackers to impersonate someone and gain access to their organization’s systems. Nevertheless, the alleged hack of the Trump campaign reportedly involved much simpler techniques: someone gained access to an email account that lacked sufficient security protections.
While people and organizations can take steps to minimize their vulnerability to hacks, nothing can eliminate the risk entirely, Wilde said, or completely reduce the likelihood that foreign adversaries will mount attacks on campaigns.
“The tax we pay for being a digital society is that these hacks and leaks are unavoidable,” he said. “Whether you’re a business, a campaign or a government.”


Ukraine concerned at reports of Iranian ballistic missiles being sent to Russia

Ukraine concerned at reports of Iranian ballistic missiles being sent to Russia
Updated 7 sec ago
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Ukraine concerned at reports of Iranian ballistic missiles being sent to Russia

Ukraine concerned at reports of Iranian ballistic missiles being sent to Russia
KYIV: Ukraine’s foreign ministry said on Saturday it was deeply concerned by reports about a possible impending transfer of Iranian ballistic missiles to Russia.
In a statement emailed to reporters, the ministry said the deepening military cooperation between Tehran and Moscow was a threat to Ukraine, Europe and the Middle East, and called on the international community to increase pressure on Iran and Russia.
CNN and the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday that Iran had transferred short-range ballistic missiles to Russia, citing unidentified sources.
Reuters reported in August that Russia was expecting the imminent delivery of hundreds of Fath-360 close-range ballistic missiles from Iran and that dozens of Russian military personnel were being trained in Iran on the satellite-guided weapons for eventual use in the war in Ukraine.
On Friday, the United States, a key ally of Ukraine, also voiced concern about the potential transfer of missiles.
“Any transfer of Iranian ballistic missiles to Russia would represent a dramatic escalation in Iran’s support for Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine,” White House National Security Council spokesperson Sean Savett said.
Iran’s mission to the United Nations in New York said on Friday that Tehran’s position on the Ukraine conflict was unchanged.
“Iran considers the provision of military assistance to the parties engaged in the conflict — which leads to increased human casualties, destruction of infrastructure, and a distancing from ceasefire negotiations — to be inhumane,” it said.
“Thus, not only does Iran abstain from engaging in such actions itself, but it also calls upon other countries to cease the supply of weapons to the sides involved in the conflict.”

Kosovo closes two border crossings with Serbia

Kosovo closes two border crossings with Serbia
Updated 07 September 2024
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Kosovo closes two border crossings with Serbia

Kosovo closes two border crossings with Serbia
  • The Kosovo government shut the border at Brnjak and the larger Merdare crossing overnight from Friday to Saturday
  • On Friday, dozens of demonstrators in Serbia blockaded the two border crossings to prevent traffic entering Serbia from Kosovo

PRISTINA: Kosovo has closed two of its four border crossings with Serbia following protests on the Serbian side that have blocked cross-border traffic, the interior minister said on Saturday.
The Kosovo government shut the border at Brnjak and the larger Merdare crossing overnight from Friday to Saturday.
Both are in the troubled north of Kosovo, where ethnic Serbs are the majority in several districts, outnumbering the ethnic Albanians who overwhelmingly populate the rest of the Balkan country.
Justifying the move, Kosovar Interior Minister Xhelal Svecla said on Facebook “masked extremists” on the Serbian side of the border were “selectively stopping... citizens who want to transit through Serbia” to third countries.
“And all this in plain sight of the Serbian authorities,” he complained.
On Friday, dozens of demonstrators in Serbia blockaded the two border crossings to prevent traffic entering Serbia from Kosovo.
They said they were protesting against the closure of parallel administrations that ethnic Serbs in northern Kosovo had set up to rival the official ones.
The Serbian government in Belgrade — which has never recognized the independence of Kosovo, its former southern province — finances a parallel health, education and social security system in Kosovo for the latter’s ethnic Serb population.
The Serbian demonstrators told the media their border blockade would last until Kosovo police were “withdrawn from the north of Kosovo and the usurped institutions are returned to the Serbs.”
They also demanded that the NATO-led peacekeeping force in Kosovo (KFOR) “take over control in the north of Kosovo.”
The border blockade began a few days after police in northern Kosovo raided and then closed five administrative offices linked to the Belgrade government.
On Saturday, Kosovo’s foreign ministry urged people to avoid trying to transit through Serbia because of the protests on the Serbian side.
Foreign Minister Donika Gervalla told reporters on Friday the Serbian protests were “yet more proof” that Belgrade was trying to provoke and destabilize its southern neighbor.
Animosity has persisted between Serbia and Kosovo since a war in the 1990s between Serbian armed forces and Kosovo’s ethnic Albanian separatists.
Kosovo declared independence in 2008. But Serbia has refused to recognize the move and has encouraged ethnic Serbs living in Kosovo to remain loyal to Belgrade.
Tensions ratcheted up a notch earlier this year, when Kosovo made the euro the only legal currency, effectively outlawing the use of the Serbian dinar.


US confirms first bird flu case without animal contact

US confirms first bird flu case without animal contact
Updated 07 September 2024
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US confirms first bird flu case without animal contact

US confirms first bird flu case without animal contact
  • The CDC said it had not identified any transmission to the patient’s close contacts or any other person
  • Scientists have voiced concern about the growing number of mammals becoming infected by bird flu, even if cases in humans remain rare

WASHINGTON: A person in the state of Missouri has become the first in the United States to test positive for bird flu without a known exposure to infected animals, authorities said on Friday.
The adult patient, who has underlying conditions, was admitted to hospital on August 22, received antiviral medications against influenza, then recovered and was discharged, according to statements from the Centers for Control and Disease Prevention (CDC) and the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services.
As the patient’s flu type appeared suspicious on an initial test, it was sent for additional testing in state and federal laboratories, which revealed it was H5, also known as avian flu or bird flu.
The CDC said it had not identified any transmission to the patient’s close contacts or any other person.
Scientists have voiced concern about the growing number of mammals becoming infected by bird flu, even if cases in humans remain rare.
They fear a high rate of transmission could facilitate a mutation of the virus, which could enable it to be passed from one human to another.
Contacted by AFP, the World Health Organization said on Saturday it was “encouraging that the national disease surveillance system has identified this case, that the patient received antiviral treatment, and that no further cases have been detected among close contacts.”
“It is critical that investigations into the patient’s exposure are continued, as indicated by national and state authorities, to inform further prevention and response activities,” said Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove, the WHO’s director of epidemic and pandemic preparedness and prevention.
“WHO strongly supports US efforts for surveillance of zoonotic influenza across human, environmental and animal sectors,” Van Kerkhove continued.
“It is important to understand the circulation of avian influenza in poultry, wild birds and other animals in the state,” she said of Missouri.
“Stronger disease surveillance in animals is essential to protect animal and human health.”
The person who tested positive for bird flu was the 14th to do so in the US this year, and the first without known contact with animals.
Indeed, “no H5 infection in dairy cattle has been reported in Missouri,” said the Missouri health department, though “some H5 cases in commercial or backyard flocks and wild birds have been reported.”
All previous bird flu cases in the United States have been among farmworkers, including the very first, in 2022.
Bird flu is most commonly found in wild birds and poultry, but has more recently been detected in mammals, with an outbreak in cattle seen across the country this year.
It can occasionally infect humans through close contact or contaminated environments.
While the CDC continues to assess the risk to the public as low, “circumstances may change quickly as more information is learned,” it said.
In the decades since H5 has been found in humans, there have been rare cases where an animal source cannot be identified.
But there has so far not been evidence of sustained human-to-human transmission, which would significantly increase the threat level.


Indian diplomats, intellectuals ask Supreme Court to stop arms sales to Israel

Indian diplomats, intellectuals ask Supreme Court to stop arms sales to Israel
Updated 07 September 2024
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Indian diplomats, intellectuals ask Supreme Court to stop arms sales to Israel

Indian diplomats, intellectuals ask Supreme Court to stop arms sales to Israel
  • Petitioners say weapons exports to Israel violate India’s Constitution
  • Petition is expected to be read by India’s top court on Monday

NEW DELHI: Indian academics, retired diplomats, and civil servants are seeking the Supreme Court’s intervention to cancel any existing licenses for the export of military equipment to Israel during its war on Gaza.

A 417-page writ petition filed to India’s top court on Wednesday and supplemented on Thursday includes information about public and private sector companies in India “dealing with manufacture and export of arms and munitions (that) have been granted licenses for the export of arms and munitions to Israel, even during this period of the ongoing war in Gaza.”

Petitioners request that the Supreme Court issue an order to the government of India to cancel these licenses and halt the granting of new ones as the sales are in violation of India’s obligations under international law and in breach of its own constitutional provisions of the right to life and equality, and the state’s duty uphold international treaties.

“This act of giving weapons to a state which is engaged — I quote the ICJ (International Court of Justice) — in probable genocidal activities, is a clear violation of India’s domestic law and international law, that is what is argued out in the main text of the petition,” Vijayan Malloothra Joseph, a renowned policy analyst and one of the 11 petitioners, told Arab News.

Indian arms sales to Israel came into the spotlight in May, when two cargo ships were prevented from docking in a Spanish port.

“Spain blocked and stopped all ships from entering their territorial waters and parking in Cartagena port. They outrightly declined. They said the ships were carrying ammunition and they gave a list of ammunition,” Joseph said.

This triggered an uproar among Indian civil society, and a group of lawyers and judges in July called on Defense Minister Rajnath Singh to cancel the licenses of companies supplying military equipment to Israel in the wake of its ongoing genocide case in the International Court of Justice over its deadly onslaught on Gaza.

The Ministry of Defense did not respond to the call, but its spokesperson told Arab News last week that the government “has not authorized the supply of any weapons to Israel during the last several months.” The spokesperson did not comment on canceling existing licenses.

“We have written earlier to the defense minister requesting him to stop the sales of lethal weapons to Israel. In these circumstances we did not get a response, then we went to the Supreme Court,” Deb Mukharji, former ambassador to Bangladesh, Nigeria and Nepal, who also signed the petition, told Arab News.

“Our expectation is that the Supreme Court might take notice because we have said that the permission to sell weapons to Israel is an illegal act. The point is that if something illegal is being done then we have to approach the Supreme Court to stop it from being done.”

At least 40,900 people, most of them children and women, have been killed and more than 94,600 wounded in Israeli military attacks on the enclave since October last year, according to Gaza Health Ministry estimates.

The real toll, however, is believed to be much higher, as the ministry’s data does not include people buried under rubble, those who died of their injuries, or who starved to death while Israeli forces have been blocking international aid.

“It’s a violation of human rights by Israel and we should not be a party to this. This has been the main motivation for the petition,” said Ashok Kumar Sharma, another petitioner, and India’s former ambassador to Finland and Kazakhstan.

“All of us petitioners have no vested interests except humanitarian interests. I have been a diplomat for 36 years and I have seen many such incidents in this history, and we the Indian people and the Indian state have never supported any genocide anywhere in the world.”

Cheryl D’Souza, advocate and member of the legal team that filed the writ petition, told Arab News that the petition is expected to be read in the court on Monday.

“The matter is listed before the chief justice on Monday. Let’s see what happens. We have appealed to the judicial conscience of the court to do something about this matter because it involves the lives of so many people,” she said.

“Let’s hope the Supreme Court steps in.”

 


French man fatally stabs partner, two young children

French man fatally stabs partner, two young children
Updated 07 September 2024
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French man fatally stabs partner, two young children

French man fatally stabs partner, two young children
  • The man was arrested at around 6.30 a.m. by a police officer as he was attacking passers-by with a knife in Mormant
  • One pedestrian was wounded in the arm and another in the neck

PARIS: A French man with a history of mental illness on Saturday fatally stabbed his partner and their two children and injured two pedestrians in a small town outside Paris, officials said.
The man was arrested at around 6.30 a.m. by a police officer as he was attacking passers-by with a knife in Mormant, a small town located 60 kilometers southeast of Paris, said the local public prosecutor.
One pedestrian was wounded in the arm and another in the neck, but their injuries were not life-threatening, public prosecutor Jean-Michel Bourles told AFP.
After the attacker was apprehended he said he had killed his wife and their two children, according to the public prosecutor and sources close to the case.
At the man’s home, the police found the bodies of his partner and their two children, aged five and 22 months.
Bourles said that the man had no criminal record, but had a history of mental illness. The attacker was taken to hospital to assess his condition.
On average, a woman is killed every three days in France.
According to the justice ministry, 94 women were killed by their partner or ex-partner in France in 2023, compared with 118 in 2022.
In 2023, more than 60 children were killed by their parents, according to the La Voix de l’Enfant (Voice of the Child) association.