Category Archives: FBI

Cyber Intrusions on U.S. Voter Databases Point to Russia

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Read the 4 page report here: Russia hacks Voter Databases

NextGov: The FBI warned election officials to enhance the security of systems after it found evidence foreign hackers penetrated databases in two state systems, Yahoo reports.

An Aug. 18 bulletin from the FBI’s Cyber Division stated hackers were able to exploit a Structured Query Language injection vulnerability to exfiltrate data from one state’s Board of Election website in July and attempted intrusions on another’s in August. The FBI alert lists eight IP addresses for the perpetrators and one used in both incidents, indicating the attacks could be linked.

The methods, tools and a previously flagged IP address resemble other suspect Russian state-sponsored attacks, an expert told Yahoo News.

Election security has been a hot-button issue a series of suspected Russian-sponsored attacks compromised the Democratic Party and media organizations allegedly to sway voter opinion. Earlier this month, Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson suggested the federal government label elections systems as critical infrastructure.

The FBI issued the bulletin three days after Johnson had a call with representatives from National Association of Secretaries of State and U.S. Election Assistance Commission to offer DHS assistance addressing cybersecurity risks within each state’s election systems.

At the time of the call, per Johnson, DHS was not aware of any credible cyberthreats related to 2016 general election systems. Some swing states declined DHS’ assistance, including Georgia and Pennsylvania, stating they will rely on in-house security crews.

The FBI bulletin asks states and election boards to review activity logs for similar tools and techniques, and report them to local FBI field offices.

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Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson has promised state election officials his department’s assistance addressing cybersecurity risks within each state’s election systems.

Johnson made the remarks in a conference call with representatives from National Association of Secretaries of State, U.S. Election Assistance Commission and representatives from various federal agencies, including the Justice Department and the National Institute of Standards and Technology.

In an Aug. 15 readout of the call published by DHS, Johnson encouraged state election officials to implement recommendations from NIST and other bodies, such as ensuring electronic voting machines are disconnected from the internet during voting. Johnson said DHS has been exploring whether to designate electoral systems as critical infrastructure—and thus elevating its priority for protecting—in its discussions.

Generational terror by Hamas and Islamic State

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 DailyMotion

HuffingtonPost: Five children appear to shoot prisoners to death in a new video released by the self-described Islamic State.

The video identifies the kids as British, Egyptian, Kurdish, Tunisian and Uzbek, and the location as the ISIS-controlled province of Ar-Raqqa in Syria, according to a translation by SITE Intelligence, a terrorism analysis firm.

The Huffington Post is not providing the video here to avoid promoting the extremist group’s propaganda.

The Islamic State has a well-documented history of recruiting children into its ranks and enlisting them in brutal acts. As of February, CNN reported the group had eulogized 88 child soldiers killed in battle, the vast majority of them from Syria and Iraq.

A July story in Der Spiegel details the harrowing ordeal of two adolescent Iraqi brothers captured by ISIS and placed in a juvenile military training camp. They described being trained in the use of guns and other weapons, and beaten to harden them for combat. On one occasion, a fighter at the front demonstrated beheading on a real captive.

The brothers, who escaped after one of them was brutally beaten for secretly calling his mother on a mobile phone, said they found it easier to adjust to the violent lifestyle after they took certain pills they were given. The drug might have been fenethylline (sold under the brand name Captagon), a stimulant popular with ISIS that fosters energy and feelings of strength and invincibility.

There are currently 1,500 male children serving ISIS in Iraq and Syria, according to estimates cited by Der Spiegel. In the face of a U.S.-led campaign of airstrikes, the group escalated its use of children in propaganda videos in 2015, an expert told the German news source.

Away from its home base, the Islamic State appears to be laying the groundwork for juvenile forces as well. ISIS operatives who have taken over parts of Afghanistan can be seen in a November documentary by PBS’s “Frontline” instructing young children how to use weapons and kill those they consider infidels.

Related reading: Hamas Child Soldiers

JPost: In documentary presented to the UN, Hamas appears to acknowledge that it is breaking international law by training and indoctrinating child soldiers.

The documentary, called “Children’s Army of Hamas, funded by the Israel-based Center for Near East Policy Research (CNEPR), in association with the Palestinian Human Rights Monitoring Group, showed that the Gaza-based terror organization was breaking international laws by training children to fight in combat roles.

Hamas Interior Minister Fathi Hamad makes references to the indoctrination of children, appearing to acknowledge they are being trained to fight.

From Clarion:

While one reads off threats to the Kurdish people, sneering that their Western allies are incapable of helping them, the others stand ready to pull the triggers, which each eventually they do.

The executions, which most likely took place in Raqqa, the Islamic State’s de facto headquarter, were preceded and followed by other executions. The first set, carried out by masked men in brown uniforms, shows the beheadings of four men of the Syrian opposition (and one shooting).

The last set of executions are carried out by elderly people on Syrian government officials, who are killed by gunshot.

The child executioners are each thought to be from a different country:  the United Kingdom, Egypt, Turkey, Tunisia and Uzbekistan.

WARNING: The following clip from the video of the children executing the Kurdish prisoners is extremely graphic.

Video here.

 

DoJ: Enforcing the Law is Discrimination

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Related reading: Report: U.S. Spent $1.87 Billion to Incarcerate Illegal-Immigrant Criminals in 2014 Read more at

Justice Dept.: Firing migrant workers with expired papers is discrimination

WashingtonExaminer: The Justice Department released a video this week encouraging companies not to terminate immigrants after their employment authorization expires, and indicated that doing so is a form of discrimination.

The video is shot in a dimly lit office, where two actors discuss whether their fictional company should let go of some Salvadoran employees who have failed to provide updated paperwork on their immigration status.

After a discussion about whether retaining the workers would violate the law, a woman says, “I think this is an exception to that rule,” and recommends that they contact the the Office of Special Counsel for Immigration Related Unfair Employment Practices before making any decisions.

“We want to follow the rules but we don’t want to lose these workers or discriminate against them,” she concludes. “They are too valuable.”

The video then tells viewers that the federal government has extended employment authorization by six months for people from El Salvador with Temporary Protected Status, a benefit designed to help foreign nationals who are considered unable to safely return to their home.

The Justice Department claims requesting additional work-authorization documents from these workers may violate a provision in the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) designed to protect individuals from excessive employer demands based on their nationality.

“The Justice Department is firmly committed to protecting the rights of all work-authorized immigrants and ensuring that employers do not engage in unlawful discrimination,” said Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Vanita Gupta, head of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division in a statement upon the video’s release on Thursday.

Related reading: Read the report on Obama Executive Action Removals Executive Action-Removals-SCOMM

MigrationPolicy: While much of the attention to the Obama administration’s announcement of executive actions on immigration in November 2014 has focused on key deferred action programs, two changes that have not faced legal challenge are in the process of being implemented and may substantially affect the U.S. immigration enforcement system. These changes include the adoption by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) of new policy guidance on which categories of unauthorized immigrants and other potentially removable noncitizens are priorities for enforcement, and the replacement of the controversial Secure Communities information-sharing program with a new, more tailored Priority Enforcement Program (PEP).

The new policy guidance, which builds on previous memoranda published by the Obama administration in 2010 and 2011, further targets enforcement to noncitizens who have been convicted of serious crimes, are threats to public safety, are recent illegal entrants, or have violated recent deportation orders. MPI estimates that about 13 percent of unauthorized immigrants in the United States would be considered enforcement priorities under these policies, compared to 27 percent under the 2010-11 enforcement guidelines. The net effect of this new guidance will likely be a reduction in deportations from within the interior of the United States as DHS detention and deportation resources are increasingly allocated to more explicitly defined priorities.

By comparing the new enforcement priorities to earlier DHS removal data, this report estimates that the 2014 policy guidance, if strictly adhered to, is likely to reduce deportations from within the United States by about 25,000 cases annually—bringing interior removals below the 100,000 mark. Removals at the U.S.-Mexico border remain a top priority under the 2014 guidelines, so falling interior removals may be offset to some extent by increases at the border.

Taking the enforcement focus off settled unauthorized immigrants who do not meet the November 2014 enforcement priorities would effectively offer a degree of protection to the vast majority—87 percent—of unauthorized immigrants now residing in the United States, thus affecting a substantially larger share of this population than the announced deferred action programs (9.6 million compared to as many as 5.2 million unauthorized immigrants).

This report analyzes how many unauthorized immigrants fall within each of the new priority categories and how implementation of these priorities could affect the number of deportations from the United States, as well as what the termination of Secure Communities and launch of PEP could mean for federal cooperation with state and local authorities on immigration.

Iran Evaded Sanctions with Venezuela’s Help

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New evidence Iran evaded sanctions, continued nuclear weapons development with Venezuela

ForeignNewsDesk: New evidence suggests Iran received help from Venezuela with its nuclear program despite a decade of U.N.-mandated sanctions aimed at curbing the rouge regime’s controversial nuclear and ballistic missile programs.

iran_venezuela_nuclear

A 2009 document obtained by Brazil’s leading weekly, Veja magazine, shows late dictator President Hugo Chavez signing off on the release of funds to help Iran with its nuclear ambitions.

Specifically, the document states the funds were to be designated for the import of equipment for a gunpowder factory and the development of production plants for nitroglycerin and nitrocellulose, elements used in rocket propulsion for Iran’s government. There is also the suggestion that Chavez may have helped Iran produce rocket motors.

The document provides written proof that Iran successfully continued with its weapons-building program, circumventing what were perceived as ‘watertight’ sanctions.

The revelation comes as Iran’s Foreign Minister Javad Zarif is currently touring South America visiting Bolivia, Chile, Cuba, Ecuador Nicaragua and Venezuela, in what Iranian officials have billed as a “new chapter” in strengthening political and economic ties between Iran and South American countries.

“In my line of work, I can’t believe in coincidences. I can’t believe that $400 million was given to Iran in cash and now Zarif is running through Latin America. The Iranian regime understands that in Latin America corruption can be used to their advantage,” said Joseph M. Humire, executive director of the Center for a Secure Free Society, who points to the long-standing relationship between Venezuela and Hezbollah, Iran’s terror proxy.

Humire is also the co-editor of Iran’s Strategic Penetration of Latin America.

“Latin America is Hezbollah’s biggest cash cow. It would make sense that this is a very strategic visit by Zarif to continue some of Iran’s previous activities which were challenged because of sanctions,” Humire said, adding that Hezbollah has been deeply involved in drug trafficking in Latin America to offset any financial hardship brought about by the sanctions.

As a member state of the United Nations, Venezuela was obliged to cooperate with United Nations Security Council Resolution 1747 that unanimously called for a ban on arm sales to the Islamic republic.

But uncertainties were already high in 2009 when Turkey intercepted a suspicious shipment from Iran to Venezuela containing 22 containers of lab equipment capable of producing explosives but was labelled as “tractor parts.”

Humire, who has long analyzed Iran’s involvement in Latin America has studied twenty different transactions between the two countries in several areas, finding that even those dealings considered legal, were problematic due to the “dual use” that they could present.

“Iran’s secretive military programs go far beyond violating sanctions. It has to do with providing military and industrial support in these countries,” Humire said.

“At the far end of that, you can begin to speculate they are beginning to develop military assets.”

In a 2011 hearing at the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee, then head of U.S. Southern command General Douglas Fraser told the committee that the U.S. was concerned about weekly flights between Venezuela and Iran dubbed the “Axis of Evil Express,” that could potentially be used to transport terrorists and weapons.

“My concern, as I look at it, is the fact that there are flights between Iran and Venezuela on a weekly basis, and visas are not required for entrance into Venezuela or Bolivia or Nicaragua,” Fraser told the hearing.

Another discrepancy in Iran’s investments in Venezuela, according to Humire, is considering that if the Iranian regime was after economic growth, they would go to “viable countries like Brazil, Colombia, not the ones that are broke, particularly with the heavy instability in Venezuela.”

Congress knows:

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FBI is Holding Internet Class, Who Will Be There?

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Related reading: Child Predators The Online Threat Continues to Grow

Take the Safe Online Surfing Internet Challenge

Available Soon for 2016-2017 School Year

What do more than 870,000 students across the nation have in common?

Since 2012, they have all completed the FBI’s Safe Online Surfing (SOS) Internet Challenge. Available through a free website at https://sos.fbi.gov, this initiative promotes cyber citizenship by teaching students in third through eighth grades how to recognize and respond to online dangers through a series of fun, interactive activities.

Anyone can visit the website and learn all about cyber safety, but teachers must sign up their school to enable their students to take the exam and participate in the national competition. Once enrolled, teachers are given access to a secure webpage to enroll their students (anonymously, by numeric test keys) and request their test scores. E-mail customer support is also provided. Top-scoring schools each month are recognized by their local FBI field office when possible. All public, private, and home schools with at least five students are welcome to participate.

Now entering its fifth season, the FBI-SOS program has seen increased participation each year. From September 2015 through May 2016, nearly a half-million students nationwide finished the activities and took the exam. We look forward to even more young people completing the program in the school year ahead. The challenge begins September 1.

Kids Gathered around laptop for Safe Online Surfing Challenge.

The FBI’s Safe Online Surfing (SOS) Internet Challenge for students in third through eighth grades is available at https://sos.fbi.gov.

 

ChicagoTribune: The smartphone is the teen’s conduit to the digital world. But it’s a conduit that runs both directions. Smartphones give bad people unfiltered access to good kids. Sexual predators, pornographers, cyberbullies and scammers can reach out to children without fear of parent intervention, because teens rarely tell their parents who they are talking to or what they are doing online.

But parents are no longer helpless to defend against these digital dangers. Over one million parents have turned to TeenSafe to help them monitor their child’s cell phone activity – without their child even knowing it. Now you can know if your child has been contacted by a sexual predator or has been duped into sexting. Here are five ways that TeenSafe can help you protect your children from digital dangers.

  1. Monitor their text messages – even deleted messages. TeenSafe allows you to read all sent, received and deleted SMS and iMessages without touching your teen’s phone. Just log into your TeenSafe account to access your child’s data.
  2. Track their incoming and outgoing calls. Your TeenSafe subscription gives you access to your teen’s call logs, including contact name, number, date and duration of the call.
  3. Monitor their social media. View your teen’s Instagram posts, read comments and see who’s following your teen with TeenSafe. You can also view their activity on Whatsapp, Kik and Tinder.
  4. Review their browser history. TeenSafe makes it easy for you to see what sites your teen has visited, which ones they’ve bookmarked and who their contacts are.
  5. Follow their phone. TeenSafe can help you monitor your teen in the real world as well as the digital world. You can see the cell phone’s current location on a map, as well as a history of the phone’s location.

USA Today is an advocate of TeenSafe, reporting that “TeenSafe has kept teens out of dangerous situations.” The Memphis affiliate of NBC calls TeenSafe “the ultimate app for preventing cyberbullying.” The TeenSafe app can be downloaded directly to your phone, and is free with your subscription.

Short of taking away your teen’s smartphone, TeenSafe is the best way for parents to protect their children from a growing number of digital dangers.