Primer: Red Cross Suspends Operations In Afghanistan After Six Employees Killed
Afghanistan hosts the Red Cross’s fourth-largest humanitarian program in the world. (file photo)
The International Committee of the Red Cross suspended operations in Afghanistan after gunmen killed six employees helping to deliver emergency relief to a remote northern region hit by heavy snowstorms.
The governor of Jowzjan Province said the aid convoy was attacked by suspected Islamic State gunmen. The head of the Red Cross called the incident the “worst attack against us” in 20 years.
A search operation was under way to find two charity workers who were still missing late on February 8.
“Our operations are on hold, indeed, because we need to understand what exactly happened before we can hopefully resume our operations,” the charity’s director of operations, Dominik Stillhart, said. More here.
WASHINGTON, Feb. 9, 2017 — A few thousand more troops for the train, advise and assist mission in Afghanistan would help to break what is now a stalemate with the Taliban, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant and other adversaries there, the commander of NATO’s Resolute Support mission and of U.S. forces in Afghanistan said here today.
Army Gen. John W. Nicholson Jr. testified this morning before the Senate Armed Services Committee on the situation in Afghanistan.
U.S. and NATO troops perform two complementary missions in Afghanistan, Nicholson said: the U.S. counterterrorism mission, called Operation Freedom’s Sentinel, and the NATO train, advise and assist mission, called Operation Resolute Support.
“I have adequate resourcing in my counterterrorism mission,” the general said. But the train, advise and assist mission has a shortfall of a few thousand troops, he added, noting that the extra troops could come from the United States and its allies, many of whom are fighting in Afghanistan.
Bolstering Offensive Capability
Nicholson said offensive capability will break the stalemate in Afghanistan, and the Afghan security forces’ key offensive capabilities are their special forces and air force.
“As a result of our training, equipping and partnering, the 17,000-strong Afghan special forces are the best in the region,” the general told the Senate panel. “They now operate independently on roughly 80 percent of their missions.”
The Afghan air force also is gaining capability, he added, noting that its first ground-attack aircraft entered the fight in April and the force is now integrating intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance assets into new targeting processes.
According to a Defense Department statement issued Dec. 19, the fiscal year 2017 budget amendment requests $264 million to procure 53 UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters and to begin to refurbish and modify some of them. The request also would fund more aircraft already in the Afghan inventory, including 30 more armed MD-530 helicopters for $227 million, six more A-29 fixed-wing close-attack aircraft for $174.5 million, and five AC-208 fixed-wing aircraft for $80 million.
The request includes $69 million to train aircrew and maintenance personnel, and DoD officials said it will seek funding for more UH-60s and AC-208s in future fiscal years.
“Congressional approval of funding for the Afghan air force is key to improving the offensive capability of the Afghan national defense and security forces, [and] there is an urgency to this request in order to get these aircraft and aircrews into the fight as soon as possible,” Nicholson said.
The investment in the Afghan air force will help them take over responsibility for their own close air support, “and even more important, will lead to an offensive capability that allows them to overmatch the Taliban or any other group on the battlefield, anywhere around the country,” the general said.
No Safe Haven
Nicholson said the main objective in Afghanistan is to keep the nation from being used as a safe haven from which terrorists could attack the United States and its allies.
“Of the 98 U.S.-designated terrorist groups globally, 20 operate in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region, along with three violent extremist organizations,” Nicholson told the senators.
This is the highest concentration of terrorist groups anywhere in the world, and it underscores the counterterrorism platform’s importance in the Central Asia-South Asia region, because it protects the American homeland, he added.
“We remain very focused on the defeat of al-Qaida and its associates, as well as the defeat of Islamic State Khorasan Province, which is the ISIL affiliate in Afghanistan,” he said.
Many nations are committed to Afghanistan’s success, Nicholson said.
At NATO’s July summit in Warsaw, Poland, the alliance reaffirmed its commitment to sustain the Afghan national defense and security forces through 2020. At an October conference in Brussels, 75 countries and organizations confirmed their intention to provide $15.2 billion to Afghanistan development needs. And India dedicated another $1 billion on top of the $2 billion it already had given to Afghan development needs.
“These expressions of international commitment reflect the importance the world places on stability in Afghanistan and confidence in the Afghan people and Afghan government,” Nicholson said, noting that the NATO mission has an exceptional partnership with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah, and the security forces and people of Afghanistan.
No. 1 Goal
The general said the No. 1 goal of the Afghanistan fight is to protect the homeland from any attack emanating from the region.
An Afghan soldier searches people receiving supplies in Afghanistan’s Parwan province during a humanitarian aid mission, Jan. 28, 2017. Army photo by Sgt. 1st Class Eliodoro Molina“We have achieved that in the last 15 years, [but] we need to stay on top of that, because of this confluence of 20 terrorist groups in the region,” he said. “I believe this is an enduring commitment to keep pressure on these groups and help the Afghans move toward a successful end state.”
Success in Afghanistan might be the maintenance of the enduring counterterrorism effort to keep pressure on terrorist groups, Nicholson said.
“It means that we would destroy the Islamic State and al-Qaida inside Afghanistan, something we’re actively pursuing every day. It means that we would help the Afghan security forces and government to extend their control to a larger and larger percentage of the population,” he said. It means the NATO mission would help Afghanistan become a more stable and prosperous entity in a critical part of the world, he added.
“I recognize the distance of Afghanistan and the length of this [war] has been challenging for the American people to support,” Nicholson said. “However, I personally believe that this effort we’re undertaking there is protecting the homeland and preventing these terrorists from bringing their fight to our doorstep.”
Category Archives: The Denise Simon Experience
You Playing the Slot Machine Next to that Russian?
Russian organized crime is not a new phenomenon by any stretch and does operate in the United States. In 2011:
Russian organized crime syndicates and criminally linked oligarchs may attempt to collude with state or state-allied actors to undermine competition in strategic markets like natural gas, oil, aluminum, and precious metals, the National Security Council attests. At the same time, transnational criminal networks in Russia are establishing new ties to global drug trafficking networks to raise quick capital. Nuclear material trafficking is an especially prominent concern in the former Soviet Union, the report stated, adding that the US would continue to cooperate with Moscow and the nations of the region to combat illicit drugs and organized crime.
The report singled out the Russian mob run by Semion Mogilevich. He is wanted by the US for fraud, racketeering, and money laundering and was recently added to the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list.
Mogilevich and several members of his organization were charged in 2003 in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania in a 45-count racketeering indictment with involvement in a sophisticated securities fraud and money-laundering scheme, in which they allegedly used a Pennsylvania company, YBM Magnex, to defraud investors of more than $150 million. Even after that indictment—and being placed on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list—Mogilevich has continued to expand his operations. Mogilevich was arrested by Russian police on tax charges in January 2008 and was released pending trial in July 2009. Other members of his organization remain at large.
Mogilevich’s criminal empire currently operates in Europe (including Italy, Chech Republic, Switzerland and Russia) the United States, the Ukraine, Israel and the United Kingdom. He also allegedly has ties with organized crime in South America, Pakistan and Japan. Mogilevich is considered one of the smartest and most powerful gangsters in the world. More here from Forbes.
**** Meanwhile, about those casinos and the fun slot machines, at least for those who cheat…
Wired: In early June 2014, accountants at the Lumiere Place Casino in St. Louis noticed that several of their slot machines had—just for a couple of days—gone haywire. The government-approved software that powers such machines gives the house a fixed mathematical edge, so that casinos can be certain of how much they’ll earn over the long haul—say, 7.129 cents for every dollar played. But on June 2 and 3, a number of Lumiere’s machines had spit out far more money than they’d consumed, despite not awarding any major jackpots, an aberration known in industry parlance as a negative hold. Since code isn’t prone to sudden fits of madness, the only plausible explanation was that someone was cheating.
Casino security pulled up the surveillance tapes and eventually spotted the culprit, a black-haired man in his thirties who wore a Polo zip-up and carried a square brown purse. Unlike most slots cheats, he didn’t appear to tinker with any of the machines he targeted, all of which were older models manufactured by Aristocrat Leisure of Australia. Instead he’d simply play, pushing the buttons on a game like Star Drifter or Pelican Pete while furtively holding his iPhone close to the screen.
He’d walk away after a few minutes, then return a bit later to give the game a second chance. That’s when he’d get lucky. The man would parlay a $20 to $60 investment into as much as $1,300 before cashing out and moving on to another machine, where he’d start the cycle anew. Over the course of two days, his winnings tallied just over $21,000. The only odd thing about his behavior during his streaks was the way he’d hover his finger above the Spin button for long stretches before finally jabbing it in haste; typical slots players don’t pause between spins like that.
On June 9, Lumiere Place shared its findings with the Missouri Gaming Commission, which in turn issued a statewide alert. Several casinos soon discovered that they had been cheated the same way, though often by different men than the one who’d bilked Lumiere Place. In each instance, the perpetrator held a cell phone close to an Aristocrat Mark VI model slot machine shortly before a run of good fortune.
By examining rental-car records, Missouri authorities identified the Lumiere Place scammer as Murat Bliev, a 37-year-old Russian national. Bliev had flown back to Moscow on June 6, but the St. Petersburg–based organization he worked for, which employs dozens of operatives to manipulate slot machines around the world, quickly sent him back to the United States to join another cheating crew. The decision to redeploy Bliev to the US would prove to be a rare misstep for a venture that’s quietly making millions by cracking some of the gaming industry’s most treasured algorithms.
From Russia With Cheats
Russia has been a hotbed of slots-related malfeasance since 2009, when the country outlawed virtually all gambling. (Vladimir Putin, who was prime minister at the time, reportedly believed the move would reduce the power of Georgian organized crime.) The ban forced thousands of casinos to sell their slot machines at steep discounts to whatever customers they could find. Some of those cut-rate slots wound up in the hands of counterfeiters eager to learn how to load new games onto old circuit boards. Others apparently went to Murat Bliev’s bosses in St. Petersburg, who were keen to probe the machines’ source code for vulnerabilities.
By early 2011, casinos throughout central and eastern Europe were logging incidents in which slots made by the Austrian company Novomatic paid out improbably large sums. Novomatic’s engineers could find no evidence that the machines in question had been tampered with, leading them to theorize that the cheaters had figured out how to predict the slots’ behavior. “Through targeted and prolonged observation of the individual game sequences as well as possibly recording individual games, it might be possible to allegedly identify a kind of ‘pattern’ in the game results,” the company admitted in a February 2011 notice to its customers.
Recognizing those patterns would require remarkable effort. Slot machine outcomes are controlled by programs called pseudorandom number generators that produce baffling results by design. Government regulators, such as the Missouri Gaming Commission, vet the integrity of each algorithm before casinos can deploy it.
But as the “pseudo” in the name suggests, the numbers aren’t truly random. Because human beings create them using coded instructions, PRNGs can’t help but be a bit deterministic. (A true random number generator must be rooted in a phenomenon that is not manmade, such as radioactive decay.) PRNGs take an initial number, known as a seed, and then mash it together with various hidden and shifting inputs—the time from a machine’s internal clock, for example—in order to produce a result that appears impossible to forecast. But if hackers can identify the various ingredients in that mathematical stew, they can potentially predict a PRNG’s output. That process of reverse engineering becomes much easier, of course, when a hacker has physical access to a slot machine’s innards.
Knowing the secret arithmetic that a slot machine uses to create pseudorandom results isn’t enough to help hackers, though. That’s because the inputs for a PRNG vary depending on the temporal state of each machine. The seeds are different at different times, for example, as is the data culled from the internal clocks. So even if they understand how a machine’s PRNG functions, hackers would also have to analyze the machine’s gameplay to discern its pattern. That requires both time and substantial computing power, and pounding away on one’s laptop in front of a Pelican Pete is a good way to attract the attention of casino security.
The Lumiere Place scam showed how Murat Bliev and his cohorts got around that challenge. After hearing what had happened in Missouri, a casino security expert named Darrin Hoke, who was then director of surveillance at L’Auberge du Lac Casino Resort in Lake Charles, Louisiana, took it upon himself to investigate the scope of the hacking operation. By interviewing colleagues who had reported suspicious slot machine activity and by examining their surveillance photos, he was able to identify 25 alleged operatives who’d worked in casinos from California to Romania to Macau. Hoke also used hotel registration records to discover that two of Bliev’s accomplices from St. Louis had remained in the US and traveled west to the Pechanga Resort & Casino in Temecula, California. On July 14, 2014, agents from the California Department of Justice detained one of those operatives at Pechanga and confiscated four of his cell phones, as well as $6,000. (The man, a Russian national, was not indicted; his current whereabouts are unknown.)
The cell phones from Pechanga, combined with intelligence from investigations in Missouri and Europe, revealed key details. According to Willy Allison, a Las Vegas–based casino security consultant who has been tracking the Russian scam for years, the operatives use their phones to record about two dozen spins on a game they aim to cheat. They upload that footage to a technical staff in St. Petersburg, who analyze the video and calculate the machine’s pattern based on what they know about the model’s pseudorandom number generator. Finally, the St. Petersburg team transmits a list of timing markers to a custom app on the operative’s phone; those markers cause the handset to vibrate roughly 0.25 seconds before the operative should press the spin button.
“The normal reaction time for a human is about a quarter of a second, which is why they do that,” says Allison, who is also the founder of the annual World Game Protection Conference. The timed spins are not always successful, but they result in far more payouts than a machine normally awards: Individual scammers typically win more than $10,000 per day. (Allison notes that those operatives try to keep their winnings on each machine to less than $1,000, to avoid arousing suspicion.) A four-person team working multiple casinos can earn upwards of $250,000 in a single week.
Repeat Business
Since there are no slot machines to swindle in his native country, Murat Bliev didn’t linger long in Russia after his return from St. Louis. He made two more trips to the US in 2014, the second of which began on December 3. He went straight from Chicago O’Hare Airport to St. Charles, Missouri, where he met up with three other men who’d been trained to scam Aristocrat’s Mark VI model slot machines: Ivan Gudalov, Igor Larenov, and Yevgeniy Nazarov. The quartet planned to spend the next several days hitting various casinos in Missouri and western Illinois.
Bliev should never have come back. On December 10, not long after security personnel spotted Bliev inside the Hollywood Casino in St. Louis, the four scammers were arrested. Because Bliev and his cohorts had pulled their scam across state lines, federal authorities charged them with conspiracy to commit fraud. The indictments represented the first significant setbacks for the St. Petersburg organization; never before had any of its operatives faced prosecution.
Bliev, Gudalov, and Larenov, all of whom are Russian citizens, eventually accepted plea bargains and were each sentenced to two years in federal prison, to be followed by deportation. Nazarov, a Kazakh who was granted religious asylum in the US in 2013 and is a Florida resident, still awaits sentencing, which indicates that he is cooperating with the authorities: In a statement to WIRED, Aristocrat representatives noted that one of the four defendants has yet to be sentenced because he “continues to assist the FBI with their investigations.”
Whatever information Nazarov provides may be too outdated to be of much value. In the two years since the Missouri arrests, the St. Petersburg organization’s field operatives have become much cagier. Some of their new tricks were revealed last year, when Singaporean authorities caught and prosecuted a crew: One member, a Czech named Radoslav Skubnik, spilled details about the organization’s financial structure (90 percent of all revenue goes back to St. Petersburg) as well as operational tactics. “What they’ll do now is they’ll put the cell phone in their shirt’s chest pocket, behind a little piece of mesh,” says Allison. “So they don’t have to hold it in their hand while they record.” And Darrin Hoke, the security expert, says he has received reports that scammers may be streaming video back to Russia via Skype, so they no longer need to step away from a slot machine to upload their footage.
The Missouri and Singapore cases appear to be the only instances in which scammers have been prosecuted, though a few have also been caught and banned by individual casinos. At the same time, the St. Petersburg organization has sent its operatives farther and farther afield. In recent months, for example, at least three casinos in Peru have reported being cheated by Russian gamblers who played aging Novomatic Coolfire slot machines.
The economic realities of the gaming industry seem to guarantee that the St. Petersburg organization will continue to flourish. The machines have no easy technical fix. As Hoke notes, Aristocrat, Novomatic, and any other manufacturers whose PRNGs have been cracked “would have to pull all the machines out of service and put something else in, and they’re not going to do that.” (In Aristocrat’s statement to WIRED, the company stressed that it has been unable “to identify defects in the targeted games” and that its machines “are built to and approved against rigid regulatory technical standards.”) At the same time, most casinos can’t afford to invest in the newest slot machines, whose PRNGs use encryption to protect mathematical secrets; as long as older, compromised machines are still popular with customers, the smart financial move for casinos is to keep using them and accept the occasional loss to scammers.
So the onus will be on casino security personnel to keep an eye peeled for the scam’s small tells. A finger that lingers too long above a spin button may be a guard’s only clue that hackers in St. Petersburg are about to make another score.
The Debate on Immigration is Now, The Raise Act
What is President Clinton say in the State of the Union address in 1995 on immigration? It got a standing ovation. It is time to have this debate in a wide and deep context including the financial and social and legal consequences.
NumbersUSA: Chain Migration is the main reason that American workers have had to compete for wages and jobs with tens of millions of new immigrants who have been given lifetime work permits the last several decades.
40% IMMEDIATE REDUCTION IN ANNUAL IMMIGRATION
Sen. Cotton says his bill would reduce the number of lifetime work permits given to foreign citizens by around 40% the first year — and by around 50% in the tenth year after passage.
Ending Chain Migration is the primary way the bill would achieve that goal.
For several decades, immigrants no longer have been limited to bringing in a spouse and minor children. Chain Migration categories allow each immigrant (once a citizen) to petition for adult brothers and sisters, for adult sons and daughters, and for parents. Each of them can in turn do the same along with bringing their own spouses who can start whole new chains in their own families, and so forth in a never-ending pattern.
Sen. Cotton would stop all of that immigration which adds millions of workers each decade without any regard to their skills or how they would affect Americans competing in the same occupations.
By limiting family immigration to a spouse and minor children — including overseas adoptions and marriages by U.S. citizens — Sen. Cotton says the bill would . . .
” . . . restore historical levels of immigration in order to give working Americans a fair shot at wealth creation.”
At around one million a year since 1990, overall annual legal immigration has been some THREE times higher than the historical average before then.
A RARE OPPORTUNITY
Sen. Cotton’s bill will be the first since 1996 to challenge the Senate to eliminate future Chain Migration.
It was in 1996 that we started NumbersUSA with our Number One legislative goal being to end Chain Migration, as recommended by the bi-partisan federal commission chaired by the Civil Rights icon Barbara Jordan.
Sen. Cotton has boldly indicated today that he will assume the leadership to advance that vision of an immigration policy that first serves the interests of our national community’s workers, especially its most vulnerable.
This year represents a rare opportunity. It is the first time in nearly a hundred years that there is a President in the White House who has declared his intention to reduce the overall numerical level of immigration.
THE PROBLEM BEING ADDRESSED
Sen. Cotton is titling his bill the Reforming American Immigration for Strong Employment Act.
Its initials spell RAISE. It’s the RAISE bill. Sen. Cotton wants to give hard-pressed American workers a raise by allowing labor markets to begin to tighten.
Sen. Cotton described the problem his bill is attempting to address:
- For over a quarter century, the United States has accepted an average of 1 million immigrants annually—the equivalent of adding the entire state of Montana each year.
- When only 1 out of every 15 immigrants arrives in the United States on a skills-based visa, the majority of the remaining immigrants are either low-skill or unskilled.
- This generation-long influx of low-skilled labor has been a major factor in the downward pressure on the wages of working Americans, with the wages of recent immigrants hardest hit.
- Wages for Americans with only high school diplomas have declined by 2 percent since the late 1970s, and for those who didn’t finish high school, they have declined by nearly 20 percent. This collapse in wages threatens to create a near permanent underclass for whom the American Dream is always just out of reach.
THE ‘RAISE’ SOLUTION
Sen. Cotton describes the key elements of his bill like this:
Eliminate Outdated Diversity Visa Lottery: The Lottery is plagued with fraud, it advances no economic or humanitarian interest, and it does not even deliver the diversity of its namesake. The RAISE Act would eliminate the 50,000 visas arbitrarily allocated to this lottery.
Place Responsible Limit on Permanent Residency for Refugees: The RAISE Act would limit refugees offered permanent residency to 50,000 per year, in line with a 13-year average. (This is the same annual refugee cap in Pres. Trump’s executive order. It is also the cap recommended in the 1980 Refugee Act, which is current law but which Presidents have routinely exceeded.)
Prioritize Immediate Family Households. The RAISE Act would retain immigration preferences for the spouses and minor children of U.S. citizens and legal permanent residents.
Eliminated would be green card categories for foreign citizens who are:
- Adult parents of U.S. citizens
- Adult brothers and sisters of U.S. citizens
- Unmarried adult sons & daughters of U.S. citizens
- Married adult sons & daughters of U.S. citizens
- Unmarried adult sons & daughters of legal permanent residents
Create Temporary Visa for Parents in Need of Caretaking: For U.S. citizens who wish to bring elderly parents in need of care-taking to the United States, the RAISE Act creates a renewable temporary visa on the condition that the parents are not permitted to work, cannot access public benefits, and must be guaranteed support and health insurance by their sponsoring children.
The difference in this being a wonderful bill and it being an incredibly helpful law is likely to be the degree to which the 8 million members of NumbersUSA’s online grassroots army make it clear to their Members of Congress and to Pres. Trump that this is a TRUE PRIORITY.
Trump Declared Terror Attacks Either Under or Not Reported…
The Guardian takes huge exception to what President Trump said. There is merit in the Guardian’s rebuke. What could be in question however, is the outcome of the estimated thousand domestic cases the FBI is or was investigating, and this does remain unclear. Yet, it could be too that President Trump and his team are conflating the definition of terror attacks as there are cases of murder, too many to list done at the hands of illegals across the homeland.
So, as a review, it is important to go over the list as provided by the Guardian. It is a chilling history on its face.
****
The full list of Trump’s ‘under-reported’ terror attacks – and how they were reported
What does the White House’s choice of ‘cases the very, very dishonest press doesn’t want to report’ tell us?
TIMELINE: September, 2014 – December, 2016
NUMBER OF ATTACKS: 78
It is not clear why these dates were chosen. A December 2016 cut-off excludes the Québec City mosque attack from the list. There were more than 78 terrorist attacks in that period – the ones selected by the White House are almost exclusively those linked – or rumoured to be linked – to Islamic State. The White House text is reproduced in bold and its errors have been kept.
MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA September, 2014
TARGET: Two police officers wounded in knife attack
ATTACKER: Abdul Numan Haider
Global media organisations including the Guardian, BBC, CNN and Fox News were among those who covered this story.
TIZI OUZOU, ALGERIA September, 2014
TARGET: One French citizen beheaded
ATTACKER: Jund al-Khilafah in Algeria
Algerian militant group Jund al-Khilafah broke its former allegiance with al-Qaida to pledge itself to Isis.
QUEBEC, CANADA October, 2014
TARGET: One soldier killed and one wounded in vehicle attack
ATTACKER: Martin Couture-Rouleau
The Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu ramming attack was described by the Canadian government and police as Isis-inspired.
OTTAWA, CANADA October, 2014
TARGET: One soldier killed at war memorial; two wounded in shootings at Parliament building
ATTACKER: Michael Zehaf-Bibeau
Read the Guardian’s live coverage here.
NEW YORK CITY, NY, USA October, 2014
TARGET: Two police officers wounded in knife attack
ATTACKER: US person
This is vague but seems to refer to Zale Thompson, also known as Zaim Farouq Abdul-Malik, described as a “self-radicalised” Muslim convert. He was killed by police.
RIYADH, SAUDI ARABIA November, 2014
TARGET: One Danish citizen wounded in shooting
ATTACKERS: Three Saudi Arabia-based ISIL members
Read a news report here.
ABU DHABI, UAE DATE: December 2014
TARGET: One American killed in knife attack
ATTACKER: Dalal al-Hashimi
Read a news report here.
SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA December, 2014
TARGET: Two Australians killed in hostage taking and shooting
ATTACKER: Man Haron Monis
The Martin Place siege received blanket worldwide coverage.
TOURS, FRANCE December, 2014
TARGET: Three police officers wounded in knife attack
ATTACKER: Bertrand Nzohabonayo
Read a news report here.
PARIS, FRANCE January, 2015
TARGET: One police officer and four hostages killed in shooting at a kosher supermarket
ATTACKER: Amedy Coulibaly
The killings – part of the series of attacks around the Charlie Hebdo massacre – received global attention. Coulibaly had claimed to be acting for Isis. Curiously, the linked attacks by the Kouachi brothers, who had pledged allegiance to al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, are not on the list.
TRIPOLI, LIBYA January, 2015
TARGET: Ten killed, including one US citizen, and five wounded in bombing and shooting at a hotel frequented by westerners
ATTACKERS: As many as five ISIL-Libya members
Read a news report here.
RIYADH, SAUDI ARABIA January, 2015
TARGET: Two US citizens wounded in shooting
ATTACKER: Saudi Arabia-based ISIL supporter
It’s not clear to which incident this refers. It could be two employees of Vinnell Arabia who were attacked by a former colleague in Al Ahsa, not Riyadh, that month; or the killing in October 2014 of another US VA employee, which did take place in Riyadh.
NICE, FRANCE February, 2015
TARGET: Two French soldiers wounded in knife attack outside a Jewish community center
ATTACKER: Moussa Coulibaly
COPENHAGEN, DENMARK February, 2015
TARGET: One civilian killed in shooting at a free-speech rally and one security guard killed outside the city’s main synagogue
ATTACKER: Omar Abdel Hamid el-Hussein
Read a news report here.
TUNIS, TUNISIA March, 2015
TARGET: 21 tourists killed, including 16 westerners, and 55 wounded in shooting at the Bardo Museum
ATTACKERS: Two ISIL-aligned extremists
In fact 22 people were killed, not including two perpetrators. Mention of “16 westerners” presumably excludes the Tunisian, Japanese and Colombian victims. Isis did claim responsibility but the Tunisian government blamed an al-Qaida splinter group. The story was carried live by many news outlets.
KARACHI, PAKISTAN April, 2015
TARGET: One US citizen wounded in knife attack
ATTACKERS: Pakistan-based ISIL supporters
No report of this could be found. However, an American woman, Debra Lobo, was shot and wounded in April 2015 in Karachi by a reported Isis sympathiser.
PARIS, FRANCE April, 2015
TARGET: Catholic churches targeted; one civilian killed in shooting, possibly during an attempted carjacking
ATTACKER: Sid Ahmed Ghlam
Sid Ahmed Ghlam is charged with the attack and is awaiting trial.
ZVORNIK, BOSNIA April, 2015
TARGET: One police officer killed and two wounded in shooting
ATTACKER: Nerdin Ibric
It is true there are few English-language reports on this attack. Here is one.
GARLAND, TX, USA May, 2015
TARGET: One security guard wounded in shooting at the Prophet Muhammad cartoon event
ATTACKERS: Two US persons
The “two US persons” were Elton Simpson and Nadir Soofi, both killed in the attack.
BOSTON, MA, USA June, 2015
TARGET: No casualties; one police officer attacked with knife
ATTACKER: US person
Very vague but could refer to Usaama Rahim, who was shot dead by police after officers said he “threatened” (not “attacked”) them with a knife. He was under counter-terrorism surveillance.
EL GORA (AL JURAH), EGYPT June, 2015
TARGET: No casualties; camp used by Multinational Force and Observers (MFO) troops attacked in shooting and bombing attack
ATTACKERS: Unknown number of ISIL-Sinai members
Few reports on this in mainstream press, possibly explained by the “no casualties”.
LUXOR, EGYPT June, 2015
TARGET: One police officer killed by suicide bomb near the Temple of Karnak
ATTACKER: Unidentified
This could be wrong. A police officer sustained minor injuries in an attempted suicide bombing at Karnak in which two would-be assailants were killed and one injured. Possibly muddled with an earlier attack near Giza pyramids in which two police officers were killed.
SOUSSE, TUNISIA June, 2015
TARGET: 38 killed and 39 wounded in shooting at a beach frequented by westerners
ATTACKERS: Seifeddine Rezgui and another unidentified attacker
The Sousse massacre was extensively covered. Inquests into the deaths of British victims are ongoing.
LYON, FRANCE June, 2015
TARGET: One civilian killed in beheading and explosion at a chemical plant
ATTACKER: Yasin Salhi
The suspect’s name was Yassin Salhi.
CAIRO, EGYPT July, 2015
TARGET: One killed and nine wounded in VBIED attack at Italian Consulate
ATTACKER: Unidentified ISIL operatives
Read a news report here.
CAIRO, EGYPT July, 2015
TARGET: One Croatian national kidnapped; beheaded on August 12 at an unknown location
ATTACKER: Unidentified ISIL-Sinai operative
The kidnapping and beheading of Tomislav Salopek received worldwide attention.
PARIS, FRANCE August, 2015
TARGET: Two civilians and one US soldier wounded with firearms and knife on a passenger train
ATTACKER: Ayoub el-Khazzani
Passengers who helped subdue the attacker were awarded the French legion of honour. Barack Obama personally called the three Americans involved to thank them.
EL GORA, EGYPT September, 2015
TARGET: Four US and two MFO troops wounded in IED attack
ATTACKER: Unidentified
Read news reports here.
DHAKA, BANGLADESH September, 2015
TARGET: One Italian civilian killed in shooting
ATTACKER: Unidentified
This could refer to the aid worker Cesare Tavella. Isis claimed responsibility.
COPENHAGEN, DENMARK September, 2015
TARGET: One police officer wounded in knife attack
ATTACKER: Palestinian national
It is not clear why the list spells “attacker” as “attaker” from here onwards.
EL GORA, EGYPT October, 2015
TARGET: No casualties; airfield used by MFO attacked with rockets
ATTAKER: Unidentified ISIL-Sinai operatives
News reports on this could not be found.
PARRAMATTA, AUSTRALIA October, 2015
TARGET: One police officer killed in shooting
ATTAKER: Farhad Jabar
The killing was widely reported in Australia and worldwide.
RANGPUR, BANGLADESH October, 2015
TARGET: One Japanese civilian killed in shooting
ATTAKER: Unidentified
Isis claimed responsibility for the death of Kunio Hoshi.
HASANAH, EGYPT October, 2015
TARGET: 224 killed in downing of a Russian airliner
ATTAKER: Unidentified ISIL-Sinai operatives
The Sinai plane crash was the subject of massive global media coverage.
MERCED, CA, US November, 2015
TARGET: Four wounded in knife attack on a college campus
ATTAKER: US person
Faisal Mohammad, whom the FBI called an Isis-inspired “lone wolf”, was shot dead. But why highlight this and the Ohio State University attack and not, say, these other campus attacks?
PARIS, FRANCE November, 2015
TARGET: At least 129 killed and approximately 400 wounded in series of shootings and IED attacks
ATTAKERS: Brahim Abdelslam, Saleh Abdeslam, Ismail Mostefai, Bilal Hadfi, Samy Amimour, Chakib Ahrouh, Foued Mohamed Aggad, and Abdelhamid Abaaoud
The White House surely cannot include the Paris attacks in the “most” on this list that it thinks were under-reported. It omits the names of three of the 11 men involved in the attack, and spells Chakib Akrouh’s name wrong. The death toll for the attacks stands at 130.
DINAJPUR, BANGLADESH November, 2015
TARGET: One Italian citizen wounded in shooting
ATTAKER: Unidentified
This appears to refer to the attack on the priest Piero Parolari.
RAJLOVAC, BOSNIA December, 2015
TARGET: Two Bosnian soldiers killed in shooting
ATTAKER: Enes Omeragic
Read news reports here.
SAN BERNADINO, CA, US December, 2015
TARGET: 14 killed and 21 wounded in coordinated firearms attack
ATTAKERS: Two US persons
The spelling should be San Bernardino. The “two US persons” were Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik. Media coverage extended to networks carrying live footage as reporters entered the couple’s home.
LONDON, ENGLAND, UK December, 2015
TARGET: Three wounded in knife attack at an underground rail station
ATTAKER: Muhyadin Mire
The stabbing was covered in the US as well as across the UK. Mire was jailed for life.
DERBENT, RUSSIA December, 2015
TARGET: One killed and 11 wounded in shooting at UN World Heritage site
ATTAKER: Unidentified ISIL-Caucasus operative
Read news reports here.
CAIRO, EGYPT January, 2016
TARGET: Two wounded in drive-by shooting outside a hotel frequented by tourists
ATTAKERS: Unidentified ISIL operatives
Another unclear one. There was a drive-by shooting outside a Cairo hotel that month, though no injuries were reported. A police officer and a soldier were shot dead in a separate incident in the following days.
PARIS, FRANCE January, 2016
TARGET: No casualties; attacker killed after attempted knife attack on Paris police station
ATTAKER: Tarek Belgacem
Read news reports here and here.
PHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA January, 2016
TARGET: One police officer wounded in shooting
ATTAKER: US person
The case of Jesse Hartnett, the police labor union said after the White House claim, was covered adequately and fairly.
HURGHADA, EGYPT January, 2016
TARGET: One German and one Danish national wounded in knife attack at a tourist resort
ATTAKER: Unidentified
As with the Cairo incident cited above, this is not clear. Three people – two Austrians and a Swede – were stabbed at a Hurghada resort. One perpetrator was shot dead.
MARSEILLES, FRANCE January, 2016
TARGET: One Jewish teacher wounded in machete attack
ATTAKER: 15 year-old Ethnic Kurd from Turkey
Read a news report here.
ISTANBUL, TURKEY January, 2016
TARGET: 12 German tourists killed and 15 wounded in suicide bombing
ATTAKER: Nabil Fadli
Thirteen people were killed. Turkey said Isis was responsible.
JAKARTA, INDONESIA January, 2016
TARGET: Four civilians killed and more than 20 wounded in coordinated bombing and firearms attacks near a police station and a Starbucks
ATTAKERS: Dian Joni Kurnaiadi, Muhammad Ali, Arif Sunakim, and Ahmad Muhazan bin Saron
See the Guardian’s live coverage here.
COLUMBUS, OH, US February, 2016
TARGET: Four civilians wounded in machete attack at a restaurant
ATTAKER: US person
This received widespread coverage in the US. The “US person” was Mohamed Barry, who was shot dead by police.
HANOVER, GERMANY February, 2016
TARGET: One police officer wounded in knife attack
ATTAKER: Safia Schmitter
The incident was covered by media but most chose not to identify the alleged attacker, who was 15.
ISTANBUL, TURKEY March, 2016
TARGET: Four killed and 36 wounded in suicide bombing in the tourist district
ATTAKER: Mehmet Ozturk
Read a news report here.
BRUSSELS, BELGIUM March, 2016
TARGET: At least 31 killed and 270 wounded in coordinated bombings at Zaventem Airport and on a subway train
ATTAKERS: Khalid el-Bakraoui, Ibrahim el-Bakraoui, Najim Laachraoui, Mohammed Abrini, and Osama Krayem
The attack on Brussels garnered wall-to-wall media coverage. The death toll was 32.
ESSEN, GERMANY April, 2016
TARGET: Three wounded in bombing at Sikh temple
ATTAKERS: Three identified minors
Three boys are charged with attempted murder.
ORLANDO, FL, US June, 2016
TARGET: 49 killed and 53 wounded in shooting at a nightclub
ATTAKER: US person
The worst mass shooting by a single perpetrator in US history was far from “under-reported”. The “US person” responsible was Omar Mateen.
MAGNANVILLE, FRANCE June, 2016
TARGET: One police officer and one civilian killed in knife attack
ATTAKER: Larossi Abballa
Read a news report here.
KABUL, AFGHANISTAN June, 2016
TARGET: 14 killed in suicide attack on a bus carrying Canadian Embassy guards
ATTAKER: ISIL-Khorasan operative
Although mostly covered in Canada, the attack was reported globally. The victims were Nepalese.
ISTANBUL, TURKEY June, 2016
TARGET: 45 killed and approximately 240 wounded at Ataturk International Airport
ATTACKERS: Rakhim Bulgarov, Vadim Osmanov, and an unidentified ISIL operative
Another deadly attack in Turkey dominated news headlines. The two identified perpetrators are reported to be Russian.
DHAKA, BANGLADESH July, 2016
TARGET: 22 killed, including one American and 50 wounded after hours-long siege using machetes and firearms at holy Artisan Bakery
ATTACKERS: Nibras Islam, Rohan Imtiaz, Meer Saameh Mubasheer, Khairul Islam Paye, and Shafiqul Islam Uzzal
The location was the Holey Artisan Bakery; 22 civilians and two police officers were killed.
NICE, FRANCE July, 2016
TARGET: 84 civilians killed and 308 wounded by an individual
ATTACKER: Mohamed Bouhlel
86 people were killed by Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel.
WURZBURG, GERMANY July, 2016
TARGET: Four civilians wounded in axe attack on a train
ATTACKER: Riaz Khan Ahmadzai
Read a news report here.
ANSBACH, GERMANY July, 2016
TARGET: At least 15 wounded in suicide bombing at a music festival
ATTACKER: Mohammad Daleel
See the Guardian’s live coverage.
NORMANDY, FRANCE July, 2016
TARGET: One priest killed in knife attack
ATTACKERS: Adel Kermiche and Abdel Malik Nabil Petitjean
The killing provoked horror and was covered globally.
CHALEROI, BELGIUM August, 2016
TARGET: Two police officers wounded in machete attack
ATTACKER: Khaled Babouri
It is Charleroi. See the Guardian report.
QUEENSLAND, AUSTRALIA August, 2016
TARGET: Two killed and one wounded in knife attack at a hostel frequented by Westerners
ATTACKER: Smail Ayad
Smail Ayad has been charged but not brought to trial; proceedings have been suspended and referred to the mental health court. Police and the mother of one of the victims have said extremism was not a factor.
COPENHAGEN, DENMAKR September, 2016
TARGET: Two police officers and a civilian wounded in shooting
ATTACKER: Mesa Hodzic
It is Denmark. Isis claimed responsibility – the attacker is dead – but it is thought the crime could be linked to drugs.
PARIS, FRANCE September, 2016
TARGET: One police officer wounded in raid after VBIED failed to detonate at Notre Dame Cathedral
ATTACKERS: Sarah Hervouet, Ines Madani, and Amel Sakaou
Read the Guardian report here.
SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA September, 2016
TARGET: One civilian wounded in knife attack
ATTACKER: Ihsas Khan
Ihsas Khan has been charged but still awaits trial.
ST. CLOUD, MN, US September, 2016
TARGET: 10 wounded in knife attack in a mall
ATTACKER: Dahir Ahmed Adan
Read the Guardian report here.
NEW YORK, NY; SEASIDE PARK AND ELIZABETH, NJ, US September, 2016
TARGET: 31 wounded in bombing in New York City; several explosive devices found in New York and New Jersey; one exploded without casualty at race in New Jersey; one police officer wounded in shootout
ATTACKER: Ahmad Khan Rahami
Rahami has been charged but no trial date has been set.
BRUSSELS, BELGIUM October, 2016
TARGET: Two police officers wounded in stabbing
ATTACKER: Belgian national
Belgian prosecutors said the attack could be terrorism-related.
KUWAIT CITY, KUWAIT
TARGET: No casualties; vehicle carrying three US soldiers hit by a truck
ATTACKER: Ibrahim Sulayman
The soldiers were not harmed. The attempted attack was reported.
MALMO, SWEDEN October, 2016
TARGET: No casualties; mosque and community center attacked with Molotov cocktail
ATTACKER: Syrian national
A Malmo court charged a man with arson but said it was not a terrorism offence.
HAMBURG, GERMANY October, 2016
TARGET: One killed in knife attack
ATTACKER: Unknown
The story that a 16-year-old boy had been killed attracted global attention. Isis claimed responsibility but police say a motive has not been confirmed.
MANILA, PHILIPPINES November, 2016
TARGET: No casualties; failed IED attempt near US Embassy
ATTACKERS: Philippine nationals aligned with the Maute group
Police said there were no explosives in the package.
COLUMBUS, OH, US November, 2016
TARGET: 14 wounded by individuals who drove a vehicle into a group of pedestrians and attacked them with a knife
ATTACKER: US person
Read the Guardian report here.
N’DJAMENA, CHAD November, 2016
TARGET: No casualties; attacker arrested after opening fire at entrance of US Embassy
ATTACKER: Chadian national
This one was barely covered by media. There were no injuries.
KARAK, JORDAN December, 2016
TARGET: 10 killed and 28 wounded in shooting at a tourist site
ATTACKERS: Several gunmen
Read the Guardian report here.
BERLIN, GERMANY December, 2016
TARGET: 12 killed and 48 wounded by individual who drove truck into a crowded market
ATTACKER: Anis Amri
The Berlin Christmas market attack dominated the news agenda in the run-up to Christmas.
Russian Information Troops, Others Helping the West
Going back a few years, it is important to understand how the cyber war began and where the Russians are today. While many in the United States laugh about the Russians hacked the Super Bowl and other ridiculous comments, there is a real seriousness that must be considered. So, for those who consider the Russian hacking thing to be ‘fake-news’, consider what the experts in the UK published in 2011.
Primer: Norway accuses group linked to Russia of carrying out cyber-attack, Norwegian intelligence service PST among targets of malicious emails believed to have been sent by APT 29.
***
Not too sure any agency or those collaborative countries know the depth of Russian cyber/espionage activity, except to offer very educated guesses and estimates based on other confirmed facts.
In part:
The narrative of “information war” is developing within Russia, but mostly under
the influence of initiatives taken overseas. The approach to CNO by the USA and
to a lesser extent by its allies is followed closely. The most recent senior comment
on the subject at the time of writing came from influential long-term Duma deputy,
and former Secretary of the Security Council and Deputy Minister of Defence,
Andrey Kokoshin – a long-term proponent of the vital importance of information
superiority for Russian security [71], with, intriguingly, a first qualification in
radio-electronics from the then Bauman Higher Technical College [72].
Speaking at the launch of a report entitled “’Cyber Wars’ and International
Security” published in late January 2011 jointly by the Institute of International
Security Issues of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Faculty of World
Politics of Moscow State University, Kokoshin said that “the development of
issues of information warfare and ‘cyber wars’ must take place on an
interdisciplinary level… the experience of many states shows that information
warfare is not just a function of the Armed Forces: other state institutions including
the secret services take part in it [73]”. This makes an interesting counterpoint to
the FSB statement cited earlier in this paper which appeared to be suggesting that it
was not the business of the Armed Forces at all. The “’Cyber Wars’ and
International Security” report, according to the Russian Ministry of Defence
newspaper Krasnaya Zvezda, “examines primarily US and Chinese policy in this
area… The study examines issues such as operations in cyberspace as an integral
part of information operations [74].” At the time of writing, the report itself
appeared to be unavailable in open sources.
Meanwhile, Russian security concerns will continue to be prompted by the fact that
“influencing the transfer and storage of data means that the physical destruction of
your opponent’s facilities is no longer required [75]” – potentially negating all the
benefits of Russia’s hard-won military reforms. Efforts will continue to be
“directed at introducing international legal mechanisms that would make it possible
to contain potential aggressors from uncontrolled and surreptitious use of
cyberweapons against the Russian Federation and its geopolitical allies [76].”
So, Russian statements and initiatives on cyber operations have to be placed in this
context of observing rapidly-developing capabilities overseas, and listening to
public announcements in the USA and elsewhere of ever-greater potential and
willingness to inflict damage on adversaries by means of cyber attack. At present,
the urgent arguments for the creation of “Information Troops” within the Armed
Forces have not yet given rise to any visible change in tasking or designation of
military structures, and visions of Russia’s potential organised cyber warriors
range from the heroic and omnipotent [77] to the realms of surreal parody [78]; but
there is no doubt that the preoccupation with a perceived lack of capacity to
prosecute or defend against CNO within the military will continue to provoke calls
for action. Read the full summary here.
**** This is important due to the declarations made by U.S. domestic intelligence agencies, as they cannot be dismissed. This site recently published some items on three Russians arrested and are moved to treason cases.
Related reading: Russian Hacking, We knew Because we had an Inside Operative(s)
Related reading: $500 million for new Russian cyber army, 2014
Related reading: Russian cyber group seen preparing to attack banks, 2015
Some of these operatives were aiding the United States for as long as 7 years.
****
Russian officers ‘passed secrets to US for 7 years’
TheTimesUK: Two senior officers from Russia’s FSB spy agency passed state secrets to the United States for at least seven years in an espionage coup for Washington, it was alleged yesterday.
Ruslan Stoyanov is accused of handing over data supplied by two FSB officers
Sergei Mikhailov and Dmitri Dokuchayev have been charged with treason alongside Ruslan Stoyanov, a manager from the cybersecurity and anti-virus company Kaspersky Lab, who is accused of being an intermediary.
They are said to have helped the US pinpoint Russian hacking during the presidential election. The news of the arrests in December emerged late last month and details of the charges have not been officially released.
Yesterday a source familiar with the investigation said that the two FSB officers received payments to pass secret data to Mr Stoyanov and a representative of another cybersecurity company. The information was then transferred to “acquaintances abroad who worked closely with foreign special services”.
“This is not a one-off story, this activity was carried out for a minimum of seven years and caused substantial harm to the interests of the Russian Federation,” the source told the Rosbalt news agency.
Mr Mikhailov, a department head at the FSB’s Centre for Information Security, was arrested dramatically during a conference in Moscow. A sack was pulled over his head and he was marched out of the room. Mr Dokuchayev, one of Mr Mikhailov’s subordinates, is said to be a former hacker known as “Forb” who was recruited to the FSB under threat of prosecution.
Security and law-enforcement sources have told Russian media that the men passed information indirectly to the CIA or an organisation close to it.
Ivan Pavlov, a lawyer, is acting for one of the three accused men although he has refused to say which one. He said all three had been charged with state treason, which carries a potential 20-year prison sentence. The case files “refer to America but not the CIA”, he claimed.
Novaya Gazeta, the independent newspaper, said that Mr Mikhailov was suspected of handing the US information on Vladimir Fomenko, the owner of King Servers. Hackers used servers provided by the company to breach election databases in Illinois and Arizona last summer, according to ThreatConnect, a US cybersecurity company.
Mr Pavlov said yesterday that Mr Mikhailov had retracted an initial confession to the treason charge.
There has been a flurry of leaks about the highly secret treason investigation in Russian media, suggesting a clash of interests inside the FSB.
Two sources told the RBK news agency that the centre where the two accused officers worked was in conflict with the Centre for Information Defence and Special Communications, a rival FSB body with overlapping responsibilities. Andrei Ivashko, the head of that rival centre, is said to be friends with Konstantin Malofeev, founder of Tsargrad, a small television channel that first revealed the FSB arrests.
The scandal has been spiced further by reports that it may be linked to the arrest of three men from the Shaltai-Boltai (Humpty Dumpty) hacking group. Vladimir Anikeyev, known as “Lewis”, and two associates nicknamed March Hare and The Hatter were taken into custody in November but the arrests only emerged recently. They are charged with gaining “illegal access to computer information”.
Some media claimed that Mr Mikhailov had infiltrated the group and was using it for his own purposes, but a lawyer acting for Mr Anikeyev said yesterday that the treason case and the arrest of his client were not connected.
