Tag Archive for: Ally

As NATO celebrates 74th anniversary, Royal Navy a crucial ally of the organization — MercoPress

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As NATO celebrates 74th anniversary, Royal Navy a crucial ally of the organization

Tuesday, April 4th 2023 – 21:38 UTC


Relations between the Royal Navy and NATO have ‘never been closer’ as the alliance marks 74 years since its creation this month amid continued global instability. British warships spent nearly 10,000 hours – 60 weeks – on NATO operations in 2022 and that pace has continued unabated in the first four months of 2023.

The Royal Navy is at the heart of galvanized NATO efforts as Russia’s unprovoked war in Ukraine continues, securing Europe’s crucial waterways and chokepoints for the prosperity of allies and partners.

“While the Royal Navy has always supported NATO maritime operations, since the illegal invasion of Ukraine by Russia over a year ago, we have worked even more closely with our NATO allies at sea,” said Deputy Assistant Chief of Staff at the Maritime Operations Centre in Northwood, Captain Steve Banfield.

“Collaboration between NATO and the RN has never been closer; in particular in the execution of coordinated Maritime Security operations and exercises in the Norwegian Sea, North Sea, Baltic and the Mediterranean.”

From the freezing Arctic and Baltic, to the endless grey of the North Atlantic and azure waters of the Mediterranean, Royal Navy warships, submarines and aircraft have operated side by side with allies and partners so far in 2023, supporting peace and prosperity in Europe.

Patrol ship HMS Mersey recently operated in the Baltic to ensure the security and stability of the region as part of the Joint Expeditionary Force, a multinational defense framework complementary to NATO which is committed to Euro-Atlantic security with the Baltic region as one of its focus areas.

Amphibious flagship HMS Albion, HMS Somerset and RFA Mounts Bay have just returned from the Arctic where they were at the heart of an allied task group working on Norwegian security and NATO’s ability to protect its northern flank. 

Elsewhere in the Arctic Circle, Royal Marines and Commando…

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In Ransomware Battle, Bitcoin May Actually Be an Ally

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Critical Infrastructure Security
,
Endpoint Security
,
Fraud Management & Cybercrime

Webs of Criminality Are Recorded on Bitcoin’s Blockchain

Jeremy Kirk
(jeremy_kirk)

•
June 17, 2021    

In Ransomware Battle, Bitcoin May Actually Be an Ally
A bitcoin mining facility in Farnham, Canada, run by Bitfarms. (Photo: Bitfarms)

The role of bitcoin in the ransomware payments pipeline is clear: it’s enabled fast, enormous payments with some degree of privacy.

See Also: Live Webinar | The Role of Passwords in the Hybrid Workforce


How to deal with bitcoin and other crytocurrencies in the battle against ransomware is the subject of a spirited debate. Some have labelled bitcoin as a prominent foe and, as in this Wall Street Journal opinion piece, called to ban it. Others say the payment method used for ransoms is largely a red herring. If bitcoin was gone, the traditional banking system would be used.


What should be done about bitcoin in the battle against ransomware? Actually, the status quo isn’t so bad. 

Disrupting the flow of money to criminal enterprises is a traditional law enforcement technique. If the money stops flowing, or it becomes too onerous or risky to get paid, criminals tend to move to the next scheme that satisfies the risk-reward balance.


Policy makers and governments are looking for disruptive levers to slow a siege against businesses and critical infrastructure. Ransomware has reached a scale that it’s becoming a political problem for leaders and a tense…

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Google shuts down a hacking operation being conducted by ally of the US government

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Two of Google’s anti-hacking teams uncovered and unilaterally took down a malware distribution operation that was being run by an undisclosed US ally, according to a report last Friday in MIT Technology Review.

The report, written by the publication’s cybersecurity senior editor Patrick Howell O’Neill, says that the Google teams—Project Zero and Threat Analysis Group—“caught an unexpectedly big fish recently: an ‘expert’ hacking group exploiting 11 powerful vulnerabilities to compromise devices running iOS, Android, and Windows.”

O’Neill also wrote that MIT Tech Review “has learned that the hackers in question were actually Western government operatives actively conducting a counterterrorism operation” and that Google’s decision to shut down and publicly expose the hack caused internal divisions and “raised questions inside the intelligence communities of the United States and its allies.”

Google’s office in Toronto, Canada (Wikipedia photo)

Google’s Project Zero specializes in finding what are known among cybersecurity experts as zero-day vulnerabilities, i.e., flaws in software that developers are aware of but have not yet been able to fix. These unintended weaknesses are called zero-day because they can be exploited by cybercriminals and hackers while developers have “zero days” to patch the software.

According to Google’s website, the Threat Analysis Group is responsible for countering targeted and government-backed hacking against the company’s products and users. Much of TAG’s previous actions have been taken against “influence operations” reported to have government backing from North Korea, Russia or China, for example.

The hacks in question were discovered by Google’s teams as far back as February 2020 and were reported on in a blog post published by Project Zero on March 18. The post entitled, “In-the-Wild Series: October 2020 0-day discovery,” detailed seven instances of zero-day exploits within Apple, Google and Samsung browsers running on iOS, Windows and Android operating systems.

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Google exposes nine-month counter-terror hacking op by ‘friendly’ government, raising questions about what makes an ally — RT World News

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A Google hacking team has exposed — and shut down — an expert counterterrorism hacking operation by a supposed US ally. While the report hid most details, it raised troubling questions on what constitutes an ally in cyberspace.

The tech giant’s Project Zero and Threat Analysis Group hacking teams uncovered and ultimately put an end to a counter-terrorism operation being run by a US ally, according to MIT Tech Review, which detailed the internal struggle at Google over whether to publicize the incident and what it implied for future cyber-espionage (apparently, all’s fair in love, war, and malware attacks).

Both Project Zero, which uncovers and exposes security vulnerabilities, and Threat Analysis Group, which tracks hacks believed to be run by governments, helped take down the “friendly” malware attack, which weaponized 11 zero-day vulnerabilities in the course of nine months. A zero-day vulnerability is a flaw that the software’s creator and user are unaware exists, a security issue that can be used as a backdoor and otherwise exploited until it is discovered.

Cropping up 11 times in nine months – more frequently than a typical zero-day exploit – the attack targeted devices powered by iOS, Android, and Windows. The exploits were innovative (MIT described them as “never-before-seen techniques”) and used infected websites as “watering holes” to deliver malware to unfortunate visitors. The infection process had been ongoing since early 2020.



Also on rt.com
Google researchers reveal exploit that let hackers ‘own’ iPhones REMOTELY – but waited 6 months to tell the world


MIT revealed on Friday that the hackers running the scheme were “actually Western government operatives actively conducting a counter-terrorism operation,” an unusual revelation given that tracing hacks to state-level actors is not the easy-to-grasp, cut-and-dried operation that US cybersecurity firms like CrowdStrike and FireEye like to describe when they speak with reporters. 

Indeed, while Google’s Threat Analysis Group attributes hacks to states, Project Zero does not, though private security companies…

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