Tag Archive for: intelligence

Pentagon Intelligence Analyst Stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6

/in


In 2018, a newly hired software engineer at a defense and intelligence contractor in the Washington, D.C., suburbs was assigned to a team led by a senior developer named Hatchet Speed.

At first, the new engineer, Richard Ngo, got along well with Speed. They sometimes went out to lunch together and socialized away from the office. “Speed was my mentor at Novetta as the software lead,” Ngo later said in court testimony. “We worked together every day.”

But after the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, Ngo noticed that Speed, a longtime Navy reservist who had deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan as an intelligence analyst and held other sensitive cyber and intelligence posts in connection with Naval Special Warfare units, seemed to be changing. Ngo had always known that Speed was a gun enthusiast, but after the Capitol riot, he became more openly anti-government than he had ever been before. “He was just frustrated with just how everything was going,” Ngo testified, adding that Speed was “panic-buying” guns.

What Ngo didn’t realize was that Speed, who had legally changed his first name from Daniel to Hatchet in 2007, according to Utah court records, had been an apocalyptic far-right extremist long before January 6.

No investigation has been conducted to determine whether Hatched Speed compromised classified information.

In fact, Hatchet Speed was a self-described member of the Proud Boys working deep inside the U.S. intelligence community. He joined other Proud Boys members to storm the Capitol on January 6, but he got away undetected and continued to work in sensitive jobs in the months after the insurrection, even as he amassed a huge arsenal of weapons and began to think about kidnapping Jewish leaders and others he considered an existential threat. He wasn’t arrested until 18 months after the insurrection, and no investigation has been conducted to determine whether he compromised classified information, a Navy spokesperson said. Officials at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence declined to comment on any possible damage to U.S. intelligence resulting from Speed’s decadeslong access to classified information.

A spokesperson for…

Source…

Andrew Neil claims US officials are praising Brexit Britain as it strengthened US-UK intelligence cooperation

/in


Andrew Neil has claimed that US officials are praising Brexit Britain for paving the way to strengthening the US- UK intelligence cooperation.

Mr Neil claimed that Americans were enjoying the fact Britain was able to make decisions about military and intelligence decisions without having to consult the European Union.

The former BBC journalist wrote in his weekly column for the Daily Mail that the US-UK intelligence sharing has become closer since it left the bloc.

READ MORE: Pound surges higher after UK and EU agree Northern Ireland deal

He claimed that US intelligence and foreign policy officials were “lavish in their praise” for the way Britain “unilaterally” extended its world-class cyber warfare capabilities to all of Eastern and Central Europe from the moment Russia invaded Ukraine.

He claimed that he was told by former Prime Minister Boris Johnson about the Aukus deal, the trilateral security pact between the US, UK and Australia.

Boris Johnson claimed to Alex Neil that Brexit was the reason behind the important AUKUS deal

Mr Neil wrote: “Boris Johnson claimed to me in London last week that the Aukus deal could not have happened if the UK had still been enmeshed in the EU’s common foreign and defence policy ambit.

Source…

ESET’s threat intelligence services extend an organizations’ security intelligence

/in


ESET has launched its threat intelligence services, designed to extend an organizations’ security intelligence. These new commercially available reports provide deeper insights and actionable guidance from ESET’s renowned global research teams about specific threat vectors and attack sources.

Now corporations and government entities of all sizes, as well as managed service providers (MSPs) and other channel partners, can make critical decisions faster, giving them a strategic advantage and competitive edge in the fight against cybercrime.

“The value of curated, high-quality threat intelligence lies in cutting through information overload to proactively deliver relevant guidance on potential threats that matter to the organization,” said Tony Anscombe, chief security evangelist at ESET.

“Rather than struggling to sift through huge, noncurated external datasets, or working with limited publicly available data, ESET’s customizable threat intelligence services enable security teams to quickly identify and prioritize emerging business risks and incoming threats – and provide the information necessary to implement a more proactive cybersecurity posture. These services also accelerate incident response and reduce data breach impacts by giving a more complete picture of the threat actor, vectors, indicators of compromise, and malware behavior,” Anscombe continued.

The new offerings include:

  • ESET Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) Reports share ESET’s ongoing APT research, including activity summaries. The APT Reports PREMIUM package gives customers access to an ESET analyst for up to four hours each month, a perfect way to get in-depth guidance on critical issues. These private reports assemble curated data for organizations that support efficiency, process maturity and security audits.
  • ESET Threat Intelligence Feeds give customers a real-time view of the worldwide threat landscape based on feeds from our research centers, to enable security teams to quickly act on IoCs in their environment. Available feeds (JSON or STIX 2.0 format) include malicious files, malicious domains, botnets, malicious IPs, malicious URLs, and APT information (included with the APT…

Source…

Russian hackers try to hack cameras in Ukrainian residential complexes to collect intelligence

/in


Cybersecurity specialists of Ukraine’s Security Service stopped an attempt by Russian hackers to break into video surveillance cameras in Ukrainian residential complexes to collect intelligence about the situation in one of Ukraine’s border oblasts.

Source: Press service Security Service of Ukraine (SSU)

Details: The SSU reports that through the Wi-Fi network of apartment buildings, hackers wanted to remotely connect to the video surveillance system in the territory of residential complexes, adjacent roads, etc. Thus, they planned to obtain a hidden channel for collecting information about the situation in the city.

In addition, hackers were interested in getting the residential addresses of Ukrainian law enforcement officers and data on the possible movement of military equipment.

The SSU were proactive and exposed the invaders. According to the investigation, a hacker group controlled by the Russian special services, which specialises in hacking electronic systems at infrastructure facilities, was involved in the cyberattack.

The issue of opening criminal proceedings under Art. 361 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine (willful interference with the operation of computers, computer systems and networks) is being resolved.

Measures are being taken to establish the circumstances of the crime and bring the perpetrators to justice.

Quote: “The SSU warns that such enemy attacks may occur in the future, so it urges citizens to be careful, pay more attention to the security of their computer networks, use complex passwords for this and periodically change them.

The SSU appeals to Ukrainians to be vigilant and immediately report any suspicious cases to the competent authorities of our state.”

Journalists fight on their own frontline. Support Ukrainska Pravda or become our patron!

Source…