Tag Archive for: war’

Inside the cyber ‘war room’ where Israeli AI experts work to locate Hamas hostages

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“I have not slept for almost two weeks now, but every time I start falling asleep I have pictures of the hostages on my desk that get me up and running again,” says Omri Marcus, who is heading one half of the Gitam BBDO “war room” in Tel Aviv.

This time two weeks ago, Gitam BBDO was not a “war room” at all. It was a leading creative agency based in the Israeli capital.

The day after Hamas launched its attack on the country, it restyled itself into what it calls a war room, made up of volunteers who have abandoned their day jobs to turn their efforts towards trying to rescue the 203 hostages the militant group captured and are holding across the border in Gaza.

The Gazan enclave is under Israeli siege with food, fuel and water access blocked off. The territory, often likened to an “open air prison” has been under Israeli bombardment since Hamas, the militant group which govern it, launched the attack on Israel in which the hostages were taken and civilians deliberately targeted to be killed.

The war room in Tel Aviv has two floors – one utilises the talents of creatives to build support for the hostages around the world, while the other is more practical. It uses face recognition tools and Artificial Intelligence (AI) to verify whether hostages are dead or alive, and pinpoint their last recorded location within Gaza.

(Photo: Gitam BBDO group)

Refael Franco took i through the process of tracking the hostages. The group collects data on social media usage within Gaza, with graphs showing the number of texts sent and app usage on the tracked phones – even down to the number of times particular emojis were sent.

Data collected from social media usage and photos and videos from the Gaza strip are then uploaded to a software called tag box, which links it to hostages using images of them provided by their families and the military.

Any matches detected are shared with the IDF’s newest unit – the task force for finding missing and displaced people.

Franco, who founded Code Blue, a crisis management company based in Israel and Germany and is the former head of Israel’s National Cyber Directorate, showed i how one hostage had been detected from a TikTok uploaded from Gaza…

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Silent cyber coverage here to stay? New Jersey Appellate Court rejects insurers’ attempt to expand scope of the war exclusions to cyber claims

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The War and Hostile Action Exclusions have been standard exclusions in property and general liability policies for decades. With the rise of cyber claims, insurers have turned to these exclusions to deny coverage where the bad actor may have governmental roots. In a win for policyholders, the New Jersey Appellate Division rejected the insurers’ attempt to deny coverage and held that the hostile/warlike action exclusion did not apply to non-military, cyber-attack claims. See Merck & Co. v. ACE American Insurance Co.1 This ruling affirms the traditional scope of these exclusions and establishes that coverage under a commercial property policy for property damage caused by cyber-related incidents, colloquially known as “silent cyber” coverage, persists.

Merck & Co. v. ACE American Insurance Co.

On June 27, 2017, New Jersey pharmaceutical company, Merck & Co. (“Merck”), suffered a cyber-attack that left thousands of Merck’s computers damaged and encrypted by the malware known as NotPetya. The malware caused large-scale disruption to Merck’s business, resulting in $699,475,000 in losses. Although the exact origin of the malware was unknown, it was believed to have originated from the Russian Federation.

Merck tendered the claim to its all-risk property insurance carriers. The insurers reserved their right to deny coverage pursuant to hostile/warlike action exclusions and then subsequently denied coverage. Specifically, these exclusions exclude coverage for “loss or damage caused by hostile or warlike action” which was caused by “any government or sovereign power . . . or by military, naval or air forces . . . or by an agent of such government . . . .”2 The insurers argued that the word “hostile” should be broadly read to mean any antagonistic, unfriendly, or adverse action by a government or sovereign power, including the Russian Federation. Rejecting the insurers’ argument, the trial court held that the hostile/warlike action exclusions were inapplicable to the NotPetya related claims. The insurers appealed.

The New Jersey Court of Appeals Narrowly Construed the Hostile/Warlike Action Exclusion

On appeal, the Court looked to the plain and ordinary…

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Hackers Join In on Israel-Hamas War With Disruptive Cyberattacks 

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Several hacker groups have joined in on the Israel-Hamas conflict escalation that started over the weekend after the Palestinian militant group launched a major attack.

Hamas launched an unprecedented attack on Israel out of Gaza, firing thousands of rockets and sending its fighters to the southern part of the country. In response, Israel declared war on Hamas and started to retaliate. Hundreds have been killed and thousands have been wounded on both sides as a result of the conflict escalation. 

In addition to the state-sponsored actors that have likely ramped up their cyber efforts behind the scenes, known hacktivist groups supporting both sides have intensified their cyberattacks. 

According to a timeline created by cybersecurity consultant and OSINT enthusiast Julian Botham, the first hacktivist attacks were launched against Israel by Anonymous Sudan less than one hour after the first rockets were fired by Hamas. The group targeted emergency warning systems, claiming to have taken down alerting applications in Israel.

The Jerusalem Post, the largest English-language daily newspaper in Israel, was also targeted by Anonymous Sudan. 

A pro-Hamas group called Cyber Av3ngers targeted the Israel Independent System Operator (Noga), a power grid organization, claiming to have compromised its network and shut down its website. The group also targeted the Israel Electric Corporation, the largest supplier of electrical power in Israel and the Palestinian territories, as well as a power plant. 

The notorious pro-Russian group Killnet has launched attacks against Israeli government websites.

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A Palestinian hacker gang named Ghosts of Palestine has invited hackers from around the world to attack private and public infrastructure in Israel and the United States. A group called Libyan Ghosts has started defacing small Israeli websites in support of Hamas.  

In most cases, these hacktivists have used distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks to cause disruption. Some of them claimed to have caused significant disruption to their targets, but it’s not uncommon for hacktivists to exaggerate their claims. For instance, claims by Iran-linked…

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Pentagon’s Unclassified Cyber Strategy is Influenced by Russia-Ukraine War, China

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The newly unclassified strategy anticipates election security issues and suggests an independent cyber service.

Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Cyber Policy Mieke Eoyang talks to members of the press in Washington, D.C., Sept. 12, 2023. Photo credit: Senior Airman Cesar Navarro / DVIDS

The Defense Department’s unclassified summary of its 2023 cyber strategy presents a broad-ranging plan informed by the lessons learned from the Russia-Ukraine war, as well as the growing tensions between the U.S. and China in cyberspace.

“There are some shifts that reflect our real-world experience for the department in the time period between 2018 and 2023 to include our experiences of observing the conflict in Russia-Ukraine that have shaped and refined our understanding of the role of cyber in warfare, the ways in which we defend the homeland, and, of course, the importance of working on strengthening the cybersecurity of our partners and allies,” Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Cyber Policy Mieke Eoyang told reporters at a roundtable organized by George Washington University.

The Pentagon’s unclassified cyber strategy comes on the heels of the White House’s national cybersecurity strategy implementation plan providing federal agencies with actionable steps to improve the nation’s security posture. While it is unclear whether a similar implementation plan will follow the Pentagon’s new cyber strategy, Eoyang said there are “mechanisms in the Department of Defense that we use to make sure that we are moving forward with that.” 

Some lessons learned from the Russia-Ukraine war include the importance of cloud migration, the impacts of satellite communications disruption, as well as people’s ability to tell their story to the world during an armed conflict. 

“The ability of Ukrainians to move their data extraterritorially, but still maintain access to it was really important,” Eoyang said. “We saw the Russian attempts to disrupt satellite communications as something that, I think, many people are still trying to understand that aggregate effect of that on the conflict. But certainly, it is something that we are looking at very carefully.”

Securing the 2024 Presidential…

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