RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.forbes.com/sites/chuckbrooks/2021/08/21/ransomware-on-a-rampage-a-new-wake-up-call/?sh=38a0815b2e81

Ransomware is on a rampage targeting industry and organizations. It is also and creating significant cybersecurity challenges. Ransomware is a type of malware cyber-attack where key files are encrypted encryption by hackers that renders data inaccessible to the victim. It is a criminal extortion tool and after an attack has occurred, the hackers will promise to restore systems and data when ransom is paid by the victims.

The use of ransomware by hackers to leverage exploits and extract financial benefits is not new. Ransomware has been around for over 2 decades, (early use of basic ransomware malware was used in the late 1980s) but as of late, it has become a trending and more dangerous cybersecurity threat. The inter-connectivity of digital commerce and expanding attack surfaces have enhanced the utility of ransomware as cyber weapon of choice for bad actors. Like bank robbers, cybercriminals go where the money is accessible. And it is now easier for them to reap benefits from extortion. Hackers can now demand cryptocurrencies payments or pre-paid cards that can be anonymously transacted. Those means of digital payments are difficult to trace by law enforcement.

But it is not just the financial gains, while hackers can use ransomware to extort, it can also be employed to harass and demonstrate vulnerabilities to critical infrastructure. In this sense, state actors and/or criminal gangs can use ransomware as an instrument of geo-political power. Hackers often operate in tacit support by nation state actors and criminal enterprises acting in cahoots. The use of ransomware against critical infrastructures has certainly elevated the issue to global national security levels.

The Targets (and Costs) of Ransomware Attacks:

The current state of cyber-affairs is an especially alarming one because ransomware attacks are growing not only in numbers, but also in the financial and reputational costs to businesses and organizations. Three statistics stand out that highlight ransomware trends and implications:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/biden-stop-terrorism-afghanistan-al-qaeda-islamic-state-taliban-jihadist-islamist-11629376977?mod=opinion_lead_pos6

President Biden said Monday that “our only vital national interest in Afghanistan remains today what it has always been: preventing a terrorist attack on [the] American homeland.” Yet one of the administration’s most egregious failures has been neglecting to develop a clear strategy to target terrorists in the country. With more than 10,000 foreign fighters already there, from groups like al Qaeda and Islamic State, the administration quickly needs an armed surveillance strategy that involves using intelligence and air power to target terrorists.

U.S. and other Western intelligence agencies have long known the Taliban continue to have close ties to al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations. In a June 2021 assessment, the United Nations Security Council concluded that a “large number of al Qaeda fighters and other foreign extremist elements aligned with the Taliban are located in various parts of Afghanistan.” The Taliban this week released thousands of them from prisons in Bagram, Kabul, Kandahar and elsewhere.

The Taliban and al Qaeda enjoy longstanding personal relationships, intermarriage, a shared history of struggle and sympathetic ideologies. Al Qaeda leaders have pledged loyalty to every Taliban leader since the group’s establishment. It is shocking, then, that U.S. officials have brushed off the implications of a Taliban victory, even as intelligence analysts said that a Taliban victory would likely be a boon for jihadists.

The Taliban has well-established ties with other regional and international terrorist groups, such as the Pakistan-based Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, Jaish-e-Mohammed and Lashkar-e-Taiba. In addition, there are roughly 2,000 Islamic State fighters in Afghanistan, and the group has conducted mass-casualty attacks across the country.

The Taliban victory presents a remarkable opportunity for these groups to reorganize and threaten the U.S. at home and abroad. Jihadist groups gleefully celebrated the Taliban’s conquest of Kabul on chat rooms and other online platforms, pledging the revitalization of a global jihad. We have seen this before. The Soviet defeat in Afghanistan in the late 1980s spawned al Qaeda.

The best way to target terrorists in Afghanistan is through armed overwatch—collecting intelligence from airborne assets and striking terrorists from drones and fighter jets. The U.S. will need to fly persistent strike and ISR (intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance) missions, most likely from Qatar and other countries in the Persian Gulf.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/08/bidens-afghanistan-catastrophe-increases-terror-michael-cutler/

The twentieth anniversary of the terror attacks of September 11, 2001 is just a few weeks away.

The first step in solving a problem is to acknowledge that there is a problem.

The good news is that the Biden administration acknowledges that America faces an increased threat of terrorism, especially as the 20th anniversary of the terror attacks of 9/11 by al-Qaida approaches.

The bad news, even as the Taliban has now taken back all of Afghanistan because of the Biden administration’s abysmally failed policies, the Biden administration, incredibly, is entirely focused on the threats posed by domestic terrorists and extremists.  

Biden utterly ignores the failures of the immigration system that continue to undermine national security and public safety in this especially dangerous era. 

On August 13, 2021 the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) issued a press release titled, DHS Issues New National Terrorism Advisory System (NTAS) Bulletin.

The focus of the press release, and as you will see, the NTAS Bulletin was Domestic Terrorism without a single reference to possible entry of foreign terrorists into the United States even as it addressed the elevated threats posed by various terror groups as the 20th anniversary of the terror attacks of 9/11 is nearly upon us.

In fact, the above-noted press release included this excerpt:

Under the Biden-Harris Administration, DHS has increased the development, production, and dissemination of intelligence and other actionable information central to countering threats in the current environment.  DHS has established a new, dedicated domestic terrorism branch within the Department’s Office of Intelligence and Analysis (I&A).  Further, DHS has established the Center for Prevention Programs and Partnerships (CP3) to help build local prevention frameworks to provide communities with the tools they need to counter terrorism and other targeted violence.   

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/08/bidens_disgraceful_retreat.html

By abandoning Afghanistan, the U.S. has given Islamic radicals a base to train, plan, and project terrorism.

For more than a decade, I hunted terrorists as a supervisory special agent with the Drug Enforcement Administration, and I believe the United States’ abandonment of Afghanistan is a disgraceful, immoral, and short-sighted foreign-policy disaster. 

On September 11, 2001, I was one of the first rescuers to reach the World Trade Center after it collapsed. I stood in the rubble and swore an oath to seek vengeance against the Islamists who targeted the U.S. I pushed my agency to investigate narco-terrorism and spent the next 14 years pursing terrorists across the globe. I helped open DEA’s office in Kabul, wrestled a suicide bomber, fought Taliban in combat, and chased terrorists across five continents. I achieved the first precedent-setting narco-terrorism arrest and convicted the world’s most prolific heroin trafficker.  

For days, I’ve been receiving frantic messages from Afghan allies who are trapped in Afghanistan or have families still in grave danger. The U.S. has a moral obligation to protect Afghan citizens who fought side-by-side with Americans against the Taliban, Islamic State, al-Qaeda, Haqqani Network, and other terror groups. Right now, Islamists are going house-to-house raping and murdering American allies. The rapid abandonment of the Afghan military and our other allies is unconscionable, but there is still time to expand the beachhead at Kabul International Airport and evacuate tens of thousands of Afghans who will be murdered for believing in democracy and human rights.

Despite problems with reconstruction, the war in Afghanistan has been successful. The purpose of the invasion was to depose the Taliban regime that provided a haven for al-Qaeda, and to combat terrorism. The U.S. achieved those goals by pushing the Taliban into Pakistan and denying the country to terrorists for almost twenty years. Southwest Asia has the highest concentration of terror groups in the world, and it is the epicenter of radical Islamic terrorism. A strong military presence in Afghanistan has facilitated intelligence, law enforcement, and military operations against Islamists who want to destroy the West. The advantage of maintaining a military presence in Afghanistan has been obvious.

https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2021/09/01/how-china-and-russia-spy-on-us/#slide-1

With differing capabilities and tactics, both infiltrate American institutions

Do China and Russia share a common set of opponents in world affairs? One might immediately think, yes, they do: the United States, the United King­dom, and their allies.

But an even more persistent danger for the world’s great authoritarians is the free flow of ideas. In their ambition to seize the territories of unwilling neighbors formerly governed without harsh restrictions on information, and in their gradual but relentless drive to control expression and religion, Beijing and Moscow show that they have little tolerance for criticism and no room to allow uncontrolled debate. These are the threats to state power that most trouble Zhongnanhai and the Kremlin.

Beijing and Moscow depend on controlling their own domestic narratives to maintain what the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) calls “harmony.” This is why China’s Propaganda Department disciplines print media and why its National Radio and Television Administration controls broadcast outlets. With news on the Chinese mainland under strict control, Hong Kong is the penultimate frontier (the last major one being Taiwan) in Beijing’s drive to exert dominance over Chinese minds.

In Hong Kong, a territory once known for its free press, the CCP wages a continuing campaign against independent voices, such as the now-defunct Apple Daily. Its next targets may be the establishmentarian but stubbornly independent South China Morning Post and the scrappy Hong Kong Free Press — read them while you can.

Contrast this depressing picture with Russia’s. Vladimir Putin exerts direct and personal control over newspapers and broadcasters, as he “appoints editors and general directors, either officially or unofficially,” as the journalist Nataliya Rostova put it in 2015.

Both Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin enjoy a measure of approval (the former more than the latter) but lean on the crutch of media control to present a one-sided picture to their domestic audiences, pursuing different means to the same end: maximum control of ideas in society. This variance is reflected in how they conceive and execute interference and influence operations abroad.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/2021/07/woke-military-failed-miserably-wargame-taiwan-daniel-greenfield/

As the David Horowitz Freedom Center has extensively chronicled in Disloyal Military Leaders, the military leadership has descended into racist virtue signaling and woke antics even while its core warfighting capability continues to be degraded.

This ought to be another wakeup call for a military leadership that is pursuing political correctness at the expense of competence with potentially deadly results for our personnel and for our national security.

A brutal loss in a wargaming exercise last October convinced the Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. John Hyten to scrap the joint warfighting concept that had guided U.S. military operations for decades. 

“Without overstating the issue, it failed miserably. An aggressive red team that had been studying the United States for the last 20 years just ran rings around us. They knew exactly what we’re going to do before we did it,” Hyten told an audience Monday at the launch of the Emerging Technologies Institute, an effort by the National Defense Industrial Association industry group to speed military modernization.   

The Pentagon would not provide the name of the wargame, which was classified, but a defense official said one of the scenarios revolved around a battle for Taiwan. One key lesson: gathering ships, aircraft, and other forces to concentrate and reinforce each other’s combat power also made them sitting ducks. 

That’s not exactly surprising. 

The strategies of a variety of opponents, from China to Iran, has been based around deploying mobile and flexible forces against concentrations of American forces. The Taliban in Afghanistan pursued a variation on that same course of action. Being the biggest kid on the block means that the smaller kids will look to their strengths, rather than try to match us blow for blow.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/does-the-pentagon-take-china-seriously-11625503914?mod=opinion_lead_pos6

U.S. defense leaders have a problem: What they say doesn’t line up with what they do. The mismatch is apparent in the latest Pentagon budget, and a “say-do” gap undermines the trust of Congress and the American people.

Military leaders identify China as our No. 1 challenge, often calling Beijing “an increasingly capable strategic competitor,” as Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Mark Milley has warned, or a “pacing” threat. Yet the budget request reduces the ability of the Navy and the Air Force—the services that would have outsize roles in any conflict in the Western Pacific—to respond to threats in that region. Meanwhile, the budget promises undeveloped weapons that may take decades to enter the fleet, funded by a “divest to invest” strategy.

The Navy wants to retire 15 ships, including seven guided-missile cruisers and four littoral combat ships, while procuring only two surface combatant ships and two submarines. (Congress’ budget draft would buy another destroyer and limit the retirements.) Naval aviation procurement dropped 15.6% over 2021 even as the Navy speeds up F/A-18 retirements. The USS Ronald Reagan, based in Japan to counter a threat from China, is overseeing the Afghanistan withdrawal in the Middle East because no other aircraft carrier is available. Meanwhile, China is building warships at an astonishing rate. In 2010 the U.S. Navy had 68 more ships than the Chinese navy. Today, it has 63 fewer, a swing of 131 ships in 10 years.

The Air Force is also following the Pentagon’s “divest to invest” lead. Combat aircraft procurement is down 22% from 2021. The force wants to retire 137 aircraft, more than double the number it plans to buy. After the retirement of 17 B-1s last year, the Air Force’s bomber inventory is at a level top officers have called the bare minimum. Ammunition procurement is down more than 40%. China in recent years has focused on procuring advanced aircraft and has the world’s third-largest air force. In addition, China has an extensive ground-based conventional missile force, including the DF-26, known as the “carrier killer” which is capable of striking Guam.

https://www.reuters.com/technology/hackers-demand-70-million-liberate-data-held-by-companies-hit-mass-cyberattack-2021-07-05/

Between 800 and 1,500 businesses around the world have been affected by a ransomware attack centered on U.S. information technology firm Kaseya, its chief executive said on Monday.

Fred Voccola, the Florida-based company’s CEO, said in an interview that it was hard to estimate the precise impact of Friday’s attack because those hit were mainly customers of Kaseya’s customers.

Kaseya is a company which provides software tools to IT outsourcing shops: companies that typically handle back-office work for companies too small or modestly resourced to have their own tech departments.

One of those tools was subverted on Friday, allowing the hackers to paralyze hundreds of businesses on all five continents. Although most of those affected have been small concerns – like dentists’ offices or accountants – the disruption has been felt more keenly in Sweden, where hundreds of supermarkets had to close because their cash registers were inoperative, or New Zealand, where schools and kindergartens were knocked offline.

The hackers who claimed responsibility for the breach have demanded $70 million to restore all the affected businesses’ data, although they have indicated a willingness to temper their demands in private conversations with a cybersecurity expert and with Reuters.

“We are always ready to negotiate,” a representative of the hackers told Reuters earlier Monday. The representative, who spoke via a chat interface on the hackers’ website, didn’t provide their name.

Voccola refused to say whether he was ready to take the hackers up on the offer.

“I can’t comment ‘yes,’ ‘no,’ or ‘maybe’,” he said when asked whether his company would talk to or pay the hackers. “No comment on anything to do with negotiating with terrorists in any way.”

The topic of ransom payments has become increasingly fraught as ransomware attacks become increasingly disruptive – and lucrative.

Voccola said he had spoken to officials at the White House, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the Department of Homeland Security about the breach but declined to say what they had told him about paying or negotiating.