Daily Intel Brief
Iran plans to back Russia in Ukraine with UAVs, ISIS planned chemical attacks in Europe, and Lithuania's state-owned energy group was hit by a massive DDoS attack...
Counterterrorism
Swedish prosecutors say they are investigating the death of a woman near a political festival as a possible terrorist crime. The woman in her 60s was killed in broad daylight near an annual event for Sweden's top politicians on the island of Gotland last Wednesday (July 6)…
In the summer of 2014, as his followers were ravaging the cities of northern Iraq, Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi convened a secret meeting with a weapons expert whose unusual skills the terrorist chief was anxious to acquire. His guest was a small man, barely above…
Military & Defense
Ukraine has touted plans to amass a "million-strong army" equipped with Nato weapons to fight Russian forces. However, the comments by Defence minister Oleksii Reznikov are being seen as more of a rallying cry than a concrete plan for a counter offensive. They come as…
Iran is planning to supply hundreds of drones with combat weapon capabilities to Russia for use in Ukraine, a top US official said Monday. Jake Sullivan, the White House national security advisor, said the information received by the United States supported views that…
Cybersecurity
Lithuania's state-owned energy group Ignitis said it was hit by "the biggest cyber attack in a decade" on Saturday. Ignitis said it had experienced DDoS attacks, affecting the operation of its websites and digital services. However, the attacks were taken under control by noon the…
Bandai Namco, the Japanese publisher behind the Ace Combat, Dragon Ball Z, and Dark Souls games, appears to be the latest major gaming company to suffer a major hack. The ransomware group BlackCat added the Elden Ring publisher to its list of victims earlier today…
Counterintelligence & Espionage
The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ruled against Turkey in the case of the detention of philanthropist and rights activist Osman Kavala, thus giving the nod to the Council of Europe (CoE) to continue with a rarely initiated disciplinary process against…
U.S. defense contractor L3Harris has reportedly ended its bid to buy spyware and hacking tools from Israeli tech company NSO Group. According to news reports, L3Harris ended the talks following security concerns raised by the Biden administration last month that the…
Transnational Organized Crime
The West African nation of Liberia is entering a period of accelerating vulnerability, threatening to create conditions for a resurgence of organized crime – according to a new report by the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime (GI-TOC)…
After snubbing the U.S. at last month's Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles, Mexico President Andrés Manuel López Obrador is set to meet President Joe Biden at the White House, Tuesday. The left-leaning president, who recently called on American's of Mexican…