Counterterrorism
The United States said on Monday it was offering a reward of up to $10 million each for information leading to the identification or location of ISIS-K leader Sanaullah Ghafari and for information leading to the arrest of those responsible for a deadly August 2021 attack…
The Islamic State in Afghanistan and the surrounding region released its first English-language magazine online, declaring that theirs is the “most important province” of ISIS after Iraq and Syria. Much of the 37-page Voice of Khurasan inaugural issue, released by Islamic…
Women held in a camp housing families of Islamic State group militants in northeast Syria tried to kidnap their Kurdish guards Monday, an opposition war monitor said. The attempt led to a shooting that left one child dead and several other people wounded…
Military & Defense
Iran “wants some type of agreement” over its nuclear program as a way to lift sanctions on the regime, but Tehran views its ballistic missile arsenal “as their crown jewels” not to be bargained away, the senior American commander in the Middle East said Thursday…
Belarus plans to deploy up to 200 troops to Syria to serve alongside Russian forces in the country, according to a Russian government document released Monday, a move strongly condemned by Belarus’ opposition leader. A draft agreement between Russia and its ally…
Berlin and London both decided to send additional troops to NATO battle groups in Eastern Europe, ministers of defence of the two countries said on Monday. Germany will send 350 more soldiers to Lithuania as part of a NATO operation amid tensions between Russia…
Cybersecurity
A new cyber attack campaign launched by North Korean APT Lazarus Group is targeting the military defense industry. Lazarus weaponized two documents related to job opportunities from Lockheed Martin in the spear phishing attack. The discovery was made...
In one of the most impactful changes made in recent years, Microsoft has announced today that it will block by default the execution of VBA macro scripts inside five Office applications. Starting with early April 2022, Access, Excel, PowerPoint, Visio, and Word users will not…
The Washington State Department of Licensing (DOL) has shuttered its Professional Online Licensing and Regulatory Information System (POLARIS) after detecting suspicious activity. POLARIS stores information about license holders and applicants. The type of information…
Counterintelligence & Espionage
In November 2020, a convoy carrying Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, Iran's most prominent nuclear scientist, came under fire. He was killed with an artificial intelligence-assisted remote control machine gun. Carrying out an assassination in such a surgical fashion against a moving…
A federal court in Virginia recently granted Microsoft the authority to seize websites used by a Chinese state-linked hacking group. Known as Nickel, the group has successfully committed cyberattacks in up to 29 countries, including the United States, and 16 Latin American…
In June last year, the Drug Enforcement Agency claimed to have received disturbing news from a cooperating witness: Some government “paperwork” on a drug trafficking investigation in West Virginia was being leaked, including confidential information previously provided by…
Transnational Organized Crime
Eolika, a Guyana-flagged cargo vessel, had already been detained in the port of Senegalese capital, Dakar due to ‘inconsistent’ declarations. Authorities in the West African nation then searched the ship, seizing three containers of Italian manufactured ammunition worth an…
The U.S. Treasury Department on Friday issued a set of recommendations to combat illicit finance in the high-value art market and warned that the emerging digital art market, such as non-fungible tokens, may present new risks. In a study published on Friday, the Treasury…
The deadliest issue in the U.S.-China relationship right now isn’t the potential for military conflict over Taiwan, but the thousands of overdose deaths in the U.S. each year from illicit fentanyl made from Chinese raw materials. China’s reluctance to tighten controls on…