Counterterrorism
The Australian government has said it planned to list the whole of the Palestinian movement Hamas to its list of outlawed “terrorist” organisations. In response, Hamas spokesman Hazem Qassem told Al Jazeera the movement strongly condemned Australia’s decision on Thursday…
A Columbus, Ohio, man pleaded guilty in federal court Tuesday for making threats to a local reproductive health services facility. Carlos Manuel Rodriguez Brime, 25, admitted to threatening to kill a patient who indicated she planned to get an abortion at the clinic…
Europol’s European Counter Terrorism Centre has supported the Spanish National Police (Policía Nacional) in a major crackdown on jihadists, including those operating online. A total of five suspected members of the so-called Islamic State have been arrested in the…
Military & Defense
Shelling in Ukraine on Thursday renewed Western fears of an imminent Russian invasion as U.S. President Joe Biden said Moscow is preparing a pretext to justify a possible attack and the Kremlin expelled an American diplomat. Early morning exchanges of fire between…
NATO defense ministers are drawing up plans to station more troops along the eastern front to face the “new normal” of an aggressive Russia, the alliance’s leader said Wednesday. Russia has stationed 150,000 troops around Ukraine and, despite commitments on Tuesday to…
The Ukrainian government announced a new security pact with the U.K. and Poland Feb. 17, as the day’s developments upped the ante yet again in the standoff with Russia. The tie-up is meant to deepen Ukraine’s relationships with the two European nations in matters of cyber…
Cybersecurity
A single activist helped turn the tide against NSO Group, one of the world’s most sophisticated spyware companies now facing a cascade of legal action and scrutiny in Washington over damaging new allegations that its software was used to hack government…
Threat actors are targeting Microsoft Teams users by planting malicious documents in chat threads that execute Trojans that ultimately can take over end-user machines, researchers have found. In January, researchers at Avanan, a Check Point Company, began tracking the…
Updates have been released for UpdraftPlus, a WordPress plugin with over 3 million installations, after a vulnerability was discovered by security researcher Marc Montpas. In a blog post, the Wordfence Threat Intelligence team explained that the vulnerability allows any…
Counterintelligence & Espionage
A 30-year-old Russian man charged with espionage for allegedly passing information about European rockets to Russian intelligence went on trial Thursday in Germany. The defendant, identified only as Ilnur N. in line with German privacy rules, was arrested in June…
Spain’s main opposition party was consumed by high drama on Thursday as senior officials were accused of mounting an espionage operation against a rising star who poses a threat to the party leader. The fight broke out after local newspapers reported that the People’s Party…
Police have uncovered an alleged plot by a suspected Chinese spy and a Russian-born Brisbane businessman to smuggle military equipment in breach of Australian laws. Brisbane entrepreneur Alexander Cher, 63, is accused of partnering with Chinese national and former…
Transnational Organized Crime
The number of illegal border crossings at the European Union’s external borders in the first month of 2022 reached 13,160, 78% more than in January 2021 and 23% more than in 2020, according to preliminary calculations by the European border and coastguard agency…
An elderly man en route to his plot of land in Aguaje, Aguililla, in Mexico’s western state of Michoacán, was blown up by a mine planted by one of Mexico’s most dangerous drug gangs, Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG). His son was also seriously injured…
The Jordanian military says a crackdown on drug smugglers along the Syrian border is delivering results. During a media tour along the Syrian border on Thursday, Col. Mustafa al-Hiyari said the military was forced into action in response to increased smuggling activity…