Daily Intel Brief
US targets smugglers supplying Islamic State in Somalia, USSTRATCOM commander warns that Ukraine is a 'warmup', and the rise of TikTok...
Counterterrorism
The United States is trying to curb the flow of weapons to the Islamic State terror group’s affiliate in Somalia, taking aim at a smuggling operation that is also helping to arm its al-Qaida-linked rival, al-Shabab, with weapons from Iran. The U.S. Treasury Department…
The U.K. government will carry out a wholesale refresh of the U.K. counter-terrorism strategy, to protect its citizens from new, emerging and persistent threats. In the U.K. and overseas, there has been a shift towards self-initiated terrorists operating independently from organized…
Military & Defense
The war in Ukraine is a prelude to greater military challenges to the US in the near future, and America is losing its competitive edge in nuclear weapons capabilities, US Strategic Command head Admiral Charles Richard warned in a speech at the Naval Submarine…
Australia's foreign intelligence chief says that there should be no automatic assumption that Australia would join the United States in any war with China over Taiwan. The director-general of the Australian Secret Intelligence Service (ASIS), Paul Symon, said that any such…
Cybersecurity
Enterprise security executives that perceive nation-state-backed cyber groups as a distant threat might want to revisit that assumption, and in a hurry. Several recent geopolitical events around the world over the past year have spurred a sharp increase in nation-state activity…
The Australian Cyber Security Centre received over 76,000 cybercrime reports during the last financial year — an increase of nearly 13% — and warned in its latest annual report that “cyberspace has become a battleground.” “We are currently witnessing deteriorating strategic…
Counterintelligence & Espionage
This summer was a period of economic uncertainty for much of the tech industry, resulting in a drop in bitcoin prices, hundreds of layoffs, and a hiring freeze. It was also the summer that US regulators crossed the aisle to reach an agreement: it was time for stricter rules for the…
A new espionage campaign, dubbed SandStrike, has been detected using malicious VPN apps to load spyware on Android devices, cybersecurity company Kaspersky reports. It's an example of how APT (advanced persistent threat) actors are constantly updating old attack tools…
Transnational Organized Crime
Earlier this year, Kik Messenger user “heyyyydude1” was selling a stash of videos he’d amassed of child sexual abuse. One customer, who said he was a 35-year-old father of two, offered to buy 200 videos for $45. “How do I pay?” he asked. “Cash App,” heyyyydude1 responded…
Five women were found dead on Friday, in Morelos, the latest victims in the rising tide of gender-based violence in the southern Mexican state. Their bodies were found in different spots across the city of Cuautla, known as a weekend getaway spot for residents of Mexico…