Daily Intel Brief
Russia recruiting Afghan commandos for Ukraine, Hackers target Australian Defense communications platform, and Iran charges female journalists of being CIA spies...
Today’s Intel Brief is brought to you by Farnsworth Forensics.
Counterterrorism
Turkey is still reportedly working to expel al-Qaeda-affiliated Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) from the northern Syrian area of Afrin. On October 30, Syrian opposition activists shared photos of fortifications which were recently built by the Turkish military to separate Afrin…
Investigation into the setting up of the Miya Museum in Assam has reportedly revealed some sensational details. According to Assam Police sources, the museum has been found to have links with terror outfits All Qaeda in Indian Subcontinent (AQIS) and Ansarullah Bangla…
Military & Defense
Afghan special forces soldiers who fought alongside American troops and then fled to Iran after the United States’s chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan last year are now being recruited by the Russian military to fight in Ukraine, the Associated Press news agency has…
Since the last Arab League summit in 2019, several members of the 22-member bloc -- for decades a forum for strident declarations of support for the Palestinian cause -- have normalised ties with the Jewish state. The United Arab Emirates went first in a historic US…
Cybersecurity
A new report shows that hackers are selling access to 576 corporate networks worldwide for a total cumulative sales price of $4,000,000, fueling attacks on the enterprise. The research comes from Israeli cyber-intelligence firm KELA which published its Q3 2022 ransomware…
Threat actors have conducted a ransomware attack against a communications platform used by Australian military personnel and defense staff. Named ForceNet, the company is one of the defense department's external service providers employed to run one of its websites. At…
Counterintelligence & Espionage
The two female Iranian journalists who helped break the story of Mahsa Amini, the 22-year-old Kurdish Iranian woman whose death in the custody of the so-called morality police last month sparked a nationwide uprising, were formally accused late Friday of being CIA spies…
Government officials have been told to never use their personal mobile phones for confidential calls as they are likely to be targeted by hackers from hostile states such as Russia, North Korea and Iran. A Whitehall source claims all MPs involved in national security have been…
Transnational Organized Crime
Over the weekend, Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) seized a tanker carrying smuggled fuel, the latest in a long series of busts - but this time with a larger than usual volume. The vessel was carrying nearly three million gallons of diesel, a near-record amount…
In a new twist in the long-running drug smuggling case involving containerships from Mediterranean Shipping Company (MSC), U.S. Federal authorities reported the indictment and arrest of one of the masterminds behind the narcotrafficking plot who they say worked…