Daily Intel Brief
Biden vows U.S. defense of Taiwan, Lapsus$ is blamed for recent Uber hack, and ISKP declares expansion of jihad into Asia...
Counterterrorism
ISKP has declared its strategy to infiltrate Central Asia aiming to bomb and sabotage operations against Chinese oil and gas pipelines in the region. In this way, the Islamic State Khorasan openly called on the Muslims of Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan to open a…
A young woman in Switzerland has been convicted on terror charges after stabbing two people in Lugano in 2020. The 29-year-old -- who was known to the police and suffers from mental health issues -- was found guilty of committing a "terrorist act" and "repeated attempts to…
Military & Defense
Somali army commanders say their forces killed more than 100 al-Shabab militants during weekend offensives to retake territory from the Islamist militant group. Witnesses say the troops also recaptured two villages that al-Shabab had held for more than a decade…
President Biden again vowed in an interview Sunday that American forces would defend Taiwan if China's military invaded the self-governing island — prompting the White House to stress that U.S. policy hasn't changed on the matter. Driving the news: Biden said during an…
Cybersecurity
Uber believes the hacker behind last week's breach is affiliated with the Lapsus$ extortion group, known for breaching other high-profile tech companies such as Microsoft, Cisco, NVIDIA, Samsung, and Okta. The company added that the attacker used the stolen…
Prosecutors in Bosnia and Herzegovina are investigating a wide-ranging cyberattack that has crippled the operations of the country’s parliament. For nearly two weeks, the website for the country’s parliament has been down, and local news outlet Nezavisne spoke with several…
Counterintelligence & Espionage
Russian-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine sentenced two employees of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe to 13 years in jail on treason charges, Russian news agencies reported Monday. In April, authorities in Lugansk announced the arrest of two…
The European Union's executive branch has unveiled plans for new laws that it said would help protect media freedom and independence in the 27-nation bloc at a time of mounting concern about the dangers of political influence in several member countries. Spurred into…
Transnational Organized Crime
The Taliban government of Afghanistan on Monday said that it had freed an American engineer, Mark R. Frerichs, in exchange for the release by the United States of a prominent Afghan tribal leader who had been convicted of drug trafficking. The release of the tribal…
South Korean prosecutors have asked Interpol for help in arresting Do Kwon, the progenitor of a $60 billion cryptocurrency wipeout, as they seek to charge him with alleged crimes including breaking capital-markets laws. “Prosecutors on Monday have made a request to Interpol for…