ISDEI Instituto de Seguridad, Defensa y Estudios Internacionales

by Mark Stockley The Dark Web is reflecting a little more light these days. On Monday I wrote about Memex, DARPA's Deep Web search engine . Memex is a sophisticated tool set that has been in the hands of a few select law enforcement agencies for a year now, but it isn't available to regular users like you and me. There is another search engine that is though. Just a few days before I wrote that article, on 11 February, user Virgil Griffith went onto the Tor-talk mailing list and announced Onion City , a Dark Web search engine for the rest of us. The search engine delves into the anonymous Tor network, finds .onion sites and makes them available to regular users on the ordinary World Wide Web. Up to now the best way to search for .onion sites has been to get on the Tor network using something like the Tor browser , but Onion City effectively does that bit for you so you can search from the comfort of your favourite, insecure web browser. The site can do this because it's ...

by  Mark Stockley   Anyone who used the World Wide Web in the nineties will know that web search has come a long way. Sure, it was easy to get more search results than you knew what to do with in 1999 but it was really hard to get good ones. What Google did better than Alta Vista, HotBot, Yahoo and the others at the dawn of the millennium was to figure out which search results were the most relevant and respected. And so it's been ever since - search engines have become fast, simple interfaces that compete based on relevance and earn money from advertising. Meanwhile, the methods for finding things to put in the search results have remained largely the same - you either tell the search engines your site exists or they find it by following a link on somebody else's website. That business model has worked extremely well but there's one thing that it does not excel at - depth. If you don't declare your site's existence and nobody links to it, it doesn't exist - in ...

AMMAN: Jordan says it will help train Syrian rebels as part of its fight against the extremist ISIS, which controls parts of neighboring Syria and Iraq. The training is part of a regional effort also involving Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar as hosts of training sites. The U.S. Congress has passed legislation providing $500 million for training about 5,000 rebels over the next year. Jordanian government spokesman Mohammad al-Momani said Monday that Jordan will train Syrians to "defeat the terrorism that has been killing their sons and daughters." He would not say if training has already begun or where it would take place. Jordan is part of a U.S.-led military coalition against ISIS. It stepped up its involvement after the extremists burned a captured Jordanian fighter pilot.

Chinese-made advanced weapons systems flooding the international market over the next 10 years will cause instability, and make it a lot harder for the US to intervene in other countries, Foreign Policy magazine warned. FP analyzed the impact of Beijing’s rapidly increasing role in the global arms market in an article titled: ‘ China’s Weapons of Mass Consumption .’ China’s shift from small arms to advanced weapons systems is proven by the sale of drones to Africa and the Middle East in 2011, a contract to supply three frigates to Algeria in 2012 and Turkey’s surprise choice of a Chinese air and missile defense system over US, Russian, and EU offerings a year later. In recent years, Beijing has been trying to achieve self-sufficiency in defense supplies by investing heavily in mimicking foreign weapon technologies and domestic arms research and development programs. The approach turned out to be effective as, according to an independent Stockholm International Peace Research Institute’...

Hackers claiming affiliation with the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) on Saturday published personal details of 100 U.S. military personnel and urged violence against them. The New York Daily News reported that a group called the “Islamic State Hacking Division” was behind the leak. It contains names, pictures, addresses and unit identification numbers for American service members allegedly involved in bombings against ISIS. “Kill them in their own lands, behead them in their own homes, stab them to death as they walk their streets thinking they are safe,” the group urged ISIS supporters. “You crusaders that fight the Islamic State, we say to you: ‘Die in your rage!’ ” The hackers claimed they compiled the threatening roster, titled “Target: United States Military,” from cracked military records. It was then posted to JustPaste.it, a Polish-based social networking site ISIS has used for propaganda in the past. The New York Times said Saturday that both Defense Departme...

ANKARA: Turkish authorities have detained 16 Indonesians from three families who were trying to cross into Syria, a Turkish foreign ministry spokesman said Wednesday, a route frequently used by sympathizers of ISIS militants. "These 16 people - three families - are currently being held at a holding center ... and we have information that Indonesia's Ankaraembassy is in touch with the group," spokesman Tanju Bilgic said in a statement. The Indonesian embassy in Ankara had made no formal requests of the Turkish foreign ministry regarding the group, according to the statement, which gave no details on the reasons for their detention. Thousands of foreigners from more than 80 nations including Britain, other parts of Europe, China and the United States have joined the ranks of ISIS and other radical groups in Syria and Iraq, many crossing through Turkey. Turkey has said it needs more information from foreign intelligence agencies to intercept them, pointing to cases such as t...

KIEV: Around 30 British military personnel have arrived in Ukraineto provide medical and tactical training to the country’s troops, officials said Thursday. Britain’s Defense Ministry said it aims to boost Ukrainian forces’ defensive capability in their campaign against Russian-backed separatists in the east. The fragile cease-fire in place since mid-February has largely held, although small arms clashes continue to be reported daily. Separatist leaders have warned they could abandon the truce over what they say is Ukraine’s failure to live up to a guarantee of autonomy to eastern regions. British trainers will run a series of combat first aid courses at bases across the country, Ukrainian Defense Ministry SpokesmanOleksandr Motuzianik said. Assistance is being aimed at preventing further Ukrainian fatalities and casualties, Britain’s Defense Ministry said in a statement. It is unclear what tactical insight instructors will be providing but the British Defense Ministry said it would “h...

BEIRUT: ISIS has claimed responsibility for a series of attacks acrossSyria that left dead dozens of people, in an announcement on its radio station. In the message broadcast Saturday on Al-Bayan radio, ISIS said it was behind explosions targeting Kurdish new year festivities in northeast Syria and raids on government positions in the central province of Hama. Forty-five people, including at least 12 children, were killed in twin bombings in the northeastern city of Hassakeh Friday as they marked their new year's eve, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman said people were too scared to celebrate on Saturday, fearing more attacks. The ISIS radio station said the group detonated a car and a bike rigged with explosives in Hassakeh city, which is controlled by Kurdish fighters and Syrian regime forces. The attacks, which took place on the bloodiest day in Syria so far this year, were widely condemned. "Committing these barbaric crimes on ...