ISDEI Instituto de Seguridad, Defensa y Estudios Internacionales

The potential damage from cyber-attacks is rapidly becoming more extensive Codenamed Locked Shields 2015, Nato officials say it was the "most advanced ever live-fire cyber-defence exercise". Four hundred cyber-warriors from 16 countries last week responded to a scenario in which computer networks came under attack from another state's hackers. The scenario was based around the idea of "hybrid conflicts" , just below the level of war, in which one state both carries out espionage and disrupts the communications and operations of another, tied in with other activities. The countries portrayed in the scenario were fictional, but it is hard to interpret this as anything other than thinking about Russia, which is seen as having pioneered hybrid conflict in Ukraine and, before that, Georgia. The exercise itself was taking place in Estonia, which was subject to its own cyber-attack . But the ability to carry out significant - even destructive - cyber-attacks is sprea...

French TV station TV5 Monde was knocked off air for hours after a hack attack A growing band of hacktivists is helping Islamic State spread its message by attacking media organisations and websites, a security company suggests. Supporters of IS were helping it with opportunistic attacks and more sophisticated operations, said FireEye . French TV station TV5 Monde was a high-profile victim early this year, but attackers have hit other media groups. FireEye said the wide range of targets made it hard to say who was at risk. Media message "There's a lot of people that go to Syria fight for IS but another way to fight is to stay home and do it from there," said David Merkel, chief technology officer at FireEye. "If you have an internet connection and have some skill levels you can definitely contribute." Mr Merkel said IS was known for using cyber-attack tools in conflict zones to gather intelligence about enemy forces. However, he said, there was also growing evide...

A suspected methane gas blast at a mine in a rebel-held area of east Ukraine is believed to have killed at least 30 people, the rebels told the BBC. They only confirmed 23 deaths at the Zasyadko coal mine. Ukraine's officials say as many as 33 people may have died. There are fears the rebels lack the resources to deal with the disaster, the BBC's Tom Burridge reports. Zasyadko was the scene of Ukraine's worst mine disaster nearly eight years ago, when 101 people were killed. Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has demanded access to the mine for government rescuers and police. The mine is close to a front line where the pro-Russian rebels have been battling Ukrainian government troops. However, Ukraine's mine unions head Mykhailo Volynets told a Ukrainian TV channel there had been no fighting in the area in recent days. While Ukraine's economy has significantly shrunk since fighting began in April, many coal mines continue to operate in the conflict zone. Mining sa...

Michael Enright (L) (Screenshot from youtube.com video) A British actor known for small Hollywood roles, including one he played alongside Johnny Depp, quit his career to join the Kurdish forces fighting against Islamic State (IS, also known as ISIS/ISIL) in Syria. Manchester-born Michael Enright was seen in a video made by the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG), The Guardian reports. The video was posted on Facebook and shows Enright firing a weapon with other fighters while sitting in a trench. Calling IS“dangerous to every human being alive,”Enright asks viewers for more weapons and medical aid for the Kurdish forces. Enright is most famous for his role as the deckhand in Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest. The actor-turned-fighter earlier told Dubai-based Al-Aan TV that he had been outraged by a video in which Islamic State terrorists “cut off an American journalist’s head.” But it was the video released in February, showing a Jordanian pilot being burned alive, that w...

Only three US airports out of 70 evaluated passed the undercover testing A top US official has pledged reforms after tests found that airport screeners allowed mock explosives and weapons through security checkpoints 95% of the time. Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson on Monday called for revised security procedures in airports across the US. In one test, a screener failed to find a fake bomb taped to an agent's back despite patting the man down. The results of tests were first reported by ABC News . ABC News reported - citing people who had been briefed on a Homeland Security inspector general report - the tests were carried out at 70 US airports. Only three airports were able detect the banned weapons, the report said. Mr Johnson said security officers should be retrained and scanning equipment should be retested. He said he was taking the results of tests "very seriously". "The numbers in these reports never look good out of context but they are a critical el...

By Aidan Lewis BBC News Out of media player. Press enter to return or tab to continue. Media captionWho's in charge of IS? In 90 secs In a ground mission in eastern Syria last weekend, US special forces killed Abu Sayyaf, a man they described as playing a key role in Islamic State's oil and gas operations. The American commandos were quickly engaged in a firefight, during which Abu Sayyaf was killed. But their original goal was to capture and interrogate him, apparently in an effort to improve their understanding of how IS works. It raised the question of how much is known about the structure of an organisation that rapidly overran large parts of Syria and Iraq last year, and has been able to hold onto much of that territory despite months of air strikes by a US-led coalition. On a broad level the shape of Islamic State may seem fairly clear. Islamic State has seized large swathes of territory in Syria and Iraq There are conflicting reports about the fate of Abu Bakr al-Baghda...

By Washingtons Blog The International Business Times reports that the head of special forces chief in Tajikistan was trained by American mercenary company Blackwater, but has now joined ISIS . Investigative reporter Jeremy Scahill notes that Zacharias Moussaoui – the so-called “20th 9/11 hijacker” – had Blackwater’s number in his notebook . Blackwater often works for the U.S. government. For example, the Atlantic noted in 2012: President Bush gave the CIA permission to create a top secret assassination unit to find and kill Al Qaeda operatives. The program was kept from Congress for seven years. And when Leon Panetta told legislators about it in 2009, he revealed that the CIA had hired the private security firm Blackwater to help run it. “The move was historic,” says Evan Wright, the two-time National Magazine Award-winning journalist who wrote Generation Kill . “It seems to have marked the first time the U.S. government outsourced a covert assassination service to private enterprise....

Japanese troops (Reuters / U.S. Air Force / Senior Airman Sara Csurilla / Handout) Fifty-two percent of Japanese people dislike South Korea, while 78 percent of Koreans feel the same way about Japan, with 4 in 10 Koreans believing the countries will go to war in the next few years, according to an authoritative survey. In its third such annual study, Tokyo’s Genron NPO, a think tank, and Seoul’s East Asia Institute, each interviewed about 1,000 people in their respective countries, ahead of a landmark meeting between the South Korean and Japanese defense ministers. Koreans have been particularly alarmed by Japan, which has recently upped its defense budget, and whose current Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has espoused a rhetoric widely dubbed “new nationalism.” Fifty-eight percent of South Koreans said Japan posed a military threat, fewer than the 83 percent who were fearful of North Korea, but far ahead of the 38 percent who said the biggest danger emanated from Beijing. Last year, only 4...