Homeland Security Science & Technology at the University of the District of Columbia: July 2015

Monday, July 27, 2015

Bomb-proof lining contains explosion in aircraft’s luggage hold

Published 27 July 2015

A bomb-proof lining developed by an international team of scientists has successfully contained blasts in a series of controlled explosions in the luggage hold of a Boeing 747 and an Airbus 321. The Fly-Bag, which lines an aircraft’s luggage hold with multiple layers of novel fabrics and composites, was tested last week under increasing explosive charges on disused planes. The tests, using this technology, have demonstrated that a plane’s luggage hold may be able to contain the force of an explosion should a device concealed within a passenger’s luggage be detonated during a flight.

A bomb-proof lining developed by an international team of scientists, including academics from the University of Sheffield, has successfully contained blasts in a series of controlled explosions in the luggage hold of a Boeing 747 and an Airbus 321.
The Fly-Bag, which lines an aircraft’s luggage hold with multiple layers of novel fabrics and composites, was tested under increasing explosive charges on disused planes at Cotswolds Airport, near Cirencester, last week.
A University of Sheffield release reports that the tests, using this technology, have demonstrated that a plane’s luggage hold may be able to contain the force of an explosion should a device concealed within a passenger’s luggage be detonated during a flight. This would mitigate damage to the plane and help keep passengers safe.
After the tests, explosives were placed in the aircraft without the lining to show the damage that could be caused.
Disasters such as the Lockerbie bombing in 1988 drove the need for this kind of invention, as well as an incident in which a printer cartridge bomb was found on-board a cargo plane at East Midlands Airport in 2010.
Fundamental to the design of the bag is a combination of fabrics which have high strength and impact and heat resistance. The fabrics include Aramid, which is used in ballistic body armor.
“Key to the concept is that the lining is flexible and this adds to its resilience when containing the explosive force and any fragments produced,” said Andy Tyas, of the Department of Civil and Structural Engineering, who is leading the research at the University of Sheffield. “This helps to ensure that the Fly-Bag acts as a membrane rather than as a rigid-walled container which might shatter on impact.”
“We have extensively tested Fly-Bag prototypes at the University of Sheffield’s blast-testing laboratory, but the purpose of these tests was to investigate how the concept works in the confines of a real aircraft and the results are extremely promising.”
Hardened luggage containers (HULD) have been developed to deal with bombs hidden in passenger luggage, but these containers are heavier and more costly than conventional equivalents.
A European consortium working on the Fly Bag project includes Blastech, a spin out company from the University of Sheffield, as well as partners from Greece, Spain, Italy, Germany, Sweden, and the Netherlands.
The technology could either be something that becomes compulsory for all airlines to use if the law was changed or could be used by airlines responding to particular threats.
It has also been adapted for use in cabin holds within the plane if the airline crew spot something they think might be a threat and could be a risk to passengers.

DHS S&T Awards $2.9 million for mobile app security research

Published 27 July 2015

DHS S& T last week announced a $2.9 million cybersecurity mobile app security (MAS) research and development (R&D) award which will help identify mobile app vulnerabilities. The MAS R&D project aims to establish continuous automated assurance of mobile apps for the federal government.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Science and Technology Directorate (S&T) last week announced a $2.9 million cybersecurity mobile app security (MAS) research and development (R&D) award which will help identify mobile app vulnerabilities. The Northern Virginia-based small business, Kryptowire, was awarded a 30-month contract through S&T’s Long Range Broad Agency Announcement (LRBAA).
“Ensuring that our mobile applications are secure across the federal government is a priority for S&T,” said DHS Under Secretary for Science and Technology Dr. Reginald Brothers. “This project will help to enable the secure use of mobile apps across the Department’s many missions.”
The MAS R&D project aims to establish continuous automated assurance of mobile apps for the federal government. By combining mobile app archiving and app vetting technologies as well as incorporating government and industry security standards, the project will capture app changes made over the app’s lifespan and will test against known vulnerabilities and emerging threats.
The results captured will be put into a report that is continuously maintained and will follow the Federal Chief Information Officer Council’s Mobile Technology Tiger Team initiative for app reciprocity reporting that would be shareable to other federal departments and agencies.
S&T’s Cyber Security Division and First Responders Group are leading this effort with partnerships from the Department’s Office of the Chief Information Officer, Federal Emergency Management Agency, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team, as well as the Department of Justice, U.S. General Services Administration and other federal agencies.
“The MAS R&D project is trying to solve mobile app security for the federal government,” said S&T Cyber Security Division Mobile Security Program Manager Vincent Sritapan. “We want the project to adhere to government requirements and best practices, but still be cost effective for the federal IT community.”
In addition, S&T will be looking to extend the mobile app security capabilities to the first responder community in order to help support their mission.
“First responders continuously rely on mobile apps for logistics and collaboration,” said First Responders Group Office for Interoperability and Compatibility Director John Merrill. “S&T wants to help make sure each first responder has access to secure mobile apps in the future.”
With the success of launching this R&D project and with partners from across the federal government, S&T looks forward to enabling the secure use of mobile apps in the federal government using the highest standards of security and protection.

Russia offers safe haven for a major botnet operator

Published 27 July 2015

Recently the FBI offered a reward of $3 million for any useful information which will lead to the apprehension of Evgeniy Mikhailovich Bogachev. Bogachev is notorious for creating the Gameover Zeus botnet, which the FBI had successfully shut down in mid-2014, but the agency failed to capture Bogachev himself.
In early 2015 Bogachev managed to restore Zeus.
Bogachev and some members of his hacking crew now live in Russia, and the Russian government does not want to hand him or any of his hackers over to the United States to stand trial.
Gameover Zeus has been in operation for at least four years, and has developed different kinds of bank fraud. The hackers behind Zeus are believed to have stolen more than $100 million since 2011. Zeus has also been used as a means of getting money from PC owners by converting data on computers into an inaccessible code and later extorting big sums of money for the decryption key.
Botnets are a collection of compromised computers, known as zombies, which are controlled by the same hacker (botherder). A zombie is a computer affected by malware which causes it to do whatever the attacker – the botherder – wants it to do without the user’s knowledge. Computers are usually turned in zombies by visiting an infected website.
Strategy Page reports that for almost ten years the FBI, which considers the creators and operators of botnets to be criminals, has apprehended botnet operators and made them criminally liable, and also helped their victims wipe out the zombie software.
Experts estimate that on any given day, about ten million computers all over the world are zombiefied, often without owners’ knowledge. Botnets are most commonly used to steal information or dispatch malware to other computers to turn them into zombies.
Computer owners, even if they do not realize their computers have been turned into zombies, often notice that there is something wrong with their machine – programs are executed more slowly, or the computer freezes up often. There are software programs which trace and remove the hidden malware. Another way to deal with a zombie computer comuter is to reformat the hard drive and reinstall the software.
Microsoft and Internet security firms are constantly improving their security software so that it can automatically detect and delete any malicious software.
Botherders typically hide in countries that have no extradition treaty with the United States – Russia being one such country.
“The most powerful Internet weapons on the planet are botnets,” Strategy Page concludes. “And many of them are getting into uniform. In wartime, many of these botnets would be turned into weapons. A botnet can be used to shut down essential military networks, or infect military computers with destructive (to the computer) software. This isn’t science fiction. It is real.”

More evidence emerges of ISIS’s use of chemical weapons

Published 27 July 2015

A joint investigation by two independent organizations has found that ISIS has begun to use weapons filled with chemicals against Kurdish forces and civilians in both Iraq and Syria. ISIS is notorious for its skill in creating and adapting weapons and experts are concerned with the group’s access to chemical agents and its experiments with and the use of these agents as weapons.

A joint investigation by two independent organizations – Conflict Armament Research (CAR) and Sahan Research — has found that ISIS has begun to use weapons filled with chemicals against Kurdish forces and civilians in both Iraq and Syria. On three occasions last month, ISIS used projectile-delivered chemical agents in Hasakah province and against Kurdish positions near the Mosul Dam.
When CAR investigators reached the “scene of crime” near the Mosul Dam, they experienced severe headaches and nausea when encountering the pungent odor of a chlorine chemical agent, and saw a dark yellow liquid leaking from a projectile, according to James Bevan, the executive director of CAR.
CNN reports that the investigation was launched to ascertain that the device contained chlorine. The results showed that fragments of munitions contained chemical residue which still emitted a powerful odor which affected eyes and throat. The same thing happened with the residue of another rocket from Tel Brak.
Malik Ellahi, spokesman for the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), noted that any use of toxic chemicals as weapons is prohibited by the Chemical Weapons convention. CAR’s James Bevan believes that the occasions of chemical weapon use the researchers identified may likely be a test run. He also added that ISIS forces are known to experiment with improvised munitions and chemicals which are at hand.
ISIS is notorious for its skill in creating and adapting weapons. Last month, photos depicting its improvised explosive device (IED) workshop in Fallujah were published. The latest assessments of experts suggest that it was a facility for creating different types of weapons.
There is a big distance between Mosul Dam and Tel Brak, but the similarity of the attacks in the two areas led analysts to think that different ISIS commands were sharing weapons and knowledge.
Moreover, there are precedents for ISIS using chlorine in a number of attacks earlier this year. Bombs filled with chlorine were used in a series of attacks near the town of Balad, in Eski Mosul, and Tikrit (see “Syrian Kurdish militia says ISIS used poison gas in attacks on militia fighters,” HSNW, 20 July 2015).
Also, during the fight against U.S. forces in 2006-07, Iraqi insurgents used crude chlorine-based weapons — usually bombs. Islamist insurgents also mixed chemicals with explosive in a suicide truck they exploded in Ramadi in 2007, killing twenty and injuring many more who required hospitalization for chemicals-related injuries.
There were many reports of the use of chemical weapons by the Assad regime (see “‘Strong possibility’ Assad may use chemical weapons on a large scale to protect regime: U.S. intelligence,” HSNW, 6 July 2015; and “Assad regime continues to employ chemical weapons,” HSNW, 22 April 2015). At the same time Bevan is concerned with ISIS’s access to chemical agents, and the group’s experiments with and use of these agents in chemical weapons.

Turkey, U.S. to create “ISIS-free zone” along Syria-Turkey border

Published 27 July 2015

In what should be regarded as a significant victory for Turkey’s approach to the conflict in Syria, Turkey and the United States have agreed on a plan create an “ISIS free” strip inside Syria along the Turkey-Syria border. The deal will see Turkey drawn more deeply into Syria’s civil war and increase the intensity of the U.S. air strikes against ISIS.
American officials told the New York Times that the United States would work with Turkey and Syrian rebel fighters to clear a strip of land near the border, up to 25-mile deep, which would constitute an ISIS-free zone and a safe haven for Syrian refugees.
“Details remain to be worked out, but what we are talking about with Turkey is cooperating to support partners on the ground in northern Syria who are countering ISIL,” a senior Obama administration official said, using another term for the Islamic State. “The goal is to establish an ISIL-free zone and ensure greater security and stability along Turkey’s border with Syria.”
Late last week, for the first time since the beginning of the war in February 2011, Turkish jets bombed ISIS targets inside Syria – but they also bombed positions of the Syrian Kurds, which are trained and armed by the United States to fight ISIS.
Turkey and the United States last Friday announced that the United States would be allowed to use a major Turkish air base in southern Turkey for bombing raids against ISIS (“Game changer: Turkey allows U.S. to use of Incirlik air base for attacks on ISIS,” HSNW, 24 July 2015)
Turkey has long demanded that a safe haven inside Syria, along the 500-mile order between the two countries, be created so Syrian refugees escaping the Assad regime’s would have a safe place to say where they would be protected from Assad’s ground and air forces. In the absence of such a safe haven inside Syria, more than two million Syrians have escaped into Turkey, where they now live in tent cities.
Turkey conditioned its participation in the fight against ISIS on the creation of this safe haven.
The New York Times reports that it is not yet clear how the safe haven will be protected, who will police it, and whether it will be declared a no-fly zone patrolled by coalition planes.
Another sensitive issue is that of the Syrian Kurds: The ISIS-free zone will include parts of the Kurdish areas in Syria, but these areas are under the control of the Kurdish Democratic Union (PYD), which is the Syrian branch of the Turkish Kurds’ pro-Kurdish independence movement PKK. The PKK is designated as a terrorist organization by both Turkey and the United States.
The hostility between Turkey and the PKK-PYD axis is such, that when the Syrian Kurds’ People’s Protection Units (YPG), the armed wing of the PYD, battled ISIS for control over the Syrian Kurdish town of Kobani, Turkey blocked aid and supplied from reaching the YPG fighters.
On Friday, when Turkish jets attacked ISIS positions, they also attacked several YPG positions.
The YPG is armed by the United States and trained by U.S. Special Forces, even though it is affiliated, through the PYD, with the PKK (for more on Syrian Kurds, see “Turkish jets bomb Kurdish positions,” HSNW, 15 October 2014). In recent months, the YPG and other Syrian rebel fighters have succeeded in evicting ISIS from large tracts of land in northern Syria, including the crucial border town of Tal Abyad, which foreign fighters had used as a waypoint for traveling to join the terror group.
Today (Monday), Kurdish spokespersons bitterly complained about the Turkish attacks on YPG positions on Friday, as YPG fighters laid siege to ISIS-held positions close to another key border crossing, the town of Jarablus. In a statement, the YPG said Turkey had shelled a Kurd- and Syrian opposition-held town near the border with seven tank rounds, and an hour later attacked vehicles belonging to the Kurdish militia.
“Instead of targeting IS terrorists’ occupied positions, Turkish forces attack our defenders’ position. This is not the right attitude,” the statement said. “We urge Turkish leadership to halt this aggression and to follow international guidelines. We are telling the Turkish army to stop shooting at our fighters and their positions.”
The Turkish campaign against ISIS – in addition to Friday bombing of ISIS targets in Syria, the Turkish security forces have arrested more than 200 Turkish sympathizers of ISIS — has been accompanied by an intensified campaign against the PKK. Turkish police has also arrested hundreds of PKK members in the last few days, in retaliation for violence against local police by PKK militants.
On Sunday, Turkish fighter jets targeted positions of the PKK for a second night, raising concerns that the peace negotiations between Turkey and the PKK may crumble.
Turkey’s acting prime minister, Ahmet Davutoğlu, has said military operations against the PKK and ISIS would continue as long as the country faced a threat by either group. Speaking with Turkish newspaper editors on Saturday, Davutoğlu said the military operations had “changed the regional game” and “showed its strength.”
Turkish daily Hürriyet quoted Davutoğlu as underlining that Washington and Ankara had found enough common ground over their Syria policy to reach agreement on opening up Turkey’s airbases. Davutoğlu said Turkey did not plan to send ground forces into Syria, and that Ankara was willing to cooperate with “moderate elements fighting against DAESH [ISIS].”
“If we are not going to send in land units on the ground, and we will not, then those forces acting as ground forces cooperating with us should be protected,” Hürriyet quoted him as saying.
He also said that the PYD, considered the Syrian affiliate of the PKK, could “have a place in the new Syria” if the party agreed to cooperate with opposition fighters, cut all links with Assad and if it “did not irritate Turkey.”
President Erdogan in 2012 launched the peace negotiations with the PKK in an effort to bring to an end the 30-year bloody war between the PKK and Turkey, in which more than 40,000 Turks were killed. Critics of the government say that the agreement with the United States over the safe haven and the use of the Turkish air base, and the Turkish attacks against ISIS, are meant to provide cover for the government’s plan to intensify its war against Kurdish separatists.

Wednesday, July 22, 2015

2014 was Earth’s warmest year on record; climate markers show global warming trend

Published 22 July 2015

In 2014, the most essential indicators of Earth’s changing climate continued to reflect trends of a warming planet, with several markers such as rising land and ocean temperature, sea levels, and greenhouse gases — setting new records. The report’s climate indicators show patterns, changes, and trends of the global climate system. Examples of the indicators include various types of greenhouse gases; temperatures throughout the atmosphere, ocean, and land; cloud cover; sea level; ocean salinity; sea ice extent; and snow cover. “The variety of indicators shows us how our climate is changing, not just in temperature but from the depths of the oceans to the outer atmosphere,” said Thomas Karl, director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) National Centers for Environmental Information.

In 2014, the most essential indicators of Earth’s changing climate continued to reflect trends of a warming planet, with several markers such as rising land and ocean temperature, sea levels, and greenhouse gases — setting new records. These key findings and others can be found in the State of the Climate in 2014 report released online the other day by the American Meteorological Society (AMS).
The report, compiled by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Center for Weather and Climate at the National Centers for Environmental Information is based on contributions from 413 scientists from fifty-eight countries around the world (highlight, full report). It provides a detailed update on global climate indicators, notable weather events, and other data collected by environmental monitoring stations and instruments located on land, water, ice, and in space.
“This report represents data from around the globe, from hundreds of scientists and gives us a picture of what happened in 2014. The variety of indicators shows us how our climate is changing, not just in temperature but from the depths of the oceans to the outer atmosphere,” said Thomas R. Karl, L.H.D, director, NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information.
NOAA says that the report’s climate indicators show patterns, changes, and trends of the global climate system. Examples of the indicators include various types of greenhouse gases; temperatures throughout the atmosphere, ocean, and land; cloud cover; sea level; ocean salinity; sea ice extent; and snow cover. The indicators often reflect many thousands of measurements from multiple independent datasets.
“This is the 25th report in this important annual series, as well as the 20th report that has been produced for publication in BAMS,” said Keith Seitter, AMS executive director. “Over the years we have seen clearly the value of careful and consistent monitoring of our climate which allows us to document real changes occurring in the Earth’s climate system.”
Key highlights from the report include:

Greenhouse gases continued to climb: Major greenhouse gas concentrations, including carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide, continued to rise during 2014, once again reaching historic high values. Atmospheric CO2 concentrations increased by 1.9 ppm in 2014, reaching a global average of 397.2 ppm for the year. This compares with a global average of 354.0 in 1990 when this report was first published just 25 years ago.
Record temperatures observed near the Earth’s surface: Four independent global datasets showed that 2014 was the warmest year on record. The warmth was widespread across land areas. Europe experienced its warmest year on record, with more than 20 countries exceeding their previous records. Africa had above-average temperatures across most of the continent throughout 2014, Australia saw its third warmest year on record, Mexico had its warmest year on record, and Argentina and Uruguay each had their second warmest year on record. Eastern North America was the only major region to experience below-average annual temperatures.
Tropical Pacific Ocean moves towards El Niño–Southern Oscillation conditions: The El Niño-Southern Oscillation was in a neutral state during 2014, although it was on the cool side of neutral at the beginning of the year and approached warm El Niño conditions by the end of the year. This pattern played a major role in several regional climate outcomes.
Sea surface temperatures were record high: The globally averaged sea surface temperature was the highest on record. The warmth was particularly notable in the North Pacific Ocean, where temperatures are in part likely driven by a transition of the Pacific decadal oscillation — a recurring pattern of ocean-atmosphere climate variability centered in the region.
Global upper ocean heat content was record high: Globally, upper ocean heat content reached a record high for the year, reflecting the continuing accumulation of thermal energy in the upper layer of the oceans. Oceans absorb over 90 percent of Earth’s excess heat from greenhouse gas forcing.
Global sea level was record high: Global average sea level rose to a record high in 2014. This keeps pace with the 3.2 ± 0.4 mm per year trend in sea level growth observed over the past two decades.
The Arctic continued to warm; sea ice extent remained low: The Arctic experienced its fourth warmest year since records began in the early 20th century. Arctic snow melt occurred 20-30 days earlier than the 1998-2010 average. On the North Slope of Alaska, record high temperatures at 20-meter depth were measured at four of five permafrost observatories. The Arctic minimum sea ice extent reached 1.94 million square miles on 17 September, the sixth lowest since satellite observations began in 1979. The eight lowest minimum sea ice extents during this period have occurred in the last eight years.
The Antarctic showed highly variable temperature patterns; sea ice extent reached record high: Temperature patterns across the Antarctic showed strong seasonal and regional patterns of warmer-than-normal and cooler-than-normal conditions, resulting in near-average conditions for the year for the continent as a whole. The Antarctic maximum sea ice extent reached a record high of 7.78 million square miles on 20 September. This is 220,000 square miles more than the previous record of 7.56 million square miles that occurred in 2013. This was the third consecutive year of record maximum sea ice extent.
Tropical cyclones above average overall: There were ninety-one tropical cyclones in 2014, well above the 1981-2010 average of eighty-two storms. The twenty-two named storms in the Eastern/Central Pacific were the most to occur in the basin since 1992. Similar to 2013, the North Atlantic season was quieter than most years of the last two decades with respect to the number of storms.

NOAA notes that the State of the Climate in 2014 is the twenty-fifth edition in a peer-reviewed series published annually as a special supplement to the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society. The journal makes the full report openly available online.
— Read more in State of the Climate in 2014, Special Supplement to the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society 96, no. 7 (July 2015)

Central African Republic on verge of becoming a failed state

Published 22 July 2015

The Central African Republic (CAR), one of the poorest countries in the world, suffers not only from mass atrocities and misrule, but also a dangerous dependence on aid, said the International Rescue Committee (IRC) in a report released the other day. Since early 2013 over half of CAR’s population has been the victim of sectarian violence which has cost over 6,000 deaths, leaving 2.7 million people in need of emergency assistance.
The report, Too Soon to Turn Away: Security, Governance and Humanitarian Need in the Central African Republic, documents the risks that civilians and aid workers face daily, while projecting what food and shelter needs could be through the end of 2015 according to different levels of violence and funding.
“The Central African Republic needs a new start, or it will become the case study of a failed state,” said David Miliband, president and CEO of the International Rescue Committee. “The scale of humanitarian suffering, fueled by a complete lack of law and order, is happening far from the spotlight but endangers an already fragile and dangerous region. Underfunded humanitarian aid programs are a lifeline for more than half the population, but they need more and different help.”
The IRC says that the report is based on field research conducted in the Central African Republic in March 2015 and draws on surveys and interviews with conflict-affected Central Africans. It recommends that while immediate humanitarian aid is critical to saving lives, comprehensive international investment and diplomatic engagement should address the root causes of conflict, provide security in ungoverned space, and plan for sustainable economic development.
According to UNHCR, 465,824 people have fled the country to already fragile neighboring states to escape persecution. The situation of the country’s 458,000 internally displaced people is desperate: 39 percent live in camps which are makeshift, overcrowded, and remain dangerous. Sanitation is poor and access to clean water is limited, threatening to spread disease. Overall, the crisis has had the following devastating impact:

80 percent of health facilities that remain open depend on humanitarian aid
Harvests have decreased by 58 percent and 1.52 million people are food insecure
The IRC received over 1,500 reports of gender-based violence, of which 71 percent were rapes
454,634 tons of food have been pillaged before reaching people in need

The International Rescue Committee has been on the ground in CAR since 2006.
ICR notes that CAR cannot break the decades-long cycle of violence and humanitarian need without serious investment in strengthening governance and security. The pact adopted by over 700 local leaders and parties to the conflict at the Bangui Forum in May 2015, if properly implemented, offers a roadmap toward peaceful recovery. The Central African Republic is due to hold presidential and parliamentary elections on 18 October and 22 November 2015.
— Read more in Too soon to turn away: Security, Governance and Humanitarian need in the Central African Republic (International Rescue Committee, July 2015)

FAA investigating teen’s gun-toting drone

Published 22 July 2015

An 18-year-old Connecticut man may have run afoul of federal aviation regulation after posting a video on YouTube showing a small drone hovering about ten of fifteen feet above ground in a wooded area while a gun strapped to it was firing shots.
The FAA said Tuesday it was investigating whether Austin Haughwout of Clinton violated the agency’s regulations, which ban the careless or reckless operation of a model aircraft.
The Washington Post reports that Haughwout’s father told a local TV station last week that his son built the drone with the help of a Central Connecticut State University professor. The 14-second video shows a four-propeller drone with a semiautomatic handgun strapped on top hovering as it fires four shots in a wooded area.
The FAA said it is cooperating with Clinton police in the investigation.
Haghwout made news last year when police charged a woman with assault after she physically confronted him when he was flying a drone at a state beach. Andrea Mears of Westbrook, who became irritated with Haughwout’s drone buzzing her and her family, was sentenced to probation in July 2014. A video Haughwout posted showed Mears calling him a pervert, striking him, and ripping his shirt.
Haughwout told the court that he had been using the remote-controlled quadcopter to get footage of the landscape from about fifty feet above the beach when Mears attacked him.

Hackers take remote control of a Jeep, forcing it into a ditch

Published 22 July 2015

Security experts have called on owners of Fiat Chrysler Automobiles vehicles to update their onboard software to make their vehicles better protected against hackers. The call comes after researchers demonstrated they could hack and take control of a Jeep over the Internet. The researchers disabled the engine and brakes and crashed it into a ditch.
Cyber experts say that FCA’s Uconnect Internet-enabled software has a vulnerability which allows hackers remotely to take control of the car. Cars’ computerized systems have been hacked before, but earlier demonstrations of such attacks on involved gaining control of the vehicle’s entertainment system. The Uconnect hack took control over the car’s driving systems — from the GPS and windscreen wipers to the steering, brakes, and engine control.
The Guardian reports that the Uconnect system is installed in hundreds of thousands of cars made by FCA group since late 2013. The system allows car owners remotely to start the car, unlock doors, and flash the headlights.
Andy Greenberg reported in Wired that security researchers Charlie Miller and Chris Valasek — who had earlier demonstrated attacks on a Toyota Prius and a Ford Escape — used a laptop and a mobile phone on the Sprint network to take control of a Greenberg’s Jeep Cherokee while he was driving it. The two researchers demonstrated how they could take control of the Jeep away from the driver behind the wheel and force it into a ditch.
Miller and Valasek informed FCA about the vulnerability, and on 16 July the manufacturer issues a security patch.
Owners must update their cars manually by visiting FCA Web site to download a program onto a USB flash drive. The drive must then be inserted into the car’s USB socket.
Graham Cluley, an independent security expert, added that although the researchers demonstrated the Uconnect vulnerability on a Jeep, “the attacks could be tweaked to work on any Chrysler car with a vulnerable Uconnect head unit.”
“You should consider installing a security update that Jeep has issued for cars fitted with a model RA3 or model RA4 radio/navigation system,” Cluley writes.

Leader of Khorasan Group in Syria killed in U.S. airstrike

Published 22 July 2015

The leader of the Khorasan Group, an al-Qaeda-affiliated militant group in Syria, was killed on 8 July in a U.S. airstrike in Syria, the Pentagon said.
Kuwait-born Muhsin al-Fadhli, who had a $7 million bounty on his head from the U.S. government, was killed when a vehicle un which he was traveling near the Syrian town of Sarmada was hit by a missile.
Islamic State has captured the headlines, but security experts say that Khorasan, whose members are senior Qaeda operatives, has established itself in Syria in the past year, and may pose a more immediate danger to the United States and Western European countries. Al-Qaeda considers attacks on Western powers as a necessary step before the establishment of an Islamic caliphate because such a caliphate would have a better chance of success if Western countries and the Arab regimes they support were driven out of the Middle East first (see “Al-Qaeda-affiliated Khorasan group more dangerous than ISIS: Analysts,” HSNW, 23 September 2014; and “U.S. strike kills Khorasan Group’s chief bomb-maker,” HSNW, 7 November 2014).
In its statement, the Pentagon said that “a kinetic strike” had killed the group’s leader, Muhsin al-Fadhli. “His death will degrade and disrupt ongoing external operations of al-Qaeda against the United States and our allies and partners,” Pentagon spokesman Capt. Jeff Davis said in a written statement.
The State Department said al-Fadhli was among Osama bin Laden’s closest advisers and was among the few al-Qaeda leaders who knew in advance about the 9/11 attacks.
The New York Times notes that little is known about the Khorasan Group, but that intelligence, law enforcement, and military officials have described it as being made up of members of al-Qaeda from the Middle East, South Asia, and North Africa. The group appears to be especially interested in planning terrorist attacks which use concealed explosives.
CNN notes that one of the group’s bases was hit in a strike last September on the first night of U.S.-led strikes inside Syria. Coalition aircraft have subsequently attacked more of Khorasan’s training camps and arms depots inside Syria.

Tuesday, July 21, 2015

SRI International working to develop screening device for radiation exposure

Published 21 July 2015

Radiation that may lead to severe health consequences post-exposure. To rapidly triage large numbers of people to determine who needs immediate treatment, a new, simple screening test is needed. Currently, if a person has absorbed a significant dose of ionizing radiation, there is nothing that can be done beyond waiting to see what symptoms develop, which roughly correlate with exposure level. SRI International has been awarded a $12.2 million contract to continue development of a diagnostic test for absorbed doses of radiation following a radiological incident.

Menlo Park, California-based SRI International has been awarded a $12.2 million contract from the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) to continue development of a diagnostic test for absorbed doses of radiation following a radiological incident.
BARDA, a division of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), has been established to develop medical countermeasures to protect civilians from adverse health effects resulting from exposure to chemical, biological, and radiological or radionuclide agents. In the event of an unanticipated radiologic or nuclear incident, large numbers of people could be exposed to radiation that may lead to severe health consequences post-exposure. To rapidly triage large numbers of people to determine who needs immediate treatment, a new, simple screening test is needed.
SRI says that a team led by David Cooper, Ph.D., director of the Sensor Systems Laboratory at SRI International, has developed such a test with subcontractors DCN Diagnostics, Evolve Manufacturing, and Stanford University School of Medicine. The project began more than five years ago when BARDA selected Cooper’s team to develop a radiation biodosimeter.
“At this point, there is nothing else like it that takes a sample from an individual and assesses whether they have absorbed ionizing radiation or not,” said Cooper.
Currently, if a person has absorbed a significant dose of ionizing radiation, there is nothing that can be done beyond waiting to see what symptoms develop, which roughly correlate with exposure level.
“If you have hundreds of thousands of people potentially affected, you want to screen quickly and use medical resources efficiently,” added Cooper. “Our goal is to develop a quick and simple point-of-care medical device that the government, first responders, hospitals and doctors can use in the field to determine a person’s absorbed dose of ionizing radiation.”
Any living tissue in the human body can be damaged by ionizing radiation. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPS), some of the early symptoms of radiation sickness are fairly nonspecific and include nausea, weakness, hair loss, skin burns or diminished organ function (especially bone marrow) — and can eventually cause death. The extent of damage depends on the dose of radiation received.
To conduct this assay, a finger-prick blood sample is taken, and results of whether a person has absorbed a clinically significant dose of radiation will be available in less than thirty minutes.
The technology is based on a lateral flow immunoassay method, similar to home pregnancy test kits. Antibodies specific to a panel of radiation-responsive proteins and a proprietary phosphorescent reporter system allow for quantitative measurement of protein concentrations in the patient’s blood sample.
“Because our test actually measures biological response to radiation rather than a physical radiation dose, the information obtained is very important,” said Cooper. Due to differences in individual’s sensitivities to radiation effects, each subject’s response to the same physical dose may be different, therefore the immediate medical decision may be different.
This current round of BARDA funding will support verification testing of the system, which is one step closer to getting FDA clearance of the device. The technology employed in this device could also be applied to other diagnostic tests, such as infectious diseases.

Initiative launched to expose those who fund, profit from wars in Africa

Published 21 July 2015

Oscar-winner actor George Clooney, in an effort to tackle corruption in war zones, on Monday launched an initiative to identify and help bring to justice individuals funding and profiting from Africa’s deadliest conflicts.
Clooney and U.S. human rights activist John Prendergast launched the project, called The Sentry, which will investigate money flowing in and out of conflict zones, and pass on the information to policymakers to take action.
Al Jazeera reports that the project will use field research and analysis technology to collect the information. The project aims to expose how conflict is financed and profits laundered, with the project’s Web site calling on people to submit information and tips anonymously.
Clooney has already been campaigning to highlight the plight of refugees in Sudan, and he and Prendergast said the goal was to “deny war profiteers the proceeds from their crimes.”
“Real leverage for peace and human rights will come when the people who benefit from war will pay a price for the damage they cause,” Clooney said in a statement.
The initiative will investigate the financing of conflicts from northeast to central Africa, including Democratic Republic of Congo, Central African Republic, Sudan, and South Sudan. The Sentry says that its goal is to “dismantle the networks of perpetrators, facilitators and enablers who fund and profit from Africa’s deadliest conflicts,” which the project identified as taking place in these four countries.
Earlier this year, a report from the Project for the Study of the 21st Century found the death toll in the world’s most brutal conflicts climbed by more than 28 percent in 2014, with five African countries among the ten deadliest nations.
Clooney and Prendergast, who served as Africa director at the U.S. National Security Council, have also founded the Enough Project in 2007 to monitor and fight crimes against humanity.
They collaborated again in 2010 on the Satellite Sentinel Project, which employed satellites to map evidence of human rights abuses.
The Sentry also has the backing of Not on Our Watch, an organization which fight human rights abuses in South Sudan, and which was co-founded with other actors including Brad Pitt, Matt Damon, and Don Cheadle.
Akshaya Kumar, a policy analyst with the Enough Project, told Al Jazeera on Monday the idea for The Sentry came from a dissatisfaction with traditional peacemaking and conflict mitigation approaches.
“We were inspired by the success of financial warfare in the fight to stem terrorist operations, money laundering and drug trafficking,” Kumar said.
Pendergast said that “conventional tools of diplomacy” had so far failed and that “new efforts [to end wars] must center on how to make war more costly than peace.”
“The objective of The Sentry is to follow the money and deny those war profiteers the proceeds from their crimes,” Prendergast said.

Fusion Centers important in promoting cybersecurity

Published 21 July 2015

Fusion centers were created after 9/11 to serve as primary focal points for state, local, federal, tribal, and territorial partners to receive, analyze, and share threat-related information. States can promote cybersecurity and enhance their capabilities by heightening the importance of cybersecurity as a mission of fusion centers, according to a paper released the other day by the National Governors Association (NGA).

States can promote cybersecurity and enhance their capabilities by heightening the importance of cybersecurity as a mission of fusion centers, according to a paper released the other day by the National Governors Association (NGA).
Fusion centers were created after 9/11 to serve as primary focal points for state, local, federal, tribal, and territorial partners to receive, analyze, and share threat-related information. Currently, seventy-eight fusion centers exist; fifty-three are owned and operated by states and territories. While fusion centers originally were designed to focus on terrorism, they now have matured and evolved to address a wider array of threats and hazards.
Enhancing the Role of Fusion Centers in Cybersecurity examines actions governors and state policymakers can take to increase the role of fusion centers in promoting cybersecurity and public safety.
“Because of the growing number of threats to our cyber infrastructure, looking at adding or expanding cybersecurity capabilities within fusion centers make sense and provides states an important opportunity,” said Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder, co-chair of the NGA Resource Center for State Cybersecurity (Resource Center). “By expanding their role, we protect not only our states’ cybersecurity but the public safety of each of our citizens.”
The NGA says that to enhance the role of a state fusion center, a governor can:

Create a shared cybersecurity mission among homeland security, emergency management, information technology and law enforcement;
Conduct an assessment of the state fusion center’s capabilities to manage a cybersecurity mission;
Develop a business and operations plan for the fusion center;
Implement an outreach strategy to the private sector to identify existing information sharing processes; and
Establish clear performance measurements for fusion center activities.

“Attacks on critical cyber infrastructure are one of the most serious threats facing the nation, and states must be able to respond appropriately,” said Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe (D-Virginia), co-chair of the Resource Center. “By implementing these recommendations, governors can effectively use fusion centers as an important asset in this response.”
— Read more in Enhancing the Role of Fusion Centers in Cybersecurity (National Governors Association, 2015); and see more information about the Resource Center, and about the work of the Homeland Security and Public Safety Division

DHS begins collecting invalid work permits mistakenly issued after a judge’s injunction

Published 21 July 2015

When President Barack Obama last year issues his Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) executive order, applicants covered by the order received a three-year work permit, or EADs (Employment Authorization Documents). On 16 February 2015, Brownsville, Texas-based U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen temporarily blocked Obama’s immigration action. After the temporary injunction was in place, the federal government mistakenly issued the approximately 2,100 three-year permits. The government is calling on those who received the three-year work permit after 16 February to swap them for two-year permits.

Recipients of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) who had received a three-year work permits were confused – and scared – when they were informed that there was something wrong with their permits. A few dozen DACA work-permit recipient who rushed to La Union del Pueblo Entero (LUPE) in San Juan, Texas, were relieved to learn the privileges were not being voided. Rather, their 3-year work permits should have been issued as two-year permits, and were now being swapped.
“Approximately 2,100 DACA recipients were issued three-year Employment Authorization Documents, rather than two-year EADs, after the February 16, 2015 court injunction was in place,” according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (CIS), a DHS agency.
In February, Brownsville, Texas-based U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen temporarily blocked President Barack Obama’s immigration action after a majority of states filed a federal lawsuit (“Federal judge in Texas temporarily blocks Obama’s executive order,” HSNW, 18 February 2015).
Valley Central reports that after the temporary injunction was in place, the federal government mistakenly issued the approximately 2,100 three-year permits. Corrected two-year EADs [Employment Authorization Documents] have been mailed to those with the incorrect ones, according to CIS.
“They are always trying to make it harder for us, but they are the ones in power,” a man who wished not to be identified said.
The federal government has since been gathering the cards issued after Hanen’s temporary injunction.
“If they don’t respond by the end of July, they run the chance of having their DACA revoked (all together),” Vaughn Cox with LUPE. “Then they could potentially be deported.”
Valley Central notes that immigration officials have gone door-to-door in other cities outside the Rio Grande Valley asking some DACA recipients to turn over their three-year work permits. So far, about half the permits incorrectly issued have been returned and exchanged for the correct ones.
A permit holder who fails to turn over the three-year permit may lose his or her DACA status.
“We just have to adapt to what the rules are. That’s all we can do,” Cox said.
LUPE officials say that those with permit effective after 16 February may have to verify that their privileges are still in effect.
They stress that the recall of the three-year permits does not apply to EADs issued on or before 16 February.

House Appropriations Committee approves DHS spending measure

Published 21 July 2015

The House Appropriations Committee approved its FY 2016 spending bill funding homeland security programs. The bill provides DHS with $39.3 billion in discretionary funding, which is $337 million below the amount enacted for FY 2015 and $2 billion less than the president’s request. The committee’s consideration of the measure was dominated by acrimonious debate over sanctuary cities, and House appropriators adopted three Republican-sponsored amendments related to the killing of a San Francisco woman by an immigrant who was in the United States illegally after being deported to Mexico several times.

The House Appropriations Committee approved its FY 2016 spending bill funding homeland security programs. The bill provides DHS with $39.3 billion in discretionary funding, which is $337 million below the amount enacted for FY 2015 and $2 billion less than the president’s request.
The committee’s consideration of the measure was dominated by acrimonious debate over sanctuary cities. debate of the DHS measure. The National Law Review reports that House appropriators adopted three Republican-sponsored amendments related to the killing of a San Francisco woman by an immigrant who was in the United States illegally after being deported to Mexico several times.

One of the amendments, adopted along party lines, would deny sanctuary cities certain DHS funding grants, including those related to FEMA.
Committee members from both parties supported a manager’s amendment which would increase funding for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Criminal Alien and Fugitive Operations programs, to increase support for enforcement.
The House measure also withheld funding for implementation of the president’s executive orders on immigration, and included a rider preventing any such funding until an ongoing federal injunction is lifted (see more on the injunction in “Federal judge in Texas temporarily blocks Obama’s executive order,” HSNW, 18 February 2015).

The homeland security spending bill is the final to be marked up by the House Appropriations Committee, and NLR notes that this is the first time in six years that all twelve measures have been passed under regular order.
Action on appropriations bills, however, currently remains stalled in both chambers.

Monday, July 20, 2015

Libyan factions, outside powers use southwest Libya tribes in proxy war

Published 20 July 2015

Since September last year, a bloody war has been raging between the Tuareg and Tebu, two indigenous tribes in the remote Saharan oasis town of Ubari, in Libya’s rich southern oil fields near Libya’s border with Algeria, Niger, and Chad.
Each side is supported by different Libyan factions and outside forces, all vying for control of the mineral-rich and politically volatile area.
Observers say that the 10-months was has so far claimed hundreds of lives and forced most of the region’s Tuareg and Arab families, and some Tebu families, to flee their homes. Ubari, once a town of about 35,000 residents, is now a ghost town.
Ghat, a Tuareg town located nearly 300km southwest of Ubari, near the Algerian border. Ghat and its resident s have played an important role in Libya in the last four decades: Former dictator Muammar Gaddafi relied almost exclusively on recruits from Ghat as his body guards, and recruited thousands of young men from Ghat to serve in Libya’s army and intelligence services. The Tuareg straddle the borders of Libya, Algeria, Niger, and Mali, and Qaddafi bought the loyalty of the Tuareg, including those from neighboring countries, by promising them a Libyan sanctuary, jobs, and rights.
Al Jazeera reports that many Tuareg bitterly note, however, that that many of the former dictator’s promises have not been fulfilled.
After Qaddafi was removed and killed in November 2011, many Tuareg soldiers from Mali returned to their homes in northern Mali, and in March 2012 rebelled against the central government in Bamako, declaring northern Mali to be the independent republic of Azawad. The break-away Azawad was soon taken over by the Islamist Ansar Dine movement, and in January 2013, France sent an expeditionary force to evict the
While the Tuareg remained loyal to Qaddafi until he was toppled, the Tebu tribe supported the anti-Qaddafi rebels in the hope of having better life under a new regime.
The pre-Qaddafi-removal divisions between the Tuareg and Tebu are reflected in the support the receive from different Libyan factions today.
Since the end of the Qaddafi reign in late 2011, Libya has not been functioning as a unitary state. Since August last year, Libya has had two governments, each with its own parliament and army. The government in Tripoli is controlled by the Islamist Libyan Dawn coalition, supported by the powerful militias from the western coastal town of Misarta, and is recognized only by Turkey and Qatar. The internationally recognized government – which was chased out by Dawn of Tripoli last August – sits in the towns of Tobruk and Beida in east Libya.
The Libyan Dawn government in Tripoli and the Misartan militias – which have a presence in the southwestern town of Sebha, where they guard Libya’s second-largest oil field at Sharara on behalf of the Tripoli government — support the Tuareg. The Misrata militias provide medical aid and gasoline to Tuareg fighters, while Tripoli’s defense ministry is said to provide financial backing and light arms.
The internationally recognized government based in Tobruk and Beida, along with the powerful forces of General Khalifa Haftar, are supported by the United Arab Emirates and Egypt, and back the Tebu. While all the Tebu are aligned with the internationally recognized government, the Tuareg community is split between the two governments.
As the United States and Europe grow more concerned about the growing presence of ISIS in Libya, they have begun to pay more attention to the war between the Tuareg and Tebu and the potential it offers for ISIS for more mischief.
European efforts to mediate the conflict have run into trouble because of the Tuareg historical suspicion of the French. Tuareg accuse the French of reneging on their promise from sixty years ago to create a Tuareg state – and only two-and-half years ago, between January and March 2013, French forces snuffed yet another attempt by the Tuareg – the fourth since 1962 – to create an independent Taureg state.
After evicting the Islamists from break-away north Mali in March 2013 and reunifying the state, France, as part of its effort to increase its counterterrorism capabilities in North and West Africa, has built a large military base in north Niger, only 100 km (60 miles) from the Libyan border – and from the Tuareg town of Ubari. The French base is also home to a few dozen U.S. Army- and CIA-operated drones, which fly surveillance missions over the vast desert area.
The Tuareg haveanother reason to complain: Algeria, in an effort to prevent a spillover of violence from Libya, has significantly bolstered security along its border with Libya, effectively cutting off the Libyan Tuareg from their Algerian kin.

Questions raised about Kaspersky’s close ties to the Russian government

Published 20 July 2015

Kaspersky Lab is a Moscow-based company which sells security software, including antivirus programs. The company has 400 million customers, and it ranks sixth in revenue among security-software makers. Since 2012, the company began to replace senior managers with people with close ties to Russia’s military or intelligence services. The company is also helping the FSB, the KGB’s successor, in investigating hacks – and people in the know say the company provides the FSB with the personal data of customers. The company’s actual or perceived alliances have made it a struggle to win U.S. federal contracts.

Kaspersky Lab is a Moscow-based company which sells security software, including antivirus programs. The company has 400 million customers, and it ranks sixth in revenue among security-software makers.
The company used to recruit senior managers in the United Sates and Europe to expand its business, and to ready an initial public offering with a U.S. investment firm.
In 2012, however, Kaspersky Lab abruptly changed its senior management recruiting practices – and, some suspect, perhaps a few other things as well. Bloomberg reportsthat high-level managers left or who were let go were, in many cases, replaced by people with ties to Russia’s military or intelligence services — some of them known to have used data from the company’s customers to help criminal investigations by the FSB, the KGB’s successor.
The change in the company’s senior hiring policy reminded people that the company’s founder and Chief Executive Officer Eugene Kaspersky used to work for the KGB. In advertising for the company he was once described as “A Specialist in Cryptography from KGB.”
Kaspersky Lab is not the only cybersecurity business with ties to the government. Most major American security-software makers work, in one way or another, with U.S. government agencies, and some of the products they sell have been developed in collaboration with government agencies.. FireEye, for example, had close ties with the CIA, which uses the company’s software, and the CIA’s investment arm, In-Q-Tel, maintained a stake in FireEye until recently. Observers note that FireEye’s revelations about Chinese and Russian hacking in the United States may have benefitted from the company’s ties to the CIA (see “Cyber espionage campaign, likely sponsored by China, targets Asian countries: FireEye,” HSNW, 15 April 2015; “New report details Russia’s cyber-espionage activities,” HSNW, 30 October 2014); “Massive cyberattack by Chinese government hackers on Penn State College of Engineering,” HSNW, 18 May 2015).
Rick Holland, principal analyst of security and risk management for Forrester Research, says that any government relationships can make a company’s products harder to sell.“It’s a challenge for any security company out there,” Holland told Bloomberg. “What are your ties to government?”
Kaspersky Lab’s ties dramatically increased after two waves of executive departures, say four of the former insiders. Christopher Doggett, Kaspersky Lab’s managing director for North America, insists that customers’ data used in the company’s support to the FSB are anonymous, but people familiar with the company’s technology say it can be modified so it can collect identifying information from individual computers, and that this modified technology has been used to assist the FSB in investigations.
Kaspersky Lab’s software is still regarded highly by technical experts, and the company’s products do well against competitors. Appreciation of the company’s products notwithstanding, the company has found it difficult to win federal U.S. contracts. Holland, the Forrester analyst, says that the company has to overcome suspicions about its senior management and about the organization with which it collaborates.
“There’s a cyber isolationism that’s definitely emerging,” Hollandtold Bloomberg.“They have to overcome any perceived or actual alliances.”

Extremist groups use social media to lure recruits, find support

Published 20 July 2015

In the past, extremist groups have used tools and forums which were available: Rallies, pamphleteering, and marching in parades were the primary means used for recruitment and spreading their message.
Now, as is the case with many other individuals and groups, these efforts have adapted to more contemporary media to target college and university campuses, to gain new members or, at least, sympathy to their cause. They now use the Internet to conduct forums and publish newsletters, a method that exposes potentially millions to their message.
Most of these Web sites are relatively new, while some have existed from at least the late 1990s. One such Web site, and one of the first to take advantage of the potential of an Internet presence, is stormfront.org, which has been an active White Nationalist Web site since at least 1997. The home page makes the claim that the group, in their words, proclaims that “We are White Nationalists who support true diversity and a homeland for all peoples.”
The site contains forums on seemingly every conceivable topic, from homemaking and health and fitness, to science and technology and music and entertainment. Most of the forums available are for members only, although the site maintains a cluster of forums for guests.
The organization claims their largest number of logged in users was on 6 December 2011, when the site served 9,798. HSNW found nothing of major significance that occurred that day or the day before, which would prompt their busiest day.
The site also maintains a radio program, Stormfront Radio, which they claim is followed by David Duke, a former Ku Klux Klan leader and a 1991 Louisiana gubernatorial candidate.
Mark Potok, editor of the “Intelligence Report” for the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) in Montgomery, Alabama, says many hate groups are motivated by resentment and reaction to perceived second-class status for Caucasians by such programs as immigration and affirmative action.
Nor are hate groups stopping with online recruiting. They have also moved onto college and university campuses. According to a report by Phillip Martin of WGBH in Boston, on a recent evening near Boston’s Kenmore Square, bright red posters, printed in Boston University colors, appeared along Commercial Avenue. They spoke out against the hiring of an African-American professor, Saida Grundy, who had tweeted that the problem on campus was white males. The posters referred to a tweet in which Grundy, a feminist sociologist of race & ethnicity and incoming Assistant Professor of Sociology and African-American Studies, complained that “Black privilege means not being fired after saying that white college males are a problem population.”
The message played to the feelings of some of BU’s students.
“They’re saying that white people can’t be racist towards black people but black people can do whatever the hell they want,” complained a student named Nicolas. “It’s a double standard. They’re compensating for what happened 200 years ago, which there should be a statute of limitations on.”
The recent killing of black congregants in a Charleston, South Carolina, church by Dylann Roof has re-ignited concern over racial terrorism and the extreme right-wing worldview on which it is built. Roof had said that he hoped to ignite a race war. This ideology is not new by any means. It was translated into action some time ago, and continues on today.
It materialized in the person of Timothy McVeigh, who, in 1995, detonated a truck bomb outside the Alfred P. Murrah office building in Oklahoma City. The blast killed 168 people and some 680 were injured.
McVeigh himself, was heavily influenced by The Turner Diaries, a novel in which extreme right-wing militia members detonate a bomb at an FBI office.
Domestic terrorism is one of the top worries of law enforcement, eclipsing worries about radical Islamist terror.

Syrian Kurdish militia says ISIS used poison gas in attacks on militia fighters

Published 20 July 2015

A Syrian-Kurdish militia and a group monitoring the Syrian war have said Islamic State used poison gas in attacks against Kurdish-controlled areas of north-east Syria in late June.
The Kurdish YPG militia said ISIS had fired “makeshift chemical projectiles” on 28 June at a YPG-controlled area of the city of Hasakah, and at YPG positions south of the town of Tel Brak to the north-east of Hasakah.
Redur Xelil, the YPG spokesman, told the Guardian on Saturday that the type of chemical used had not yet been definitively identified. No YPG fighter exposed to the gas had died because they were quickly taken to hospital and treated, he added.
He noted that this was the first time ISIS had used poison gas against the YPG.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a U.K.-based group which relies on activists on the ground in Syria to issue what analysts regard as reliable reports on the war, said it had also documented the use of poison gas by ISIS in an attack on a village near Tel Brak on 28 June.
The human rights group said twelve YPG fighters had been exposed to the gas. The group also said it had received information about the gas attack on Hasakah, but gave no further details.
The YPG statement could not be verified by other sources, but the YPG said it was asking for the help of an international team of experts to investigate ISIS’s use of chemical weapons.
Back in January, Kurdish sources in Iraq said they had evidence that (ISIS) used chlorine gas as a chemical weapon against Kurdish peshmerga fighters. The Kurdistan Region Security Council said the chlorine gas was spread by a suicide truck bomb attack on 23 January in northern Iraq. Iraqi officials and Kurds fighting in Syria have made several similar allegations since last fall about ISIS using chlorine chemical weapons against them. In the previous Islamist insurgency in Iraq – in Anbar province, in 2006-2007 – there was evidence of chemical use by the insurgents. The insurgents in 2006-2007 were members of al-Qaeda in Iraq, which later transformed itself into ISIS (see “ISIS employed crude chemical weapons against Kurdish Peshmerga,” HSNW, 16 March 2015).
The YPG is the armed wing of the Syrian branch of the PKK, the pro-independence Turkish Kurdish faction. The YPG has been receiving military aid and training from the United States, but neighboring Turkey regards it as a terrorist organization because of its ties to the PKK.
YPG fighters have pushed ISIS back from a large swath of territory in north-eastern Syria with the help of U.S. air strikes. Areas captured from Isis include the town of Tel Abyad at the border with Turkey.
The YPG said in a statement that its forces had captured industrial-grade gas masks in the last four weeks from Isis fighters, “confirming that they are prepared and equipped for chemical warfare along this sector of the front.”
The group’s statement also said that its fighters who were exposed to the gas “experienced burning of the throat, eyes and nose, combined with severe headaches, muscle pain and impaired concentration and mobility.”
“Prolonged exposure to the chemicals also caused vomiting,” the statement added.