Maj. Nidal Hassan’s vicious and deliberate shooting of unarmed soldiers and civilians at Ft. Hood was a terrorist attack.  Hassan’s assault was religiously motivated and it targeted a population which he regarded as the enemy, therefore, his actions must be regarded as “terrorist”.  Unlike a criminal who targets an individual or a group of individuals, Hassan’s terrorist target was a group of people who represented a political doctrine to which he fiercely objected and resented.

Hassan’s role as an officer and psychiatrist in the U.S. Army about to be deployed could not coexist with his beliefs and his religious identity as a devout Muslim. The policies taken by the U.S. government and put into action by the U.S military abroad go against some of the most fundamental doctrines in Islam.  One such doctrine is that Muslims should never be ruled or conquered by an army that represents a faith other than Islam (like it or not, the U.S military is regarded by most Muslims around the world as a Christian army and not as we might see it; an army representing a democratic and free nation.) In fact, a conquest of Muslims by non-Muslims such as the one taking place in Iraq and Afghanistan justifies Jihad according to prevalent Muslim thought.

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Hezbollah is today the world’s most organized, well-equipped, well-trained and sophisticated terrorist organization. The seizure of the Antiguan-flagged Francop cargo ship by the Israeli military two weeks ago shows the degree of operational support and capability that this organization holds.  Hezbollah works and operates as an operational arm of Iran and its revolutionary guard and as such it receives complete support in intelligence, training and technology directly from the Iranian government.

As a Shea based terrorist organization; Hezbollah operates using a well structured organizational hierarchy and a centrally controlled political objective. In this regards Hezbollah operates differently than Sunni based terrorist organizations like Al-Qaida that is organized as a network of sub-organizations and individuals operating with a very wide scope political and religious goal. While Al-Qaida operates as terrorist movement or network, Hezbollah works as a terrorist organization.

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The Department of Homeland Security’s U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT) is warning BlackBerry users about a spyware program that allows attackers to turn a target’s handset into a microphone that can be accessed remotely. PhoneSnoop is a free, remote spying application designed for BlackBerry phones. The app works by intercepting phone calls from a predetermined ‘trigger’ number. When PhoneSnoop detects an incoming call from that number, it accepts the call and turns on the BlackBerry’s speaker phone, effectively allowing the caller to listen in on the target’s surroundings.

In this video you will find some examples of the spyware used to hack and listen into mobile phones

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A new report  by The U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission notes that Chinese hackers are increasingly targeting U.S companies  and US government agencies. The report entitled “Capability of the People’s Republic of China to Conduct Cyber Warfare and Computer Network Exploitation,” states that: “Technical assessments of operational tradecraft observed in intrusions attributed to China are the result of extensive forensic analysis and discussions with information security professionals who follow these issues closely.”

The report details an attack that was believed to be China-based, where two groups of hackers worked on a sophisticated operation to steal data from an unspecified “large” U.S. company. One group worked to crack the security systems while another moved specific files and information external severs. The report note that: “The problem is characterized by disciplined, standardized operations, sophisticated techniques, access to high-end software development resources, a deep knowledge of the targeted networks, and an ability to sustain activities inside targeted networks, sometimes over a period of months,”

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Among many security professionals, intelligence still remains a governing factor in resource allocation and configuration of security operations. This situation drives many security directors and law enforcement officers to wait for intelligence gathered by outside agencies (FBI, CIA, DHS etc.) to dictate security efforts and deployment as if there is a magical formula between intelligence and security.

The threat level color system currently used by the Department of Homeland Security is a mechanism that promotes exactly this kind of misuse of security resources. It is purely an intelligence driven system that mandates how America needs to do security. This leads to a situation where vague chatter gathered over cell phones or the internet directly effect the deployment of security or law enforcement officers at a random airport in Maine or a mall in Texas. Every time the national threat level rises from “Yellow” to “Red” law enforcement and security organizations are “beefing” up their operations, increasing their security visibility for the public, yet fail to provide real obstacles for the aspiring terrorist.

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When people hear the term “asymmetrical warfare,” they are apt to imagine the Improvised Explosive Device (IED) or some other aspect of guerrilla warfare tactics.  The poor David uses his homemade slingshot, and kills the rich Goliath, who is adorned with impressive, expensive—and useless—military hardware.  So then  the think tank and study groups scramble to identify how to thwart the emerging threat of asymmetric warfare that appears in the world today.  Yet we are missing something.  Somehow we have missed the most obvious point—that asymmetrical strategy has always been with us.  In fact, there is an actual, finite number of “tricks” that people employ, whether with weapons of warfare or within the bloodless confines of white collar places of business.  (more…)

The highest quality of any intelligence analyst is to arrive at conclusions from seemingly disparate pieces of information. We call this connecting the dots. Most people believe that this is more of an art than science. However the truth is that this is more of a science than art

Morgan D. Jones was an intelligence analyst at the CIA several years ago during the Cold War, and what he found was that deception was very difficult to detect within the “wilderness of mirrors” of intelligence and counterintelligence. In his book, “The Thinker’s Toolkit” (New York: Three Rivers Press, 1998), Jones summarized the findings of his career at the CIA with an interesting thesis, which Chameleon Associates believes and embraces in its Predictive Profiling seminar — that is, structure must precede analysis.

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