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Cyber crime has been put centre stage by the Iranian war, as all parties try to destabilise the foundations of institutions, and this highlights once more how The Eye too have been targeted by hackers.
It is believed that America may be using cyber tools, after the success of the January raid in Venezuela which captured Nicolás Maduro, when power was reportedly cut to parts of Caracas.
Israel is reported to have hacked into traffic cameras in Tehran, allowing it to track the movements of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei prior to his assassination on February 28.
This comes as countries around the world turn increasingly to cyber hacking as a key method of warfare. Both China and Russia have used this tactic.
Disturbing news about cybercrime today comes amid a dire warning about the actions of China from the boss of MI5. Sir Ken McCallum said the UK needed to “defend itself robustly” against security threats from this country, as he revealed the agency had “intervened operationally” against Chinese related activity several times in just one week.
He also declared that Russia had carried out operations, as well, which were “routinely” being uncovered.
The background to all this is alarming as the UK’s National Cyber Security Agency has warned that firms using Cisco systems could also be at risk from hackers.
Worldwide nearly 50,000 Cisco firewall devices have vulnerabilities which are connected to the internet, according to statistics from the Shadowserver Foundation illustrating the extent of the world’s exposure to the flaws in its Adaptive Security Appliance and Firepower Threat Defense devices.
These have earned a rare emergency patching directive from the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA).
Shocking details have emerged as well about hacks suffered by leading car makers, and they have followed Marks & Spencer (M&S) and Co-Op being struck earlier this year.
As well as disrupting its online business, the hack affected M&S in-store too, leaving shelves bare in the days after it was targeted, and the huge company admitted that some personal customer data was taken during the attack.
Most of the firm’s systems had to be switched off, and without the technology that links stores and warehouses, food went to waste.
The website, through which one-third of M&S fashion, home and beauty is sold, was down for around six weeks.
The stock price dropped by almost 14 per cent in that period, while competitors like Next rallied.
Once most of the business was back up and running, M&S estimated it had lost a total of £300 million in operating profit as a result of the attack, roughly one-third of what it made last year.
A ‘foreign entity’ (as has been proclaimed) might also include Russia, because there have been worrying accusations that this country, too, is behind illegal internet hacking to secure their aims.
Criminal gangs may be involved in the M&S and Co-Op hacks, but the backdrop is extremely concerning, as it has also emerged that Czechia was flooded by pro-Russian disinformation before a crucial election, where the country tilted even further towards the European Union (EU).
There was a huge volume of fake news – and it has increased steadily since Russia’s February 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine to a record high of some 5,000 articles per month, according to Vojtěch Boháč, an investigative journalist with Czech outlet Voxpot.
A recent Voxpot investigation found that the 16 largest disinformation websites churn out more content than all Czech traditional media outlets combined.
Articles ranged from critical takedowns of the EU and NATO to extraordinary conspiracy theories, including claims that Brussels is promoting cannibalism as a solution to climate change.
In Moldova too there is enormous concern.
Leading up to a central Parliamentary vote there the Prime Minister Dorin Recean declared that Moscow was spending “hundreds of millions” of Euros as part of a “hybrid war” to try to seize power, which he described as “the final battle for our country’s future”.
The Moldovan President Maia Sandu alerted people to the “massive Russian interference”, saying the future of her country, which is flanked by Ukraine and Romania, was at stake.
The war in Ukraine made Moldova very important to Russia. According to Moldova’s Government, the Kremlin spent $200 million (the equivalent of one per cent of Moldova’s annual GDP) on disinformation and bribing voters.
On election day, bomb scares were reported at polling stations for expatriates in Italy, Romania, Spain and America.
One of Russia’s banks is said to have been opening accounts and transferring money to Moldovans in pro-Russian parts of the country.
Although tiny in comparison, we too have attracted the unwanted attention of those connected to Russian authorities.
Our site always used to get a couple of ‘allow requests’ from e-mail addresses with the .ru (Russia) ending, but recently this has increased massively, and at one point there were four or five A DAY!
There has also been a marked increase in online ‘disinformation’ campaigns, which appears to be linked to the cyber attacks.
In the past Viginum, the French foreign-disinformation watchdog, announced it had detected preparations for a large disinformation campaign in France, Germany, Poland and other European countries.
Russia has been at the forefront of internet disinformation techniques at least since 2014, when it pioneered the use of bot farms to spread fake news about its invasion of Crimea.
Viginum said it had uncovered a Russian network of 193 websites which it codenames ‘Portal Kombat’.
Most of these sites, such as topnews.uz.ua, were created years ago and many were left dormant. But over 50 of them, such as news-odessa.ru and pravda-en.com, have been created since 2022.
French authorities think they are ready to be activated aggressively as part of what one official calls a “massive” wave of Russian disinformation.
Viginum says it closely watched the sites over several months, and managers there have concluded that they do not themselves generate news stories, but are designed to spread “deceptive or false” content about the war in Ukraine, both on websites and via social media.
The underlying objective it would seem, is to undermine support for Ukraine in Europe, and according to the French authorities, the network is controlled by a single Russian organisation.
If sensitive UK Government information is also being stolen by ANOTHER foreign power, it is obvious that hacking into computer systems is extremely dangerous and widespread now.
Sources close to the authorities say this is being undertaken as well in the Iran war, although it is never confirmed.
You have to rely on sites like The Eye for this kind of information – which may be why we too have become a target for Russian hackers…
The memories of our Editor, Welshman Phil Parry, during his long journalistic career (when foreign interference was rare) as he was gripped by the incurable disabling condition Hereditary Spastic Paraplegia (HSP), have been released in a major book ‘A GOOD STORY’. Order it now!
Tomorrow – during 23 years with the BBC, and a 42 year journalistic career (when he was trained to use clear and simple language, avoiding jargon), for Phil it has always been important to reveal the truth behind well-publicised negotiations between senior political figures, and now we are seeing this in Wales, as well as at the much-trumpeted summit between Donald Trump and Xi Jinping.
