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NATO mulls ‘offensive defense’ with cyber warfare rules

By Robin Emmott

TARTU, Estonia (Reuters) – A group of NATO allies are considering a more muscular response to state-sponsored computer hackers that could involve using cyber attacks to bring down enemy networks, officials said.

The United States, Britain, Germany, Norway, Spain, Denmark and the Netherlands are drawing up cyber warfare principles to guide their militaries on what justifies deploying cyber attack weapons more broadly, aiming for agreement by early 2019.

The doctrine could shift NATO’s approach from being defensive to confronting hackers that officials say Russia, China and North Korea use to try to undermine Western governments and steal technology.

“There’s a change in the (NATO) mindset to accept that computers, just like aircraft and ships, have an offensive capability,” said U.S. Navy Commander Michael Widmann at the NATO Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence, a research center affiliated to NATO that is coordinating doctrine writing.

Washington already has cyber weapons, such as computer code to take down websites or shut down IT systems, and in 2011 declared that it would respond to hostile cyber acts.

The United States, and possibly Israel, are widely believed to have been behind “Stuxnet”, a computer virus that destroyed nuclear centrifuges in Iran in 2010. Neither has confirmed it.

Some NATO allies believe shutting down an enemy power plant through a cyber attack could be more effective than air strikes.

“I need to do a certain mission and I have an air asset, I also have a cyber asset. What fits best for the me to get the effect I want?” Widmann said.

The 29-nation NATO alliance recognized cyber as a domain of warfare, along with land, air and sea, in 2014, but has not outlined in detail what that entails.

In Europe, the issue of deploying malware is sensitive because democratic governments do not want to be seen to be using the same tactics as an authoritarian regime. Commanders and experts have focused on defending their networks and blocking attempts at malicious manipulation of data.

Senior Baltic and British security officials say they have intelligence showing persistent Russian cyber hacks to try to bring down European energy and telecommunications networks, coupled with Internet disinformation campaigns.

They believe Russia is trying to break Western unity over economic sanctions imposed over Moscow’s 2014 annexation of Crimea and its support for separatists in eastern Ukraine.

“They (Russia) are seeking to attack the cohesion of NATO,” said a senior British security official, who said the balance between war and peace was becoming blurred in the virtual world. “It looks quite strategic.”

Moscow has repeatedly denied any such cyber attacks.

ESTONIAN ‘CYBER COMMAND’

The United States, Britain, the Netherlands, Germany and France have “cyber commands” — special headquarters to combat cyber espionage and hacks of critical infrastructure.

Estonia, which was hit by one of the world’s first large-scale cyber attacks a decade ago, aims to open a cyber command next year and make it fully operational by 2020, with offensive cyber weapons.

“You cannot only defend in cyberspace,” said Erki Kodar, Estonia’s undersecretary for legal and administrative affairs who oversees cyber policy at the defense ministry.

Across the globe this year computer hackers have disrupted multinational firms, ports and public services on an unprecedented scale, raising awareness of the issue.

NATO held its biggest ever cyber exercise this week at a military base in southern Estonia, testing 25 NATO allies against a fictional state-sponsored hacker group seeking to infiltrate NATO air defense and communication networks.

“The fictional scenarios are based on real threats,” said Estonian army Lieutenant-Colonel Anders Kuusk, who ran the exercise.

NATO’s commanders will not develop cyber weapons but allied defense ministers agreed last month that NATO commanders can request nations to allow them use of their weapons if requested.

(Reporting by Robin Emmott; Editing by Peter Graff)

Rebel area near Damascus hit by heavy shelling despite two-day truce

BEIRUT (Reuters) – Dozens of mortar bombs landed on the last major rebel stronghold near the Syrian capital Damascus on Wednesday, a war monitor and a witness said on Wednesday, despite a 48 hour truce proposed by Russia to coincide with the start of peace talks in Geneva.

After a relatively calm morning, shelling picked up later in the day, accompanied by ground attempts to storm the besieged enclave, a witness in the Eastern Ghouta area told Reuters.

The Syrian army stepped up bombardment two weeks ago in an effort to recapture Eastern Ghouta, a rebel-held pocket of densely populated agricultural land on the outskirts of the capital under siege since 2012.

Scores of people have been killed in air strikes during the offensive, and residents say they are on the verge of starvation after the siege was tightened.

Russia had proposed a ceasefire on Monday in the besieged area for Nov. 28-29. U.N. Syria envoy Staffan De Mistura later said Russia had told him that the Syrian government had accepted the idea, but “we have to see if it happens”.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said at least one person was killed when dozens of mortars crashed into Eastern Ghouta on Wednesday.

Eastern Ghouta is one of several “de-escalation” zones across western Syria where Russia has brokered ceasefire deals between rebels and President Bashar al-Assad’s government. But fighting has continued there.

On Tuesday, shelling killed three people and injured 15, but was less intense than in previous days, the observatory said. It had reported intense bombardment that killed 41 people over two days from Sunday to Monday.

“A two-day truce is not nearly enough for civilians facing grave violations of international law – including bombardment and besiegement – but it is a window of opportunity to save the lives of the most desperately in need of treatment,” said Thomas Garofalo, International Rescue Committee’s Middle East Public Affairs Director, in a statement on Wednesday.

The Syrian delegation arrived in Geneva to participate in the eighth round of United Nation-sponsored peace talks. It delayed its departure for one day after the opposition repeated its demand that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad step down.

Nasr Hariri, head of the opposition delegation, told a Geneva news conference on Monday night that he is aiming for Assad’s removal as a result of negotiations.

The government delegation will be headed by Syria’s U.N. ambassador and chief negotiator Bashar al-Ja’afari, state-run news agency SANA said.

A breakthrough in the talks is seen as unlikely as Assad and his allies push for total military victory in Syria’s civil war, now in its seventh year, and his opponents stick by their demand he leaves power.

(Reporting by Sarah Dadouch and Dahlia Nehme; Editing by Angus McDowall, Jeremy Gaunt and Peter Graff)

Over half of public comments to FCC on net neutrality appear fake: study

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – More than half of the 21.7 million public comments submitted to the U.S. Federal Communications Commission about net neutrality this year used temporary or duplicate email addresses and appeared to include false or misleading information, the Pew Research Center said on Wednesday.

FCC Chairman Ajit Pai, a Republican appointed by President Donald Trump, proposed in April to scrap the 2015 landmark net neutrality rules, moving to give broadband service providers sweeping power over what content consumers can access.

Pai has said the action would remove heavy-handed internet regulations. Critics have said it would let internet service providers give preferential treatment to some sites and apps and allow them to favor their own digital content.

From April 27 to Aug. 30 the public was able to submit comments to the FCC on the topic electronically. Of those, 57 percent used either duplicate email addresses or temporary email addresses, while many individual names appeared thousands of times in the submissions, Pew said.

For example, “Pat M” was listed on 5,910 submissions, and the email address john_oliver@yahoo.com was used in 1,002 comments. TV host John Oliver supported keeping net neutrality earlier this on his HBO talk show.

The flood of purportedly fake comments has made it difficult to interpret the public’s true thinking on net neutrality and has even spurred New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman to investigate for the last six months who posted the comments to the FCC website.

Pew did not say how many of the comments supported or opposed the FCC’s proposal. With three Republican and two Democratic commissioners, the FCC is all but certain to approve the repeal.

Pew found that only 6 percent of submitted comments were unique while the rest had been submitted multiple times, in some cases, hundreds of thousands of times.

Thousands of identical comments were also submitted in the same second on at least five occasions. On July 19 at precisely 2:57:15 p.m. ET, 475,482 comments were submitted, Pew said, adding that almost all were in favor of net neutrality.

“In fact, the seven most-submitted comments (six of which argued against net neutrality regulations) comprise 38 percent of all the submissions over the four-month comment period,” the study said.

Pew said its analysis of the submissions “present challenges to anyone hoping to understand the attitudes of the concerned public regarding net neutrality.”

The regulatory agency will vote at a Dec. 14 meeting on Pai’s plan to rescind the rules championed by Democratic former President Barack Obama.

The rules bar broadband providers from blocking or slowing down access to content or charging consumers more for certain content, and treated internet service providers like public utilities.

(Reporting by Chris Sanders; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)

Hawaii, ACLU ask U.S. top court not to allow full Trump travel ban

By Lawrence Hurley

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The state of Hawaii and the American Civil Liberties Union on Tuesday urged the U.S. Supreme Court not to allow President Donald Trump’s latest travel ban that would bar entry of people from six Muslim-majority countries to go into full effect after it was partially blocked by lower courts.

Lawyers for the Democratic-governed state and the civil liberties group, pursuing separate legal challenges to the ban, were responding to the Trump administration’s request last week that the conservative-majority court allow the ban to go into effect completely while litigation over the policy continues.

Both sets of challengers said the latest ban, Trump’s third, discriminates against Muslims in violation of the U.S. Constitution and is not permissible under immigration laws.

The Republican president has said the travel ban is needed to protect the United States from terrorism by Muslim militants. As a candidate, Trump had promised “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.”

In the ACLU court filing, its lawyers said the administrative process that led to the latest ban “does not wipe away the history of the president’s efforts to ban Muslims, especially given the remarkable similarity between the current ban and its predecessors.”

On Nov. 13, the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals allowed the ban to go partly into effect while the litigation continued, lifting part of a Hawaii-based district court judge’s nationwide injunction.

Separately, a judge in Maryland partly blocked the ban on similar lines in the case spearheaded by the ACLU.

The Trump administration asked the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene in both cases. The high court could act at any time.

Whatever the Supreme Court decides, the two cases will continue in lower courts. The 9th Circuit and the Richmond, Virginia-based 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals both are due to hear oral arguments on the merits of the challenges next week.

Trump’s ban was announced on Sept. 24 and replaced two previous versions that had been impeded by federal courts.

The ban currently applies to people from Iran, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Somalia and Chad who do not have connections to the United States. Those with certain family relationships and other formal connections to the United States, such as through a university, can enter the country.

The ban also covers people from North Korea and certain government officials from Venezuela, and lower courts have allowed those provisions to go into effect.

(Reporting by Lawrence Hurley; Editing by Will Dunham)

Venezuela systematically abused foes in 2017 protests: rights groups

CARACAS (Reuters) – Venezuela “systematically” abused anti-government protesters this year, two rights groups said on Wednesday, including through beatings, firing tear gas canisters in closed areas and forcing detainees to eat food tainted with excrement.

Unpopular leftist President Nicolas Maduro faced four months of near-daily protests asking for early elections, humanitarian aid to combat food and medicine shortages, respect for the opposition-led congress, and freedom for jailed activists.

Demonstrators say heavy-handed National Guard soldiers clamped down on their right to protest, while Maduro says his administration faced a U.S.-backed “armed insurgency.”

More than 120 people died in the unrest, with victims including demonstrators, government supporters, security officials, and bystanders.

In a joint report, New York-based Human Rights Watch and Venezuela-based Penal Forum documented 88 cases between April and September, from excessive use of force during marches to protest against arbitrary detentions. Around 5,400 people were detained, with at least 757 prosecuted in military courts, the report said.

“The widespread vicious abuses against government opponents in Venezuela, including egregious cases of torture, and the absolute impunity for the attackers suggests government responsibility at the highest levels,” said Chilean lawyer Jose Miguel Vivanco, Americas director at Human Rights Watch.

Venezuela’s Information Ministry did not respond to a request for comment.

ELECTRIC SHOCKS, BEATINGS

In one case cited, intelligence agents allegedly hanged a 34-year-old government critic from the ceiling and gave him electric shocks as they interrogated him. The man, whose name was not revealed, was ultimately released and left Venezuela.

In another case, a 32-year-old detained during a protest in Carabobo state was allegedly beaten for hours by National Guard soldiers who also threatened to rape his daughter. He said officials also fired tear gas into his cell.

Others interviewed recounted being handcuffed to a metal bench, hit with sticks, and witnessing a man being raped with a broomstick. At least 15 detainees in Carabobo said officials forced them to eat human excrement mixed in with uncooked pasta.

The government failed to acknowledge such violations, the report said, adding that instead officials “often downplayed the abuses or issued implausible, blanket denials.”

Maduro’s government says Human Rights Watch is in league with a Washington-funded conspiracy to sabotage socialism in Latin America. Rights activists are in league with the opposition and compliant foreign media, officials say, and downplay opposition violence, including setting a man on fire during a demonstration and targeting police with explosives.

The two rights groups said there were cases of protesters hurling rocks and Molotov cocktails at security forces, but that abuses by authorities went far beyond attempts to quell unrest.

(Reporting by Leon Wietfeld; Writing by Alexandra Ulmer; Editing by Susan Thomas)

Truce near Damascus mostly being observed before Syria talks begin

BEIRUT (Reuters) – The Russian-proposed ceasefire in the Eastern Ghouta area of Syria has been widely observed, a war monitor and a witness said on Wednesday, as a delegation from Damascus arrived in Geneva to join peace talks there.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that the ceasefire in the besieged rebel-held enclave near Damascus is being “observed in general”.

The United Nations Special Envoy for Syria, Staffan de Mistura said on Tuesday that the Syrian government had accepted the Russian proposal to stop fighting in the area on Nov. 28-29.

The observatory, which monitors the war, reported that the ceasefire had seen insignificant breaches on Wednesday morning in the village of Ain Terma, where Syrian forces fired five shells.

On Tuesday, shelling killed three people and injured 15, but was less intense than in previous days, it added.

“We are in peace today,” a witness from the Eastern Ghouta village of Douma told Reuters on a messaging site.

Nasr Hariri, head of the opposition delegation, told a Geneva news conference on Monday night that he is aiming for Assad’s removal as a result of negotiations.

The government delegation will be headed by Syria’s U.N. ambassador and chief negotiator Bashar al-Ja’afari, state-run news agency SANA said.

(Reporting by Dahlia Nehme; Editing by Angus McDowall/Jeremy Gaunt)

Indonesia reopens Bali airport as wind clears volcanic ash

By Ayu Mandala and Slamet Kurniawan

DENPASAR, Indonesia (Reuters) – The airport on the Indonesian holiday island of Bali reopened on Wednesday as wind blew away ash spewed out by a volcano, giving airlines a window to get tourists out while authorities stepped up efforts to get thousands of villagers to move to safety.

Operations at the airport – the second-busiest in Indonesia – have been disrupted since the weekend when Mount Agung, in east Bali, began belching out huge clouds of smoke and ash, and authorities warned of an “imminent threat” of a major eruption.

“Bali’s international airport started operating normally,” air traffic control provider AirNav said in a statement, adding that operations resumed at 2:28 p.m. (0628 GMT).

The reopening of the airport, which is about 60 km (37 miles) away from Mount Agung, followed a downgrade in an aviation warning to one level below the most serious, with the arrival of more favorable winds.

“We really hope that we actually get a flight, maybe today or tomorrow, to get back home,” said tourist Nathan James, from the Australian city of Brisbane, waiting at the airport.

A large plume of white and grey ash and smoke hovered over Agung on Wednesday, after night-time rain partially obscured a fiery glow at its peak.

President Joko Widodo begged villagers living in a danger zone around the volcano to move to emergency centers.

Sutopo Purwo Nugroho of the disaster mitigation agency said about 43,000 people had heeded advice to take shelter, but an estimated 90,000 to 100,000 people were living in the zone.

The decision to resume flights followed an emergency meeting at the airport, when authorities weighing up weather conditions, tests and data from AirNav and other groups.

Flight tracking website FlightRadar24 later showed there were flights departing and arriving at the airport although its general manager said if the wind changed direction the airport could be closed again at short notice.

Agung looms over eastern Bali to a height of just over 3,000 meters (9,800 feet). Its last major eruption in 1963 killed more than 1,000 people and razed several villages.

Ash coated cars, roofs and roads to the southeast of the crater on Wednesday and children wore masks as they walked to school.

‘UNPREDICTABLE’

Singapore Airlines Ltd <SIAL.SI> said it would resume flights while Australia’s Qantas Airways Ltd <QAN.AX> said it and budget arm Jetstar would run 16 flights to Australia on Thursday to ferry home 3,800 stranded customers.

Singapore Airlines and SilkAir were seeking approval to operate additional flights on Thursday, while budget offshoot Scoot said it would cease offering land and ferry transport to the city of Surabaya, on Java island, as it resumed flights to Bali.

Virgin Australia plans to operate up to four recovery flights to Denpasar on Thursday.

“As the volcanic activity remains unpredictable, these flights may be canceled at short notice,” it said on its website.

The head of the weather agency at Bali airport, Bambang Hargiyono, said winds had begun to blow from the north to south, carrying ash toward the neighboring island of Lombok.

He said the wind was expected to shift toward the southeast “for the next three days”, which should allow flights to operate.

As many as 430 domestic and international flights had been disrupted on Wednesday.

Authorities are urging villagers living up to 10 km (6 miles) from the volcano to move to emergency centers, but some are reluctant to leave homes and livestock.

“Those in the 8- to 10-km radius must truly take refuge for safety,” Widodo told reporters.

“There must not be any victims.”

Interactive graphic: ‘Mount Agung awakens’ click http://tmsnrt.rs/2AayRVh

Graphic: ‘Ring of fire’ click http://tmsnrt.rs/2AzR9jv

(Additional reporting by Kanupriya Kapoor in KARANGASEM Jamie Freed in SINGAPORE and Agustinus Beo Da Costa in JAKARTA; Writing by Fergus Jensen and Ed Davies; Editing by Clarence Fernandez, Robert Birsel)

Florida man sentenced to 25 years for attempt to blow up synagogue

(Reuters) – A Florida man was sentenced by a U.S. judge on Tuesday to 25 years in prison for trying to blow up a synagogue in the state during a Jewish holiday last year, court officials said.

James Medina, 41, will first be treated at a U.S. prison medical facility for a brain cyst and mental illness before being moved into the general prison population, U.S. District Judge Robert Scola in Miami ruled.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation began watching Medina, who had converted to Islam, after he began expressing anti-Semitic views and a wish to attack a synagogue. They launched an investigation in late March 2016, court documents showed

Medina, who faced up to life in prison, had pleaded guilty in August 2017 to charges of an attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction and an attempted religious hate crime, court documents showed.

“This is a very, very serious offense,” Scola was quoted as saying in court by the Miami Herald.

Medina’s federal public defender, Hector Dopico, declined to comment when reached by Reuters on Tuesday afternoon.

Medina met with an FBI-affiliated confidential informant and explained his plan to attack a synagogue in Aventura, Florida, near Miami, the documents showed.

“Medina wanted to witness the explosion, hearing and feeling the blast from (a) nearby car,” the informant cited Medina as saying, according to the documents.

Asked why he wanted to do it, Medina said he wanted to kill Jews, adding: “It’s my call of duty.”

Medina was supplied with what he thought was an explosive device by federal law enforcement. The device was inert and posed no danger to the public, federal law enforcement said in court filings.

He was taken into custody as he approached the synagogue with the inert device and later admitted to his crimes, they said. No one was hurt.

(Reporting by Jon Herskovitz in Austin, Texas; editing by Bernadette Baum and Diane Craft)

Egypt security forces kill 11 suspected militants in raid

CAIRO (Reuters) – Egyptian security forces have killed 11 suspected militants in a shootout near the Sinai, the interior ministry said on Tuesday, just days after more than 300 people were killed in an attack on a mosque in North Sinai.

The shootout occurred during a raid on a suspected militant hideout in the Sinai-bordering province of Ismailia, the ministry said in a statement.

It said the area was being used by militants to train and store weapons and logistical equipment for attacks in North Sinai.

Militants detonated a bomb and then gunned down fleeing worshippers in last Friday’s mosque attack, the deadliest in Egypt’s modern history.

No group has claimed responsibility for the assault, but Egypt’s public prosecutor linked Islamic State militants to the attack, citing interviews with wounded survivors who said militants brandished an Islamic State flag.

Six suspected militants were arrested as part of the operations, which also included a raid on an additional suspected militant hideout in the 10th of Ramadan, an area just outside of Cairo.

Since 2013 Egyptian security forces have battled an Islamic State affiliate in the mainly desert region of North Sinai, where militants have killed hundreds of police and soldiers.

The interior ministry statement on Tuesday did not directly link the suspected militants targeted in the operations to last week’s mosque attack.

(Reporting by Ahmed Tolba; Writing by Eric Knecht; Editing by Richard Balmforth)

UK shipping firm Clarkson reports cyber attack

(Reuters) – British shipping services provider Clarkson Plc <CKN.L> on Wednesday said it was the victim of a cyber security hack and warned that the person or persons behind the attack may release some data shortly.

The company’s disclosure, while a relatively rare event in Britain, follows a series of high-profile hacks in corporate America.

Clarkson is one of the world’s main shipbrokers, sourcing vessels for the world’s largest producers and traders of natural resources. It also has a research operation which collects and analyses data on merchant shipping and offshore markets.

The London-headquartered company said it had been working with the police on the incident but did not provide any details about the scale or type of data stolen.

“As soon as it was discovered, Clarksons took immediate steps to respond to and manage the incident,” the company said.

“Our initial investigations have shown the unauthorized access was gained via a single and isolated user account which has now been disabled.”

The company said it is in the process of contacting potentially affected clients and individuals directly, and that it has been working with data security specialists to probe further.

(Reporting by Rahul B in Bengaluru; Editing by Maju Samuel and Patrick Graham)

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