U.N., Unicef, Red Cross Under Ongoing Mobile Attack
threatpost.com
threatpost.com
Summary: they are somewhat certain to die when Assad's army takes over northern Syria and manages to identify them as aid workers, even remotely connected to anything we would consider "good". The agencies are trying to burn all their local paperwork to protect their employees' identities.
[0]: https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2019/10/am...
Let me present an alternative outcome: when the SyGov enters into joint-control of Northern Syria, nothing will change. And the bulk of the SDF will be incorporated into the Syrian military... exactly as the same as what has happened every single time this has happened in the last 8 years.
There is not a single reason to suspect otherwise, and propagandists like Hassan Hassan and co. will just find a new talking point next week.
It's actually ridiculous that the inner-circle of Twitter MENA propagandists, led by Henry Jackson Society notables like Michael Weiss, are still the go-to "experts" people depend on and still have a platform to spread their poison in 2019.
> First it was protesters chanting for democracy—many took encouragement from Barack Obama’s statement in the summer of 2011 that the country’s dictator, Bashar al-Assad, should step down. But the U.S. government looked on as protesters were killed or disappeared into the regime’s teeming prisons.
It’s as though the US government is on a mission to prove they should not be trusted. I hope most can get out of there somehow, this is very unfortunate
I would consider that mission solidly accomplished at this point.
That doesn't mean the US was flawless before Trump. It had its flaws, just like any other government. But generally, they were trusted in scenarios like above, but also, for example, by diplomats to at least try to keep their word even across administrations, or by travellers not to be asked for bribes at the border.
People have become rather cynical and won't believe me, but still it is worth mentioning: before Trump, politicians, including the presidents, almost never lied. On occasion, they would try but fail to make good on a promise. Or they would err, or go to great lengths to avoid answering a question.
But actual lying, as in saying something wrong and repeating it even after it was pointed out to be wrong? It barely ever happened.
Trust isn't binary, nor does it exist on a single dimension. I might use the products and services of US companies, I might conditionally trust the judgement of some US government bodies, but there's always a heavy set of caveats.
I wouldn't trust a drug that had been approved by the FDA until it had also been approved by the European Medicines Agency. I would trust a NIST standard for metrology, but I certainly wouldn't trust a NIST standard for cryptography. I wouldn't ever allow a European customer's data to be stored in the US, or to transit US networks in plaintext. I trust US-made hardware and software about as much as Chinese-made hardware and software, which is to say I assume it's heavily backdoored. I haven't ever trusted the words of a US administration, red or blue; I do broadly trust that Merkel or Macron will mostly keep their word and mostly honour international law.
Or Watergate.
You have a very short memory, the cognitive dissonance is beyond me unless you also supported the invasion of Iraq too? The indefinite nature of that should be a point that this can go on forever and it will. If we're going to stop being the world police, we have to actually stop getting involved and back away as we've been doing slowly over the past decade. This isn't a big surprise.
JFC... I never understood why that "improvement" was necessary in the first place. Now its causing real harm out in the world. Kind of infuriating.
I think it’s MS Outlook that only shows the name in email chain when forwarding. So once the first person tricked forwards the email, info is lost and prevents future readers noticing the phishing email address
I complained to support about Outlook iOS doing this, not just for forwarding... but all received emails display only the name. I receive AppleID phishing attacks constantly to my old hotmail account, Microsoft helpfully sends all them to my inbox and Outlook shows them as from 'Apple' unless I click the sender name and then it shows something like totallynotlegit@paypalappleidscams.tk. Their link scanner is effective around 50% of the time. It's not good enough.
Microsoft does not consider this a bug or a threat in any way. I have been active about this on social media and have had my screenshots and complaints picked up by largish accounts like @swiftonsecurity.
At this point Microsoft is complicit with the phishers. Oh well, not the first time an entire industry thrived off their lack of security.
What improvement are you talking about? Mobile phones truncate the URL bar because phone screens are physically narrow.
Safari doesn't.
I hate when my phone / browser truncates or hides URL's.
At which point the article fails to include the one actionable piece information - the IP blocks and ASNs.
It's so like the tech press to write a comprehensive article that omits the only info that could actually help.
Red Cross and Unicef show up everywhere there's a serious conflict. Often the very first western organizations there. The job of most intel agencies is to keep their governments up to date on those conflicts. Especially one involved in plenty of global conflicts like Russia.
I'm sure the US embeds agents with them all the time.
Using NGOs like this should be as unacceptable as using outright human shields, but as always, it's different when the perfidious foreigners do it.
I mean, yes? At what number of intelligence operatives would firing at Red Cross workers be a good thing?
> Using NGOs like this should be as unacceptable as using outright human shields
Yes. But, like human shields, firing on them with disregard will indeed make people think you're the bad guys.
...and intelligence cover.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-cia-fake-vacc...
So now how do you know if the next humanitarian group running around your country isn't full of U.S. spooks?
Damn, they couldn't even be arsed to give them the full number of shots
You don't even have to hit submit, hopefully not autofilled.
IMO, browsers should have site bookmarks to replace EV certificates, where you can bookmark a site and give it a name and the name appears where the EV company name used to.