News Report: India Foils the Online Agenda of Islamist Cyber-Terrorists

Police in the Indian state of Maharashtra, where Mumbai is located, have thwarted a major Daesh attempt to influence Indian youth by de-radicalizing several young people and blocking hundreds of Islamist propaganda websites.

New Delhi (Sputnik)- A police anti-terror operation in India is making headway with its renewed strategy to take on terrorist extremist groups by blocking their attempts to take advantage of cyberspace.

The Anti-Terror Squad (ATS) of the Maharashtra police has de-radicalized 70 youths, while the cyber cell of ATS has blocked more than 450 websites related to Daesh (ISIS) in the past two years.

According to Home Ministry sources, the NIA and various state ATS units have been closely monitoring the social media sites and keeping a close tab on the activities of suspects.

News Story: Top U.S. general says DPRK has not changed military posture

WASHINGTON, Sept. 26 (Xinhua) -- The Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) has not changed its military posture despite heated exchange of rhetoric with the United States, a top American general said on Tuesday.

"While the political space is clearly very charged right now, we haven't seen a change in the posture of North Korean (DPRK) forces and we watch that very closely," Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told a Senate committee.

"What we haven't seen is military activity that would be reflective of the charged political environment," Dunford added.

Asked about his assessment of DPRK's ballistic missile program, the general said the country will "soon" have the capability to strike U.S. mainland with an intercontinental ballistic missile.

"Whether it's three months or six months or 18 months, it is soon, and we ought to conduct ourselves as though it is just a matter of time, and a matter of very short time, before North Korea (DPRK) has that capability," Dunford told lawmakers.

Read the full story at Xinhua

News Report: North Korea Claims US Has Declared War

Margaret Besheer

UNITED NATIONS — North Korea's Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho said Monday the United States has declared war on his country and Pyongyang would take counter-actions if threatened, including shooting down American war planes in the region.

Ri directly linked U.S. President Donald Trump’s comments Saturday night on social media platform Twitter to the threat.

In a tweet late Saturday responding to Ri’s United Nations General Assembly speech earlier in the day, Trump wrote: “Just heard Foreign Minister of North Korea speak at U.N. If he echoes thoughts of Little Rocket Man, they won't be around much longer!”

On Monday, North Korea's foreign minister responded:

“Given the fact that this comes from someone who is currently holding the seat of United States presidency, this is clearly a declaration of war," Ri told reporters outside his New York hotel. "All the member states participating in the United Nations and the whole world should clearly remember that it was the U.S. who first declared war on our country."

The North Korean foreign minister added, "we will have every right to make countermeasures, including the right to shoot down the United States strategic bombers, even when they are not yet inside the airspace border of our country,” he warned.

News Story: No Safe Place In Next War - The Army’s Expanded Battlefield

Bradley M2A3 IFVs are unloaded at Busan port RoK (File Photo)

By SYDNEY J. FREEDBERG JR.

What if the next war starts, not with a gunshot, but with a tweet? As tensions rise, US troops discover their families’ names, faces, and home addresses have been posted on social media as they prepare to deploy, along with exhortations to kill the fascists/imperialists/infidels (pick one). Trolls call them late at night with death threats, a mentally ill lone wolf runs over a soldier’s children, fake news claims the military is covering up more deaths, and official social media accounts are hacked to post falsehoods. The whole force is distracted and demoralized.

Meanwhile, defense contractors discover the networks they use to deliver supplies to the military have been penetrated. Vital spare parts go missing without ever leaving the warehouse because the serial number saying which crate they’re in has been scrambled in the database. As railways and seaports prepare to transport heavy equipment, they discover key railroad switches, loading cranes, and other equipment – civilian-owned but vital to the military operation – now malfunction unpredictably, forcing prolonged safety inspections.

US forces finally cut through this cyber thicket and begin to deploy abroad by air and sea – but now the shooting starts. A thousand miles from enemy territory, submarines sink transport ships with torpedoes, cruise missiles and covertly laid mines. A few hundred miles out, long-range anti-aircraft missiles blunt the US air offensive. While stealth fighters can penetrate the defenses, the lumbering fuel tankers that let them cover long distances cannot. Transport planes must unload the troops at airfields well outside the danger zone, while transport ships must unload at distant ports.

US forces face a long road march just to reach the ally they’re supposed to be defending. The whole way, they must fight through attacks by everything from surface-to-surface missiles to local malcontents stirred up by social media. By the time the Americans arrive, their ally’s territory is not only occupied but thoroughly defended by dug-in enemies.

Read the full story at Breaking Defense

News Story: Indonesia to work with Google in fight against cyber terror attack

JAKARTA, Aug. 4 (Xinhua) -- Indonesia will cooperate with Google to counter spread of radicalism in cyber media following a spate of suicide attacks in the country which used internet as a facility, a minister said on Friday.

Minister of Communication and Information Rudiantara said the inclusion of Google in the move would shorten the period required to filter out and delete the internet contents with links with radicalism.

"Google and the ministry will apply a system of 'trusted flagger and legal removal programs.' Basically, we will settle all the problems," the minister said after meeting with the representatives of Google.

Read the full story at Xinhua

News Story: Nations agree to boost cooperation on fighting terrorism - Indonesian official

JAKARTA, July 31 (Xinhua) -- Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Australia, New Zealand and Brunei Darussalam have pledged to step up cooperation in combating terrorists following the IS's militant strikes in the Philippines, a senior official said here Monday.

Indonesian Chief Security Minister Wiranto made the remarks after attending the sub-regional meeting on foreign terrorist fighters and cross-border terrorism in Manado city of North Sulawesi province at the weekend.

The meeting agreed on the establishment of a forum on counter foreign terrorist fighters in a bid to strengthen cooperation and share information among the law enforcers and intelligence, Wiranto said.

Read the full story at Xinhua

News Report: China Escalates Efforts to Shut Down Unauthorized VPNs

Joyce Huang

In spite of an earlier denial, the Chinese government has tightened its grip on the Internet, stepping up efforts against netizens’ access to unsupervised connections, including those via virtual private networks (VPNs) halfway through its 14-month-long crackdown nationwide.

VPNs are third-party services that help bypass the so-called Great Firewall, installed by state censors to filter traffic between Chinese and overseas servers and block banned websites such as Google, Twitter and scores of international news media, including VOA.

“Some local services have been brought offline, some VPN apps no longer work, and the authorities are targeting other specific VPN providers,” Charlie Smith, a co-founder of Greatfire.org, said in an emailed reply to VOA.

The anti-censorship group’s earlier report showed that China blocked 135 of the world’s top 1,000 websites.

News Story: App blocks terror content as Southeast Asia boosts efforts vs radicalism

By Stephen Wright

JAKARTA, Indonesia — The encrypted messaging app Telegram is forming a team of moderators who are familiar with Indonesian culture and language so it can remove "terrorist-related content" faster, its co-founder said Sunday, after Indonesia limited access to the app and threatened a total ban.

Pavel Durov, who with his brother Nikolai founded the app in 2013, said in a message to his 40,000 followers on Telegram that he'd been unaware of a failure to quickly respond to an Indonesian government request to block a number of offending channels — chat groups on the app — but was now rectifying the situation.

The Ministry of Communications and Information Technology on Friday said it was preparing for the total closure of Telegram in Indonesia, where it has several million users, if it didn't develop procedures to block unlawful content. As a partial measure, it asked internet companies in the world's most populous Muslim nation to block access to 11 addresses offering the web version of Telegram.

Samuel Pangerapan, the director general of informatics applications at the ministry, said the app is used to recruit Indonesians into militant groups and to spread hate and methods for carrying out attacks including bomb making.

Read the full story at PhilStar

News Report: Police Clamp Down in Indian Kashmir on Anniversary of Militant Leader's Death

Anjana Pasricha

NEW DELHI — Thousands of troops patrolled Indian Kashmir on Saturday as authorities imposed widespread restrictions to foil protests planned for the anniversary of a local militant leader, Burhan Wani, whose killing in 2016 by armed forces has pulled the Himalayan region into a fresh spiral of violence after several years of relative peace.

Internet services were shut down and police raised barricades between neighborhoods. Shops and businesses remained closed in the Kashmiri capital, Srinagar.

Police fired tear gas in at least four places where protesters attempted to march in the streets.

The tightest security was in Tral village around the house of Wani, who had joined the Hizbul Mujahideen militant group and is regarded as a hero in Kashmir. He belonged to a new rank of social media savvy young rebels who used Facebook and other social media to draw fresh recruits.

The call for a strike to mark Wani’s killing was given by local Kashmiri separatist leaders and by a Pakistan-based militant commander, Syed Salahuddin, whom the United States last week added to its list of global terrorists.