South Asia, Middle Eastern regional rivalries play out in cyberspace. Online voting insecurity. PPE supply chain attacks.
Regional rivals continue expanding their operations in cyberspace. Pakistani operators Telegana Today describes as “criminals” are said to be smishing Indian Defense officials. Their aim appears to be data exfiltration. The goal and the target set suggest a connection to espionage. Both India and Pakistan are said by Eurasian Times to be increasing their cyber operational capability, and doing so with the aid of allies, respectively Israel and China.
As more information about the exchange of cyberattacks between Iran and Israel comes to public attention, an essay in Foreign Policy assesses those operations as indicating the future of warfare: increasingly conducted in cyberspace, especially at the lower end of the spectrum of conflict, and increasingly overt.
Remote voting online has been used in some US states’ primaries, and may see some limited use in November’s general elections. The New York Times discusses the risks this may pose for direct manipulation of votes by hostile intelligence services (they focus on Russian services). Delaware, West Virginia, and New Jersey plan to use Democracy Live’s OmniBallot platform, but researchers at MIT and the University of Michigan report that OmniBallot “represents a severe risk to election security and could allow attackers to alter election results without detection.”
IBM’s X-Force reports that Task Force Schutzausrüstung, organized by Germany’s Health Ministry to procure personal protective equipment, has been subjected to a phishing campaign directed against PPE supply chains. It may be the work of a nation-state intelligence service interested in gaining competitive advantage in the market.
Gloss