The 1st ship carrying 25,000 tonnes of Ukrainian wheat underneath the  Grain from Ukraine humanitarian application arrived in Ethiopia on December 3.

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The post First vessel with humanitarian wheat shipment from Ukraine arrives in Ethiopia appeared first on Ukraine Intelligence.

WASHINGTON (JTA) — The Iranian regime has launched dozens of plots to kill its perceived enemies abroad, including Jews, among them the French philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy, according to a report in The Washington Post.

The Iranian regime dramatically intensified its targeting of overseas figures after the United States assassinated a top general, Qassem Soleimani, in 2020, the report posted Thursday said, citing 15 unnamed officials in the United States, Europe and the Middle East as well as documents its reporters have seen.

According to the report, the regime has since 2020 shifted from identifying and tracking targets for possible attack should there be an intensification in tensions between the West and Iran, to launching plots, which one expert said so far number 36. Many of the attacks do not come to fruition, because they are thwarted by authorities in the targeted countries, or because the designated assassins choose not to carry them out.

Last summer, Israeli officials warned Israelis not to travel to Istanbul, saying that Israeli and Turkish authorities had recently thwarted Iranian-backed terrorist attacks.

Among the targets of Iranian assassins, according to the Washington Post report, was Lévy, a philosopher who emphasizes his Jewish outlook and who has been an outspoken critic of repressive regimes in the Middle East, particularly Iran.

Lévy was targeted by the Quds Force, the special operations branch of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps that Soleimani headed, the Post reported.  The Quds Force paid an Iranian drug dealer $150,000 to kill Lévy, it said. The report did not say how the plot was thwarted. Lévy declined to comment to the newspaper.

Other targets included Israeli businessmen in Colombia, the Post said. An Iranian spy serving a prison sentence in Dubai met two Colombian brothers who were in the same prison; they were jewel thieves, according to the report. The spy trained the brothers in assassination techniques, it said, but they never followed through once released.

Also noted was the arrest last year in Cyprus of an Azerbaijani Russian citizen who allegedly was supervising a team of Pakistanis tracking Israeli citizens in the country. That plot had recently shifted into a plan to carry out deadly attacks, the report said.

Other groups targeted in the plots, the report said, included Iranian exiles who are prominent in their criticism of the regime, and journalists living abroad who report on Iran. In addition to France, Cyprus and Colombia, plots have been attempted or carried out in the United States, Canada, Britain, Iraq and Turkey, the report said.

Matthew Levitt, a former FBI official who now tracks terrorism at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy think tank, told the newspaper that, of 124 plots he has identified since 1979, 36 have taken place since Soleimani’s killing. Soleimani was responsible for attacks on American forces in the area and for liaising with and arming two of Israel’s enemies, the terrorist groups Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

This article originally appeared on JTA.org.

The post Report: Iranian regime has plotted to kill Jews overseas, including philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy appeared first on The Forward.

(NewsNation) — The family of Kaylee Goncalves questioned if police were too quick to clear some of the people connected to the case in which Kaylee and three other college students were killed in a rental home near the University of Idaho campus in Moscow, Idaho. 

Speaking to NewsNation’s Brian Entin, the family says since the Nov. 13 killings, police have ruled out a number of people as potential suspects, something they would like more information on. 

“A few of the names that have been circulating around, I think it’s hard not to dig into this and I don’t know how much of that is we have so little information from law enforcement, and how much of it is really a sister or a father’s intuition,” said Alivea Goncalves, Kaylee’s sister. 

“I just feel like there’s been a couple individuals that were cleared very fast that maybe should not have been,” said Kristi Goncalves, Kaylee’s mother. 

The family is asking for clarity to help them understand why authorities were able to clear some persons involved so quickly. 

“I don’t know what would prevent you from sharing someone’s alibi,” said Steve Goncalve, Kaylee’s father.

So far, police have cleared the person who called 911 to report an unconscious person, as well as the food truck driver Kaylee and Madison Mogen stopped at shortly before the killings occurred. 

Two roommates in the house at the time of the attack survived, and a sixth person was also named on the lease. Police have ruled them out as suspects as well.

A person wearing a hooded sweatshirt near the food truck was also not involved, according to police. 

The family also notes that Kaylee made phone calls to her ex-boyfriend the night of her death, which they say was normal and unrelated to the killings.

The family told NewsNation they just want to understand the process better, as the investigation approaches its fourth week. 

“We don’t want to make more victims out of innocent people,” Steve said. 

NewsNation has been covering this story from the beginning, and will continue its investigation in a special hour on Sunday. National correspondent Brian Entin will host “Special Report: Idaho Murder Mystery” on Dec. 4 at 9 p.m. ET on NewsNation. Here’s how you can watch.

While right wingers love to lambast President Biden’s approval ratings and largely clung to them with the false hope that they’d win big on election night this year, that largely didn’t happen. The problem is, if Republicans really want to go by that metric, their own disapproval ratings are seismically worse. A recent poll of the incoming Republican House majority put them at 60% disapproval and they polled even worse among the independents that often decide how these races are going to go.

This is one poll, but bear in mind that polling for President-elect Biden around this time in 2020 was over 60% approval – indicating a strong ceiling for support. The incoming House majority, which does not presently have the votes for an official leader, can absolutely poll worse than they currently are – and they probably will when they waste everyone’s time and tax dollars on frivolous investigations of Hunter Biden and officials of this administration that go nowhere. It also doesn’t exactly help their image when they can’t decide on the next house speaker – nor can they divorce themselves from the craziness of Marjorie Taylor Greene.

What’s clear is that the problems Republicans hoped to ride to a red wave have largely been stemming off since this summer – inflation and high gas prices – while the economy continues to thrive. It’s never been clearer that Democrats are the party delivering on solutions for the American people and we’re in a clearer position than ever to make gains in 2024.

The post House Republican “majority” immediately hits a wall appeared first on Palmer Report.

Experts spotted a new data wiper, dubbed CryWiper, that was employed in destructive attacks against Russian mayor’s offices and courts.

Researchers from Kaspersky discovered a previously unknown data wiper, dubbed CryWiper, that was employed in destructive attacks against Russian mayor’s offices and courts.

The malware masquerades as ransomware, but the analysis of the code demonstrates that it does not actually encrypt, but only destroys data in the infected system. 

According to Kaspersky, the wiper was first spotted in the fall of 2022 when it was employed in an attack against an organization’s network in the Russian Federation.

“After examining a sample of malware, we found out that this Trojan, although it masquerades as a ransomware and extorts money from the victim for “decrypting” data, does not actually encrypt, but purposefully destroys data in the affected system.” reads the report published by Kaspersky. “Moreover, an analysis of the Trojan’s program code showed that this was not a developer’s mistake, but his original intention.”

The CryWiper sample analyzed by the researchers is a Windows 64-bit executable that was written in C++ and compiled using the MinGW-w64 toolkit and the GCC compiler. The experts pointed out that this development process for C/C++ malware developers for Windows is unusual.

The experts believe the malware was specifically designed to target Windows systems because it uses many calls to WinAPI functions.

Once executed, CryWiper uses the Task Scheduler and the schtasks create command to create a task to run its file every 5 minutes.

The the wiper contacts the command and control server using an HTTP GET request and passes the name of the infected system as a parameter.

The C2 in turn responds with either a “run” or “do not run” command, in order to determine if the malware have to start.

In some cases, the researchers observed execution delays of 4 days (345,600 seconds) to hide the logic behind the infection.

Upon receiving a run response, CryWiper stops processes related to MySQL and MS SQL database servers, MS Exchange mail server and MS Active Directory web services using the taskkill command. This action unlocks files used by the above legitimate applications before encrypting them.

CryWiper will stop critical processes related to MySQL, MS SQL database servers, MS Exchange email servers, and MS Active Directory web services to free locked data for destruction.

The wiper also deletes shadow copies on the compromised machine to prevent victims from restoring the wiped files.

The malware also changes the HKLMSYSTEMCurrentControlSetControlTerminal ServerfDenyTSConnections registry setting to prevent RDP connections to the infected system. 

In order to destroy user files, the wiper generates a sequence of data using the pseudo-random number generator “Mersenne Vortex” overwrite the original file content.

The malware appends the .CRY extension to the files it has corrupted and drops ransom notes (‘README.txt’) demanding for 0.5 Bitcoin for the decrypted.

“CryWiper positions itself as a ransomware program, that is, it claims that the victim’s files are encrypted and, if a ransom is paid, they can be restored. However, this is a hoax: in fact, the data has been destroyed and cannot be returned. The activity of CryWiper once again shows that the payment of the ransom does not guarantee the recovery of files.” concludes the report.

Follow me on Twitter: @securityaffairs and Facebook and Mastodon

Pierluigi Paganini

(SecurityAffairs – hacking, CryWiper)

The post New CryWiper wiper targets Russian entities masquerading as a ransomware appeared first on Security Affairs.

Mehmet Oz lost. He’s gone, baby gone Blake Masters lost. He, too, is gone. Kari Lake hired lawyers to file a lawsuit. And now they’re gone, baby gone. And so is Lake’s complaint. And not only is the lawsuit gone, but Kari Lake’s lawyers — some of them — have been sanctioned by a furious Judge who recognizes bullshit when he sees it.

The Judge in Lake’s baseless, stupid lawsuit ordered Lake and Mark Finchem to pay court costs. These costs were incurred by the country the lawsuit was brought in — Maricopa County. Finchem is a republican election denier who was running for Secretary of State and also lost.

“Baseless filings.” That is what the Judge called this frivolous litigation. And he ordered their attorneys be sanctioned. “It is to penalize specific attorneys conduct with the broader goal of deterring similarly baseless filings initiated by anyone, whether an attorney or not.”

This litigation was against Governor-elect Katie Hobbs and several county government boards. And it appears one of these attorneys being sanctioned is a familiar name — Alan Dershowitz. Does this surprise anyone?

Although he was not named in the sanctioning, he IS listed as the lead attorney for Kari Lake. Who’d have thought it? This is according to the court docket. When Republicans rear their ugly heads, the Dersh seems assured to follow. Speaking out, Dershowitz said that he has “not challenged the results of any Arizona election” but merely provided legal advice. Right.

My favorite part of this whole story is that Lake and Finchem were both ordered to pay attorney fees of the other side. I think that’s fair, though, knowing Lake, she is likely squawking in pretend indignation right at this very moment. So — another failure for Lake. Another lost opportunity to concede graciously. Another one bites the dust.

The post Another one bites the dust appeared first on Palmer Report.

A new round of the weekly SecurityAffairs newsletter arrived! Every week the best security articles from Security Affairs free for you in your email box.

If you want to also receive for free the newsletter with the international press subscribe here.

Follow me on Twitter: @securityaffairs and Facebook and Mastodon

Pierluigi Paganini

(SecurityAffairs – hacking, newsletter)

The post Security Affairs newsletter Round 396 appeared first on Security Affairs.

U.S. Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell is pushing for a legislative fix to a law designed to make horse racing safer after an appeals court last month ruled it unconstitutional, a source with direct knowledge of the negotiations told Reuters.

The changes to the law, which would provide greater federal oversight of the board charged with writing and implementing safety rules, would be included in a full-year spending bill, known as an omnibus, which could pass later this month.

The Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority (HISA) was created by Congress in 2020 to replace the state-by-state patchwork of regulations with national rules following a series of high-profile doping scandals and horse deaths that rocked the industry.

But the law was ruled unconstitutional by a federal appeals court in Louisiana, which said there was insufficient government oversight of the new authority in a case brought by various horse racing associations and some states. read more

McConnell, who hails from the horse racing stronghold of Kentucky, played a key role in getting the law passed and will seek changes to enhance the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) oversight of HISA, the source who spoke directly with the lawmaker said.

The source asked not to be identified to speak freely about the negotiations. McConnell’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Saturday.

If the changes are adopted as part of the spending bill, the law’s backers say there should be no interruption to the implementation of HISA’s rules, including the anticipated launch of its anti-doping and medication control program next month.

Supporters say the law is necessary to protect horses, jockeys and the sport as a whole, which they argue could fall out of favor with the public permanently if horses continue to die in training and competition.

Opponents argue that HISA would replace states’ regulatory structures and allow new fees to be imposed on the industry.

While not guaranteed, McConnell told the source there is the political will in the Senate to pass the full-year spending bill as two key members of the Appropriations Committee – chair Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont) and ranking member Richard Shelby (R-Alabama) – are set to retire and want to leave with the bill done.

Former Trump White House Counsel Pat Cipollone reportedly testified to a DOJ grand jury for six hours yesterday. This comes after the courts recently ruled that Cipollone had to testify without invoking executive privilege. In other words, Cipollone spent six hours giving up Donald Trump to a grand jury today.

We all watched Cipollone give partial testimony to the January 6th Committee months ago, and that was damning enough – even with Cipollone refusing to answer questions that may have been covered under privilege. Now Cipollone has given presumably much more damaging testimony to the DOJ grand jury.

The DOJ has spent quite awhile working through the legal process of getting the courts to rule to that Cipollone’s grand jury testimony against Trump shouldn’t be limited by executive privilege. So this new breakthrough in testimony isn’t necessarily a result of Special Counsel Jack Smith’s appointment. Rather, Smith’s appointment appears to be the result of processes like Cipollone’s testimony nearing completion. In other words, the DOJ’s criminal cases against Trump are finally just about ready to go, and Smith was brought in as a closer to seal the deal.

The post Key witness gives up Donald Trump to DOJ grand jury appeared first on Palmer Report.

U.S. intelligence expects the reduced tempo in fighting in Ukraine to continue in the next several months and sees no evidence of a reduced Ukrainian will to resist, despite attacks on its power grid and other critical winter infrastructure, the Director of National Intelligence said on Saturday.

“We’re seeing a kind of a reduced tempo already of the conflict … and we expect that’s likely to be what we see in the coming months,” Avril Haines told the annual Reagan National Defense Forum in California.

She said both the Ukrainian and Russian militaries would be looking to try to refit and resupply to prepare for a counter-offensive after the winter, but there was a question as to what that would look like, and added:

“We actually have a fair amount of skepticism as to whether or not the Russians will be in fact prepared to do that. I think more optimistically for the Ukrainians in that timeframe.”

Asked about the effects of Russian attacks on Ukraine’s power grid and other civilian infrastructure, Haines said Moscow’s aim was partly to undermine the will of Ukrainians to resist, and added: “I think we’re not seeing any evidence of that being undermined right now at this point.”

She said Russia was also looking to affect Ukraine’s capacity to prosecute conflict and added that Kyiv’s economy had been suffering very badly.

“It can over time, obviously, have an impact. How much of an impact will be dependent on how much they go after, what they’re capable of doing, the resilience of that critical infrastructure, our capacity to help them defend it.”

“Ukraine’s economy is suffering very badly. It’s been devastating, and … obviously taking down the grid will have an impact on that as well.”

Haines said she thought Russian President Vladimir Putin had been surprised that his military had not accomplished more.

“I do think he is becoming more informed of the challenges that the military faces in Russia. But it’s still not clear to us that he has a full picture at this stage of just how challenged they are … we see shortages of ammunition, for morale, supply issues, logistics, a whole series of concerns that they’re facing.”

Haines said Putin’s political objectives in Ukraine did not appear to have changed, but U.S. intelligence analysts thought he may be willing to scale back his near-term military objectives “on a temporary basis with the idea that he might then come back at this issue at a later time.”

She said Russia appeared to be using up its military stockpiles “quite quickly.”

“It’s really pretty extraordinary, and our own sense is that they are not capable of indigenously producing what they are expending at this stage,” she said.

“That’s why you see them going to other countries effectively to try to get ammunition … and we’ve indicated that their precision munitions are running out much faster in many respects.”

Haines said the United States had “seen some movement” in supplies of munitions from North Korea, “but it’s not been a lot at this stage.”

She said Iran had supplied Russia with drones and Moscow was looking for other types of precision munitions from Tehran, something that would be “very concerning in terms of their capacity.”