EU sanctions on Russian, Chinese 'cyber attackers'

Yahoo – AFP, Dave CLARK, July 30, 2020

The EU member states said measures would be taken against six individuals
and three entities from China and Russia involved in various actions, including
the attempt to hack into the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical
Weapons (OPCW) (AFP Photo/Philip Pacheco)

Brussels (AFP) - The European Union imposed its first ever sanctions against alleged cyber attackers on Thursday, targeting Russian and Chinese individuals and a specialist unit of Moscow's GRU military intelligence agency.

An export firm based in North Korea and technology company from Tiajin, China, were also listed.

The member states said measures would be taken against six individuals and three entities involved in various actions, including the attempt to hack into the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW).

They also included suspects said to be involved in the major cyber assaults known by the nicknames "WannaCry", "NotPetya" and "Operation Could Hopper".

The individuals will be banned from travel to the European Union and all the targets will be subject to an asset freeze for any funds in areas under EU jurisdiction.

In addition, the European Council of member states said: "EU persons and entities are forbidden from making funds available to those listed."

EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell (pictured July 17, 2020) said the action had 

been taken "to better prevent, discourage, deter and respond to such malicious 

behaviour in cyberspace" (AFP Photo/JOHN THYS)

EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said the action had been taken "to better prevent, discourage, deter and respond to such malicious behaviour in cyberspace".

These attacks, he said, represented "an external threat to the European Union or its member states" or had "a significant effect against third States or international organisations".

The best known of the targeted entities is the Main Centre for Special Technologies, a unit of the Main Directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation -- better known as the GRU.

This unit, based on Kirova Street in Moscow, is said to have carried out attacks known as NotPetya and EternalPetya in June 2017, hitting EU private companies with ransomware and blocking data.

The sanctions list also accuses GRU agents of carrying out an attack on the Ukrainian power grid in the winters of 2015 and 2016, resulting in parts of it being shut down.

Four alleged Russian GRU agents -- two "human intelligence support" officers and two "cyber operators" -- are also named, for their roles in the April 2018 attempt to penetrate the OPCW agency in The Hague.

EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell (pictured July 17, 2020) said the action had 

been taken "to better prevent, discourage, deter and respond to such malicious 

behaviour in cyberspace" (AFP Photo/JOHN THYS)

The watchdog was investigating reports that Russian-backed Syrian forces carried out chemical attacks when alleged GRU agents were intercepted trying to penetrate the agency's wifi from a hire car parked near its headquarters.

"With these sanctions, the EU is taking a big step towards safer cyber space. The price for bad behaviour is being increased, because the bad guys still get away with it too often," said Dutch foreign minister Stef Blok.

"Now the EU shows that it can take effective action against these and other malicious parties," he said.

The other two entities targeted were Tianjin Huaying Haitai Science and Technology Development Company Ltd, said to be the actor known to cyber war observers as "Advanced Persistent Threat 10" or APT10.

Haitai is said to have been the source of "Operation Cloud Hopper", which the European Council said "targeted information systems of multinational companies in six continents ... and gained unauthorised access to commercially sensitive data, resulting in significant economic loss".

Another target was Chosun Expo, an export company from North Korea which, under the "WannaCry" banner, is said to have helped hack the Polish Financial Supervision Authority and Sony Pictures Entertainment.

It is alleged to have carried out cyber-theft from the Bangladesh Bank and attempted cyber-theft from the Vietnam Tien Phong Bank.

German puzzlers reconstruct Stasi files from millions of fragments

Yahoo – AFP, Hui Min NEO, November 4, 2019

There are still 400 to 600 million fragments of surveillance reports, private letters
or policy papers to be matched (AFP Photo/John MACDOUGALL)

Berlin (AFP) - Barbara Poenisch spends most of her days at work doing puzzles -- piecing together a mountain of documents torn up by the hated East German Stasi secret police.

The former bookbinder is one in a team of 10 people painstakingly reconstructing surveillance reports, private letters or policy papers that the Stasi accumulated and desperately tried to destroy as the communist regime came crashing down 30 years ago.

When the Berlin Wall fell on November 9, 1989, the secret police began shredding their files.

The machines broke down under the strain, so they were forced to tear up the documents by hand to then pulp or burn the scraps.

But "citizen committees" stormed the Stasi's offices -- including its East Berlin headquarters -- on January 15, 1990, seizing millions of files along with 16,000 bags of torn up documents to preserve them for the future.

The East Berlin-based Ministry of State Security, known as the Stasi, had been one of the world's most effective instruments for state repression during its nearly 40 years of existence.

It employed more than 270,000 people -- many of them informants seeded throughout the population -- during the Cold War, making East German society the most intensely monitored in the Eastern bloc.

Three decades on, its secrets are still being revealed as Poenisch and her colleagues at the BStU federal office for Stasi records reconstruct the ripped up papers.

"I enjoy doing puzzles and the search, that's a little like detective work," said Poenisch, herself an east German, with a smile.

More crucially, she said, "it is gratifying to be able to put together these things that were once torn up 30 years ago... because I know that this material will then be looked at by an archivist and make a contribution towards our coming to terms with the past."

On average it takes each puzzler 18 months to completely reconstruct each 

sack of shreds (AFP Photo/John MACDOUGALL)

'Huge responsibility'

Thousands of spies were unmasked as the Stasi files became available to the public in the years following German reunification in 1990.

Many East Germans learned that their friends and even family members had been keeping tabs on them as "unofficial collaborators" of the Stasi.

What Poenisch describes as her "small contribution to coming to terms with the past" is therefore in fact a Herculean task with an impact on the real lives of thousands if not millions of people.

Among personal items that she had pieced together is a letter written by a mother pleading with the Stasi to free her son.

"That was from a few years back and really touched me," she said.

Carefully aligning two scraps of papers, holding each side down with paper weights before firmly sticking them together, Poenisch underlined that the key to her job is not only patience, but more importantly, recognition of the "huge responsibility" it carries.

Manual reconstruction of the ripped up papers began in 1995 (AFP Photo/John 

MACDOUGALL)

Technology overwhelmed

Since manual reconstruction of the ripped up papers began in 1995, some 500 bags of fragments -- equivalent to more than 1.5 million pages -- have been pieced together.

Bombshells turned up by the archivists as they reconstruct the documents include papers proving the state-sponsored doping of East German athletes or papers about extreme left Red Army Faction militant Silke Maier-Witt, who went underground in the GDR.

Many more may lay hidden for years, as on average, it takes each puzzler 18 months to completely reconstruct each sack of shreds, said Andreas Loder, who leads the manual reconstruction team.

With each bag containing fragments making up as many as 3,500 pages, it means there remain up to 600 million fragments to be pieced into some 55 million pages.

Hopes had been raised in 2013, when technology was deployed to help in the process.

But the so-called e-Puzzler developed by research institute Fraunhofer IPK proved helpless in the face of hundreds of thousands of fragments. Eventually, only 23 bags or around 91,000 pages were put together.

A new machine is being designed and archivists hope it will be deployed in the coming years.

The former headquarters of the Stasi, which was one of the world's most effective 

instruments for state repression during its nearly 40 years of existence (AFP Photo/

John MACDOUGALL)

'Claim their rights'

For now, it is back to human labour.

Ute Michalsky, who oversees the reconstruction work, admits that she cannot say if there will come a day when all the fragments will be pieced together.

But she stressed the importance of pushing ahead with the work, noting that the priority will be to put together documents that carry personal significance.

"The bags in which documents with information about people who the Stasi kept tabs on" are first on the list, she said.

"For many affected people, such things are still very important for rehabilitation... so we're not looking particularly for controversial documents or explosive finds.

"For us it's more important to help victims of the dictatorship claim their right" to know what the secret police knew about them.

UK spy agency GCHQ offers apology to gay code breakers, including Alan Turing

The UK's eavesdropping agency, GCHQ, has apologized for its ban on homosexuals, particularly in relation to legendary code breaker Alan Turing. The apology came on the same day it officially opened a Twitter account.

Deutsche Welle, 16 May 2016

Monument in Manchester to Alan Turing

The head of the UK's Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) has formally apologized for a ban on homosexuals which led to the dismissal and subsequent suicide of one of its best-ever code breakers, Alan Turing, in the 1950s.

Speaking on Monday, Robert Hannigan told a gay rights workplace conference in London that Turing had been an example to others as he had not been afraid to think "differently and radically."

Alan Turing portrait at the National Gallery

"(I want to) say how sorry I am that he and so many others were treated in this way," Hannigan said. "Their suffering was our loss." GCHQ's ban on homosexuals was only lifted in the 1990s. The life of Turing was featured in a recent film with Benedict Cumberbatch "The Imitation Game.'

"To do our job, which is solving some of the hardest technology problems the world faces for security reasons, we need all talents and we need people who dare to think differently and be different," Hannigan said.

While Turing, and other gay men were regarded as security risks by their employers, the UK's domestic spy agency MI5 was recently rated the country's most gay-friendly employer by campaign group Stonewall. Six years ago it was ranked 134 on the index.

A scene from 'The Imitation Game'

Now with an outward presence on Twitter

GCHQ rarely makes public pronouncements and so its entry to the world of social media made Monday a double-first. "We want GCHQ to be more accessible and to help the public understand more about our work," an unnamed spokesperson said. "We also want to reach out to the technical community and add our voice to social media conversations about technology," maths and cyber-security.

The agency's first tweet "Hello, world" came with a background image of its ring-shaped building in Cheltenham, known locally as the "doughnut."

Hello, world. https://t.co/SROtSsE8KB

— GCHQ (@GCHQ) May 16, 2016

GCHQ presented itself as an agency "Where our brightest people bring together intelligence and technology to keep Britain safe."

The US Central Intelligence Agency, which joined Twitter in February 2014 and boasts 1.36 million followers, was concise in its welcome:

Welcome to Twitter @GCHQ! https://t.co/EmD8hGMRBv

— CIA (@CIA) May 16, 2016

Within two hours, GCHQ was testing the mental agility of its 16,300 new Twitter followers with a soccer-doku puzzle based on England and Wales' group in the upcoming Euro 2016 tournament in France:

Try our soccer-doku puzzle, fill in the gaps (3 pts win, 1 draw). Answers: 5pm https://t.co/L19xcgjV22 #MathsMonday pic.twitter.com/MufsT4QYaM

— GCHQ (@GCHQ) May 16, 2016

Others reflected on who the spy agency would follow from its official account, starting with a famous and fictitious operative:

Glad to see @GCHQ new Twitter account is following James Bond @007

— Paul Lewis (@paullewismoney) May 16, 2016

jm/msh (Reuters, AFP)

Related Article:

Britain pardons code-breaking hero Alan Turing over homosexuality conviction