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[19 May 2014] Cable operators shut down Pakistan Geo TV - English

The Jammu and Kashmir government Monday banned local cable operators from airing Iranian TV channel Press TV after protesters in the valley defied curfew and took to the streets following rumours that the Quran had been desecrated in the US.

The mayor of Bethlehem says Israeli tour operators are controlling the influx of travelers into the historical city over the Christmas period. This, the mayor says, is hurting the Palestinian economy.

Indian troops kill dozens in Kashmir At least 18 people have been killed and over 100 injured in Indian-controlled Kashmir as soldiers open fire on pro-independence rallies in disputed Himalayan region. Security forces opened fire on tens of thousands of protesters in the Budgam and Tangmarg areas. An Indian soldier was also killed in the violence. The protests were particularly intense following the news of the desecration of the Quran in the US. On Sunday, India imposed a curfew in many areas of Kashmir. However, people have been pouring out to the streets across Kashmir to protest against Indian rule despite the curfews. The latest round of public outrage began after a government forces' teargas grenade killed a teenager back in June. More than 80 protesters and by-standers have lost their lives during the unrest ever since. Article Source: http://www.presstv.ir/detail/142336.html Kashmiris protest Quran desecration Hundreds of Muslims have defied curfews in Indian-administered Kashmir and hit the streets to voice their anger over desecration of Islam's holy book in the US. Protests were held in the region's main city of Srinagar and its neighboring districts despite strict curfews, The Nation reported on Monday. "Death to the US!" and "Death to Quran desecrators!" chanted the protesters, who described the act as despicable. The protesters also called for punishment of those behind the desecration of the Quran. "These are absolutely pro-Islam protests and we demand befitting punishment to those who have desecrated the holy Quran. No Muslim anywhere in the world will watch the desecration of the holy Quran as a mute spectator. This protest is beyond borders and nationalities," a 55-year-old Kashmiri said. Although an American pastor cancelled earlier plans to burn copies of the Quran, other anti-Islam elements in the US desecrated the holy book in New York and in Washington on the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. The protest rallies in Srinagar erupted after local television showed a small group of protesters tearing apart and burning pages from the Muslim holy book outside the White House on Saturday. Article Source: http://www.presstv.ir/detail/142324.html India knocks Press TV off air in Kashmir India has banned local cable operators in Indian-administered Kashmir from airing Iran's English-language Press TV in the disputed Himalayan region. State Chief Secretary SS Kapur made the announcement in Kashmir's summer capital of Srinagar on Monday. "We have decided to impose a ban on the airing of Press TV broadcasts by local cable operators," Kapur told reporters. The ban comes as Press TV has become popular across the Muslim-majority region due to its enhanced coverage of the regional events over the past three months. Media organizations have strongly condemned the move and demanded that the government put the channel back on air. However, reports say more and more people in Kashmir continue to get their news from Press TV via internet services or direct broadcast satellites. In a separate development, hundreds of Kashmiris have come out to the streets to voice their anger over the desecration of Islam's holy book in the US. Protests were held in the Indian-administered region's main city of Srinagar, and its neighboring districts despite strict curfews in place. The protesters, who were shouting anti-US slogans, described the act as despicable, calling for the punishment of those behind the desecration of the Quran. The protests erupted after pages from the Muslim holy book were torn up and burned in Washington, as well as in other US cities. The move has outraged Muslims all over the world. Meanwhile, at least twelve people were killed in Indian-controlled Kashmir as soldiers opened fire on pro-independence rallies on Monday. Unrest in Kashmir has claimed at least 83 lives over the past three months. Kashmir has been rocked by a wave of protests over the death of a teenager back in June. He was killed when Indian police fired teargas shells during demonstrations against India's rule over the mainly Muslim-populated Kashmir. Article Source: http://www.presstv.ir/detail/142343.html

When first discovered in 2010, the Stuxnet computer worm posed a baffling puzzle. Beyond its unusually high level of sophistication loomed a more troubling mystery: its purpose. Ralph Langner and team helped crack the code that revealed this digital warhead's final target -- and its covert origins. In a fascinating look inside cyber-forensics, he explains how. The idea behind the Stuxnet computer worm is actually quite simple. We don't want Iran to get the Bomb. Their major asset for developing nuclear weapons is the Natanz uranium enrichment facility. The gray boxes that you see, these are real-time control systems. Now if we manage to compromise these systems that control drive speeds and valves, we can actually cause a lot of problems with the centrifuge. The gray boxes don't run Windows software; they are a completely different technology. But if we manage to place a good Windows virus on a notebook that is used by a maintenance engineer to configure this gray box, then we are in business. And this is the plot behind Stuxnet. So we start with a Windows dropper. The payload goes onto the gray box, damages the centrifuge, and the Iranian nuclear program is delayed -- mission accomplished. That's easy, huh? I want to tell you how we found that out. When we started our research on Stuxnet six months ago, it was completely unknown what the purpose of this thing was. The only thing that was known is very, very complex on the Windows part, the dropper part, used multiple zero-day vulnerabilities. And it seemed to want to do something with these gray boxes, these real-time control systems. So that got our attention, and we started a lab project where we infected our environment with Stuxnet and checked this thing out. And then some very funny things happened. Stuxnet behaved like a lab rat that didn't like our cheese -- sniffed, but didn't want to eat. Didn't make sense to me. And after we experimented with different flavors of cheese, I realized, well, this is a directed attack. It's completely directed. The dropper is prowling actively on the gray box if a specific configuration is found, and even if the actual program that it's trying to infect is actually running on that target. And if not, Stuxnet does nothing. So that really got my attention, and we started to work on this nearly around the clock, because I thought, well, we don't know what the target is. It could be, let's say for example, a U.S. power plant, or a chemical plant in Germany. So we better find out what the target is soon. So we extracted and decompiled the attack code, and we discovered that it's structured in two digital bombs -- a smaller one and a bigger one. And we also saw that they are very professionally engineered by people who obviously had all insider information. They knew all the bits and bites that they had to attack. They probably even know the shoe size of the operator. So they know everything. And if you have heard that the dropper of Stuxnet is complex and high-tech, let me tell you this: the payload is rocket science. It's way above everything that we have ever seen before. Here you see a sample of this actual attack code. We are talking about -- round about 15,000 lines of code. Looks pretty much like old-style assembly language. And I want to tell you how we were able to make sense out of this code. So what we were looking for is first of all is system function calls, because we know what they do. And then we were looking for timers and data structures and trying to relate them to the real world -- to potential real world targets. So we do need target theories that we can prove or disprove. In order to get target theories, we remember that it's definitely hardcore sabotage, it must be a high-value target, and it is most likely located in Iran, because that's where most of the infections had been reported. Now you don't find several thousand targets in that area. It basically boils down to the Bushehr nuclear power plant and to the Natanz fuel enrichment plant. So I told my assistant, "Get me a list of all centrifuge and power plant experts from our client base." And I phoned them up and picked their brain in an effort to match their expertise with what we found in code and data. And that worked pretty well. So we were able to associate the small digital warhead with the rotor control. The rotor is that moving part within the centrifuge, that black object that you see. And if you manipulate the speed of this rotor, you are actually able to crack the rotor and eventually even have the centrifuge explode. What we also saw is that the goal of the attack was really to do it slowly and creepy -- obviously in an effort to drive maintenance engineers crazy, that they would not be able to figure this out quickly. The big digital warhead -- we had a shot at this by looking very closely at data and data structures. So for example, the number 164 really stands out in that code; you can't overlook it. I started to research scientific literature on how these centrifuges are actually built in Natanz and found they are structured in what is called a cascade, and each cascade holds 164 centrifuges. So that made sense, it was a match. And it even got better. These centrifuges in Iran are subdivided into 15, what is called, stages. And guess what we found in the attack code? An almost identical structure. So again, that was a real good match. And this gave us very high confidence for what we were looking at. Now don't get me wrong here, it didn't go like this. These results have been obtained over several weeks of really hard labor. And we often went into just a dead-end and had to recover. Anyway, so we figured out that both digital warheads were actually aiming at one and the same target, but from different angles. The small warhead is taking one cascade, and spinning up the rotors and slowing them down, and the big warhead is talking to six cascades and manipulating valves. So in all, we are very confident that we have actually determined what the target is. It is Natanz, and it is only Natanz. So we don't have to worry that other targets might be hit by Stuxnet. Here's some very cool stuff that we saw -- really knocked my socks off. Down there is the gray box, and on the top you see the centrifuges. Now what this thing does is it intercepts the input values from sensors -- so for example, from pressure sensors and vibration sensors -- and it provides legitimate code, which is still running during the attack, with fake input data. And as a matter of fact, this fake input data is actually prerecorded by Stuxnet. So it's just like from the Hollywood movies where during the heist, the observation camera is fed with prerecorded video. That's cool, huh? The idea here is obviously not only to fool the operators in the control room. It actually is much more dangerous and aggressive. The idea is to circumvent a digital safety system. We need digital safety systems where a human operator could not act quick enough. So for example, in a power plant, when your big steam turbine gets too over speed, you must open relief valves within a millisecond. Obviously, this cannot be done by a human operator. So this is where we need digital safety systems. And when they are compromised, then real bad things can happen. Your plant can blow up. And neither your operators nor your safety system will notice it. That's scary. But it gets worse. And this is very important, what I'm going to say. Think about this. This attack is generic. It doesn't have anything to do, in specifics, with centrifuges, with uranium enrichment. So it would work as well, for example, in a power plant or in an automobile factory. It is generic. And you don't have -- as an attacker -- you don't have to deliver this payload by a USB stick, as we saw it in the case of Stuxnet. You could also use conventional worm technology for spreading. Just spread it as wide as possible. And if you do that, what you end up with is a cyber weapon of mass destruction. That's the consequence that we have to face. So unfortunately, the biggest number of targets for such attacks are not in the Middle East. They're in the United States and Europe and in Japan. So all of the green areas, these are your target-rich environments. We have to face the consequences, and we better start to prepare right now. Thanks. (Applause) Chris Anderson: I've got a question. Ralph, it's been quite widely reported that people assume that Mossad is the main entity behind this. Is that your opinion? Ralph Langner: Okay, you really want to hear that? Yeah. Okay. My opinion is that the Mossad is involved, but that the leading force is not Israel. So the leading force behind that is the cyber superpower. There is only one, and that's the United States -- fortunately, fortunately. Because otherwise, our problems would even be bigger. CA: Thank you for scaring the living daylights out of us. Thank you Ralph. (Applause)

AS&E's Z Backscatter Van™ (ZBV) is a screening system built into a commercially available delivery van.The system's "drive-by" capability allows one or two operators to conduct X-ray imaging of vehicles and objects while the ZBV drives past. The ZBV can be operated in stationary mode by parking the system and producing X-ray images of vehicles as they pass by. Screening can also be done remotely while the system is parked. Remote operation allows scanning to be done even in dangerous environments, while maintaining low-profile operation

Turkey's smear campaign against the Syrian government is much worse than the propaganda spread by Arab media to tarnish the image of Damascus with regards to its recent unrest. While Syrian officials and residents of crisis-hit Syrian regions have repeatedly said that armed groups are responsible for the deadly clashes in the country, Turkey has tried to portray Iran and the Lebanese Resistance Movement, Hezbollah, as being behind the unrest in Syria and that they help Damascus quell protests. The Turkish NTV news channel recently claimed that the Syrian soldiers who refused to open fire on protesters were shot dead by their commanders. The broadcaster reported that a Syrian soldier taking refuge in the country says that he and his comrades were trying to avoid hurting protesters by firing warning shots, but those who refused to open fire on protesters were shot dead. "I've seen Iranians and Hezbollah operators giving instructions to shoot, and those who refused were immediately shot dead," the alleged fugitive Syrian soldier told NTV, adding that the soldiers were mostly shot from behind or in the neck. The Turkish broadcaster has also claimed that Syrian forces have opened fire on unarmed civilians in al-Rastan. "We opened fire on everyone, the young, the old... Women were raped in front of their husbands and children," the army defector told NTV. Political analysts in Middle East affairs have accused Ankara of playing a double game -- claiming to support the Damascus government in order to have greater influence in the Middle East, while at the same time supporting and providing a safe haven for armed gangs seeking to incite revolt in Syria. Iranian analyst Hadi Mohammadi says that the United States has now formed operational headquarters in southern Turkey close to the border with Syria to direct the riots in the Arab country after its attempts to cause unrest in southern Syria were unsuccessful. Mohammadi said that the United States has assigned Turkey to carry out its anti-Syria plan. It has hence provided aid to the Turkish Army to assist Syrian dissidents in crossing into Turkey and settle in tent villages set up in Turkey's Hatay Province. Meanwhile, a mass grave with bodies of at least 10 Syrian security forces was discovered near the northwestern town of Jisr al-Shughour on Monday. Syria's state TV says the victims were killed by armed gangs and the bodies bore marks of torture. Heavy clashes were reported as troops and tanks moved into the city on Sunday and gunmen targeted civilian areas including a hospital. The government says it entered the town to restore order after some 120 security forces were killed there about a week ago. People in Jisr al-Shughour gathered to thank government troops for protecting them against the gunmen.

[30 Dec 2012] Press groups condemn Eutelsat\'s ban on Iranian media - English