IACTTS announces the partnership...

...with Kenyan based Harriet Group of Companies who secured the License to develop and promote the IACTTS portfolio of products and services across Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania.

Chairman of Harriet Group, Terry Downes, who is a former member of the Irish Anti-Terrorist Forces, founder and former CEO of the fastest growing security company in East Africa (Senaca EA) describes this initiative as a REAL opportunity for professionals across East Africa in the public or private sector who seek to appreciate at an academic level the threat posed by terrorist organizations and develop a context within which the terrorist threat in EA can be analysed and addressed. 

Achieving academic recognition from a body such as the Highfield Awarding Body for Compliance (HABC UK) and obtaining a Diploma in the Principles of Anti and Counter Terrorism Studies and Preventing Mass Casualties will significantly enhance your capacity to develop strategies to deal with this global threat.

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Welcome Terry Downes!

Our Director of Operations,

Tom O Sullivan,

formally welcomes Terry Downes

from the Harriet Group as our IACTTS partners

in East Africa with focus on Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania.

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"Hope militants will swap kidnapped girls" - Metro Herald, Tue, May 13, 2014

[Metro Herald, Tue, May 13, 2014]

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Warning over unintentional file leak from storage sites

Dropbox has moved to fix the issue

Continue reading the main story

People using file storage services, such as Dropbox and Box, are being warned that they are at risk of inadvertently leaking their own files.

Intralinks - which is a competitor - said it found sensitive files, such as mortgage records.

The problem centred on the use of the services' sharing function that generated a public link.

As a precaution, Dropbox has disabled access to links that have been previously shared.

It said it had also implemented a patch to prevent shared links from being exposed from now on.

"We realise that many of your workflows depend on shared links, and we apologise for the inconvenience. We'll continue working hard to make sure your stuff is safe and keep you updated on any new developments,"the company said in a blog post.

"We're working to restore links that aren't susceptible to this vulnerability over the next few days."

Box has not responded to the BBC's request for a comment.

Security researcher Graham Cluley said identity thieves could use the method to "scoop up" data.

"I think these services need to be more upfront with warnings," he told the BBC.

However he added that the problem was not a security flaw as such, but instead an unexpected consequence of user behaviour.

Referral data

Mr Cluley has outlined suggestions on his blog for how users can restrict access to the public files.

Both websites offer ways to tighten security on shared links, but doing so limits flexibility.

"This is the eternal battle sites like this face," Mr Cluley added. "It's security versus functionality."

Dropbox, Box and most other cloud hosting services often give users the option of creating a shareable web link for their files.

Box is another highly successful file storage service

It means users are able to simply send a web address - made up of a string of letters and numbers - for someone to directly download a file without needing to log in.

Because of the complexity of the link, it is very difficult to guess - meaning that while the link is technically public, it is unlikely anyone would be able to access it by chance.

However, Intralinks discovered that the links were being exposed in two ways not previously considered.

Firstly, it discovered that shared links were often appearing in websites' referral data.

Many websites look at referral data when analysing their traffic to get an insight into how visitors got to their site.

Intralinks found that if a link to a website is included in a file shared on Dropbox, and subsequently clicked within the web viewer, the website owner would see the shared link in its referral data - and therefore be able to access the file.

Dropbox said its patch has now fixed the problem.

Google ads

Furthermore, the company had been running a Google advertising campaign, and had paid to have an advert for Intralinks appear in Google's search results whenever someone searched for "Dropbox" or "Box".

Companies that use Google's search advertising service are sent an anonymised breakdown of what users had searched for in order to find their advertising.

Intralinks found that many people would put the entire shared link into a Google search box, and therefore Intralinks would subsequently see those links in the breakdown data from Google.

While copying and pasting a download link into Google's search engine might appear to be odd behaviour, Intralinks said "a few hundred documents" were exposed to them in this way.

Dropbox's patch has not addressed this particular problem, Mr Cluley said.

Intralink's chief technology officer for Europe, Middle East and Africa Richard Anstey said: "Most internet users have, at one time or another, accidentally pasted a link into the search bar of their favourite search engine whilst intending to paste it into the internet address bar - it's an easy mistake to make.

"However, what they don't realise is that when they press enter to execute the search, the advertisement engines that drive (and fund) the search engine will distribute that link as a search term to anyone who has paid for an 'adword' that closely matches any part of that link."

[http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-27285786]

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US 'outrage' as calls grow to help rescue Nigeria schoolgirls

White House spokesman Jay Carney: "We view what has happened as an outrage"

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The US says it considers the abduction of more than 200 Nigerian schoolgirls by Islamist militants "an outrage" and is offering help to try to rescue them.

White House spokesman Jay Carney said President Barack Obama was being briefed as his national security team was monitoring developments.

Earlier, a video emerged of the leader of the Boko Haram group saying the militants intended to sell the girls.

They were taken from a school in the northern state of Borno on 14 April.

Continue reading the main story

Their whereabouts remain unknown and there is mounting anger and frustration in Nigeria at the failure of the government to find them.

"We view what has happened there as an outrage and a terrible tragedy," said Mr Carney in a White House briefing.

"The president has been briefed several times and his national security team continues to monitor the situation there closely. The state department has been in regular touch with the Nigerian government about what we might do to help support its efforts to find and free these young women."

He added that the US was offering counter-terrorism help to Nigerian investigators that involved "information-sharing" and improving Nigeria's "forensics and investigative capacity".

UK Foreign Office minister Mark Simmonds said the UK had offered "planning support" to the Nigerian authorities and said his officials were in Washington at the moment to co-ordinate efforts.

He told the BBC's Today programme that it was difficult for the Nigerian government because of the vast geographical area of the north-east.

"The forest area where the girls are rumoured to be being held is 60,000 sq km (23,166 sq miles). It's an area of hot dry scrub forest 40 times the size of London; it's a wild territory, very difficult for land and air-based surveillance operations to take place... you have extremely porous borders with neighbouring countries - Chad, Cameroon, Niger, so there are very serious challenges," he said.

Boko Haram means "Western education is forbidden" in Hausa

In the US, six senators have introduced a resolution supporting the Nigerian people and calling for the immediate return of the girls.

Senator Dick Durbin, one of the resolution's sponsors, called the kidnapping "an affront to the civilised world".

"We and our African allies should do everything to help the Nigerian government rescue innocent girls and return them to their families," he said in a tweet.

Protesters have taken to the streets in Nigeria, calling for the girls to be released

The girls were in their final year at the boarding school in Chibok

'Instructions from God'

Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau sent a video - obtained by the AFP news agency - in which he said for the first time that his group had taken the girls.

Boko Haram, which means "Western education is forbidden", has attacked numerous educational institutions in northern Nigeria.

In the video, Abubakar Shekau said the girls should not have been in school in the first place, but rather should get married.

"God instructed me to sell them, they are his properties and I will carry out his instructions," he said.

Reports last week said that some of the girls had been forced to marry their abductors, who paid a nominal bride price of $12 (£7).

Others are reported to have been taken across borders into Cameroon and Chad.

President Goodluck Jonathan has said everything was being done to find the girls.

Boko Haram analyst Jacob Zenn says the girls, aged 16 to 18, have probably been split into smaller groups and it will be hard to track them.

"Any effort to rescue them will have to be done in a very piecemeal fashion and might take over a decade," he told the BBC's Newsday programme.

Analysis

Boko Haram analyst Jacob Zenn

For the past one and half years Boko Haram has been carrying out kidnappings of girls but this one was on a much larger scale than anything else. It should also be noted that Boko Haram began this tactic when the Nigerian security forces also began kidnapping, or rather taking as prisoners, the wives and children of Boko Haram members.

On an operational level Boko Haram is likely using these girls as human shields and keeping them in their camps which will prevent the Nigerian air force from bombing those camps. Furthermore there is also the potential monetary reward if Boko Haram can sell some of them back to their parents.

It's very likely that the girls have been split up into dozens of groups - maybe into twos or threes or fours. Any effort to rescue them will have to be done in a very piecemeal fashion and might take over a decade. When you look at Joseph Kony's Lord's Resistance Army in Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo, they took some girls captive more than a decade ago and some of them still remain captive even though most of them have been freed or escaped.

Jacob Zenn is the African Affairs analyst at The Jamestown Foundation

[http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-27289128]

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Knife attack at south China station

At least six people have been injured in a knife attack at a station in Guangzhou, Chinese officials say.

It is unclear how many people were involved in the attack, but one person was shot and then detained by police.

There is no information yet on the motivation for this attack, but it comes a week after an attack at a station in Urumqi, in the western region in Xinjiang.

It also follows an attack at Kunming station in March that killed 29 people.

Chinese authorities have blamed both these attacks on separatists from the Uighur minority group, which lives in Xinjiang.

Security personnel cordoned off the plaza outside Guangzhou railway station, where bloodstains were seen

Passengers were evacuated from the railway station following the attack

Chinese SWAT team members were immediately posted outside the station

Local media carried conflicting accounts on the number of people involved in Tuesday's attack, with some reporting four attackers, while others said there were two young men, one of whom managed to get away.

It was also unclear how the incident started. Guangzhou Daily quoted a store owner who said the suspects had waited by his shop for about two hours before they launched their attack.

But several eyewitnesses told Guangzhou Journal that the attack began shortly after a train from Kunming arrived at the station. They said that among the disembarking passengers was a group of young men clad in white clothes and wearing white caps, holding large knives.

China News spoke to a woman from Inner Mongolia who was among those attacked.

Ms Liu Yuying had just arrived at Guangzhou railway station and were taking pictures in the plaza outside when two men rushed towards them wielding knives. She injured her leg when she fell while trying to flee.

Two other people from her tour group, believed to be brother and sister, were slashed, she said.

In a statement on the public security bureau's official microblog, police said they arrived at the station at 11:30 on Tuesday.

They shot a male suspect armed with a knife after he failed to heed warnings, they said.

The six injured people had been taken to hospital for further treatment, they said, and further investigations were underway.

This is the third attack on a public transport hub in China in three months. Officials say Uighur extremists from the Xinjiang region carried out the attacks in Urumqi and Kunming.

Xinjiang has seen a long history of discord between Chinese authorities and the minority Uighurs, including bloody ethnic riots in 2009 that left about 200 people dead.

The Uighurs, who are ethnically Turkic Muslims, say that large-scale Han Chinese immigration has eroded their traditional culture. Beijing, meanwhile, says it has invested heavily in the region to improve people's lives.

[http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-27289398]

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Missing flight MH370: Canberra talks map out search plan

To date, no sign of the missing plane has been found, despite an intensive international search

Continue reading the main story

Officials from Australia, Malaysia and China have met to map out a way forward in the search for the missing Malaysia Airlines plane.

Transport ministers from Malaysia and China joined the Australian deputy leader and Angus Houston, the official leading the search, at the talks in Canberra.

So far, an intensive search operation has found no sign of flight MH370.

The next stage is set to involve a long search of a large area of ocean floor.

The plane went missing on 8 March as it flew from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, with 239 people on board.

It lost contact with air traffic controllers over the South China Sea. Officials now believe, based on satellite data, that it ended its journey in the sea far west of the Australian city of Perth.

It is not yet known what caused the plane to fly so far off course. Finding its "black box" flight recorders is seen as key to understanding what happened.

Seabed mapping

Last week, Australia announced that the operation was entering a new phase, after an initial search of the area where acoustic signals thought to be from flight recorders were heard found nothing.

Speaking in Canberra, Australian Deputy Prime Minister Warren Truss said new sonar and submersible equipment would be needed.

"It's possible that some of it may be owned by navies or governments around the world, but it's likely that the majority will have to be provided from the private sector," he said.

He said the plan was to call for bids for a single operator to lead the search in its new phase.

He said he was optimistic that this could be done "in the space of one to two months", and said that in the interim the Bluefin-21 robotic submersible would continue working.

Mr Truss also said that detailed mapping of the ocean floor would be a key part of the next stage.

"Much of this area has never been mapped and so it will require a significant effort for us to understand the ocean floor in that area," he said.

More meetings would begin on Wednesday where experts would share all the information, including satellite data, collected to date, it was agreed.

Angus Houston said they wanted to ensure their assumptions were correct.

"We've got to this stage of the process where it's very sensible to go back and have a look at all of the data that has been gathered, all of the analysis that has been done and make sure there's no flaws in it, the assumptions are right, the analysis is right and the deductions and conclusions are right,'' AP quoted him as saying.

Australia has warned that the next stage of the search could take up to a year.

[http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-27281049]

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