Hamas sets ‘honey traps’ to hack Israeli soldiers’ phones: army ( in World )

Using photos of young women and Hebrew slang, the Palestinian militant group Hamas chatted up dozens of Israeli soldiers online, gaining control of their phone cameras and microphones, the military said on Wednesday.

An officer, who briefed reporters on the alleged scam, said the group that runs the Gaza Strip uncovered no major military secrets in the intelligence-gathering operation.
Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum declined to comment.

Mainly using Facebook, Hamas used fake online identities and photos of young women, apparently found on the Internet, to lure soldiers in, the officer said.

“Just a second, I’ll send you a photo, my dear,” one “woman,” wrote.

“OK. Ha-ha,” the soldier replied, before a photo of a blonde woman in a swimsuit popped up.

The “woman” then suggested they both download “a simple app that lets us have a video chat”, according to an example of an exchange provided by the officer.

The officer said most of the soldiers were low-ranking and that Hamas was mostly interested in gathering information about Israeli army manoeuvres, forces and weaponry in the Gaza area.

The military discovered the hacking when soldiers began reporting other suspicious online activity on social networks and uncovered dozens of fake identities used by the group to target the soldiers, the officer said.

In 2001, a 16-year-old Israeli was lured to the occupied West Bank, where he was shot dead by Palestinian gunmen, after entering into an online relationship with a Palestinian woman who posed as an American tourist.

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India’s top court throws out case alleging Modi took cash payments ( India )

India’s Supreme Court on Wednesday threw out a case brought by an anti-corruption lawyer that accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi of accepting suspicious cash payments, dealing a blow to an opposition leader who had latched on to the case.

A panel of judges found that there was too little evidence to go on, deflating Rahul Gandhi’s warnings late last year that he would cause an “earthquake” by unveiling proof that Modi was corrupt.

In the event, it transpired that the heir apparent to the leadership of the opposition Congress party was referring to a case already before India’s highest court that relied on evidence recovered in income-tax raids on two corporate houses.

Citing written records, the plaintiff alleged that an individual called “Gujarat CM” had received cash payments from companies totalling at least 400 million rupees ($5.9 million) in late 2013 and early 2014.

Modi was the chief minister of India’s western state of Gujarat at the time and went on to win election by a landslide in May 2014. “There is not enough evidence to order an inquiry into the case. We are dismissing it,” a Supreme Court bench headed by Justice Arun Mishra ruled.

Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi, the government’s top lawyer, told the court that there was no credible evidence to prove that Modi had been paid off. “Nobody in the country would be safe if such documents are accepted as legal evidence. Anyone can put the name of anybody on such papers,” Rohatgi told the court.

Prashant Bhushan, the anti-corruption lawyer who brought the case on behalf of a non-governmental organisation called Common Cause, had urged the court to order a probe into the alleged payments made to public officials. “It is sad and unfortunate that the Supreme Court dismissed my plea,” Bhushan told media.

Indian politicians are often dogged by sleaze allegations and many of the country’s elected officials face criminal proceedings. Modi has, however, cultivated a clean image as the son of a humble tea seller.

He shook India in November by scrapping high-value banknotes in a bid to purge the economy of “black money” — the proceeds of illicit business, corruption and tax evasion. The move has caused massive disruption to daily life and business throughout the country of 1.3 billion people.

Modi’s so-called demonetisation drive will face the verdict of voters when five of India’s federal states hold elections in February and March — most importantly the battleground state of Uttar Pradesh — that will influence his chances of a second term at the 2019 general election.

work work work 22:13 No comments

Trump lashes out over ‘phony’ Russia dossier claims ( international )

Donald Trump attacked US intelligence agencies and the media as he denied explosive allegations about his ties to Russia, despite admitting for the first time that Moscow had likely meddled in the US election.

Just over a week before he takes office, Trump said he had ceded “complete” managing control of his global property empire to his two adult sons but stopped short of making a full divestment, earning a swift rebuke from an ethics watchdog and Democratic Party opponents.

“It doesn’t meet the standards that the best of his nominees are meeting and that every president in the last four decades has met,” said Walter Shaub, director of the Office of Government Ethics.

“He needs to get rid of his business interests and he needs to put them in what’s called a blind trust,” Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren told Bloomberg TV.

But the hour-long press conference, his first in six months, focused firmly on the unsubstantiated claims that his aides colluded with the Kremlin to win the US election, and that Russia has compromising information on Trump.

The president-elect accused CNN of being “fake news” and slammed BuzzFeed as “a failing pile of garbage” after it published a dossier with the allegedly incriminating material, drawn up by a former British intelligence agent hired to do “opposition research” on Trump.

“It’s all fake news. It’s phony stuff. It didn’t happen,” he said, referring to allegations of lurid behaviour in a Moscow hotel room.

“It was a group of opponents that got together, sick people, and they put that crap together,” added the 70-year-old Republican billionaire.

‘Nazi Germany’ –

He suggested it may have been released by the intelligence agencies, which would be a “tremendous blot on their record.”

“That’s something that Nazi Germany would have done and did do,” added America’s incoming 45th president, explaining an earlier tweet in which he asked: “Are we living in Nazi Germany?”

Trump dodged questions about whether his campaign had contacts with Russian intelligence, instead of tearing into reporters whose outlets reported on the allegations of the existence of compromising material.

“I’m not going to give you a question. You are fake news,” he told a CNN reporter, igniting a fresh raft of questions about his respect for constitutional guarantees of the free press.

The US intelligence community concluded Moscow interfered in the November election in a bid to tip the race in Trump’s favour.

But intelligence chiefs last week presented Trump, as well as President Barack Obama, with a two-page synopsis on the potentially embarrassing but unsubstantiated allegations involving Russia, according to CNN and The New York Times.

Even before the new allegations became public, Democrats and Trump’s Republican allies had become increasingly uneasy about Russia’s role in the election, with calls for an independent investigation growing.

-‘No dealings with Russia’ –

The Kremlin has dismissed the dossier as a “totally fake” aimed at damaging bilateral ties.

Trump began the press conference muted and disciplined, but became increasingly agitated as questions piled up.

“I have no dealings with Russia. I have no deals in Russia. I have no deals that could happen in Russia because we’ve stayed away. And I have no loans with Russia,” Trump said.

The president-elect finally admitted for the first time that he believes Moscow likely meddled in the US election.

But while secretary of state-designate Rex Tillerson, also seen as close to Moscow, called Russia a “danger” during his confirmation hearing, Trump may have fanned the flames by downplaying Moscow’s role.

“As far as hacking, I think it was Russia, but I also think we’ve been hacked by other countries, other people,” he said.

Trump aides bristle at the suggestion that Russia weighed in behind Trump, seeing it as an effort to delegitimize his election victory.

Trump again refused to back away from his openness towards Russian President Vladimir Putin.

– The dossier –

“If Putin likes Donald Trump, I consider that an asset, not a liability,” Trump said. “I don’t know that I’m going to get along with Vladimir Putin. I hope I do. But there’s a good chance I won’t.”

Without corroborating its contents, BuzzFeed published a 35-page dossier of memos on which the synopsis reportedly presented to Trump is based.

The memos, which had been circulating in Washington for months, describe sex videos involving prostitutes filmed during a 2013 visit by Trump to a luxury Moscow hotel, supposedly as a potential means of blackmail.

They also suggest Russian officials proposed lucrative deals in order to win influence over the real estate magnate.

“The Kremlin does not have compromising information on Trump,” Russian President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov told journalists.

Trump refused to comment on his classified briefing but said he had seen the information “outside of that meeting.”

Without delineating the specific allegations in the memos, Trump denied engaging in any questionable behaviour during visits to Russia.

“You have cameras in the strangest places,” he said. “You’d better be careful or you’ll be watching yourself on nightly television.”

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