Day: September 18, 2023

The disappearance of Chinese Defence Minister Li Shangfu highlights the opaque and complex nature of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), diplomats and analysts say.

Reuters reported on Friday that Li is under investigation over the corrupt procurement of military equipment during his previous role. Eight other senior officials are also being investigated. His fate has not been officially explained.

In the Chinese system, the Minister of National Defence is seen as significantly less powerful than the U.S. defence secretary and many international equivalents.

The position is essentially a diplomatic and ceremonial role without a direct command function.

Even so, Li is among the six military officials under Commander-in-Chief and President Xi Jinping on the core Central Military Commission (CMC) and is one of five State Councillors, a post outranking a regular cabinet minister.

An aerospace engineer who worked in China’s satellite program, Li was seen as technocrat who helped implement Xi’s modernisation vision for the PLA, military attaches and analysts say.

The PLA is the armed wing of the ruling Communist Party and, according the Pentagon’s annual report on China’s military, “does not directly serve the state but is rather under the direct control of the party”.

As Li rose through his career to this point, he would have been vetted to ensure he was absolutely loyal to the party and to Xi.

The PLA still operates an active cadre of political commissars who flank the command chain, tasked with ensuring loyalty, unity and morale. The commissar system does not have clear equivalents outside traditional Communist militaries.

The CMC, meanwhile, is the party’s highest-level decision-making body on military matters.

“Since becoming CMC Chairman, Xi Jinping has implemented multiple reforms reducing PLA autonomy and greatly strengthening Party control over the military,” notes the Pentagon report, which was released in November 2022.

That adds an extra layer of opacity beyond routine military secrecy, according to foreign defence attaches who scrutinise the PLA.

For sure. The PLA is already the world’s largest fighting force and growing more capable and modernised. As it absorbs new weapons, its system is changing too, with the creation in recent years of new unified regional commands and a Strategic Support Force to cover its space and cyber warfare capabilities – a body Li was deputy commander of in 2016.

As the PLA’s power and reach expands, foreign militaries are eager to learn more about how it functions and the strategic intentions of its leadership – efforts that underpin military-to-military to diplomacy.

The disappearance of Li has raised concerns among some diplomats and analysts that Chinese military outreach is being trumped by an internal security clampdown.

U.S. defence chiefs are eager to restore routine communications with their Chinese counterparts amid regional tensions.

Li, who was sanctioned by the U.S. in 2018 over the purchase of Russian weapons, shunned formal discussions with U.S. Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin in Singapore in June.

After weekend talks between White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in Malta, U.S. officials said they noted “limited” signs that the communications chill could ease.

Even if China announces a new defence minister and allows them to meet Austin, some analysts say a more senior figure, such as CMC vice-chairman and close Xi ally Zhang Youxia, would be a figure on a more equal footing.

Given the upheaval, an international security conference Li was due to host in October is now being closely watched.

If Li does not appear at the upcoming Xiangshan Forum, Beijing’s biggest defence diplomacy outreach event, it could mean that he is still being held for investigation.

Diplomats say China is set to hold the forum in the latter half of next month, but has not sent invitations – late by China’s standards.

Billed as Beijing’s version of the Shangri La Dialogue, the Xiangshan Forum is a high-level conference through which China tries to shape global discussions on defence and security issues.

When the forum was last held in-person in 2019, more than 530 defence and military officials and scholars attended, including defence ministers from 23 countries.

The Chinese defence minister would typically give the keynote speech at the forum and meet with delegations.

Yaroslava Mahuchikh, after being forced to flee Russia’s full-scale invasion, continues to leap to new heights and proudly fly Ukraine’s flag on the road to the Paris Olympics.

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Researchers from vx-underground reported that FBI hacker ‘USDoD‘ leaked sensitive data from consumer credit reporting agency TransUnion.

TransUnion is an American consumer credit reporting agency. TransUnion collects and aggregates information on over one billion individual consumers in over thirty countries, including “200 million files profiling nearly every credit-active consumer in the United States”.

A threat actor who goes by the moniker “USDoD” announced the leak of highly sensitive data allegedly stolen from the credit reporting agency. The leaked database, over 3GB in size, contains sensitive PII of about 58,505 people, all across the globe, including the America and Europe

According to researchers vx-underground who reported the leak, the archive contains data that dates back to March 2nd, 2022, which could be the data of the data breach.

This leaked database has information on individuals all across the globe including the Americas (North and South), as well as Europe

vx-underground states that leaked data includes individual first name, last name, Internal TransUnion identifiers, sex, passport information, place of birth, date of birth, civil status, age, current employer, information on their employer, a summary of financial transactions, credit score, loans in their name, remaining balances on the loans, where they got the loan from, when TransUnion first began monitoring their information.

The name USDoD is well known in the cyber security sector, it was also listed in the indictment for the notorious owner of the BreachForums cybercrime forum Pompompurin. vx-underground pointed out that they are believed to be behind many other high-profile security breaches.

Recently, The multinational aerospace corporation Airbus announced that it is investigating a data leak after cybersecurity firm Hudson Rock reported that a hacker posted information on thousands of the company’s vendors to the dark web.

“USDoD” announced he had gained access to an Airbus web portal by compromising the account of a Turkish airline employee.

The hacker claimed to have details on thousands of Airbus vendors. The threat actors obtained the personal information of 3,200 individuals associated with Airbus vendors, exposed data include names, job titles, addresses, email addresses, and phone numbers. 

In December 2022, the FBI’s InfraGard US Critical Infrastructure Intelligence portal was hacked and a database containing the contact details of more than 80,000 high-profile private sector individuals was offered for sale by USDoD on the Breached cybercrime forum.

After the law enforcement shutdown of “Breached” forum, its members, including “USDoD,” moved to other platforms such as “BreachForums.”

“USDoD” posted two threads on this new forum, one to announce they have joined the notorious ransomware group Ransomed. In the second threat, the hacker exposed the personal information of 3,200 sensitive Airbus vendors. USDoD also warned that Lockheed Martin and Raytheon might be the next targets.

“Threat actors typically refrain from revealing their intrusion techniques, however in this exceptionally rare leak, “USDoD” revealed they gained access to Airbus’s data by exploiting “employee access from a Turkish Airline”.” reported Hudson Rock. “Using this information, Hudson Rock researchers succeeded to trace the mentioned employee access — a Turkish computer infected with an info-stealing malware in August 2023.”

According to the researchers, the computer of the victim was likely infected with the RedLine stealer after he attempted to download a pirated version of the Microsoft .NET framework.

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Pierluigi Paganini

(SecurityAffairs – hacking, TransUnion)

The post FBI hacker USDoD leaks highly sensitive TransUnion data appeared first on Security Affairs.

Lying Journo Elnur Enveroglu and his bunch of lies … 

#ElnurEnveroglu
Unleashed puppy Elnur Enveroglu squeals again, while pooping and producing his next bunch of lies …https://t.co/hcflWVkVzu | https://t.co/6RNDrLHCin… South Caucasus News | #SouthCaucasus #News | #SouthCaucasusNews Armenia – #Armenia, Azerbaijan -… pic.twitter.com/rVEVy7Dxa6

— Michael Novakhov (@mikenov) September 17, 2023