Israeli spy firm crashes Slovenia’s election – POLITICO
Black Cube, leaked tapes and corruption: Israeli spy firm crashes Slovenia’s election – POLITICO Skip to main content Source link
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Russia’s newest spy may be someone you know – POLITICO
Fighting foreign interference is less straightforward than combating terrorism, said Ait Daoud, who spent three years at the National Coordinator for Security and Counterterrorism before taking on his new role. “If someone wants to commit a terrorist act, they usually are ideologically motivated,” he said. “They move around in those circles, talk a certain way, are looking for explosives or firearms. All of that is visible.” Intelligence operations, by contrast, take place in a “gray zone between war and peace,” he said, much of it online. Intelligence and media reports point to Telegram, a messaging platform popular in Russia, as a key recruitment tool. In a high-profile case in September, Ait Daoud’s team was involved in the arrest of three 17-year-olds in connection with what prosecutors say was a Russian-directed plot. The teenagers are suspected of trying to map internet traffic around key sites in The Hague using a device known as a “Wi-Fi sniffer,” allegedly on orders from a Russian state-linked hacking group. According to Dutch media, targets included the Canadian embassy and the …
Len Deighton death: Bestselling spy thriller author, who also taught men how to cook, dies aged 97
Get the latest entertainment news, reviews and star-studded interviews with our Independent Culture email Get the latest entertainment news with our free Culture newsletter Get the latest entertainment news with our free Culture newsletter Len Deighton, a prolific writer whose tough, stylish spy thrillers featured on bestseller lists for decades, has died. He was 97. Deighton’s literary agent, Tim Bates, said he died on Sunday. No cause of death was given. Deighton’s first novel, The Ipcress File, helped set the tone of cool and gritty 1960s thrillers and was made into a Bafta-winning film starring Michael Caine that helped launch long and stellar careers for both author and actor. It was then remade as an ITV series starring Peaky Blinders actor Joe Cole in 2022. “Len was a Titan,” Bates said on Tuesday. “He was not only one of the greatest spy and thriller writers of the 20th century but also one of our greatest writers in any genre.” Born to a working-class family in a wealthy part of London in 1929 – his father …
Trump rocked by bombshell resignation of top spy boss over Iran war | World | News
Donald Trump has been rocked by the resignation of his top counterintelligence official as the chaos around his war in Iran explodes. Joseph Kent, Director of the National Counterterrorism Center, said Iran posed no imminent threat and the war was started “due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby”. He added: “I cannot in good conscience support the ongoing war.” The resignation comes weeks after the US and Israel carried out a joint missile attack on Iran, killing its supreme leader Ali Khamenei. Since then, Iran has been retilating by carrying out attacks against the likes of Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Qatar, Kuwait. Mr Kent, who works under Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, accused the President Trump of abandoning the non‑interventionist principles he campaigned on. In his resignation letter, he wrote: “I support the values and the foreign policies that you campaigned on in 2016, 2020, 2024, which you enacted in your first term. Until June of 2025, you understood that the wars in the Middle East were a trap that robbed America …
Legendary spy writer behind1965 Michael Caine file dead at 97 | UK | News
Spy writing legend Len Deighton has died at the age of 97. The former chef and cookery writer, whose early break came when his ‘cookstrips’ – a combination of a recipe and cartoon – appeared in the Daily Express in 1961, is widely regarded as having helped introduce modern spy fiction. “I wrote out the recipes on paper, and it was easier for me to draw three eggs than write ‘three eggs’. So I drew three eggs, then put in an arrow. For me it was a natural way to work,” he explained. A year later his first novel, The Ipcress File, was published, becoming a bestseller and eventually shifting more than 2.5 million copies in three years. It became a 1965 film starring Michael Caine as Deighton’s previously unnamed protagonist, who became Harry Palmer on screen. In 2022, it was rebooted as an ITV drama starring Peaky Blinder’s Joe Cole. Deighton was born in London in 1929, his father was a chauffeur to the keeper of prints and drawings at the British Museum and …
Labour MP Resigns From Party After Husbands China Spy Investigation
A Labour MP whose husband was arrested on suspicion of spying for China has resigned from the party. Joani Reid said she was “voluntarily” suspending herself after discussions with the government chief whip. Her move comes a day after her husband, lobbyist and former Labour adviser David Taylor, was arrested along with two other men on suspicion of assisting a foreign intelligence service. Reid, the MP for East Kilbride and Strathaven, has denied any wrongdoing. In a statement, she said: “This week has been the worst of my life. The shock of recent days has been difficult for me and my family. “I want to reiterate something very important: I am not under investigation by the police and no accusations have been against me. I have done nothing wrong. “I love my country. To serve the people of East Kilbride and Strathaven as their MP and the Labour Party has been – and continues to be – the privilege of my life. “I understand that speculation and gossip is fevered at a time like this. …
How Vulnerable Are Computers to an 80-Year-Old Spy Technique? Congress Wants Answers
Computers leak secrets. Not just through invasive ad tracking, data-stealing malware, and your ill-advised oversharing on social media, but through physics. The movements of a hard drive’s components, keystrokes on a keyboard, even the electric charge in a semiconductor’s wires produce radio waves, sound, and vibrations that transmit in all directions and can—when picked up by someone with sufficiently sensitive equipment and enough spycraft to decipher those signals—reveal your private data and activities. This category of spying techniques, originally codenamed TEMPEST by the National Security Agency but now encompassed in the more general term “side-channel attacks,” has been a known problem in computer security for close to eight decades, and it’s one that the United States government carefully considers in securing its own classified information. Now a pair of US lawmakers are launching an investigation into how vulnerable the rest of us are to TEMPEST-style surveillance—and whether the US government needs to push device manufacturers to do more to protect Americans. On Wednesday, Senator Ron Wyden and Representative Shontel Brown released a letter they sent …
Rose Byrne on Golden Globes ‘regret,’ Oscar nomination, ‘Spy’ and more
When Rose Byrne won a Golden Globe last month for her starring role as a mother on the verge of a nervous breakdown in Mary Bronstein’s “If I Had Legs I’d Kick You,” her acceptance speech briefly threatened to overshadow the actual honor. In it, she explained that her longtime partner, Bobby Cannavale, was absent from the ceremony because he was at a reptile convention in New Jersey, where he hoped to fulfill their children’s dreams by purchasing a bearded dragon. It was a charming and funny aside that some users of social media naturally used to criticize Cannavale and try to gin up a controversy. (Insert eye-roll emoji here.) Byrne, now an Oscar nominee for the same role, found herself having to explain that parenthood almost always comes with scheduling conflicts and answer follow-up questions about the reptilian addition to her family. Including, I regret to report, from me. Since Conan O’Brien, who co-stars in “If I Had Legs I’d Kick You,” will be hosting this year’s Oscars, it seems natural that Byrne will …
KGB cigarette pack spy camera still works (sort of)
Get the Popular Science daily newsletter💡 Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent six days a week. The James Bond films are famous for their very cool—and usually very absurd—spy gadgetry. In reality, however, espionage has always been more about lowkey surveillance than laser watches. Any good professional intelligence officer will almost always opt for a discreet, reliable camera over a parking meter loaded with tear gas. One of the Central Intelligence Agency’s former chiefs of disguise has even said as much. “There are a lot of ways to collect intelligence. Cameras [were] my preferred method of collection,” Former CIA Chief Jonna Mendez explained during a 2020 interview. While decent store bought cameras often did the trick, specialized spy photography remains a cornerstone of modern espionage. There are plenty of examples, from the commercially available Minox-B subminiature camera of the 1950s–60s to the CIA’s famous 1970s fountain pen containing a tiny Tropel lens. But it wasn’t only American and British spy agencies that gathered intel from photography. The Soviet KGB apparatus employed all kinds of custom …
This Week in History: From a ‘bizarre’ spy swap to wartime secrets
Stay ahead of the curve with our weekly guide to the latest trends, fashion, relationships and more Stay ahead of the curve with our weekly guide to the latest trends, fashion, relationships and more Stay ahead of the curve with our weekly guide to the latest trends, fashion, relationships and more Move over James Bond. Spies are making the headlines this week, but the truth proves stranger than fiction. A bizarre attempt is underway to swap agents between the United States, Israel and the Soviet Union, with suspected moles at the centre of the intrigue. Years later, after the Cold War’s end, espionage anxieties resurface as the US demands Russia halt spying operations following the exposure of a senior CIA mole. In Britain, newly released files reveal a wartime Nazi spy network operating on home soil – and a cunning MI5 counter-operation to neutralise the threat. On the battlefield, President George H W Bush declares victory in Kuwait after just 100 hours of ground war, Nato fires its first shots in anger in Bosnia, and …