A political commentator Bruce Gagnon has stated that America might use the terrorist organizations like ISIS to weaken their enemies.
Gagnon, the coordinator of the network against space weapons and nuclear weapons has stated that Saudi Arabia and America sponsored ISIS for a long time.
He has stated that the target of American team is to use this organization against Iraq, Syria, Iran and Russia.
He has further stated that as America is a declining state, they do everything possible to protect them
He has stated that due to these reasons, American cannot be trusted and the next plan is to make ISIS to pay their attention to the Russian gas resources.
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In an unprecedented, three-year cyber espionage campaign, Iranian hackers created false social networking accounts and a fake news website to spy on military and political leaders in the United States, Israel and other countries, a cyber intelligence firm said on Thursday.
ISight Partners, which uncovered the operation, said the hackers' targets include a four-star U.S. Navy admiral, U.S. lawmakers and ambassadors, members of the U.S.-Israeli lobby, and personnel from Britain, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan.
The firm declined to identify the victims and said it could not say what data had been stolen by the hackers, who were seeking credentials to access government and corporate networks, as well as infect machines with malicious software.
"If it's been going on for so long, clearly they have had success," iSight Executive Vice President Tiffany Jones told Reuters. The privately held company is based in Dallas, Texas and provides intelligence on cyber threats.
ISight dubbed the operation "Newscaster" because it said the Iranian hackers created six "personas" who appeared to work for a fake news site, NewsOnAir.org, which used content from the Associated Press, BBC, Reuters and other media outlets. The hackers created another eight personas who purported to work for defense contractors and other organizations, iSight said.
The hackers set up false accounts on Facebook and other online social networks for these 14 personas, populated their profiles with fictitious personal content, and then tried to befriend target victims, according to iSight.
The operation has been active since at least 2011, iSight said, noting that it was the most elaborate cyber espionage campaign using "social engineering" that has been uncovered to date from any nation.
To build credibility, the hackers would approach high-value targets by first establishing ties with the victims' friends, classmates, colleagues, relatives and other connections over social networks run by Facebook Inc, Google Inc and its YouTube, LinkedIn Corp and Twitter Inc.
The hackers would initially send the targets content that was not malicious, such as links to news articles on NewsOnAir.org, in a bid to establish trust. Then they would send links that infected PCs with malicious software, or direct targets to web portals that ask for network log-in credentials, iSight said.
The hackers used the 14 personas to make connections with more than 2,000 people, the firm said, adding that it believed the group ultimately targeted several hundred individuals.
"This campaign is not loud. It is low and slow," said Jones. "They want to be stealth. They want to be under the radar."
ISight said it had alerted some victims and social networking sites as well as the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation and overseas authorities. An FBI spokeswoman declined to comment.
Facebook Inc spokesman Jay Nancarrow said his company had discovered the hacking group while investigating suspicious friend requests and other activity on its website.
"We removed all of the offending profiles we found to be associated with the fake NewsOnAir organization and we have used this case to further refine our systems that catch fake accounts at various points of interaction on the site and block malware from spreading," Nancarrow said.
LinkedIn spokesman Doug Madey said the site was investigating the report, though none of the 14 fake profiles uncovered by iSight were currently active.
Twitter declined to comment and Google could not immediately be reached for comment.
POST-STUXNET ERA
ISight disclosed its findings as evidence emerges that Iranian hacking groups are becoming increasingly aggressive.
Cybersecurity company FireEye Inc reported earlier this month that a group known as the Ajax Security Team has become the first Iranian hacking group to use custom-built malicious software for espionage.
Iranian hackers stepped up their activity in the wake of the Stuxnet attack on Tehran's nuclear program in 2010. The Stuxnet computer virus is widely believed to have been launched by the United States and Israel.
ISight said it could not ascertain whether the hackers were tied to the government in Tehran, though it believed they were supported by a nation state because of the complexity of the operation.
The firm said NewsOnAir.org was registered in Tehran and likely hosted by an Iranian provider. The Persian term "Parastoo" was used as a password for malware associated with the group, which appeared to work during business hours in Tehran, according to iSight.
Among the 14 false personas were reporters for NewsOnAir, including one with the same name as a Reuters journalist in Washington; six employees who purportedly worked for defense contractors; a systems administrator with the U.S. Navy; and an accountant working for a payment processor.
A spokesman for Thomson Reuters Corp, which owns Reuters, declined to comment.
(Reporting by Jim Finkle; Editing by Tiffany Wu)
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World News
Deprived of their basic needs, the four Saudi royal princesses kept in 13-year isolation by their father, King Abdullah, have surpassed 60 days without food.
The monarch’s daughters fell out of their father’s favor for speaking out against the ill treatment of women in the Gulf kingdom. It is also believed that the king was angry at the girls' mother for not giving him a son.
Two of the princesses, Sahar and Jawaher, say they are being kept against their will in two mansions inside a royal compound in the city of Jeddah, along with their other two sisters – Maha and Hala. They say they have been deprived of food for over 60 days and have very little access to water.
“It’s a horrible situation, it’s a forced famine basically. They are confining us, depriving us of food and water, freedom and rights. We are struggling, we are surviving, we are resisting, we are trying our best to stay alive,” the two sisters told RT via Skype.
“How can we continue living like this? We have to take the risk of [speaking out]."
Having spent so much time deprived of freedom, they struggle to understand why they have been locked up.
“The king and his sons need to answer these questions: What are we charged with? What exactly is our crime?”
“What is the crime of 99 percent of women in this country, who are basically suffering under male guardianship? A male guardian can do whatever he wants; he can cut off everything and she is left with nothing,” they said on behalf of the female citizens of the ultraconservative kingdom.
“We are making these statements right now [in order to] gain our rights, our freedoms.”
Their health is slowly deteriorating. Past appeals by their mother, Alanoud Al-Fayez, for outside assistance - including from Western leaders like US President Barack Obama - have not come to fruition. The administration is turning a blind eye, according to some critics. But the situation cannot be helped by appealing to the Saudi government either, as it maintains that the princesses are in fact perfectly free to move around the city of Jeddah, provided they are accompanied by bodyguards.
The four sisters are between the ages of 38 and 42, with at least one said to be suffering from psychological problems.
Earlier, in rare interviews with foreign media, the sisters said they don’t have any passports or IDs and the king has also forbidden any man to seek his daughters’ hands in marriage. The entire time they have been kept in isolation, both electricity and water have been shut off at random, often for days – even weeks.
The 89-year-old monarch and father of 38 children, given to him by multiple wives, is listed among Forbes magazine's most wealthy and influential men, with a fortune estimated at around US$17 billion.
The princesses' mother, Al-Fayez, divorced King Abdullah in 1980, consequently leaving for London in 2001. The sisters' ordeal then began around 2002. Less than one year after their mother escaped, Abdullah began tormenting his daughters. The sisters told their mother that he drugged their food and water to keep them docile when they openly spoke against women being illegally detained and placed in mental wards.
The director of the Institute for Gulf Affairs, Ali Al-Ahmed, believes the grave human rights situation in the kingdom is compounded by a political strategy from the outside, whose purpose is to keep any negative press at bay, and is a force to either change things for the better or keep them as they are.
“This is the nature of the Saudi monarchy, who are oppressing the people in their country. But now it’s very clear that they’re oppressing their own female members. The king who is portrayed in the international media – in the Western media - as a reformer, is oppressing his own daughters; healthy adult women, who have been held for 13 years…they’re being starved deliberately,” Al-Ahmed told RT.
“People outside the country definitely can speak and hold those people who are responsible for this crime accountable; namely the Saudi king and his sons…who are deliberately doing this.”
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Five Saudi men have been sentenced to thirty two years in prison and 4,500 lashes by a criminal court in Saudi Arabia – for holding a Valentine’s Day party.
The law-breaking men were caught at a rented rest house in the Al-Farouq area of Buraidah Qassim province and accused of holding a party with women who were unrelated to them, drinking and dancing.
Police from the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice (CPVPV) rounded up the men with the help of security patrols for their offences along with six women on February 14.The men have all admitted to the charges, which include illicit seclusion with unrelated women, dancing and drinking.
A judge will decide the fate of the six women.
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