Mali. Visit to Bamako by Mahamat DÉBY, Head of the Transitional Council of Chad

The Head of the Transitional Council of Chad, Mahamat DÉBY, current President of the G5 for the Sahel, will visit Bamako at the end of November to meet Malian President Assimi GOITA. 

At the center of the talks between the two there are also relationships between Mali and Russia, in particular the possibility, repeatedly mentioned by the international media, that Bamako will start a collaboration with the private security company WAGNER. 

In this sense, one of the objectives of DÉBY's visit would be to undermine this collaboration,  not formalized by the parties yet, and avert a crisis with the other G5 countries, Burkina Faso, Mauritania, Niger and precisely Chad.

The role of WAGNER in the Sahel and the problems connected to it have also been the subject of recent talks held in Paris between Mahamat DÉBY himself, the President of Burkina Faso, Roch Marc Christian KABORÉ, the President of Niger, Mohamed BAZOUM, and the French President Emmanuel MACRON.

Ukraine Poland Tension Promoted from Grey Eminence of the "Russian Influence Machine"

According to Informnapalm.org website - a volunteer initiative to inform Ukrainian citizens and the foreign public about the undeclared war against Ukraine, the annexation of Crimea, and the activities of the Russian special services - the recent tension between Kyiv and Warsaw, with a series of incidents in late 2016 and early 2017, resulted from Russian interference.

Informnapalm.org reported that organisations CyberHunta and Ukrainian Cyber Alliance have got access to emails of Alyaksandr Usowski, a 49-year-old Belarusian citizen described as a "grey eminence of the Russian influence machine in Eastern Europe" and alleged organiser of "anti-Ukrainian stunts" in Poland.

Alyaksandr Usowski is an historian and writer promoting ideas of the "Russian world". He published his pieces on the website of the pro-Russian movement "Ukrainian Choice", lead by Viktor Medvedchuk, believed to be a close friend of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Usowski had been running his "anti-Ukrainian stunts" in Poland under the auspices of his NGO Eastern European Cultural Initiative (Vychodoeuropska kulturna iniciativa), registered in Slovakia.

Russian Psychological Operations Troops Ready to Work in Propaganda Activities

In early 2017 russian newspaper Kommersant wrote that Russia is one of five countries with the most developed level of cyber troops.

Russian website Gazeta.ru reported Defense Minister Sergey Shoygu recently speaking about the establishment of information operations troops in Russia: "information operations troops have been created during this time, and this is enormously more effective and stronger than that directorate which was called counterpropaganda".

According to Shoygu, propaganda must be "smart, literate and effective".

State Duma Defense Committee Chairman Vladimir Shamanov said that "a number of challenges have shifted to the so-called cyber sphere today, and information conflict essentially goes on today as a component part of overall conflict. Based on this, Russia took efforts to form structures which engage in this".

In USSR times there were subunits in the troops which were responsible for counterpropaganda against enemy troops. During the war the subunits worked on preparing leaflets which were supposed to affect the enemy, as well as on radio broadcasting to enemy troops.

In postwar times military departments of a number of institutes were training "psychological warfare" specialists who engaged in counterpropaganda.

Nothing was known for certain about actual progress in military organizational development in this direction until today's statement by Shoygu, but according to Association of Military Political Scientists expert Aleksandr Perendzhiyev,, an indirect sign of work being done was the appearance of a course on information conflict in the General Staff Academy syllabus.

According to information on the Defense Ministry official website, there are several subunits in the department's structure for now whose zone of responsibility can include information operations.

Above all this is the GRU (Main Intelligence Directorate), Main Directorate for Development of Information and Telecommunications Technologies under the direction of Colonel Maksim Bets, as well as the Press Service and Information Directorate headed by Major General Igor Konashenkov.

The General Staff Eighth Directorate's 6th Scientific Company located in Krasnodar probably also plays a certain part.

Russian hackers looking software systems at Shell, Philips and the Dutch Ministry of Defense

"Russian hackers are looking software systems at Shell, Philips and the Dutch Ministry of Defense for a way in. The systems are being probed. Without results for now", according well-known daily published in the Netherlands NRC Handelsblad.

According to the Handelsblad "there are tens of young men and women testing the software of businesses and government institutions. They call themselves white-hat hackers. The accountants wear slim fit suits; the Cyber Risk Services technical staff just wear jeans. In one of these flexible working spaces, there stands a Golden Cup, awarded for the Global CyberLympics Security Challenge. Here sit the wizards of our time, as director Jelle Niemantsverdriet calls his colleagues".

Jelle Niemantsverdriet said that "there are grandiose examples of state attacks. The American and Israeli Governments spread malicious software in 2010 to shut down the Iranian nuclear program's Siemens centrifuges. You can use a method like that once, but then you have revealed yourself quickly".

The number of potential cyber attacks rises steeply as soon as states start using the simple tricks of criminals. "Phishing," for example, the retrieval of a user's password by making him retype it. That is what Hillary Clinton's campaign manager John Podesta did and, according to the US intelligence services, Russia was behind it.

Niemantsverdriet lists several examples, such as software which is used in a different way than intended: "what happens if you upload a file containing a virus instead of a photo? What happens if you change a URL with user-id=2 to user-id=3? Do you possess someone else's data? Suppose that you put 3,000 characters in a user name field that only allows 30 characters? Then you get an error message".

"And that error message tells you something about the programming code".

Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) Uncovered Russian Monitoring Material in Odessa

According Intelligence Online, an online newsletter managed from french editor-in-chief Pierre Gastineau and focusing on the role of the worldwide government intelligence agencies, the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) "recently uncovered a supply of Russian technical monitoring material including GPS trackers, microphones and jammers in Odessa port".

The materiel is believed to have been made by a Russian company close to the FSB.

Since the change of regime, the SBU has received a lot of support, particularly technical assistance, from the US intelligence community".

Kaliningrad Bans Officials Using Foreign Comapnies Internet Products and Services

Kaliningrad.ru news portal reported that the administration of Kaliningrad, the capital city of Russia's Baltic exclave Kaliningrad Region, has banned officials from using "foreign companies internet products and services".

The order, signed by city deputy head Anna Appolonova, refers to a directive from the Kaliningrad administration of 17 August on the use of domestic products by the mayor's office on the grounds of "ensuring information security of agencies in the social sphere".

The order includes a list of "enemy" software and recommends a list of Russian alternatives to use.

Among those listed are Skype, Facebook Messenger, Viber, WhatsApp, GMail, Dropbox, Yahoo, Hotmail and even Yandex-Post (which is registered in the Netherlands as part of the Yandex NV joint-stock company), among others.

It recommends officials communicate using services such as ICQ and QIP.

The Russian government has been taking increasing measures recently to ensure its cyber security.

In November, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov denied Russia would introduce a blanket ban on foreign software