Israel strikes targets in Syria for 2nd day

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Israel strikes targets in Syria for 2nd day

JERUSALEM (AP) — The Israeli military on Sunday said it attacked a series of targets belonging to the Syrian military, after several projectiles from neighboring Syria landed in the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights for a second day.

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Mosul celebrates first Eid without Islamic State in years

By Alaa Marjani MOSUL, Iraq (Reuters) - People in the Iraqi city of Mosul celebrated their first Muslim Eid holiday without Islamic State in years on Sunday after the militants were ejected from much of the city, and hoped the battle to recapture the remaining area would soon be over. Some played on old swings and others with toy guns and rifles, which were among the toys allowed by Islamic State militants after they took over the city in June 2014. Eid prayers were allowed under Islamic State but festivities were not.

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How the CIA hacks computers that aren’t even connected to the internet

Air-gapped computers are supposed to be ultra-secure PCs that can’t be infected with malware that spreads with the help of the internet. That’s because of these computers, often connected to sensitive machines, aren’t also connected to the internet. You’d think these systems would be impenetrable by remote attacks and would require a hacker to be in the same room with the PC. But, unsurprisingly, the CIA developed tools that can infect air-gapped computers.

Wikileaks on Thursday published more than 150 pages of materials that explain how the CIA used USB drives to sneak malware to the air-gapped machines. After all, even these computers need to exchange data, and the only way to do it is using USB drives or external hard drives.

A platform called Brutal Kangaroo contains tools that can be used to target computer systems not connected to the internet, Ars Technica explains. Drifting Deadline is a tool installed on a computer of interest. When a USB drive is connected to it, the tool will infect it with malware that would then be passed to the air-gapped computer.

These advanced malware versions would be able to infect air-gapped computer immediately after the USB drive is plugged in. Some of them required no user interaction and could be activated by default behaviors in Windows, such as Windows Explorer displaying icons, or the letter corresponding to the thumb drive that was just inserted.

Microsoft said it patched some of these vulnerabilities, and they don’t work on any of the supported versions of Windows.

The documentation says that the first infection — the deployment of Drifting Deadline — might need manual access to a computer, but Ars argues that intrepid hackers could find ways to deliver the malware to the computer that would be used to transmit it to a USB stick.

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Conservative Koch network criticizes U.S. Senate healthcare bill

By James Oliphant COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (Reuters) - Officials with the conservative U.S. political network overseen by the Koch brothers say they are unhappy with the healthcare bill that may be voted on by the Senate this week and will lobby for changes to it. At a weekend event with conservative donors, top aides to Charles Koch, the billionaire energy magnate, said the Senate bill does not go far enough to dismantle former President Barack Obama's signature healthcare law, also known as Obamacare. “We have been disappointed that movement has not been more dramatic toward a full repeal,” said Tim Phillips, president of Americans for Prosperity, a grassroots advocacy group backed by Charles Koch and his brother, David.

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