Insights


16 July, 2015

What Does a Tiny Port in Pakistan have to do with Chinese-Indian Relations?

According to reports coming from workers in Gwadar port, near the Pakistani-Iranian border, the Chinese construction of the port have brought the port to the level of advanced commercial activity. A recent visit to the port of a delegation headed by a senior Chinese official, Lin Dajian, shows that the regional superpower is aiming to advance its presence in the Indian Ocean Region on India’s expense.

The Navy of the People Liberation Army (PLAN) was built in 1950 after the Chinese civil war. It presented no serious operational capabilities until the mid-1990s, and until 2008, PLAN ships were not seen outside of the East-China Sea.


17 June, 2015

How ISIS Twitters Keep Coming Back to Life?

The militant group is known for its use of social-media platforms to recruit new members and distribute propaganda. Though substantial efforts are made to narrow and eliminate its activity on social media sites such as Twitter, American officials have recently declared that ISIS is “winning the war on social media.” An S2T research shows that “Shoutout” accounts dedicated to promoting new or returning Twitter users are a central contributor to ISIS’ network sustainability.

The Islamic State, an extremist organization expanding through Iraq and Syria, has been known for a while for relying upon a well-built propaganda machine in order to recruit new members and raise its members’ morale. A lot has been written about social media’s crucial part in this operation.


29 April, 2015

Jihad Online: ISIS’ Use of the Internet in South-East Asia

The Islamic State is most infamous for its brutal expansion in Iraq and Syria, though a deeper look into the organization’s online activity shows that the states of South-East Asia have a lot of reasons to fear the organization as well.

Since 2014, ISIS (The Islamic State of Iraq and a-Sham) has claimed the leading position of global Jihad, due to its rapid expansion in the Middle East and its brutal methods of execution. It appears that the organization has mastered the art of PR, as it uses a vast number of social-media accounts to distribute its videos, often edited carefully to present Hollywood-like effects. It has long been known that the organization relays heavily on the internet for recruiting new members and distributing propaganda.


30 March, 2015

Dyre Banking Trojan Hits Singaporean Banks

A research conducted by S2T Analytics found that several prominent Banks in Singapore have been targeted by the notorious malware, known for stealing banking credentials. The malware uses dark net domains in order to keep its C&C servers anonymous.

On February 12 2015, DBS bank released an announcement, stating: “We have discovered a variant of Dyre malware that may affect the legitimacy of the DBS IDEAL website. This malware is spread through phishing emails with malicious attachment.