Pradeep Thakur, TNN - The Times of India

NEW DELHI: After seeking information from the US authorities on who picked up the tab for Pakistani-American terrorist David Coleman Headley’s credit cards, security agencies have launched a crackdown against terror suspects using international cards as a mode of funding their operations in India.

In two operations in Lucknow and Delhi, intelligence agencies with the help of local police seized more than 65 international credit cards with at least Rs 4-5 crore withdrawn on them and distributed to sleeper cells, sources said.

In the first operation, the Anti-Terrorist Squad of the UP police last month recovered 20 international cards from two individuals in Lucknow after a close surveillance revealed that they were using the credit cards to draw money and pass it on to sleeper cells in the city on the instructions of Nepal-based masterminds.

In a similar action in the national Capital, officials of the Delhi Police raided a resident in Rohini and recovered 45 international credit cards from his possession along with Rs 6 lakh in cash. Initial questioning of the accused in both the cases that the revealed money was paid in Nepal and the operatives in Lucknow and Delhi were instructed to withdraw it and pass it on to contacts as per orders.

While the income tax department is on the job to map the economic footprint of these jehadis within the country, the government has roped in the Enforcement Directorate to register and investigate each of these cases to identify the sources of transactions made in foreign countries on these cards and further investigate the cases under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA).

Meanwhile, the government is in touch with the authorities in US and Canada to ascertain who had paid for the credit card bills of Headley and other accused linked to the 26/11 Mumbai terror attack.

A year-long investigation in the use of international credit cards by terror suspects in India has revealed that at least Rs 20-25 crore had been spent by them in the recent past across the country. These credit cards were issued in US, Canada, UK, Dubai, Nepal and Bangladesh and the bills were picked up by terror masterminds based there. Agencies are identifying all such payment gateways, their beneficiaries and sponsors.

The authorities are hopeful of busting the terror and narcotics syndicates by establishing a link between the users of such credit cards and their masterminds who are picking up the tab. Though the FBI has shared some details with the National Investigation Agency while referring to Headley’s co-accused Tahawwur Hussain Rana’s company, World Immigration Service, as one of the funding sources which also provided him a cover for his jehadi mission, it is not yet clear who picked up Headley’s credit card bills in the US.

Sources said Pakistan-based jehadi outfits are using the new modus operandi to fund their operatives in India without alerting the security agencies as the earlier hawala mode of funding had come under close surveillance.

If Simple Credit Cards are cloneable just imagine how ”New ID cards” are supposed to be ‘unforgeable’ – but it took expert minutes to clone one, and program it with false data

By Cory Doctorow at 11:43 PM February 11, 2010

(Chip and PIN is broken via Schneier)

BBC: New flaws in chip and pin system revealed

Noted security researcher Ross Anderson and colleagues have published a paper showing how “Chip-and-PIN” (the European system for verifying credit- and debit-card transactions) has been thoroughly broken and cannot be considered secure any longer. I remember hearing rumbles that this attack was possible even as Chip-and-PIN was being rolled out across Europe, but that didn’t stop the banks from pushing ahead with it, spending a fortune in the process.

The flaw is that when you put a card into a terminal, a negotiation takes place about how the cardholder should be authenticated: using a PIN, using a signature or not at all. This particular subprotocol is not authenticated, so you can trick the card into thinking it’s doing a chip-and-signature transaction while the terminal thinks it’s chip-and-PIN. The upshot is that you can buy stuff using a stolen card and a PIN of 0000 (or anything you want). We did so, on camera, using various journalists’ cards. The transactions went through fine and the receipts say “Verified by PIN”.

It’s no surprise to us or bankers that this attack works offline (when the merchant cannot contact the bank) — in fact Steven blogged about it here last August.

But the real shocker is that it works online too: even when the bank authorisation system has all the transaction data sent back to it for verification. The reason why it works can be quite subtle and convoluted: bank authorisation systems are complex beasts, including cryptographic checks, account checks, database checks, and interfaces with fraud detection systems which might apply a points-scoring system to the output of all the above. In theory all the data you need to spot the wedge attack will be present, but in practice? And most of all, how can you spot it if you’re not even looking? The banks didn’t even realise they needed to check.

By ANGELA CHARLTON
Associated Press Writer – Charlotte Observer

DAVOS, Switzerland The biggest travel threat facing the world now is passport fraud, according to the chief of Interpol – the millions of stolen documents that could be used by terrorists or criminals to travel worldwide.

Airport body scanners, embraced by many in the aftermath of the attempted Christmas Day airplane bombing, are a misguided solution to travel threats, Interpol Secretary-General Ronald K. Noble told The Associated Press in an interview Thursday night.

“The greatest threat in the world is that last year there were 500 million, half a billion, international air arrivals worldwide where travel documents were not compared against Interpol databases,” he said on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum, where 2,500 business and political leaders are gathered in this Alpine resort.

“Right now in our database we have over 11 million stolen or lost passports,” he said. “These passports are being used, fraudulently altered and are being given to terrorists, war criminals, drug traffickers, human traffickers.”

The solution, he said, is better intelligence, and better intelligence sharing, among countries.

“You don’t know the motivation behind the person carrying the passport,” he said. If you’re a terrorist, he said, “Are you going to carry explosives that are going to be detected? No.”

Many U.S. airports use the body-scanning machines and airports in other countries are adopting them after Nigerian Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab allegedly tried to detonate explosives hidden in his underwear Dec. 25 on the Detroit-bound flight.

But Noble questioned “the amount of money and resources that go into these (body-scanning) machines.”

He cited a case two weeks ago in a Caribbean country where five people were arrested carrying European passports, but were caught after they were found to be carrying stolen passports – one stolen back in 2001. The five had “definite links to crime, organized crime, human trafficking but no definite links to terrorism,” he said, though he wouldn’t name the country.

He said U.S. authorities are recognizing the threat of passport fraud – in 2006, U.S. authorities scanned the Interpol database about 2,000 times, while last year they did so 78 million times. They came up with 4,000 people traveling on stolen or lost passports.

Intelligence experts have cast doubt on the usefulness of the so-called no-fly lists of suspects shared among airports worldwide, saying that criminals can change their names or make simple name spelling changes that render them untrackable.

“(The lists) are useful but I don’t believe they are the be-all and end-all,” Noble said, adding he was concerned about governments’ efforts to expand them.

Noble, who has expanded Interpol’s efforts to fight terrorism, cybercrime, corruption and maritime piracy in his nearly 10 years at the helm of international police agency Interpol, also had words of warning for people hoping to donate money to Haiti after its devastating earthquake.

“Be very careful,” he said, citing several cases of fraudsters preying on donors and stealing their money via fake charity Web sites.

“Whenever there’s a tragedy it seems to bring out the best in people and unfortunately the worst,” he said. He said several U.S. sites have been taken down since the earthquake after they were found to represent no known charity.

Interpol has a team helping identify victims in Haiti, a daunting task with an estimated 200,000 dead. Another daunting task will be rebuilding Haiti’s law enforcement.

Policing in Haiti “was a challenge before this happened,” he said.

The FBI says the used an image found on Google of Spanish lawmaker Gasper Llamazares, right, to create a digitally altered photo of what an aged Osama bin Laden might look like, as reported by El Mundo. Madrid, Spain – A Spanish lawmaker says he was stunned to find that the FBI used his photograph as part of a digitally enhanced image showing what Osama bin Laden might look like today.

Gaspar Llamazares says he would no longer feel safe in the U.S. after his hair and other features appeared on a wanted poster showing an older bin Laden on a U.S. government Web site rewardsforjustice.net. A reward of up to $25 million is offered.

Spanish newspaper El Mundo, which noted the similarities between the bin Laden composite and Mr. Llamazares, quotes FBI spokesman Ken Hoffman as acknowledging that the agency used a picture of Llamazares taken from Google Images for the digitally altered image of bin Laden.

The photo appeared on a U.S. State Department Web site rewardsforjustice.net, where a reward of up to $25 million is offered for bin Laden, wanted in the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks and the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings in Tanzania and Kenya.

Llamazares said he planned to ask the U.S. government for an explanation and reserved the right to take legal action.

FBI headquarters in Washington did not respond immediately when asked for comment Saturday, requesting that questions be sent to them by e-mail. The State Department told a reporter to call back Tuesday after the U.S. federal holiday on Monday.

Llamazares said he couldn’t believe it when he was first told about the similarity, but he quickly realized the seriousness of the situation.

The 52-year-old politician said he would not feel safe traveling in the U.S. now, because many airports use biometrics technology that compares the physical characteristics of travelers to passport or other photographs.

“I have no similarity, physically or ideologically, to the terrorist bin Laden,” he said.

They do share on characteristic — both are 52.

Jose Morales, spokesman for Llamazares’ party, told the Associated Press that no one in Spain had any idea that important security computer images such as the retouched bin Laden photo were built up from photographs of real people. Llamazares, the former leader of his party, was elected to Spain’s parliament in 2000.

Llamazares said it was worrying to see elite security services like the FBI resorting to such sloppy techniques, especially in the light of recent security alerts like the attempted Christmas Day bombing of a Detroit-bound airplane.

“It might provoke mirth, but it demonstrates that what we’re seeing from security services isn’t exactly recommendable,” he said.

Bin Laden is believed to be hiding in the lawless Pakistan frontier bordering Afghanistan. His exact whereabouts have been unknown since late 2001, when he and some bodyguards slipped out of the Tora Bora mountains, evading air strikes, U.S. special forces and Afghan militias.

The U.S. State Department Web site shows the photos and bounty on bin Laden and 41 others wanted for terrorism.

The Phnom Penh Post
Chrann Chamroeun and Mom Kunthear

Police arrest group after catching one suspect wearing a fake two-star general’s uniform

SEVEN people were sent to Ratanakkiri provincial court on Wednesday after they were found with forged government documents and fake military police uniforms, a provincial military police chief told the Post.

Tuy Sim, Ratanakkiri provincial Military Police chief, said his officials had arrested the group after one of its members was caught wearing a fake general’s uniform.

——————————————————————————–
…when he began to panic they suspected him and took them to the police station.
——————————————————————————–

“Our men had lunch with [one of the suspects] and he was wearing casual clothes, and then later in the day they saw him wearing a two-star general’s military police uniform travelling to a pagoda in a Mitsubishi car with six other people,” Tuy Sim said.

He added that upon raiding the car, police found a gun, four other uniforms and forged documents, including one with the signature of Prime Minister Hun Sen and another that was signed by Minister of Agriculture Chan Sarun.

“They asked him for his name and which unit he came from, and when he began to panic, they suspected him and took them to the police station,” he said.

Illegal logging suspected
Pen Bonnar, provincial coordinator for the rights group Adhoc, told the Post Wednesday that he welcomed the arrests because he believed the group was likely involved in illegal logging.

“I request that authorities further investigate the group, as we have found that a lot of people who have fake police uniforms and forged documents are involved in illegal logging.”

U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and Public Safety Canada Minister Peter Van Loan today announced initiatives between the United States and Canada.

Source: U.S. Department of Homeland Security Posted on: 24th November 2009

Those initiatives build on their shared commitment to tackle common threats like terrorism and organized crime while ensuring the lawful flow of travel and trade across the border.

The announcement came after Secretary Napolitano and Minister Van Loan met for the second of their formal biannual meetings; the Secretary and the Minister have also met three other times this year.

Today they reviewed progress on the mutual goals they announced in May, including enhancing information sharing and expanding integrated law enforcement while protecting privacy and economic security.

“Close cooperation and coordination between the United States and Canada is critical to the national and economic security of both nations,” said Secretary Napolitano. “Minister Van Loan and I are committed to working together to combat transnational threats and facilitate lawful travel and trade on both sides of the border.”

“A shared understanding of the threats and risks we face is paramount to our common objective of enhancing U.S.-Canadian security. We are working together to achieve this,” said Minister Van Loan. “We have a joint responsibility to secure the safety of our citizens.”

Secretary Napolitano and Minister Van Loan also made announcements to strengthen both trade and security:

Streamlining Border Shipping: Canada and United States have agreed to work toward aligning the U.S. Customs Trade Partnership Against Terrorism (C-TPAT) and Canada’s Partners in Protection (PIP) program, in an effort to achieve harmonization as quickly as possible. These trusted shipper programs focus on improving the security of private sector supply chains and benefit shippers.

Maritime Emergency Cooperation: Canada and United States have created a Maritime Annex to the Joint Framework for the Movement of People and Goods During and Following Emergencies. This is an addition to the Framework the countries established in May. The new annex guides communication and coordination during incidents that affect shared waterways and ports, enabling both nations to assist one another during emergencies.

NEXUS and FAST Cards Now Accepted Everywhere: Canada will join the United States in recognizing NEXUS and Free and Secure Trade (FAST) trusted traveler program cards as valid identification documents in all lanes at all land and sea border ports of entry beginning Nov. 25. It was also announced that the programs are expanding with new enrollment centers opening in St. Stephen, New Brunswick – Calais, Maine and Lansdowne, Ontario – Alexandria Bay, N.Y

Immigration Information Sharing: Secretary Napolitano announced that the United States will join a biometric data sharing initiative involving Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom and, eventually, New Zealand – an initiative designed to strengthen the integrity of immigration systems and the security of each country while protecting privacy and civil rights. Minister Van Loan, with the Canadian Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism, Jason Kenney, welcomed the United States’ participation.

“Previous trials show that biometric information sharing works. For example, when the fingerprints of some asylum claimants in Canada were checked against the U.S. database, more than a third matched and 12 percent of these individuals presented a different identity in the United States,” said Minister Kenney. “The data sharing helps uncover details about refugee claimants such as identity, nationality, criminality, travel and immigration history, all of which can prove relevant to the claim.”

Fighting Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing: Secretary Napolitano and Minister Van Loan announced that the two countries are in the final stages of completing a Memorandum of Understanding to share data on currency seized at the border. This will significantly enhance the ability of law enforcement officers in both countries to investigate and track illicit cash movement. It will disrupt the flow of funds that support the activities of criminals and terrorists.

Combating Human Trafficking: Secretary Napolitano and Minister Van Loan agreed to instruct their respective law enforcement agencies to enhance collaboration on efforts to combat human trafficking in both nations and across the U.S.-Canada border. As part of extensive existing cooperative efforts to ensure the security of the 2010 Vancouver Olympic Games, both countries are already focusing on ensuring that the Games do not present a venue for criminals to engage in human trafficking.

Security Cooperation: Secretary Napolitano and Minister Van Loan also agreed to exchange best practices and broaden collaboration in the areas of critical infrastructure protection and countering violent extremism.

Continuing Cooperation: Minister Van Loan and Secretary Napolitano expect to meet again in approximately six months to continue their strategic work on mutual initiatives to combat security threats and expedite travel and trade.