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(Updated: December 2, 2018) Last Thursday, October 4, the Dutch Ministry of Defence held a press conference about how its Military Intelligence and Security Service MIVD had disrupted a spying operation by the Russian military intelligence agency GRU last April. Four Russian operatives were caught red-handed when they tried to hack into the Wi-Fi network of the headquarters of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) in The Hague. Meanwhile, the US Department of Justice (DoJ) published a formal indictment against seven GRU officers, including the four from the Netherlands. Here, the failed GRU operation will be compared to close access operations of the NSA, which learns us more about the methods for hacking wireless networks. There are also some answers to frequent questions about the disruption by the MIVD. Press conference with from left to right: MIVD director Onno Eichelsheim, Defence minister Ank Bijleveld, British ambassador Peter Wilson (photo: Bart ...

(Updated: September 21, 2017) Since the Snowden revelations, we know that signals intelligence agencies are trying to acquire large sets of telephone metadata in order to analyse them in support of protecting their national security. Less known is that commercial companies also analyse similar big data sets, albeit for research purposes and with personal information being anonymized. Now, a research report from the Netherlands provides us with actual numbers of mobile telephone metadata, which can be used to compare with the numbers that NSA and GCHQ collected according to the Snowden documents. Tourist movements Recently published was a report about visitor movements in and around the Dutch capital of Amsterdam. It was prepared by the economic research company Decisio on behalf of the province of Noord-Holland and the municipalities of Amsterdam and Zandvoort. Since a few years, Amsterdam almost suffers from a huge increase of tourists, but it was difficult to get detailed insights ...

(Updated: August 26, 2017) About how signals intelligence agencies, like NSA and GCHQ, are intercepting communications, we learned a lot from the Snowden revelations and the German parliamentary inquiry, but also from new legislation in France , the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. Much less is known about the practice of tapping by law enforcement, like for example the FBI and police forces. Now, a case from the Netherlands provides some interesting insights in how Dutch police intercepts internet communications - in a way that comes remarkably close to the bulk collection by intelligence agencies. - Cooperation with the Russians - Intercepting at Leaseweb - - Some questions - The end of ZeuS - Office of the Team High Tech Crime (THTC) of the Dutch police in Driebergen (photo: NRC/Merlin Daleman)   Cooperation with the Russians On Saturday, May 27, the Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant came with a surprising story about the cooperation between the Team High Tech Crime (THT...

( Updated : March 24, 2018) Since the Snowden-revelations, several countries adopted new laws governing their (signals) intelligence agencies, but instead of restricting the collection capabilities, they rather expand them. Previously we examined the new laws that have recently been implemented in France . This time we will take a look at the Netherlands, where a new law for its two secret services is now being discussed by the parliament. The situation in the Netherlands is different in at least two major aspects from many other countries. First, there is no institutional separation between domestic security and foreign intelligence as the two secret services combine both tasks. Second, the current law restricts bulk or untargeted collection to wireless communications only, so cable access is only allowed for targeted and individualized interception. - Secret services - Oversight bodies - Towards a new law - - Bulk cable access - Cyber security - Third party hacking - - Update...