NATO Chief Warns China, India and Brazil Over Russia Links
'My encouragement to these three countries particularly is if you live now in Beijing or in Delhi, or you're the president of Brazil, you might want to take a look into this, because this might hit you very hard,' Rutte told reporters Tuesday.
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Yahoo
14 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Brazil's Former President Jair Bolsonaro Ordered to Wear Ankle Monitor After Police Raid
(Bloomberg) -- Brazil's Supreme Court sent police to raid the home of former President Jair Bolsonaro and to attach a monitor to his ankle just hours after Donald Trump piled pressure on the South American nation to drop criminal charges against his right-wing ally. The Dutch Intersection Is Coming to Save Your Life Mumbai Facelift Is Inspired by 200-Year-Old New York Blueprint Advocates Fear US Agents Are Using 'Wellness Checks' on Children as a Prelude to Arrests LA Homelessness Drops for Second Year Manhattan, Chicago Murder Rates Drop in 2025, Officials Say Bolsonaro, who is about to stand trial over an alleged coup attempt, was banned from using social media and will now face an evening curfew, according to the Supreme Court order issued on Friday. The former president is also prohibited from communicating with foreign diplomats and getting close to embassies. Justice Alexandre de Moraes, who authored the decision, cited obstruction of justice and a flight risk as motives for the measures. Bolsonaro's legal team said in a statement that it received word of the measures 'with surprise and indignation,' adding that the former president 'has always complied with all rulings issued by the judiciary.' The early morning raid is the latest escalation in a high-stakes standoff between the governments of the Western hemisphere's most populous nations. Last week, Trump threatened President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva with a 50% levy on Brazilian goods due to the treatment of Bolsonaro and what the US head of state claims are unfair trade practices. Brazil's currency, the real, gained 0.2% in late morning trading after initially falling as much as 0.4% on open. It erased losses after a member of Bolsonaro's family called on Trump to drop his tariff threat. Brazil's Case While Trump has fired off a flurry of tariff letters to leaders around the world in recent days, Brazil's case has been unique. Latin America's largest economy runs a trade deficit with the US, while almost all of Trump's other targets post large surpluses. Its 79-year-old president has shown no signs of heeding to American demands. Lula, as the former union leader is universally known, has seized the moment to reinvigorate his progressive base after flagging in opinion polls. He has appeared on Brazil's airwaves almost daily, accusing his adversaries of seeking foreign intervention and vowing to defend national sovereignty. 'We don't want to fight, but we don't flee,' Lula said on Thursday while he visited the northeastern state of Bahia. 'Brazil only has one owner: the Brazilian people.' Meanwhile, Trump's threats have created chaos for Brazilian conservatives as they seek to find an answer to the upheaval US levies will cause. Even Bolsonaro's closest confidants have begun to buckle as pressure mounts at home and abroad. Following the Friday morning raid, Bolosonaro's son, Flavio Bolsonaro, a senator, made an appeal to Trump on social media to 'suspend the 50% tariff on Brazilian imports and impose individual sanctions.' The post was later deleted. Deeply Personal The clash with the US has become personal for Lula, who narrowly defeated Bolsonaro less than three years ago. Days after Lula's 2023 inauguration, Bolsonaro's supporters stormed the capital, Brasilia, and ransacked government buildings under the false belief the election had been stolen. Bolsonaro, a former army captain and longtime Trump admirer, has denied involvement in the attacks. But he and his allies amplified baseless claims about the integrity of Brazil's voting system, which fueled the rage of rioters. Out of government, the former head of state's legal woes have spiraled. He is currently facing multiple criminal cases, including accusations that he sold presidential gifts for personal gain and actively worked to discredit Brazil's voting system, which led authorities to confiscate his passport and ban him from holding public office. The danger of jail time led his lawmaker son Eduardo Bolsonaro to step away from his congressional duties earlier this year and relocate to Washington DC, where he has lobbied the Trump administration to take action against Brazil's Supreme Court. Brazil government opponents allege the court has tried to silence conservative voices and persecute the current president's foes, a claim that has gained traction among Trump's allies. In a public letter to Bolsonaro on Thursday, Trump blasted the Brazilian government as a 'ridiculous censorship regime' and said the former head of state's trial, which is expected to begin later this year, 'should end immediately!' Moraes has continued to work through Brazil's judicial recess in July. On Monday, the Prosecutor General's Office submitted its closing arguments, detailing the charges, listing the evidence, and requesting a conviction for the attempted coup. Now Bolsonaro's legal teams must present their final arguments on the case. The Supreme Court has called an extraordinary session to review Moraes's decision beginning today and extending through Monday. Cash According to Moraes' move on Friday, the former president worked with Eduardo Bolsonaro to stop the functioning of the Supreme Court 'through hostile acts stemming from spurious and criminal negotiations, with clear obstruction of justice and the evident intent to coerce this court in its rulings.' Moraes banned Bolsonaro from communicating with his son in Washington. Police found over $14,000 in cash in the former president's home in Brasilia and seized his smartphone, newspaper Folha de reported. It is not the first time that Bolsonaro has been suspected of trying to dodge authorities. Last year, a New York Times investigation reveled that the right-wing leader stayed at the Hungarian embassy in Brasilia for four days after handing his passport over to federal police. Bolsonaro later confirmed his stay at the embassy but denied claims he was seeking refuge. (Updates with Supreme Court decision, market reaction, context throughout.) What the Tough Job Market for New College Grads Says About the Economy How Starbucks' CEO Plans to Tame the Rush-Hour Free-for-All Godzilla Conquered Japan. Now Its Owner Plots a Global Takeover A Rebel Army Is Building a Rare-Earth Empire on China's Border Why Access to Running Water Is a Luxury in Wealthy US Cities ©2025 Bloomberg L.P.
The Hill
15 minutes ago
- The Hill
Trump's 50-day Ukraine ultimatum is doomed to fail
President Trump campaigned on a promise to end the Ukraine war within 2 4 hours of returning to the White House. Now back in the White House, he finds himself hemmed in by the realities of great-power politics. Trump's self-confidence has collided with the entrenched dynamics of a grinding conflict. Frustrated, he has turned to familiar tools of coercion: threats, pressure tactics and a new flow of advanced weapons to Kyiv. Trump's latest initiative gives Moscow a 50-day deadline to end its war in Ukraine. He has threatened secondary sanctions on Russia's key trading partners and opened a fresh weapons pipeline to Kyiv, hoping this twin-pronged approach will force Russian President Vladimir Putin's hand. But like Trump's earlier attempts to employ brute pressure as a substitute for diplomacy, this initiative reflects impatience more than strategic clarity. Trump once believed that his personal rapport with Putin, coupled with a dealmaker's instinct, could bring about a ceasefire. But six months into his new term, his peace push lies in tatters. Russia continues to press its territorial ambitions, while Ukraine, bolstered by Western military support, shows little interest in making major concessions. Instead of a breakthrough, Trump faces a deepening quagmire. The irony is unmistakable — the president who pledged to end America's entanglements in ' forever wars ' is now escalating U.S. involvement in one that is deflecting American attention away from more-pressing strategic challenges, including from China, which is seeking to supplant the U.S. as the world's foremost power. Trump's new Ukraine strategy bears an eerie resemblance to his Iran policy, when he tried to bomb Tehran into submission, only to end up entrenching animosities further and weakening U.S. leverage. There is no doubt that ending the war in Ukraine is in America's strategic interest. The conflict has absorbed vast U.S. resources, diverted diplomatic bandwidth and strained transatlantic cohesion. More importantly, the war has delayed Washington's ability to focus on the key Indo-Pacific region — the world's emerging economic and geopolitical nerve center. The pivot to the Indo-Pacific is not merely aspirational. A leaked memorandum titled 'Interim National Defense Strategic Guidance,' signed by Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, identifies China as the Pentagon's 'sole pacing threat.' The Trump administration is seeking to reorient the U.S. military posture to prepare for a potential showdown in Asia over Chinese aggression against democratic Taiwan. The war in Ukraine, by draining American attention, resources and capabilities, undermines this rebalancing. Seen from this angle, Trump is right to seek an end to the conflict. But his approach — escalating arms transfers while threatening punitive sanctions on countries that do business with Russia — is unlikely to yield peace. If anything, it risks prolonging the war by reinforcing the belief in Kyiv that Washington remains committed to a military solution. In fact, Trump's threat to impose harsh penalties on Russia's trading partners lacks credibility. Such sanctions would trigger a U.S. showdown with China, which trades nearly $250 billion annually with Russia, including major oil and gas imports. Sanctioning India could upend America's Indo-Pacific strategy aimed at maintaining a stable balance of power. History offers little support for the notion that coercion alone can deliver durable peace. Military pressure may bring parties to the table, but diplomacy is what cements outcomes. The Dayton Accords, which ended the Bosnian war, and the Camp David Accords, which brought peace between Egypt and Israel, were both products of tough negotiations rather than deadlines and threats. Trump's maximalist tactics risk backfiring on multiple fronts. Sanctioning Russia's trading partners could alienate crucial 'swing' nations in the global contest with China. These states are already wary of U.S. unilateralism, and some of them could be pushed into Beijing's orbit. Moreover, punitive economic measures often fail to change state behavior, especially when national security interests are at stake, as is the case for Russia in Ukraine. Meanwhile, a flood of advanced new U.S. weapons to Ukraine may boost short-term battlefield performance but will do little to bridge the wider diplomatic impasse. Putin, faced with increased Western backing for Kyiv, is unlikely to scale back his goals. Instead, he may double down, calculating that time and attrition are on his side. The real path to peace in Ukraine lies not in deadlines or ultimatums, but in a forward-looking diplomatic initiative that recognizes the legitimate interests of all parties while seeking to uphold Ukraine's sovereignty. The Biden administration made limited overtures in this direction, but Trump, who claims to be a great dealmaker, has an opportunity to go further. Instead of trying to impose peace through pressure alone, he must find ways to bring both sides to the table — with credible inducements and face-saving compromises. This will require working with international partners — not just NATO allies, but also influential neutral states like India and the United Arab Emirates that can serve as mediators. It will also require a nuanced understanding of Russia's domestic political constraints and Ukraine's security concerns. None of this is easy, but it is more likely to succeed than a strategy built on coercion and deadlines. Despite promising to end the war quickly, Trump now finds himself caught in the same bind as his predecessor. His failure to secure a ceasefire has deepened America's involvement in the war — the very entanglement he vowed to end. Unless he pivots toward a more diplomatic course, his 50-day ultimatum to Moscow will go the way of his 24-hour pledge: unmet and quietly shelved. Deadlines don't make peace. Diplomacy does.
WIRED
16 minutes ago
- WIRED
How China's Patriotic ‘Honkers' Became the Nation's Elite Cyber Spies
Jul 18, 2025 11:28 AM A new report traces the history of the early wave of Chinese hackers who became the backbone of the state's espionage apparatus. Photo-illustration: Jacqui VanLiew; Getty Images In the summer of 2005, Tan Dailin was a 20-year-old grad student at Sichuan University of Science and Engineering when he came to the attention of the People's Liberation Army of China. Tan was part of a burgeoning hacker community known as the Honkers—teens and twenty-somethings in late-90s and early-00s China who formed groups like the Green Army and Evil Octal, and launched patriotic cyberattacks against western targets they deemed disrespectful to China. The attacks were low-sophistication—mostly web site defacements and denial-of-service operations targeting entities in the US, Taiwan, and Japan—but the Honkers advanced their skills over time, and Tan documented his escapades in blog posts. After publishing about hacking targets in Japan, the PLA came calling. Tan and his university friends were encouraged to participate in a PLA-affiliated hacking contest and won first place. The PLA invited them to an intense, month-long hacker training camp, and within weeks Tan and his friends were building hacking tools, studying network infiltration techniques, and conducting simulated attacks. The subsequent timeline of events is unclear, but Tan, who went by the hacker handles Wicked Rose and Withered Rose, then launched his own hacking group—the Network Crack Program Hacker (NCPH). The group quickly gained notoriety for winning hacking contests and developing hacking tools. They created the GinWui rootkit, one of China's first homegrown remote-access backdoors and then, experts believe, used it and dozens of zero-day exploits they wrote in a series of 'unprecedented' hacks against US companies and government entities over the spring and summer of 2006. They did this on behalf of the PLA, according to Adam Kozy, who tracked Tan and other Chinese hackers for years as a former FBI analyst who now heads the SinaCyber consulting firm, focused on China. Tan revealed online at the time that he and his team were being paid about $250 a month for their hacking, though he didn't say who paid or what they hacked. The pay increased to $1,000 a month after their summer hacking spree, according to a 2007 report by former threat intelligence firm VeriSign iDefense. At some point, Tan switched teams and began contracting for the Ministry of State Security (MSS), China's civilian intelligence agency, as part of its notorious hacking group known as APT 41. And in 2020, when Tan was 36, the US Justice Department announced indictments against him and other alleged APT 41 members for hacking more than 100 targets, including US government systems, healthcare organizations, and telecoms. Tan's path to APT 41 isn't unique. He's just one of many former Honkers who began their careers as self-directed patriotic hackers before being absorbed by the state into its massive spying apparatus. Not a lot has been written about the Honkers and their critical role in China's APT operations, outside of congressional testimony Kozy gave in 2022. But a new report, published this month by Eugenio Benincasa, senior cyber defense researcher at the Center for Security Studies at ETH Zürich university in Switzerland, expands on Kozy's work to track the Honkers' early days and how this group of skilled youths became some of China's most prolific cyber spies. 'This is not just about [Honkers] creating a hacker culture that was implicitly aligned with national security goals,' Benincasa says, 'but also the personal relations they created [that] we still see reflected in the APTs today.' Early Days The Honker community largely began when China joined the internet in 1994, and a network connecting universities and research centers across the country for knowledge-sharing put Chinese students online before the rest of the country. Like US hackers, the Honkers were self-taught tech enthusiasts who flocked to electronic bulletin boards (dial-up forums) to share programming and computer hacking tips. They soon formed groups like Xfocus, China Eagle Union, and The Honker Union of China, and came to be known as Red Hackers or Honkers, a name derived from the Mandarin word 'hong,' for red, and 'heike,' for dark visitor—the Chinese term for hacker. The groups were self-governing with loosely formed hierarchies and even had codes of ethics shaped by influential members like Taiwanese hacker Lin Zhenglong (known by his handle 'coolfire'). Lin believed hacking skills should be cultivated only to strengthen cyber defenses— to learn the ways of hackers in order to thwart them—and wrote an influential hacking manual 'to raise awareness about the importance of computer security, not to teach people how to crack passwords.' There were no simulated environments for hackers to build their skills at the time, so Honkers often resorted to hacking real networks. Lin didn't oppose this—hacking wasn't illegal in China except against government, defense, or scientific research networks—but he published a set of ethical guidelines advising hackers to avoid government systems or causing permanent damage and to restore systems to their original condition after Honkers finished hacking them. But these guidelines soon fell away, following a series of incidents involving foreign affronts to China. In 1998, a wave of violence in Indonesia broke out against ethnic Chinese there, and outraged Honker groups responded with coordinated website defacements and denial of service attacks against Indonesian government targets. The next year, after Taiwanese president Lee Teng-hui announced his 'Two-States Theory' challenging the Communist Party's "One China" doctrine, the Honkers defaced Taiwanese government sites with patriotic messages asserting the existence of a unified China. In 2000, after participants at a conference in Japan denied facts around the Nanjing Massacre, in which an estimated 300,000 Chinese were killed during Japan's 1930's occupation of the city, Honkers circulated a list of more than 300 Japanese government and corporate sites, along with email addresses of Japanese officials, and prompted members to target them. The so-called patriotic cyberwars gave the Honkers a common cause that forged an identity unique from western hacking groups, which the Honkers had emulated until then. Where western hackers were primarily motivated by curiosity, intellectual challenge, and bragging rights, the Honkers bonded over their common cause to help China 'rise up.' In the words of a China Eagle Union pledge, the Honkers vowed 'to put the interests of the Chinese nation above everything else.' The patriotic wars put China's Honkers on the map and inspired more to join them. Honker Union swelled to an estimated 80,000 members, Green Army to 3,000. Most were just enthusiasts and adventure seekers, but a subset stood out for leadership and hacking skills. A particularly influential group among these, whom Benincasa calls the Red 40, would go on to found or join many of China's top cybersecurity and tech firms and become integral to the state's cyberspy machine. There's no evidence that the government directed the patriotic hacking operations, says Benincasa, but their activity aligned with state interests, and they drew government attention. A retired PLA rear admiral and former professor at the PLA National Defense University praised their patriotism. The public also appeared to support it. A report claimed that 84 percent of internet users in China favored the patriotic hacking. But in April 2001, this began to change after a Chinese fighter jet clipped a US reconnaissance plane mid-air off the coast of Hainan and sparked an international incident. The collision killed the Chinese pilot and forced the US plane to land on Hainan, where the Chinese military seized the aircraft and held the crew for more than a week. The incident stoked nationalist sentiments among US and Chinese hackers alike, and both sides lobbed cyberattacks against the other country's systems. The Chinese government grew concerned over its lack of control of the Honkers and feared they could become a liability and escalate tensions. The Chinese Communist Party's official newspaper likened the hacking to "web terrorism,' and the head of the Internet Society of China issued a statement through China's official state media condemning it as well. The retired PLA rear admiral who previously praised the groups now warned they were a threat to international relations. The Honkers got the message, but with their patriotic mission shelved, the groups now became less cohesive. There were leadership clashes and disagreements over direction and priorities—some wanted to turn professional and launch cybersecurity companies to defend China's systems against attack, others wanted to go rogue and sell malicious tools. The former left to join tech firms like Baidu, Alibaba, and Huawei or cybersecurity firms like Venustech and Topsec. Some became entrepreneurs and launched their own security firms, like NSFocus and Knownsec, which became leaders in vulnerability research and threat intelligence. Some, however, shifted to cybercrime. And others, like Tan, became contract hackers for the PLA and MSS, or founded firms that served these operations. Honker Recruitment According to Benincasa, the PLA and MSS began hiring Honkers around 2003, but the recruitment became more structured and earnest following the 2006 hackings attributed to NCPH and Tan. The recruitment expanded during and after the 2008 Beijing Olympics, and was likely helped in 2009 with the passage of China's Criminal Law Amendment VII, which criminalized unauthorized intrusions into any network as well as the distribution of hacking tools. Hacker forums began to shutter, and some Honkers got arrested. Word spread that Tan was among them. According to Kozy, Tan faced seven and a half years in prison, though it's unclear if he served any time. Kozy believes he cut a deal and began work for the MSS. In 2011, it appears he launched an antivirus firm named Anvisoft, which may have served as a front for his MSS work. Former Honkers Zeng Xiaoyong (envymask) and Zhou Shuai (coldface) also became contractors for the PLA and MSS and worked on operations conducted by APT 41, APT 17, and APT 27, according to Benicassa. Some worked through shell companies, others worked through legitimate firms who acted as intermediaries to the intelligence services. Topsec and Venustech were two firms alleged to have assisted these efforts. Topsec employed a number of former Honkers, including the founder of the Honker Union of China, and Topsec's founder once acknowledged in an interview that the PLA directed his company. In 2015, Topsec was linked to state-sponsored cyber operations, including the Anthem Insurance breach in the US. Over the years, many tools used by China APT groups were built by Honkers, and the PLA and MSS mined them for vulnerability research and exploit development. In 1999, Huang Xin (glacier), a member of Green Army, released 'Glacier,' a remote-access trojan. The next year, he and Yang Yong (coolc) from XFocus released X-Scan, a tool to scan networks for vulnerabilities that is still used by hackers in China today. In 2003, two members of Honker Union released HTRAN, a tool to hide an attacker's location by rerouting their traffic through proxy computers, which has been used by China's APTs. Tan and fellow NCPH member Zhou Jibing (whg) are believed to have created the PlugX backdoor in 2008, which has been used by more than 10 Chinese APTs. According to Benincasa, Zhou developed it even further to produce ShadowPad, which has been used by APT 41 and others. Over the years, leaks and US indictments against former Honkers have exposed their alleged post-Honker spy careers, as well as China's use of for-profit firms for state hacking operations. The latter include i-Soon and Integrity Tech, both launched by former Honkers. Wu Haibo (shutdown), formerly of Green Army and 0x557, launched i-Soon in 2010. And last year, someone leaked internal i-Soon files and chat logs, exposing the company's espionage work on behalf of the MSS and MPS. In March this year, eight i-Soon employees and two MPS officers were indicted by the US for hacking operations that targeted US government agencies, Asian foreign ministries, dissidents, and media outlets. Integrity Tech, founded in 2010 by former Green Army member Cai Jingjing (cbird), was sanctioned by the US this year over ties to global infrastructure hacks. This year, the US also indicted former Green Army members Zhou and Wu for conducting state hacking operations and sanctioned Zhou over links to APT 27. In addition to engaging in state-sponsored hacking, he allegedly also ran a data-leak service selling some of the stolen data to customers, including intelligence agencies. This isn't unlike early-generation US hackers who also transitioned to become cybersecurity company founders, and also got recruited by the National Security Agency and Central Intelligence Agency or hired by contractors to perform hacking operations for US operations. But unlike the US, China's whole-of-society intelligence authorities have compelled some Chinese citizens and companies to collaborate with the state in conducting espionage, Kozy notes. 'I think that China from the beginning just thought, 'We can co-opt [the Honkers] for state interests.'' Kozy says. 'And … because a lot of these young guys had patriotic leanings to begin with, they were kind of pressed into service by saying, 'Hey you're going to be doing a lot of really good things for the country.' Also, many of them started to realize they could get rich doing it.'
