30 2GM Wednesday April 8 2020 | the times
Wo r l d
Migrants scale fence to
reach Spanish territory
Spain More than 50 people have
forced their way into Spain’s
north African city of Melilla in an
attempt to reach Europe. The
migrants fought off police as they
scaled the barbed-wire fences on
the border with Morocco. “They
used metal hooks and threw
rocks,” said José Manuel
Santiago, the local civil guard
chief. One of his officers was
lightly wounded. Two migrants
were arrested and four others
taken to hospital with fractured
ankles and deep cuts. Melilla is
under a coronavirus lockdown
and Mr Santiago said: “We will
continue to work with Morocco
to avoid this type of situation. We
will not let down our guard.”Islamist leader killed in
airstrike by US military
Somalia The US claims to have
killed a high-ranking leader of
the al-Shabaab Islamist group in
an airstrike. Yusuf Jiis was one of
three extremists who died in the
attack last week in Bay, southern
Somalia, military officials said.
Five others were said to have
been killed in a strike on Monday.
Al-Shabaab is allied to al-Qaeda
and controls southern and central
parts of the country. (AP)Campaign to plant a
billion mangrove trees
Singapore Activists are hoping to
plant a billion mangrove trees by
2025 with money raised online.
The Global Mangrove Trust,
based in Singapore, says that five
trees can be planted for the price
of a cup of coffee and plans to
launch an app and website to
fund restoration across India and
southeast Asia. Mangroves are
being destroyed up to five times
faster than other forests. (Reuters)Victims fear dictator
will be freed from jail
Chad Victims of the former
dictator Hissène Habré fear that
his temporary release from prison
will become permanent, one of
their lawyers has said. Habré, 78,
was jailed in Senegal in 2016 over
abuses committed during his rule,
but his supporters have been
campaigning for his release. On
Monday a judge gave him two
months of prison leave amid fears
over the coronavirus. (AFP)Woman, 101, rescued
after fleeing care home
Germany A 101-year-old woman
who slipped out of a care home in
Brunswick to visit her daughter
on her birthday had to be rescued
by police after getting lost in the
surrounding suburbs. She said
that she lived with her daughter,
but when the officers drove her
there they learnt that she had
moved into the care home two
weeks earlier, and she was taken
back to her room. (AFP)Hong Kong police
jailed for brutality
Hong Kong Five police officers
have been jailed for beating a
protester during the 2014
Umbrella Movement protests.
Ken Tsang Kin-chiu, 44, testified
at the Court of Final Appeal that
they had kicked, punched and
beat him with batons. In 2017
seven officers were found guilty
of assault but two had their
convictions quashed on appeal
last year.The Chinese government is facing
“unimaginable” losses of secret data
after its computers were hacked, a
cybersecurity company claimed.
Qihoo 360, a Beijing internet secur-
ity firm, said that Darkhotel, a shadowy
organisation that has been linked to
both North and South Korea, penetrat-
ed “Chinese enterprises and institu-
tions” in 19 countries.
The group took advantage of net-
works established to allow employees
to work at home during the coronavirus
pandemic. According to Qihoo 360,
China suffers ‘huge data losses to hackers’
China
Richard Lloyd Parry Asia Editor
Darkhotel exploited security flaws in a
virtual private network (VPN), an on-
line “tunnel” that allows people work-
ing from remote locations to connect
directly with a central computer and
work as if they were in their offices.
The company said in a report: “Chi-
nese enterprises and institutions
abroad have adopted the remote work-
ing mode and employees establish con-
tact with the headquarters and transfer
sensitive data through the VPN. If the
VPN server is compromised, the conse-
quences will be unimaginable. Once
VPNs are controlled by threat actors,
internal assets of enterprises will be ex-
posed to the public network, and theloss will be immeasurable.” By Qihoo
360’s account, Chinese organisations
were compromised in countries such as
Britain, Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan.
According to the NK News website,
they included the Chinese embassy in
North Korea.
Darkhotel is thought to have used a
weakness in a system update to estab-
lish a presence in government systems,
an attack called an advanced persistent
threat (APT).
The VPN was operated by another
Chinese company, Sangfor Technolo-
gies, and the hackers gained access to
more than 200 computer servers. The
attacks began last month on Chineseorganisations abroad and spread to
Beijing and Shanghai last week, Qihoo
360 said. The precise purpose of the
attacks, and what was stolen, is not
clear, but experts speculated they were
intended to glean information about
the Chinese response to Covid-19.
According to cybersecurity special-
ists, Darkhotel is based in east Asia,
possibly in Korea, and has been active
since 2007. It has perpetrated sophisti-
cated “cyberespionage” against busi-
ness travellers by hacking wifi net-
works at international hotels. The Rus-
sian cybersecurity firm Kaspersky said
that CEOs, senior vice-presidents and
sales and marketing directors have all
been targeted.
“[It] is behind cyberespionage cam-
paigns against executives, government
agencies, electronics and other sec-
tors,” Qihoo 360 said. “Its [cyber] foot-
prints are all over China, North Korea,
Japan, Russia, and other countries.”
A fortnight ago there were fears that
the group was starting cyberattacks
against the World Health Organisa-
tion. Cybersecurity experts have failed
to establish where Darkhotel originates
or who is behind it.
North Korea has an active cyber-
crime programme. The US Council on
Foreign Relations suggested that Dark-
hotel was linked to the South Korean
government.
A researcher at Kaspersky was scep-
tical about the Qihoo 360 report. “[It] is
full of speculation, no evidence this was
Darkhotel,” Brian Bartholomew said.
“There needs to be more supporting
data to support [such] claims.”It’s Confederacy
history month
in Mississippi
United States
Henry Zeffman Washington
The governor of Mississippi has
declared April “Confederate heritage
month”.
Shortly after issuing a stay-at-home
order to combat coronavirus, Tate
Reeves urged people to “honour all who
lost their lives” in the Civil War from
1861 to 1865. Mississippi fought in the
Confederacy to defend slavery.
“It is important for all Americans to
reflect upon our nation’s past, to gain
insight from our mistakes and success-
es,” read the proclamation signed by Mr
Reeves, 45. “The lessons learnt will
carry us through tomorrow if we strive
to understand and appreciate our heri-
tage and our opportunities.”
Mr Reeves has longstanding ties to
the Sons of Confederate Veterans, a
group that insists the war was not, in
fact, fought over slavery, according to
the Jackson Free Press. The group
shared the proclamation on its Face-
book page; the first that reporters learnt
of Mr Reeves’s order, which was not re-
leased to the public. The group added:
“God bless the Confederate Soldier. He
shall never be forgotten. Deo Vindice!”
The phrase, which means “with God as
our defender”, was the motto of the
Confederacy.
Mr Reeves’s predecessor, Phil Bryant,
made a similar proclamation in 2016,
although his version gave full responsi-
bility for the war to the southern states.
W Ralph Eubanks, a professor at the
University of Mississippi, tweeted: “As
coronavirus spiked across the state, the
governor proclaimed confederate heri-
tage month. If it’s not one viral plague
affecting the body politic of Mississippi,
it’s another one bearing the stars and
bars [flag].”