Alan W. Dowd is a Senior Fellow with the American Security Council Foundation, where he writes on the full range of topics relating to national defense, foreign policy and international security. Dowd’s commentaries and essays have appeared in Policy Review, Parameters, Military Officer, The American Legion Magazine, The Journal of Diplomacy and International Relations, The Claremont Review of Books, World Politics Review, The Wall Street Journal Europe, The Jerusalem Post, The Financial Times Deutschland, The Washington Times, The Baltimore Sun, The Washington Examiner, The Detroit News, The Sacramento Bee, The Vancouver Sun, The National Post, The Landing Zone, Current, The World & I, The American Enterprise, Fraser Forum, American Outlook, The American and the online editions of Weekly Standard, National Review and American Interest. Beyond his work in opinion journalism, Dowd has served as an adjunct professor and university lecturer; congressional aide; and administrator, researcher and writer at leading think tanks, including the Hudson Institute, Sagamore Institute and Fraser Institute. An award-winning writer, Dowd has been interviewed by Fox News Channel, Cox News Service, The Washington Times, The National Post, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and numerous radio programs across North America. In addition, his work has been quoted by and/or reprinted in The Guardian, CBS News, BBC News and the Council on Foreign Relations. Dowd holds degrees from Butler University and Indiana University. Follow him at twitter.com/alanwdowd.

ASCF News

Scott Tilley is a Senior Fellow at the American Security Council Foundation, where he writes the “Technical Power” column, focusing on the societal and national security implications of advanced technology in cybersecurity, space, and foreign relations.

He is an emeritus professor at the Florida Institute of Technology. Previously, he was with the University of California, Riverside, Carnegie Mellon University’s Software Engineering Institute, and IBM. His research and teaching were in the areas of computer science, software & systems engineering, educational technology, the design of communication, and business information systems.

He is president and founder of the Center for Technology & Society, president and co-founder of Big Data Florida, past president of INCOSE Space Coast, and a Space Coast Writers’ Guild Fellow.

He has authored over 150 academic papers and has published 28 books (technical and non-technical), most recently Systems Analysis & Design (Cengage, 2020), SPACE (Anthology Alliance, 2019), and Technical Justice (CTS Press, 2019). He wrote the “Technology Today” column for FLORIDA TODAY from 2010 to 2018.

He is a popular public speaker, having delivered numerous keynote presentations and “Tech Talks” for a general audience. Recent examples include the role of big data in the space program, a four-part series on machine learning, and a four-part series on fake news.

He holds a Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Victoria (1995).

Contact him at stilley@cts.today.

Hamas hackers attempted to 'catfish' Israeli soldiers

Tuesday, February 18, 2020

Categories: ASCF News Emerging Threats Cyber Security

Hamas hackers have targeted Israeli soldiers’ phones with fake social media profiles, according to the Israel Defense Forces.

On Sunday, the IDF tweeted that the Palestinian terror group created fake profiles, which included photos of women, in an attempt to hack the phones of Israeli soldiers. “What Hamas didn’t know was that Israeli intelligence caught onto their plot, tracked the malware & downed Hamas’ hacking system,” it added, with the hashtag #CatfishCaught.

“Catfishing” is the creation of fake identities on social media to deceive people.

Hamas controls the Gaza strip.

Citing the Israeli military, the Times of Israel reports that IDF and Israel’s Shin Bet security service joined forces to foil the hacking attempt. Israeli forces took down the Hamas servers used in the attempt this weekend, it said. The IDF does not believe that Hamas obtained any “significant intelligence” in its catfishing attempt, the Times of Israel reported.

The hacking attempt was the third Hamas effort to “catfish” Israel soldiers in recent years, according to the Times of Israel.

Cybersecurity is a critical part of Israel’s defense operations. In a rare public speech in 2017 Nadav Argaman, the head of the Shin Bet explained how the country has harnessed tech to prevent "lone-wolf" terrorist attacks.

Photo: © PeopleImages/E+/Getty Images

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