Syria is ruled by the Al Assad family since 1971 till date. Hafez Al-Assad, the father of the current ruler of Syria, Bashar al-Assad assumed power through a coup in 1970 and remained in power till he died on 10th June 2000. He was succeeded by his son Bashar al-Assad. The Al Assad family belongs to a minority Shia sect called Alawite which constitutes about 10 to 15 percent of the total population of Syria.
The Alawites had traditionally held most of the officer class positions in the military under the French Mandate Syria during the 1930s and 1940s. However it was the regime of Hafez that gave Alawites a disproportionate share in the country’s financial and economic structure as well as the military due to ultra-loyalty to the regime.
It was, however, the death of Hafez, which brought to light the complex equation between the strongly knit Alawite minority influence in Syria’s financial and military interests and the ruling Assad family. Mohammad Makhlouf, father of Rami Makhlouf, Syria’s richest man, and his sister Anissa, widow of Hafiz Al Assad had at that time ensured that the transfer of power to Bashar al-Assad went on smoothly.
Bashar al-Assad had to grapple with the mass movement dubbed Arab Spring in 2011 when people rose against the authoritarian rule of Bashar Al Assad and the preferential treatment received by the Alawites in the regime. The Arab spring later took the form of a civil war which is still raging in parts of Syria. Throughout this difficult period Alawite community stood solidly behind Bashar Al Assad. There was no bigger backer of Bashar Al Assad during all the ups and down, than his cousin and the richest man of Syria Rami Makhlouf.
However for the first time the absolute support for Bashar Al Assad in the tightly knit Alawite community seems to be shaking. In a recent Facebook video, Rami Makhlouf, is seen making allegations that the Syrian regime of Bashar has been going after him and his company assets because he raised voice for Alawite families which lost members while serving the regime, but were left to fend for themselves. There have been unconfirmed reports that Rami has been under house arrest since last summer.
Multiple reasons have been cited for the Assad governments’ sudden outburst against Rami. Some experts suggest it is because of Rami’s immense wealth, which in turn makes him a possible rival to Bashar, or the lavish lifestyle of the Makhlouf’s, as evidenced by Rami’s son Mohammad who was seen boasting about their wealth and showing off pictures of his private jet to multiple newspapers around the world. Whatever be the reason behind the regime going after Rami, it is quite evident that they are under severe pressure to churn out cash to revive the dwindling currency. While his son might have dented his family’s rather away from limelight public image with his public show-off stunts, it appears that Rami himself has not been up to the mark in rolling out enough credit for the Assad regime.
The ongoing saga of Rami Makhlouf brings to light the complex relationship between the Assad regime and the dominant Alawite minority, indicating a clear rift between them. A former Syrian diplomat who defected from the Syrian Embassy in Washington in 2012 said “It’s very big. Rami was in the inner circle from day one of Bashar’s rule. He’s built into the regime. To take him out would be like a divorce.”
It will be interesting to see whether the Alawite community will continue to back Bashar Al Assad or Rami Makhlouf will be able to sway a significant section of the community to take a stand against Bashar Al Assad. Watch this space for further updates
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SolarWinds Attack and its implication for U.S. Security: Sabotage or espionage?
SolarWinds, a publicly listed Texas-based company with a value of more than $6 billion, has a very reputed customer list including multiple U.S. government agencies. The company develops softwares for businesses and agencies to help manage and monitor their networks, systems and IT infrastructure. The company is a service provider to over 425 of the Fortune 500 companies, top 5 U.S. accounting firms, all major U.S. telecom providers, the U.S. treasury, several global universities and educational institutions, the NSA and the White House.
A set of hackers managed to sneak a malicious code into the software update of SolarWinds for a tool called “Orion”. Earlier, in 2020, the hackers had injected malware into the updates of Orion which were released between March and June of 2020. On 5th of Jan, 2021, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Cybersecurity and Infrastructure security Agency (CISA), the Office of the director of National Intelligence (ODNI) and the National Security Agency (NSA) made an official joint statement stating, "an Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) actor, likely Russian in origin, is responsible for most or all of the recently discovered, ongoing cyber compromises of both government and non-governmental networks". U.S. government agencies like The Pentagon, National institute of Health, FBI, DHS, the Department of Energy and the Department of Veterans affairs were some significant users of Orion. In fact, in August 2020, the Department of Veterans affairs renewed its Orion license in a 2.8-million-dollar order. The Department of Veterans affairs has been heavily involved in COVID-19 relief.
The Orion hack began as early as March 2020. Over 18,000 customers had installed the compromised software which implies that these customers were vulnerable to spy operations throughout 2020. The malware inserted in the updates provided remote access of an organization’s network to the elite hackers. Since the malware was undetected for months, it gave the hackers an opportunity to obtain information from their targets. In fact, the hackers could also monitor emails and other internal communications. FireEye, the cybersecurity company who were the first to discover the breach describes the capability of the malware, from initially lying dormant up to two weeks, to hiding in plain sight by masquerading its investigation as “Orion Activity”. In 2016, Russian Military hackers used a method called “supply chain” to infect companies performing business in Ukraine with a hard-drive wiping virus called NotPetya. This attack is considered to be one of the most damaging cyber-attacks till date. The infiltration tactic used in the current hack is also identified to be similar to the “supply chain” method.
The Orion software framework contained a backdoor that communicated via HTTP to third party servers. Cybersecurity firm, FireEye has been tracking the trojanized version of Orion plug-in as SUNBURST.
FireEye Logo
FireEye described the use of SUNBURST backdoor on one of its blogs published on 13th December 2020. It stated,
“After an initial dormant period of up to two weeks, it retrieves and executes commands, called “Jobs”, that include the ability to transfer files, execute files, profile the system, reboot the machine, and disable system services. The malware masquerades its network traffic as the Orion Improvement Program (OIP) protocol and stores reconnaissance results within legitimate plugin configuration files allowing it to blend in with legitimate SolarWinds activity. The backdoor uses multiple obfuscated blocklists to identify forensic and anti-virus tools running as processes, services, and drivers.”
FireEye described the attack through the SUNBURST backdoor as “highly evasive”. Meanwhile, SolarWinds is facing a class action lawsuit filed by a stakeholder of the IT Infrastructure Management software company in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas on 4th Jan 2021. The lawsuit is filed against SolarWinds’ ex-president, Kevin Thompson and chief financial officer, J. Barton Kalsu on the grounds of violating Federal Securities laws under Securities Exchange Act of 1934. The complaint states that SolarWinds Company failed to disclose that "since mid-2020, Orion monitoring products had a vulnerability that allowed hackers to compromise the server upon which the products ran". The complaint also mentioned that SolarWinds update server had a fairly weak and easily accessible password, ‘solarwinds123’.
Microsoft’s internal security research team found evidence that the same hackers had accessed some internal source code in their company’s systems. Microsoft mentioned that the attempted activities were beyond just the presence of malware SolarWinds code in their environment. Microsoft has “an open source like culture” which allows teams within Microsoft to view the source code. The company acknowledges that it is a threat model but they are downplaying the risk by saying “just viewing the source code should not cause any elevated risk”.
The Russian Hackers have also managed to breach the network of Austin City, Texas. The breach dates back to at-least mid of October 2020. The hackers have seemed to target the U.S. Treasury, Departments of Commerce and Homeland Security, The Pentagon, Cybersecurity firm FireEye, and SolarWinds. The breach of the network of the Austin city is an apparent win for Russian hackers. Theoretically, the compromise could have helped them access sensitive information in accordance with the city governance, elections, city police and by excavating deeper, the hackers can practically burrow inside energy, water and airport networks of the city.
Berserk Bear, the hacking outfit that is currently believed to be behind Austin’s breach appears to have used Austin’s network as grounds to stage larger attacks. Berserk Bear also known as BROMINE inter alia several names is believed to have been responsible for a series of breaches of significant U.S. infrastructures in the past year.
The attacks on SolarWinds, U.S. government and FireEye have been linked to another Russian group called APT29 also popularly known as Cozy Bear. Berserk Bear is allegedly a unit of Russian federal Security Service (FSB). Cozy Bear is known to be affiliated with the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service, or SVR. FSB and SVR are considered to be successors of the Committee of State Security of the Soviet-era which was widely known as the KGB.
The Austin Council seems to have been aware of the breach from October 2020. The FBI and CISA had published an initial advisory warning of “advanced persistent threat actors” (APTs) on October 9th, 2020. The advisory warned the city council of APTs targeting state and local governments. On October 22nd, a follow-up advisory was published in which both agencies accredited the breach to Berserk Bear. CISA published a heat map listing the types of organizations that were breached, scanned or targeted by Berserk Bear. The reputation of Berserk Bear of lurking fit their common pattern of espionage-oriented attacks. Sami Ruohonen, a researcher at Finnish cybersecurity firm F-Secure said that the adversaries have already been in the network for more than a couple of months before someone discovers their existence. Ruohonen also mentioned that this technique is specially preferred by APT groups because, the longer they go unnoticed, the longer they have a remote access to the network. F-Secure, in a report published in 2019, compared Berserk Bear and similar groups to the cyber equivalent of sleeper cells.
The cybersecurity experts have warned Austin city and the U.S that Berserk Bear hackers are not just involved in espionage and sabotage. They can gear up at any moment and create havoc in the United States. These Russian Hackers can cause city blackouts, disturbance in water supply and can even disrupt COVID-19 relief. Vikram Thakur, a technical director at Symantec who has tracked Berserk Bear for years quotes, “We should be cognizant of the level of information that they have, turning on valves or closing valves, things of that sort — they have the expertise to do it.”
SolarWinds replaced their ex-CEO Kevin Thomson with Mr Sudhakar Ramakrishnan. Unlike his predecessor Thomson, who is an accountant by training, Ramakrishnan comes from a security background having led Pulse Secure in the recent past. The new CEO publicly stated that the company will be making 5 critical changes to put security front and center. The company also hired ex-CISA chief Chris Krebs and Facebook’s former security lead, Alex Stamos. Krebs and Stamos work as independent consultants to help the company coordinate its crisis response. Krebs told the Financial Times that it could even take years to uncover the full extent of the hack. On the brighter side, the new CEO mentioned that the company has engaged several cybersecurity experts to assist SolarWinds in its efforts to become more secure. We can hope that, with better expertise, vision and understanding of threat and vulnerability management, the company is now headed towards a better future.
