How China Extended Its Repression into an American City | Terrorism Threats on the Rise 3 Years After Afghanistan Exit | U.S. Doesn’t Have the Troops for Another War, and more

Between November 2023 and July 2024, the attackers compromised Mongolian government websites and used the access to conduct “watering hole” attacks, in which anyone with a vulnerable device who loads a compromised website gets hacked. The attackers set up the malicious infrastructure to use exploits that “were identical or strikingly similar to exploits previously used by commercial surveillance vendors Intellexa and NSO Group,” Google’s TAG wrote on Thursday. The researchers say they “assess with moderate confidence” that the campaigns were carried out by APT29.
These spyware-esque hacking tools exploited vulnerabilities in Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android that had largely already been patched. Originally, they were deployed by the spyware vendors as unpatched, zero-day exploits, but in this iteration, the suspected Russian hackers were using them to target devices that hadn’t been updated with these fixes.

Family Members of 9/11 Victims Call on Harris and Trump to Oppose U.S.-Saudi Deal  (Aaron Navarro, CS News)
More than 3,000 family members of victims from the 9/11 terrorist attacks are calling on both Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump to oppose any Middle East peace deal with Saudi Arabia until the U.S. government holds the country accountable for any role it might have played on Sept. 11.
In the letter first obtained by CBS News, the families point to 1999 video footage of a Saudi government agent “casing” the U.S. Capitol as proof of Saudi involvement. “60 Minutes” reported on the video for the first time in June.
“As you campaign to become the next President of the United States, we ask you to pledge that you will not endorse any Middle East peace deal involving Saudi Arabia unless it fully addresses the role of the Saudi Arabian government in the 9/11 attacks,” the letter reads. “Justice and closure for the victims and their families must be a priority in our foreign policy.”
The letter was organized by 9/11 Justice, an organization formed in 2022 to represent families of victims of the terrorist attacks in New York, Virginia and Pennsylvania. The group has sued the Saudi government and pushed the U.S. government to declassify all remaining documents about 9/11.

Terrorism Threats on the Rise 3 Years After Afghanistan Exit  (Brad Dress, The Hill)
Threats from terrorist groups such as ISIS are again surging across the globe three years after the U.S. withdrew from Afghanistan, an exit that marked a new phase in the war on terrorism.
ISIS has claimed responsibility for several deadly attacks this year across the world, from Turkey to Iran and Russia. ISIS-affiliated actors also carried out a stabbing attack in Germany this month and threatened a Taylor Swift concert in Austria.
The renewed ISIS threat, along with the proliferation of terrorist groups across the Middle East, Central Asia and African Sahel regions, underscores how the U.S. and its allies are struggling to combat these groups in an era that is also marked by threats from state actors, including Russia, Iran, North Korea and China.
Still, in Washington and among the broader American public, there is no appetite for long-term foreign invasion missions to combat terrorism on the heels of the 20-year war in Afghanistan or the eight-year war in Iraq.
Instead, a smaller number of U.S. troops are deployed in countries willing to host an American presence, ostensibly giving the U.S. an “over-the-horizon” view on threats. But that has proven a difficult strategy to manage, with Iraq looking to possibly expel U.S. forces and African nations giving Americans and Europeans the boot after falling to military coups.
While not at the height it was before, the terrorism threat is again growing, and security experts worry the U.S. is falling back into a reactive posture.