Somalia piracy facts , map and statistics | Strange Military Stories

Somalia piracy

Somalia Piracy occurs in the Gulf of Aden, Somali Sea and territorial waters.In the early modern times, the territory of Somaliland was occupied by three colonial players. One part was occupied by British, the second by Italy and the third by the French. The part occupied by the French became a new state called Djibouti. The rest of Somaliland gained independence in 1960. In 1960, there was a coup by Siad Barre wherein took over the control of the state. Opposition rebels began to fight against Siad Barre. 

Two prominent opposition groups emerged, namely, the Somalia National Movement (SNM) and the United Somalia Congress (USC). The two parties, SNM and USC, started controlling the northern and southern territories and succeeded in ousting Siad Barre in 1991. Despite the ousting of Barre, no united government emerged as factionalism grew to the extent where tribal warlords began to assert control over their clans, creating a situation of complete anarchy. The tribal clans turned to piracy to sustain themselves. Absence of a stable centralised government since 1991 has aggravated stability issues making Somalia politically fragile.

Somalia piracy ship

Due to rise in piracy, the cost of transporting goods has increased. The ships have started circumventing the area in favour of a longer route in deep sea to avoid piracy. Shipping firms have increased security on board of ships. The insurance firms have hiked the premiums. All this have led to an increase in the cost of trade. Nations have resorted to resolutions at the UN level. These UN level resolutions have legalised naval presence in Somali water. Countries have stationed their navies to protect the sea lines of communication. 

India has also likewise increased its naval presence in the Horn of Africa. India has urged the UN to track the ransom money being paid by help of international agencies like Interpol. India has been advocating that all joint anti-piracy operations (JAPO) be brought under the UN ambit and domestically all nations create laws to criminalise piracy. Indian Navy has been protecting sea lines of communication since 2008.

 The Indian coast guard has established new district head offices in Kavaratti and in Minicoy. Through naval presence in Mauritius, Seychelles and Maldives, India has been able to keep the pirates in check. India has also clarified in an annual report released by the Ministry of Defence that the Indian Ocean region is central to Indian interests and piracy in the region is a cause of serious concern to combat, which the Indian Navy is ready to play a critical role in the region.

The long-term solution lies in international collaboration to criminalise ransom payment and under take adequate social engineering to create a unified society in Somalia. A stable government, skills to population and creation of jobs in the fishing industry can help in a big way in future.

Somalia Piracy map

Somalia Piracy map

Somalia Piracy Statistics

Somalia Piracy Statistics

Somali Piracy attacks are calm from 2012.

For IMB Piracy & Armed Robbery Map 2020 Visit their official site 

Spotlight on the Gurkha regiments:beyond the call of duty

The war cry of the Gorkha Regiments is ‘Jai Maha Kali, Ayo Gorkhali’ .

Sam Manekshaw, India’s first field Marshall, who himself belonged to the eighth Gurkha Rifles regiment, once famously said: “If anyone tells you he is never afraid, he is a liar or he is a Gurkha.”

War cry of gorkha

Gorkhas are soliders native of Nepalese nationality,that was started recruiting by British army.The Gorkha word was originated from kingdom of nepal and expanded under  Prithvi narayan shah.they are associated with a forward curved nepali knife called khukuri have a reputation of fearless military power.

Around 1816,Anglo nepali war was fought between Gurkha Kingdom of nepal and British East India company .Treaty of Sugauli was signed in the end. Gorkhali soilder made an impression on British ,who called them Gurkhas.

   Gorkha empire before the 1816(Sugali treaty)

After India gained Independence, six Gurkha regiments were transferred from the British to the Indian Army as part of a tripartite agreement between Nepal, India and Britain. A seventh regiment was raised after Independence. Currently, there roughly are 32,000 Gurkhas who make up the 40 battalions serving in the seven regiments in the Indian Army. There is not a single military campaign launched by independent India, where the battalions have not left their indelible mark. In recent decades, many retired Indian Army officers would recall the sheer tenacity, courage and combat skills of Gurkha troops at the dizzy heights of the Siachen Glacier in Ladakh.

The Gorkha Regiments have been awarded 3 Param Vir Chakras, 33 Maha Vir Chakras, and 84 Vir Chakras during operations.

                    Gorkha regiment

Hitler once said “ If I had Gurkhas, no armies in the world will defeat me ”.

Also check the article on Importance of Pangong Tso Lake and Galwan Valley :China's presence in Ladakh

Top cybersecurity threats in 2020

What is Budapest convention?

The Budapest Convention on Cybercrime is the first international treaty for Internet and computer crime by harmonizing national laws, improving investigative techniques, and increasing cooperation among nations. It was open for signature in 2001 and came intoforce in 2004.As of September 2019, 64 states have ratified the convention.
The European Commission adopted a provision that requires all members of theEuropean Union all activities defined as “attack through interference with information systems” to be punishable as terrorist act, if their goal is “serious alteration or destruction of political, economic or social structures”.

Main cyber threats to any person or organisation

1. Phishing: Phishing is the act of attempting to acquire information, such as  username, passwords and credit card details  by masquerading as a trustworthy entity in an electronic communication. Phishing email may contain links to websites that are infected with malware. Phishing typically carried out by email spoofing or instant messaging.
   

   
   
                               Phishing mail
2. Vishing (Voice Phishing): The term is a combination of 'voice and 'phishing'. When phishing is done with the help of telephonic system, it is called vishing.
   

   
   
                                Vishing scam
3. Whaling: Several recent phishing attacks have been directed specifically at senior executives and other high profile targets within businesses, and the term whaling has been coined for these kinds of attacks.
   

   
   
                         How whaling work
4. Tabnabbing: Tabnabbing is one of the latest phishing technologies. It takes advantage of tabbed browsing(which uses multiple open tabs) that a user uses and silently redirects the user to the affected site. This technique operates in reverse to most phishing techniques as it does not directly take the user to the fraudulent site, but, instead, phishers load their fake page in one of the open tabs.
5. Spoofing: A spoofing attack is a situation in which one person or programme successfully masquerades as another by falsifying data and thereby gaining an illegitimate advantage. A spoofing attack involves one programme, system or website successfully masquerading as another by falsifying data and thereby being treated as a trusted system by a user or another programme. The purpose of this is usually to fool programmes, systems or users into revealing confidential information, such as user names and passwords, to the attacker.
6. Zombies: A zombie is a computer connected to the internet that has been compromised by a hacker, computer virus or trojan horse. It can be used to perform malicious tasks under remote direction. Botnets of zombie computers are often used to spread email spam and launch denial-of- service attacks. Most owners of zombie computers are unaware that their system is being used in this way. Because the owner tends to be unaware, these computers are metaphorically compared to zombies.
   

           zombie attack on computer system
7. Botnets: A botnet is a collection of internet connected programmes communicating with other similar programmes in order to perform tasks.Botnets sometimes compromise computers whose security defences have been breached and control conceded to a third party. Each such compromised device, known as a 'bot', is created when a computer is penetrated by software from a malware (malicious software) distribution.
8. Pharming: It is an attack to redirect a website's traffic to a different, fake website, where the individual's information is then compromised.
9. Drive-by: These are opportunistic attacks against specific weaknesses  within a system.
10. Spam: The unsolicited sending of bulk email for commercial purposes, is unlawful in some jurisdictions. While anti-spam laws are relatively new, limits on unsolicited electronic communications have existed for some time.

Top 12 Biggest Cyber Attacks in The World

Here is the list of top Cyber Attacks that happened in the world.

1.In 1988, a cyber attack had happened on embassies of Sri Lanka with 800 emails a day. The message which was appearing was “We are the Internet Black Tigers and we are doing this to disrupt your communications.” Department of Intelligence characterizes the attack as a terrorist attack on government computer systems.

2.On 3 June 1998, the "mealworm" hacking group attacked Web site of the Indian Bhabha Atomic Research Centre and stole e-mails from the same center. The three anonymous saboteurs through online interviews claimed that.

3.In July 1997, the leader of the Chinese hacker group claimed that temporarily disallowed Chinese satellite and announced that hackers set up a new global organization to protest and prevent investment by Western countries in China.

Red hacker alliance

                

      

4.In 1998, at the time of parliamentary elections in Sweden, Anonymous attacked the Web site of the political party pornographic sites. The same month, saboteurs attacked the website of the Mexican government in protest against government corruption and censorship. 

Romanian hackers on one occasion managed to intrude into the computer systems controlling the life support systems at an Antarctic research station, endangering the 58 scientists involved. Fortunately, their activity is stopped before any accident occurred. 

5.During the Kosovo conflict, Belgrade hackers conducted a denial of service attack (DoS) on the NATO servers. They typically used for diagnostic or control purposes or generated in response to errors in IP operations. 

6.During the Palestinian-Israeli cyberwar in 2000, ProPalestinian hackers used DoS tools to attack Israel’s ISP, Netvision managed to resist subsequent attacks by increasing its safety. 

ProPalestinian hackers attack Israel's ISP

7.In late 2008, when a  group of hackers called the “Greek Security Team”, “intrude” into CERN computer systems (European Center for Nuclear Research) so deep, that they were very close to taking control of one of the detectors at LHC (Large Hadron Collider), whose aim was to defame the experts responsible for the computer system, calling them “a group of students.” 

8.In April 2007,  the “Associated Press” reported that cyber attacks on critical information infrastructure on Estonia  DoS attacks carried out by different locations around the world (U.S., Canada, Brazil, Vietnam, and other locations). Of course, the locations of the computers involved in the attack do not always show the location of the direct participants in the attack. It is actually the location of the so-called “zombie” machines that act as intermediaries during the attack, without their knowledge or without any knowledge of the direct attackers. The attack completely put out the function of the Web sites of many governmental, media, and Þ financial institutions and leads to diplomatic talks which were a reason to examine the possibility of creating a NATO-supported research center capable of identifying the source of cyberattacks. In August 2008, a similar attack was conducted against Georgia. It is assumed that the attack was perpetrated by Russian hackers.

                    Estonia cyber-attack 2007
9.In 2007, hackers attacked the Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko's website. The attack was carried out by the radical Russian nationalist youth group, the Eurasian Youth Movement.

An analyst from the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) publicly revealed that in January 2008, hackers successfully stopped power supply networks in several U.S. cities. 

In November 2008, the Pentagon had a problem with cyber attacks carried out by computer virus, prompting the Department of Defense (DoD) to take the unprecedented step of banning the use of external hardware devices, such as flash memory devices and DVDs.Officially, the U.S. never felt a cyber-terrorist attack.