Inside the Ring: CIA director battle

In 2006, Hawaii-based Pacific Command official Ronald N. Montaperto, a former DIA China analyst, pleaded guilty to the illegal possession of classified documents and admitted in a plea agreement that he passed “top secret” information to Chinese intelligence officials.

Israel-Hamas cyberwar

One new element of the kinetic war raging between Israel and the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas in Gaza is the back and forth electronic and Internet warfare taking place.

Since the conflict began seven days ago with Israel killing a top Hamas military commander, some 40 Hamas leaders have been killed in the campaign, some of them by precision bombings of cars on the streets. The conflict began after months of Palestinian rocket attacks into Israel.

In addition to the rocket and bombing strikes, both sides are waging cyberwarfare.

The Hamas news portal Safa was attacked around Nov. 17, presumably by Israeli hackers, and shut down for several days.

The anarchist hacker group Anonymous sided with Hamas, a designated U.S. terrorist group that runs the government in Gaza. Anonymous has claimed responsibility for numerous attacks against Israeli websites and announced that it had declare cyberwar on Israel by posting the personal data online of about 5,000 Israeli officials.

The cyberwar also has raged on Twitter and Facebook, with the social media used as launching points for information and attacks.

Israel’s military and intelligence services are known to be developing sophisticated cyberwarfare capabilities. Iran, which has supplied arms and missiles to Hamas, also is developing cyberwarfare weapons, and recently was blamed for cyberattacks on U.S. financial institutions.

China military drills

Amid heightened tensions between China and its Asian neighbors, China’s military is holding naval exercises in the Bohai Sea — not far from Japan.

The exercises are being closely watched, as China announced a sea-closure area near the nuclear submarine base at Huludao, where China builds its Type 094 ballistic-missile submarines, called the Jin class by the Pentagon.

The exercises began last week and will continue through Friday.

Based on the announced closure area, U.S. officials said one possible activity could be a second JL-2 submarine-launched ballistic-missile test.

China last conducted a JL-2 test in the same area Aug. 21.

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