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Evelyn Varley has always been ambitious and clever. As a girl, she earned a scholarship to a prestigious academy well above her parents’ means, gaining her a best friend from one of England’s wealthiest families. In 1939, with an Oxford degree in hand and war looming, Evelyn finds herself recruited into an elite MI5 counterintelligence unit.

Beguiling and dark, An Unlikely Spy is a fascinating story of deception and sacrifice, based on the history of real people within the British intelligence community.

After her young husband’s untimely death, Army veteran Cassie Gale decides to take a few days of solitude in the Alaskan wilderness before she starts her new job. But when she fails to show up on her first day and her dog is discovered injured at her wrecked campsite, her father knows that this is much more than a camping trip gone awry.

Timely, electrifying, and perfect for fans of Vince Flynn and Brad Thor, Sleeping Bear clamps you in its jaws and doesn’t let go. A fierce, relentless beast of a novel” (Tess Gerritsen, New York Times bestselling author).

A Fifth Avenue address, parties at the Plaza, two healthy sons, and the ideal husband: what looks like a perfect life for Katharina Edgeworth is anything but. It’s 1954, and the post-war American dream has become a nightmare

A born and bred New Yorker, Katharina is the daughter of immigrants, Ivy-League-educated, and speaks four languages. As a single girl in 1940s Manhattan, she is a translator at the newly formed United Nations, devoting her days to her work and the promise of world peace―and her nights to cocktails and the promise of a good time.

With the fast-paced twists of a classic spy thriller, and a nuanced depiction of female experience,A Woman of Intelligence shimmers with intrigue and desire.

Parizad rose through his nation’s military to become a lethal soldier and brilliant tactical commander. Now a general, he leads Quds Force, an extremist terrorist organization targeting America and its western allies.

The United States has just uncovered a biochemical weapon developed by Parizad’s group. A viral agent, it attacks a person’s nervous system and renders them susceptible to mind control. Parizad plans to unleash the weapon in Washington D. C. on Inauguration Day during the swearing in of the country’s first female president, turning civilians into weapons.

Sinclair pursues Parizad across the Middle East, Europe, and in the U.S., only to discover a deeper conspiracy―a revelation that his wife may not have died from cancer but was murdered.

Scot Harvath is having his best summer ever. With a cottage on the fjord, a boat, and his beautiful girlfriend Sølvi, he’s got everything he could possibly want. But out of vacation days and long overdue back home, America’s top spy has a decision to make—return, or submit his resignation.

When his deadly past comes calling, though, he’ll be left with no choice at all.

Leaving his favorite Oslo café, Harvath watches as a ghost climbs out of a taxi—a man he killed years ago, halfway around the world. How is he still alive? And what is he doing in Norway?

In a race against time that will take him high above the Arctic Circle, Harvath is tested in ways he has never imagined and pushed to a limit few human beings could ever endure.

In the autumn of 1948, Iris Digby vanishes from her London home with her American diplomat husband and their two children. The world is shocked by the family’s sensational disappearance. Were they eliminated by the Soviet intelligence service? Or have the Digbys defected to Moscow with a trove of the West’s most vital secrets?

Sinclair pursues Parizad across the Middle East, Europe, and in the U.S., only to discover a deeper conspiracy―a revelation that his wife may not have died from cancer but was murdered.

The New York Times bestselling author of The Summer Wives returns with a gripping and profoundly human story of Cold War espionage and family devotion through Our Woman in Moscow.

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi will visit Pacific Island nations including the Solomons, weeks after Beijing and Honiara sealed a security pact that has stirred unease in Australia and the region.

Wang will also travel to Kiribati, Samoa, Fiji, Tonga, Vanuatu and Papua New Guinea, as well as East Timor, during the trip from Thursday to June 4, China’s foreign ministry said on Tuesday.

Newly declassified U.S. intelligence shows that a Russian naval blockade has halted maritime trade at Ukrainian ports, in what world leaders call a deliberate attack on the global food supply chain that has raised fears of political instability and shortages unless grain and other essential agricultural products are allowed to flow freely from Ukraine.

China is secretly building a naval facility in Cambodia for the exclusive use of its military, with both countries denying that is the case and taking extraordinary measures to conceal the operation, Western officials said.

Weapons sent to Ukraine after Russia’s invasion in February will end up in the global hidden economy and in the hands of criminals, the head of Interpol has said.

Jürgen Stock says once the conflict ends, a wave of guns and heavy arms will flood the international market and he urged Interpol’s member states, especially those supplying weapons, to cooperate on arms tracing.

San Francisco — Innovation by cyber adversaries and within the commercial spyware sector are among the key aspects making digital security increasingly difficult for the U.S. intelligence community to effectively manage, the nation’s spy chief said Monday.

The somber assessment comes as the federal government and the private sector remain on a heightened state of alert about online attacks spiraling out of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the ever–present threat of digital piracy or assault by China and other malicious actors.

I begin tonight by acknowledging the Traditional Custodians of the land on which we meet and pay my respects to their Elders past, present and emerging.

olleagues, the Honourable Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus, QC, distinguished guests and to the broader law enforcement audience here tonight: Many of you have travelled several hours to get to Australia and your journey is no doubt a reminder of our unique location in the Asia Pacific Region.

The close alliance that brings us here today was borne out of the military affiliations formed during World War II.

Controversial facial recognition firm Clearview AI has been handed a $13.3 million fine by the UK privacy watchdog following a joint investigation with its Australian counterpart.

Clearview AI sells a facial recognition app which allows users to upload a photo of an individual and have it matched with images in the company’s database of at least three billion photos, which it automatically scrapes from social media platforms and a range of other sources online.

When Moritz Kraemer first heard about the new monkeypox outbreak spreading through the UK, Europe, and the US, it was not through conventional scientific channels, or from the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA), but via Twitter. As each suspected case was reported, and infectious disease experts shared their theories in real time, Kraemer—an epidemiologist at the University of Oxford who specializes in modeling the spread of infectious diseases—became increasingly concerned.

Your passwords are terrible. Year after year, the most popular passwords leaked in data breaches are 123456, 123456789, and 12345—‘qwerty’ and ‘password’ come close behind—and using these weak passwords leaves you vulnerable to all sorts of hacking. Weak and repeated passwords are one of the most significant risks to your online life.

Do you consider yourself an above-average decision maker? Does logic drive most, if not all, of your security risk mitigation decisions? Think again.

Most security professionals believe that they are better decision makers than the average person, but recent research has proven this is not the case. In fact, security leaders often fall prey to the same biases as the majority of the population, and they may find themselves relying on gut feelings and prior experience instead of facts and probability. Unlike most people, however, security professionals’ biases could have significant ramifications on risk management and safety decisions.

The Australian Taxation Office (ATO) has issued a warning over the rise of tax scams in Australia as another financial year draws to a close.

The federal body said it had identified and taken action against 595 websites impersonating its online services in the last 12 months.

According to the ATO, the fake sites are designed to steal passwords, personal information and identity documents, such as passports and driver licences.

Unidentified operatives have been using the fitness tracking app Strava to spy on members of the Israeli military, tracking their movements across secret bases around the country and potentially observing them as they travel the world on official business.

By placing fake running “segments” inside military bases, the operation – the affiliation of which has not been uncovered – was able to keep tabs on individuals who were exercising on the bases, even those who have applied the strongest possible account privacy settings.

Gain vital cybersecurity insights from our analysis of over 23,000 incidents and 5,200 confirmed breaches from around the world—to help minimize risk and keep your business safe.

This paper explores the use of publicly available information and open source intelligence for national security purposes, and provides recommendations for future policy development.

Each year, thousands of ships travel across the globe, transporting everything from passengers to consumer goods like wheat and oil.

But just how busy are global maritime routes, and where are the world’s major shipping lanes? This map by Adam Symington paints a macro picture of the world’s maritime traffic by highlighting marine traffic density around the world.

It uses data from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in partnership with The World Bank, as part of IMF’s World Seaborne Trade Monitoring System.

Data spans from Jan 2015 to Feb 2021 and includes five different types of ships: commercial ships, fishing ships, oil & gas, passenger ships, and leisure vessels.

The Russian offensive against Ukraine has been dogged by a cascade of intelligence failures at every level of command. This has ranged from completely failing to assess the likelihood and shape of a unified Western response and Ukraine’s determined resistance, to inadequate preparations for Ukraine’s ‘mud season’ and a bewildering lack of any effective operational security (OPSEC) measures. The irony of this, of course, is that Vladimir Putin’s ruling coterie is numerically and functionally dominated by former intelligence officers.

In response to President Joe Biden’s June 2021 executive order, many federal agencies—from NASA to the Department of Defense—released plans to pursue diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) in their day-to-day operations. In a recent comment on these efforts, one senior Defense Department official said he hopes “as many leaders and members of the total force as possible see [these] efforts as a force multiplier.”

EXPERT PERSPECTIVE — When I was just starting out at CIA, there was an analyst in my group who worked in a particularly methodical way. As she read all the various intelligence reports, she would type on a sheet of paper (and it was a typewriter then) the excerpts that she considered meaningful. She would then cut the paper into strips, so that each strip contained just one excerpt, and filed them in notebooks. When it came time to write an article about a particular issue, she would pull out the relevant strips of paper, organize them into paragraphs, write connecting and transition language and an occasional topic sentence, and, voila! She had an analytic product.

In a conversation about his debut novel, a former CIA analyst and McKinsey alumnus discusses his writing process, his work experiences, and an infamous hot dog machine.

Over a period of about 18 months, David McCloskey, a former McKinsey consultant, debriefed himself on his experiences as an analyst in the CIA at the turn of the Arab Spring. He sat down and recounted the sights, sounds, personalities, and politics of both Langley, Virginia, and the Middle East of the 2010s. The resulting debut novel, Damascus Station (W. W. Norton & Company, October 2021), surprises, entertains, and informs—as the author intended.

The top job: what is it like? What are the joys and pains of leadership? This is not like leading a business, though, or a soccer team, this is protecting the country and its citizens from terrorism, espionage, sabotage, and external interference. Such is the charge of the Australian Security Intelligence Organization (ASIO).

To address these questions, Andrew sat down with Mike Burgess, who was formerly the Director-General of the Australian Signals Directorate (ASD), comparable to GCHQ and the NSA – an agency would serve in for over 20 years. They also discussed the Australian intelligence landscape and its most important alliances, such as the U.S. and FIVE EYES and some of its important regional relationships.

A browser extension bug let malicious websites spy on webcams, hackers threaten the global food supply chain, and Michael Fish (not that one…) hacked into his female classmates’ online accounts, hunting for nude photos and videos.

All this and much much more is discussed in the latest edition of the “Smashing Security” podcast by computer security veterans Graham Cluley and Carole Theriault, joined this week by Mark Stockley.