September 2022

Montenegro Blames Slowed Court Processes on Cyber-Attacks

Posted on September 7, 2022January 26, 2023 by BIRD

Montenegro’s Judicial Council said on Wednesday that the court system had been slowed down by the massive cyber-attacks which have hit the country since August 22.

The digital infrastructure of a major part of Montenegro’s public administration has been offline since August 22 following an unprecedented series of a ransomware attacks on government servers.

The Judicial Council told BIRN that some trials had to be postponed due to technical problems.

“The reason for the postponement of certain trials lies in the fact that a small number of users are unable to access the Judicial Information System, PRIS, and enter the necessary data due to problems with the links provided by the Ministry of Public Administration.

“We are actively working on finding alternative ways to access the system for users who do not currently have it, until the establishment of a regular operating regime,” the Judicial Council’s press office said.

“So far, no data were compromised in the court system, nor was direct damage to the system detected,” it added.

On September 5, the Higher Court in Podgorica postponed the so-called “coup plot” trial, as it couldn’t provide technical conditions for the trial. It postponed the trial to November 28.

After the second cyber-attack on August 26, certain services were switched off temporarily for security reasons, causing problems in the functioning of the public administration. The websites of the government and the president are still offline.

Courts and the prosecution service are also working only offline, as are the State Property Administration, the Central Register of Business Entities and the fiscal system.

Government servers were hit with ransomware, a type of malware attack in which the attacker locks and encrypts the target’s data and important files and then demands a payment to unlock and decrypt the data. The head of State Cyber Security Service, Dusan Polovic, said on September 5, that some service could be switched to online mode in future days, stressing that a team from the FBI had joined the investigation.

“In the next few days, we expect developments. Citizens should understand the complexity of the attack. The situation we have, many countries have gone through,” Polovic told television Vijesti.

After the second wave of cyber-attacks on August 26, the Agency for National Security, ANB, accused Russian services of organizing the attacks. On September 1, Russia’s Foreign Ministry dismissed the claims as part of a “continuous policy of dismantling relations with Moscow in order to please the United States”.

On August 31, Public Administration Minister Marash Dukaj blamed Cuba Ransomware for the attack. He said this group had created a special virus for this attack, costing about 10 million dollars and which has not been used anywhere so far.

BIRN Hit by Cyber-Attacks After Turkish Fraudster Investigation

Posted on September 5, 2022January 26, 2023 by BIRD

The Balkan Investigative Reporting Network and its Greek partner media outlet Solomon’s websites came under DDoS attack by hackers from early Saturday morning onwards in the wake of the publication of an investigation into a controversial Turkish businessman.

The attack began on Saturday morning and continued into Sunday. BIRN’s server was not compromised but at one point, BIRN’s flagship Balkan Insight website was completely inaccessible.

“The attack started on Saturday at 7.30am. That’s when the alarms went off, and around eight we had already started to react. It was a fierce battle, I never experienced a fight like that,” said an IT security expert whose company works for BIRN.

“At one point on Saturday, we had 35 million different IP connections from all over the world. The site was brought down by the number of connections,” he explained.

BIRN’s technical experts determined that the attack was specifically aimed at bringing down the page on which the investigation into how a Turkish businessman who had been convicted of fraud bought his way to honorary Greek citizenship.

By Sunday evening, the attack had been repelled. But Solomon’s website remained under attack and was still offline on Monday morning.

Solomon, a Greek independent media outlet which worked with BIRN on the investigation, initially announced on Twitter on Saturday that it was experiencing difficulties because of a “massive DDoS attack on our site”.

A distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack is a malicious attempt to disrupt the normal traffic of a targeted server, service or network by overwhelming the target or its surrounding infrastructure with a flood of Internet traffic.

It is often used in attempts to target specific content published online and strike a blow at websites that need time to recover from such huge amounts of visits.

The investigation believed to have caused the DDoS attack looks at the case of Yasam Ayavefe, a Turkish businessman who was convicted of defrauding online gamblers in his home country in 2017 and arrested in Greece in 2019 while trying to cross the border into Bulgaria on a false Greek passport. He was later awarded honorary Greek citizenship.

The BIRN and Solomon investigation “examined how honorary citizenship, a state honour long reserved for those who have significantly promoted Greek culture, was turned into a golden visa scheme for those with deep pockets”, Solomon said in a Twitter post on Monday.

The investigative outlet Inside Story first broke the news in July, triggering a fierce debate over Ayavefe’s suitability for such an honour. Inside Story also came under DDoS attack after publishing its report on Ayavefe.

Call for Applications for Internship Programme

Posted on September 5, 2022January 26, 2023 by BIRD

As part of its Investigative Reporting Initiative programme, the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network is looking for five journalism students who wish to learn from dedicated journalists and editors in a course of three months.

The programme will provide the successful candidates with a key theoretical foundation, followed by systematic but very practical investigative work. The selected candidates will receive online training from experienced journalists at the beginning of the programme and
spend the rest of the internship working on investigative stories, while receiving support to understand and learn about the most relevant procedures.

BIRN is offering the five placements to applicants from six Balkan countries: Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia and Serbia. You will work from home or from your newsroom, as the programme is due to take place online.

Who can apply?

Journalism students from Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia and Serbia.

How to apply?

Applicants should submit the following documents to ivana.nikolic@birnnetwork.org in English before September 21, at midnight Central European Time:

● Applicant’s CV (in English)
● Motivation letter (in English)

● Work sample (translated into English; school assignments are eligible)
● Evidence of status (in English or local language)

The motivation letter should show how you expect to benefit from the programme and your motivation to participate.

Applicants that do not have any published work can submit their student assignments from practical courses in journalism.

Applicants should provide evidence of their current situation. This evidence should include, but not be limited to, confirmation of enrolment at university.

Language:

All applications must be submitted in English; proof of status may be in local languages. The programme’s working language will be English, so advanced knowledge of the English language is required.

DURATION OF INTERNSHIP: October 1, 2022 to December 23, 2022.
DEADLINE: September 21, 2022, at midnight Central European Time

Greek Arrest Warrant Against Journalist Whistleblower Condemned

Posted on September 2, 2022January 26, 2023 by Ivana Jeremic

The International Press Institute IPI, the Journalists’ Union of Athens Daily Newspapers, ESIEA, and the journalist himself have condemned the Greek Supreme Court’s arrest warrant against the TV journalist and publisher Petros Kousoulos.

The Supreme Court’s Prosecutor issued an arrest warrant against Kousoulos for publishing confidential documents on the National Intelligence Service NIS’s surveillance of his newspaper MPAM.

MPAM reported that the NIS wiretapped the telephone conversations of two former officials during the first half of the left-wing SYRIZA-ANEL’s government in 2016.

The wiretapping was about the transfer to a company of Qatari interests of an entire area in the mountains of Zakynthos; a scandal that was widely known at the time, but which Greek media did not cover.

Kousoulos himzelf said it was “unthinkable that in 2022, in a well-organized country like Greece, a journalist would be prosecuted for simply doing his job. I was surprised at the decision of the Prosecutor’s Office, which instead of shedding light on the case and finding the real culprits, issued a warrant for my arrest. All this is a violation of the freedom of the press.”

“We condemn the order of the arrest of Petros Kousoulos,” said a press release by ESIEA, announcing that it will seek a meeting with the Prosecutor to discuss all matters concerning journalists.

Greece is embroiled in a wiretapping scandal, nicknamed “predator gate”. The Supreme Court has not investigated who used and sold the illegal spyware “predator”. Instead, it issued a warrant against a journalist who revealed the state surveillance, which worries Greek journalists.

“I find it unthinkable that in 2022, in a well-organized country like Greece, a journalist would be prosecuted for simply doing his job. I was surprised at the decision of the Prosecutor’s Office, which instead of shedding light on the case and finding the real culprits, issued a warrant for my arrest. All this is a violation of the freedom of the press,” Kousoulos told BIRN on Friday.

“At a time when the political and social life of the country is shaken by the revelations about the scandal of government surveillance, the Prosecutor’s Office spends its time hunting journalists, instead of standing firm in its institutional role and investigating who orchestrated the wiretapping scandal,” Vangelis Triantis, a legal editor at the Greek media outlet Documento, told BIRN.

“The attempted criminalization of journalism aims at intimidating those journalists who in future make similar revelations about the wiretapping scandal. The journalist’s job is to publicize and inform public opinion,” added Triantis.

IPI Europe Advocacy Officer Jamie Wiseman told BIRN: “The initiation of an arrest warrant for a newspaper publisher over a journalistic report in an EU member state is an extremely serious issue, one which deserves scrutiny and raises immediate concerns for press freedom, especially at a time when Greece is already in the spotlight internationally.”

“While the publication of information from confidential documents about state surveillance is clearly a sensitive matter, IPI urges judicial authorities in Greece to proceed with utmost caution and with full respect for the values of public interest journalism and the freedom of the press,” he added.

Turkey’s Communications Chief Accuses Reuters of ‘Manipulation’

Posted on September 1, 2022January 26, 2023 by Ivana Jeremic

Fahrettin Altun, head of the Communications Directorate under the Turkish Presidency, has accused Reuters news agency of “systemic manipulation” and “fake news” after it published a special report on how he and his staff control the newsrooms of Turkish media.

“This is not the first time that Reuters, an apparatus of perception operations and systematic manipulation targeting Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Turkey, publishes misleading and fake news,” Altun wrote on Twitter on Wednesday.

A Reuters special report prepared by Jonathan Spicer wrote on Wednesday that from an office tower in Ankara, officials shape the nation’s news – and always to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s advantage.

The report added that the Communication Directorate often calls journalists and editors by phone and sends WhatsApp massages to instruct the media about their coverage.

Altun dismissed the claims and insisted on their good work. “Being targeted by the UK-based news agency Reuters is a sign that we are on the right track and a badge of honour,” Altun said.

Altun also accused Reuters of manipulation and fake news on certain topics, such as distorting Erdogan’s statements, Turkey’s military operations in Syria, the country’s economic crisis and the failed coup attempt in 2016.

“This is the sort of news agency that attempts to target the Turkey Communications Model and the Directorate today. We know perfectly well Reuters’ intentions, the purpose it serves and what it is doing for that purpose,” Altun said.

Altun, who has no previous media experience, was appointed to head the Directorate of Communications in 2018 under the new presidential system, in which there are almost no checks and balances.

“The Directorate, with an annual budget of around 680 million lira ($38 million), was tasked with coordinating government communication. It grew out of the old Directorate of Media, Press and Information, whose main role was issuing press cards to journalists. But its responsibilities reach much wider, including countering ‘systemic disinformation campaigns’ against Turkey through a unit the Directorate established this year,” Reuters wrote in its special report.

The directorate employs media monitors, translators, legal and public relations staff in Turkey and abroad.

“It has 48 foreign offices in 43 countries worldwide. These outposts deliver to headquarters weekly reports on how Turkey is portrayed in foreign media,” Reuters wrote, quoting an insider.

Altun and his Directorate are often accused of intervening heavy-handedly in the media.

“The government strategy is to make everyone see, hear and read only the government line,” Osman Vedud Esidir, a journalism professor, told Reuters.

Since the 2016 failed coup attempt resulted in a major crackdown on dissenting voices, the Turkish media and press have come under increasing government control.

Turkey ranked in 149th place out of 180 countries in 2022 in the latest press freedom index of the watchdog organisation Reporters Without Borders, RSF It classifies the Turkish government’s control over media outlets as high.

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