Amnesty International says human rights activists, journalists, and dissidents in Azerbaijan have been targets of fraudulent computer-based campaigns aimed at gaining access to personal information and private communications, RFE/RL reports, citing the organization.
In a report issued on March 10, Amnesty said the “spear-phishing” attacks had been directed at government critics during the past 13 months.
Victims of the practice have told the watchdog group they believe Azerbaijani authorities are behind the attacks.
Amnesty said it presented its findings to Azerbaijan’s government, which said the cases documented had not been reported to Azerbaijani authorities and, therefore, had not been investigated.
Amnesty senior technologist Claudio Guarnieri said, “Our research reveals that a targeted and coordinated cybercampaign is being waged against critical voices in Azerbaijan, many of whom are longtime victims of government repression.”
“The malware used has been designed with the express intention of gathering as much private information as possible about a target,” Guarnieri said. “Given the profiles of those targeted, it is not hard to see why victims believe the authorities are responsible.”
The Amnesty International report details how victims have been targeted using a practice known as “spear phishing,” which involves an e-mail with an attachment containing a virus being sent to a target from a fake address.
Amnesty said it was not able to trace the cyberattacks directly to any government officials or agencies.
However, it said, some of the attacks used an IP address from a block of addresses that predominantly host government institutions, such as the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Justice, and state-owned television.
The court trial took place—on Friday, in Almelo, the Netherlands—against Ilham Askin, Chairman of the Turkish Azerbaijani Cultural Association in The Hague.
“70-80 percent of the Azerbaijani servicemen serving in the frontline are representatives of ethnic minorities. It can be stated that they are drafted to the army forcefully being immediately sent to the frontline. This is the reason why the majority of the killed soldiers are Talysh people, Tatars and Udis, as it can be inferred from their names,” member of Talish Cultural Council, participant of Talish freedom movement, reporter of “Tolishi Sado” newspaper Shahin Mirzoev, who fled to Armenia from Azerbaijan with his family, told the aforesaid to the reporters, Panorama.am reports.
Contract serviceman of the NKR Defense Army Gegham Manukyan (born in 1979) has been killed as a result of ceasefire violation by the Azerbaijani side in the northern direction of the Defense Army at about 11:00 today, the NKR Defense Ministry said in a statement.
The Armenian authorities have handed over the body of dead Azerbaijani serviceman Chingiz Gurbanov to his homeland through the mediation of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).
Last night saw follow-on to Azerbaijan’s provocation on Thursday: the Armenian troops retaliated killing four Azerbaijani troops, Artsrun Hovhannisyan, Spokesman for Armenia’s defense office, wrote on his Facebook page.
Azerbaijani opposition activists held a rare mass protest in Baku, one of the largest ever seen in the country. The National Council of Democratic Forces called for the cancellation of a September 26 referendum which would strengthen the authority of President Ilham Aliyev, and likely prolong his rule. (RFE/RL’s Azerbaijani Service)
Head of Israel’s Meretz party Zehava Gal-On accused head of “Our Home Israel” Avigdor Lieberman of being a foreign agent. This happened at a meeting of the Knesset Committee on legislation, which discussed the draft law on transparency of NGO funding.
A serviceman of Nagorno-Karabakh’s Defense Army was fatally wounded in a northern military unit on Friday night, amid intensive ceasefire violations incited by Azerbaijan’s armed forces.