Sentinel SitRep - 20 June 2024
US Import ban for Kaspersky products; China wary of Kim-Putin bromance; Russia’s been “working” on the railroad as EU closes loopholes in sanctions; Hong Kong Customs busts CPU smuggler
Exclusive: Biden to ban US sales of Kaspersky software over Russia ties, source says
The Biden administration on Thursday will announce plans to bar the sale of antivirus software made by Russia's Kaspersky Labs in the United States, a person familiar with the matter said, citing the firm's large U.S. customers including critical infrastructure providers and state and local governments.
The company's close ties to the Russian government were found to pose a critical risk, the person said, adding that the software's privileged access to a computer's systems could allow it to steal sensitive information from American computers, install malware or withhold critical updates.
The sweeping new rule, using broad powers created by the Trump administration, will be coupled with another move to add the company to a trade restriction list, according to two other people familiar with the matter, dealing a blow to the firm's reputation that could hammer its overseas sales.
The plan to add the cybersecurity company to the entity list, which effectively bars a company's U.S. suppliers from selling to it, and the timing and details of the software sales prohibition, have not been previously reported.
Russia and North Korea’s Defense Pact Is a New Headache for China
By David Pierson and Choe Sang-Hun
In the contest of global narratives, China has sought to cast itself as a peaceful nation opposed to dividing the world into rival camps. In contrast, it has accused the United States of building alliances that will drive the world toward a new Cold War.
Yet Russia and North Korea’s mutual defense treaty, which calls for the two countries to provide immediate military assistance to each other in the event of war, is exactly the kind of bloc-building that China has charged the United States with. China’s closest strategic partner and its only treaty ally — Russia and North Korea — are now the ones heightening the risk of Cold War-style confrontation in northeast Asia.
The pact also creates more headaches for Beijing by appearing to deepen the semblance of a trilateral axis between China, Russia and North Korea, which China has sought to avoid. “Beijing has very carefully stayed away from the optics of a China-Russia-North Korea axis,” said Yun Sun, the director of the China program at the Stimson Center in Washington. “It wants to keep its options open.”
Attempts to circumvent sanctions through Lithuanian railways up 5 times
The number of attempts to circumvent the existing Western sanctions against Russia and Belarus has increased fivefold over the past three months, from 14 in March to 74 in May, Lietuvos Geležinkeliai (Lithuanian Railways, LTG), the country’s state-owned railway group, has said.
While the group is looking into the new trends, it cannot yet say why the number of attempts to circumvent them has increased so much, Gediminas Šečkus the group’s chief resilience officer, said.
He did not rule out the possibility that this is an attempt to test the effectiveness of sanction controls.
EU Countries Agree On Fresh Russia Sanctions That Include Ban On Liquefied Gas
European Union ambassadors on June 20 approved a fresh package of sanctions on Russia over its invasion of Ukraine aimed primarily at closing loopholes that exist in previous restrictions and targeting for the first time Moscow's lucrative liquefied natural gas (LNG) industry.
"EU Ambassadors just agreed on a powerful and substantial 14th package of sanctions in reaction to the Russian aggression against Ukraine," the Belgian EU presidency wrote on X.
"This package provides new targeted measures and maximizes the impact of existing sanctions by closing loopholes," it said.
The new package of sanctions includesmeasures to hold European operators accountable for sanctions violations by subsidiaries and partners in third countries and provide for a a ban on the transshipment of Russian liquefied natural gas and the export of helium.
It also restricts access to dual-use technologies and the trade in works of art stolen in Ukraine.
Between 4 billion and 6 billion cubic meters of Russian LNG was shipped on to third countries through EU ports last year, the bloc estimates.
Read it at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
Hong Kong authorities halt alleged smuggler shifting 596 'high-end' CPUs to China
Simon Sharwood
Hong Kong's Customs and Excise Department on Monday revealed it intercepted 596 CPUs that an alleged smuggler was trying to ship into China.
The agency announced that on June 11 its staff spotted a suspect vehicle attempting to pass through the Shenzhen Bay Control Point – one of the checkpoints between Hong Kong and mainland China.
Officers felt the vehicle worthy of X-ray inspection – a hunch that paid off after it was found to contain CPUs hidden in false compartments.
The agency valued the CPUs at HKD$12 million – around $1.5 million, or about $2,500 apiece.
Customs investigator Ho Ting-chun told The South China Morning Post the chips were high-end devices capable of powering cloud services and AI workloads.
The Register used a photo of the CPUs posted by the agency and applied reverse image search to identify the part: we're confident it's a recent Intel Xeon, but can't say with any certainty which model.
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