The French Public Prosecution announced on Wednesday that a joint operation between the French and American authorities led to the closure of an electronic platform that was distributing nude pictures of thousands of women, including minors, obtained through blackmail, hacking, or without the consent of the victims.
Three other websites linked to the platform were also closed, according to what was reported by the German News Agency.
The Paris Public Prosecutor's Office said in a statement that two brothers, aged 21 and 25, were arrested in northern France and are suspected of being the main operators of the platform.
The statement said that digital assets worth more than 700,000 euros ($787,000) were confiscated.
Reports stated that the images came from hacking attacks targeting social media accounts, in addition to cases of electronic luring.
The material also included what is known as “revenge porn,” which is intimate images that were originally taken with the consent of the person appearing in them, but were later published by a former partner without permission, usually with the aim of harming or humiliating him after the relationship ended.
The authorities said that women of many nationalities were targeted, including minors.
The French authorities called on victims, whether from France or from other countries, whose intimate photos were published on the platform, to communicate via email with the French National Unit to Combat Cybercrime.
A senior official at the World Health Organization said today (Wednesday) that the United Nations organization does not know how a laboratory employee died in Siberia amid fears about the plague (severe pneumonia), and called on Russia to provide more information.
Maria Van Kerkhove, Director of the Department of Epidemics and Pandemics at the World Health Organization, said that the organization does not know what the “causative factor” was behind the woman’s death on October 2, and “that is why we need more information,” according to the Associated Press.
In its terse official statements, Rospotrebnadzor, Russia's public health and epidemiological surveillance agency, did not link the case to pneumonic plague, saying only that "comprehensive" testing had found no evidence that her illness was caused by any of the pathogens she worked with at the Irkutsk Plague Research Institute in Siberia and the Far East.
Russia said the woman died of pneumonia - a "usual" acute viral infection of the respiratory system - and the World Health Organization said its health authorities had not discovered any recent cases of plague, acknowledging that pneumonia is a common disease.
“We don’t understand how she became infected,” Van Kerkhove said.
Statements issued by the World Health Organization indicate that it has more questions than answers about the situation in the laboratory, which focuses on plague and was established about a century ago to study the disease in an area where it is endemic.
Since the suspicious death of the laboratory worker last week, the Russian authorities have imposed a severe blackout on information related to her. The incident was kept secret and it was said that it might have been caused by pneumonic plague.
Armies protect their airports through multiple layers of defense, including radars and early detection systems, air defenses to intercept missiles and drones, as well as electronic jamming, shelters and fortifications to protect aircraft, in addition to distributing aircraft and equipment to different locations to reduce losses if the base is attacked.
Active defense and interception
According to Business Insider, missile defense systems such as the Patriot system intercept ballistic missiles and cruise missiles, although the use of multi-million dollar interceptors against cheap drones creates a severe economic disparity.
Short-range air defense systems and anti-rocket, artillery and mortar systems also provide close-range protection against drone swarms and hostile artillery fire.
Air & Space Forces magazine said that militaries are increasingly incorporating high-power microwave technologies, lasers, and specialized means designed to shoot down low-cost drones at a reasonable cost.
The military forces are also transforming the mission of protecting bases from a secondary mission to a core mission, as specialized career paths and units entirely dedicated to protecting facilities are being created.
Electronic warfare
Electronic warfare systems are used to jam, disable or obscure enemy drones' guidance and communications systems before they reach the airport perimeter.
Advanced tracking networks, which rely on radar, visual systems, and artificial intelligence, detect threats that fly at low altitudes or have a small radar footprint early, allowing sufficient time for response teams, according to the American “Task & Purpose” website.
Passive defense and fortification
Hardened, blast-resistant hangars protect grounded aircraft from shrapnel, blast waves and short-range drone attacks.
Protective nets direct drones toward designated destruction zones, while decoy targets and distraction strategies confuse enemy targeting systems.
Airports maintain materials to quickly repair runways; This is to address potholes and restore flight operations following an attack, according to Air & Space Forces magazine.
