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dreaminginthedeepsouth · 3 years

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LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

December 4, 2020

Heather Cox Richardson

While coronavirus continues to burn across the country, Trump is focusing instead on continuing to contest the election results and on the Pentagon.

The main story in the country continues to be the coronavirus. As of tonight, according to the New York Times, more than 14,441,700 people in the U.S. have been infected with the virus and at least 278,900 have died. Official daily death counts are well over 2000.

As several states continue to count votes from the November election, President-Elect Joe Biden’s popular vote margin over Trump is now more than 7 million. Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Nevada, Georgia, Arizona, and Michigan, all states in which Trump contested the vote, have already certified their election results for Biden. In all six of those states, judges have ruled that Trump’s lawyers have provided no evidence of fraud. They have used words like “baseless,” “flimsy,” “obviously lacking,” “dangerous,” and “not credible.”

Trump’s obsession with winning an election he has clearly lost has brought into relief the struggle for control over the Republican Party. Trump is clearly trying to turn the party into a vehicle for loyalty to him and him alone. He has always turned on those who no longer serve his interests: Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions was one of the first elected Republicans to support Trump’s 2016 presidential candidacy, giving it an air of legitimacy. He left the Senate to become Trump’s first Attorney General, only to have Trump turn against him when he recused himself from the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, because he had lied about his own contacts with Russians. Trump forced Sessions to resign, and when Sessions ran again for the Senate, endorsed his rival and attacked Sessions on Twitter. Sessions lost his primary.

Now Trump has turned on men who similarly sacrificed their careers for his. Three days ago, Trump’s loyalist Attorney General, William Barr, undercut Trump’s election fraud arguments when he said that he had not seen such fraud. This apparently so infuriated Trump that he is considering firing Barr. Then, this morning, Trump turned on loyalist Louis DeJoy at the head of the United States Postal Service, who removed mail sorting machines and changed USPS rules to slow mail-in ballots expected to be for Biden. Trump tweeted that the USPS “is responsible for tampering with hundreds of thousands of ballots” and thus stole the election from him. He called the USPS a “long time Democrat stronghold,” although DeJoy is a major Trump supporter and donor.

While Trump is talking about running again in 2024, his turning against his most loyal supporters in the Republican Party will not inspire others to rally to his banner. Instead, it may simply be that he’s keeping the idea of his candidacy alive because it keeps money flowing in. Since the election, he has raised more than $200 million in donations.

While he is fighting over the election results, Trump has done very little else except to replace civilian employees at the Pentagon with his own hand-picked loyalists. This is unusual in a lame duck period, when presidents usually try to smooth the transition to the next administration.

Far from trying to smooth that transition, Trump is making it as bumpy as possible. His appointee at the General Services Administration delayed the start of the transition for weeks. Now that Biden’s team finally has access to Trump’s people to learn about their planning for the rollout of the coronavirus vaccine, it turns out there hasn’t been much planning. Biden today noted that “There is no detailed plan that we’ve seen, anyway, as to how you get the vaccine out of a container, into an injection syringe, into somebody’s arm…. It's going to be very difficult for that to be done and it’s a very expensive proposition…. There’s a lot more that has to be done.”

Also disturbing is that the Trump administration has denied the Biden team access to U.S. intelligence agencies that are controlled by the Defense Department, including the National Security Agency (which is the nation’s largest U.S. intelligence service), the Defense Intelligence Agency, and other intelligence services with a global reach. The Biden folks have, though, been able to meet with their counterparts at the CIA and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

The refusal of the Pentagon to meet with Biden’s people comes at a time when Trump has been shaking up personnel there. Immediately after the election, Trump fired his fourth Defense Secretary, Mark T. Esper, and replaced him with an acting secretary of defense, Christopher C. Miller. Miller, in turn, has presided over the installation of a number of Trump loyalists both in the Pentagon leadership and on the Defense Policy Board, a group of advisors who consult with the Defense Secretary on specific issues when asked. Pushed out were about a dozen advisers, including former Secretaries of State Madeleine Albright and Henry Kissinger, as well as former House Majority Leader Eric Cantor.

Today, there was another major purge at Defense, this time from the Defense Business Board, a nonpartisan group of about 20 volunteers from the business sector who are appointed to give business advice to Pentagon leaders. The White House threw nine people off the board—informing them with a terse email—including its chair, Michael Bayer. Trump replaced them with his former 2016 campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, and that year’s deputy campaign manager, David Bossie, among other loyalists. Both Lewandowski and Bossie are outspoken Trump supporters who have led the fight to contest the election.

So has another Trump nominee for a Pentagon post, Scott O’Grady, who has endorsed the idea that Trump won by a landslide and that Trump should declare martial law. Trump has nominated him to become an assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs, overseeing operations in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa.

Exactly what Trump is doing with this packing of the Defense Department is unclear. There are, though, three major issues on the table right now that may or may not be involved, but are worth keeping in mind.

The first is that Trump is trying to remove many U.S. troops from around the world before he leaves office, and had gotten serious pushback on that from the people he has now purged from the Defense Department. Today, he ordered nearly all of about 700 U.S. troops out of Somalia, where they have been training local soldiers to hold ground against terrorists. They will not come home, though; they are being sent elsewhere in Africa.

There is also still hanging out there the administration’s sudden announcement of a $23 billion sale of arms to the United Arab Emirates, including a number of advanced F-35 fighter jets and Reaper drones. Lawmakers of both parties object to this sale, concerned about risks to Israel and that the UAE could transfer the technology to China and Russia. The Senate will vote next week on banning the sale.

There is also the effort by the White House to force the Pentagon to lease its airwave spectrum to a private company, Rivada Networks, to create a nationwide 5G network. Rivada is backed by major Republican figures, including operative Karl Rove, but established Pentagon officials have little interest in the project, pointing out that there is no proof that Rivada knows what it’s doing or that the plan would be legal. It’s also not clear that the use of this spectrum for private carriers wouldn’t impact its use for national security. The Defense Department spectrum the White House would like to lease to private investors is worth between $50 and $75 billion.

I always believe in following the money, and that’s especially true now as Trump’s years in the White House, which have given him access to huge sums, are drawing to a close.

—-

[FROM COMMENTS]

Scott M. Krasner

I waver between bewilderment and rage when reading these daily summaries. I can almost "understand" his more political moves - installing loyalists, withdrawing troops, even trying to sell access to the Defense Department's wavebands. I don't agree or condone these actions, but they're consistent with his approach to governance to date.

What's comprehensible is ignoring - in any and every way - the coronavirus and its impact. Unconscionable doesn't begin to describe his failure to acknowledge the deaths of 280,000 Americans, or to endorse any means of protecting each other as best possible. It's inhumane. It's devoid of empathy, morally vacuous, and ethically deplorable. It is unequivocally and unalterably wrong.

And yet 74,000,000 thought it acceptable to return him to office. McConnell has personally obstructed any efforts to extend relief for 8 months and counting. It's Hobbseian in its social brutishness. Even Hobbes might be appalled. And Republican leadership is mute.

I'm almost beyond shock. Since the beginning, many thought each of Trump's transgressions would be the last straw, yet nothing happened. The only apparent imposition of accountability is his having lost the election. Court losses haven't swayed him. Our perverse campaign finance laws have given him license to steal despite the misleading fine print. His Cabinet, always incompetent for the task, is asleep, silent, or in on the game. Each day goes by with no visible effort to limit his efforts to salt the earth in advance of his successor. And Republican leadership ignores or enables him to proceed unhindered.

He's unmoored. He's looking to preemptively pardon family and loyalists who are most likely would be criminally liable but haven't yet been charged. His most ardent supporters are almost insane (read Giuliani and Powell) or seditious (read Flynn and Lin Wood). And still the Republican party watches with bloodless faces and dead eyed stares, saying not a word.

What is one to think? How does one explain this to children? How can one reason with any family, friends, or acquaintances who somehow believe Trump is in the right, brought low only by a grand, silent conspiracy of wrong minded citizens and foreign actors?

Perhaps history can look upon Trump's reign of terror more dispassionately. Today, however, I and many others feel like we're helpless, our minds and sensibilities best represented by the visage of horror in Edvard Munch's The Scream.

Linda Mitchell

Hannah Arendt's book (based on her reporting for The New Yorker), "Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil" encapsulates the issues TCinLA and the people who posted replies to it raise. I have read only bits of it but what she presents is a picture of evil that is stripped of glamour and that indicts everyone. As she says about Eichmann, "Except for an extraordinary diligence in looking out for his personal advancement, he had no motives at all." If you have access to JSTOR (you can read online for free but not download if you don't have access through a library) there is a great short article in The History Teacher (1981) that discusses Arendt and her book in clear and concise terms. https://www.jstor.org/stable/493684

Miller and most everyone else surrounding the Deranged Cheeto--including the criminal enablers in Congress--fit Arendt's description perfectly. They are not monsters. They are not (most of them) pathological narcissists. They are sterile, unoriginal, uncreative people who have decided that personal advancement through doing terrible things is fine with them. It is actually harder, in our modern world, to be a good person than to be an awful one. Empathy, emotional maturity, awareness, and wisdom all require effort on the part of the individual. One has to engage, one has to become self-aware, one has to be brutally honest with oneself. Evil simply requires reaching down to that lowest common denominator of the id: a desire for self-advancement by any means necessary.

This is why they all seem so petty, so puerile, so childish, so joyless. This is why their tantrums are so infantile. And this is why Biden and Harris seem, by contrast, so refreshingly mature, so willing to allow joy. Both have been radically affected by what Hegel referred to as the "slaughter-bench" of history. The subhumans surrounding the Unelected Ex-President have not got enough imagination to be affected by anything except their own hunger.

[LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN]

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

#Letters From An American #Heather Cox Richardson #political #election 2020 #corrupt GOP #criminal GOP

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arrhakis · 2 years

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The Ghosts That Scare Putin - The Lost Political Conscience Of Europe by Daniel Arrhakis (2022)

The Invasion of Ukraine took much of the Western World by surprise and unprepared to face a Russia that had studied and planned this military operation for years.

From the study of international treaties to the study of annual weather forecasts, through to the improvement of the military arsenal or the reduction of western economic dependence, everything was carefully planned or else Putin is a military strategist and a deep knowledge of information, counter-intelligence services and foreign intelligence.

Laws were adapted to concentrate power in state institutions, which were attributed to figures of economic, political, internal security, judicial and military confidence. The security of information and its total control led to repression, closure, imprisonment and even the murder of all those who opposed it or who may be able to oppose it in future. Blackmail and fear is another of the great powers for those who have privileged access to information and Putin has never excluded himself from using it whenever necessary.

As he himself tells of a young child growing up in the tenements of Leningrad, now St. Petersburg, chasing rats with a stick. One day he cornered one of the creatures. With nowhere to turn, the rat responded by attacking the young Vladimir, a frightening moment that would be indelibly etched in his memory of him. In his later recounting of the incident, he said it taught him that when one is alone and isolated in such a way, the best thing to do is charge at your foe. And no doubt that this childhood lesson served him to shape his recent domestic and foreign policy. Even because of the fact that he felt small, he also developed an inferiority complex that he always tried to overcome with the conquest of professional and political successes.

The alteration of consecutive electoral laws ended up perpetuating him in power, culminating in his unquestionable dominance over Russia, his people and his powerful army. A power that he always aspired to, inspired by nationalist and ultra-nationalist sentiments of the former Imperial Russia and Napoleonic inspiration; in this last case in reverse geographical sense. The fall of the Berlin Wall takes place when Putin was in Germany because from 1985 to 1990 he worked in Dresden; heading the border department. The dismantling of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact while NATO remains active with objectives different from those initially defined was always a kind of dishonor or humiliation for him and that Putin never forgot; much in the light of the "Century of National Humiliation" used by some Chinese scholars and politicians to describe the history of China from the mid-19th century to the mid-20th century, during the Opium Wars by the Western powers , and which partly explains its influence on the rise of Chinese Nationalism and, consequently, on the construction of the national identity of China and the Anti- Western and Anti-Japanese sentiment.

To try to counter this loss of influence Putin turned to Sergey Karaganov's theories that Russian-speakers, who live in non-Russian territories, can be used as an asset in foreign policy. The implementation of the doctrine can be observed on the Russia’s near abroad policy stretching from Georgia, Moldova to Ukraine and other near abroad states. In addition to his Doctrine, Karaganov has advocated for a united Sino-Russian strategy to unify a Eurasian bloc ; hence also the approximation of positions in recent times between Russia and China.

However, the Invasion of Ukraine, despite being well planned and disguised over time, did not take into account three factors that escaped Putin's Machiavellian plan: the feeling of nationalism and independence that in the meantime grew among the Ukrainians after the invasion of Crimea in 2014 , the resistance of the military led by President Zelensky, whom Putin wrongly despised, and the unity of NATO, which in the meantime has strengthened despite efforts in previous years by Putin and Trump to condition it; in fact the role and relationship between the two will still be in the future to be better understood and revealed. This unity on the part of Western countries then led Putin to use again his well-known power of blackmail with the threat of Russian nuclear power in order to be able to contain and paralyze any and all actions they might plan against him.

But despite this veiled threat, the truth is that Putin is afraid that the West will unite militarily and that it will overcome the loss of its Political Consciousness after the Second World War. Because one thing is certain, the spirits of the great western leaders such as Churchill, Roosevelt or De Gaulle are increasingly present in the soul of the European people accustomed to long years of Democracy and Freedom and who are revolted by the images of a bloody war that crushes a innocent people and an army that fights alone against a tyrant dominated by imperialist impulses and subjugation of democratic peoples who just want to be free.

In his vision of the world, Putin thinks that his autocratic regime should serve as a model of success for the world and all means serve because it is his own survival and ideals that are at stake! Just as humanity lived close to the apocalypse more than 70 years ago, so now we have the future of Europe and the world in the hands, hearts and souls of peoples who love freedom!

And do not have any doubts that the spirits of those who united and inspired the free world and the resisters of the time like Churchill, Roosevelt or De Gaulle are once again the key to our victory, because Putin does not recognize defeats, does not suffer from human suffering or respects the values of Democracy or Freedom, all are mere pieces of his strategic game to control the World, just like someone else before him tried!

It's time for us to go hunting this big mouse too!

Texto e imagem de Daniel Arrhakis

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massielandnetwork · 3 years

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Thriving in an Economic Bubble during Anarchy

3. The Christian Succession – Watching God at Work

When I learned of the new national holiday my initial reaction was a combination of laughter and crying. The good news is that there is one more day each year that we peasants cannot be abused by our government bureaucrat overseers because they will not be working, or water coolering, or whatever they do during normal work hours.

When one considers the fact that they enjoy almost perfect job security, excellent pay, phenomenal retirement pensions, and health care insurance superior to anyone in private industry, it becomes obvious that they really needed another national holiday. The Bad news for us peasants, we get another day we cannot go to a bank or get an answer from a bureaucrat.

Have you seen the foreign media’s reports on Biden’s trip to the G7, NATO, and meeting with Putin? No wonder Congressman Ron Jackson, former White House Physician, has asked for Biden to take a cognitive test. The foreign media has already passed judgment without a test. They also picked up on Putin apparently intimidating Biden into reneging on military support of the Ukraine. Was it quid pro quo regarding cybersecurity attacks? No more Russian bombers in US air space? Does Biden even know what he agreed to do? More important, what level of confidence do you have that Mrs. Biden knows what she is doing?

Meanwhile, God was working:

1. The high-level defector from China has been identified as Vice Minister of State Security Dong Jingwei who was in charge of counterintelligence efforts. Reportedly, Mr. Dong brought with him terabytes of files including –

a. Data about the Wuhan Virus and the Chinese projections of the impact on the USA and world. Oops, there goes the pretense of an accident.

b. How the Chinese gained access to CIA files which led to the death of the Chinese working for the CIA in China.

c. Financial records showing US businessmen and public officials who have received money from the Chinese Communist party;

d. Additional details about Hunter Biden’s pornography problems and business dealings with the CCP (and Joe’s) including the sale of American stealth technology to the Chinese via the Henniges Automotive deal and how that deal was approved (first disclosed in the report last fall by Senator Ron Johnson’s Homeland Security report and discounted by the “media”).

e. One-third of the 60,000 Chinese “students” in the USA are actually spies from the Chinese military.

f. AND MUCH MORE

g. Which is why the “intelligence community” and some others here in the USA are reportedly “scared sh**less”.

h. Reportedly the Chinese demanded that Secretary Blinken return Mr. Dong to the Chinese and Blinken replied that we did not have him because the DIA had not shared with the State Department, CIA, and FBI that the DIA had Mr. Dong.

i. It is a shame we do not have a real news media.

2. Governor Abbot declared Texas would finish building the wall on the border of Mexico and requested other governors send police to Texas to help. Governor DeSantis of Florida announced Florida would help Texas. The Governor of Arizona has activated the Arizona National Guard. It is interesting watching Republican Governors address this national crisis while the Demented Marxists (DM) do nothing. Virginia has no adult leadership which is amazingly sad.

3. Buckhead announced it is divorcing itself from Atlanta because crime has surged in response to Atlanta defunding the police. In cities that have defunded their police the serious crime rates have surged. A trend?

4. Moms are organizing and becoming more vocal and organized in their opposition to the Critical Race Theory and the LGYBQ agenda. Too many events to list. An entire generation of children are at risk because school systems are more concerned with chasing the phantom of “social justice” than with actually teaching math, science, and western history.

5. In an amazing demonstration of self-delusion, the Democrats appear to be attacking the Catholic Church on Christian values.

6. As many as 20 states have expressed interest in having an audit done of the election and have sent delegations to Arizona.

7. A great awakening is happening before our eyes. Satan is being exposed and confronted. Hallelujah.

On the economic front, last week confirmation was received that the peak of this real estate cycle was back in January or February, 2021, because The Fed’s Chairman Powell announced that they may begin to increase interest rates in 2023. What received less coverage is that The Fed is expected to announce in September 2021 that they will begin to taper their buying of Treasuries in 2022. By the end of this year that announcement will drive 10-year Treasuries up to at least 2% (from 0.7% at the election) probably higher and mortgage rates will likewise increase up to 3.5% to 4%. The actual tapering of purchases in 2022 will increase interest rates further.

In 2023, The Fed expects to begin to increase the Federal Funds rates thus increasing the interest rates that correlate with the Federal Funds rate such as “Prime”. But the impact on housing from higher mortgage rates is already being felt and the slow down will become more severe this year and next. Some have questioned why the 10 Year Treasury has declined while inflation rises, etc. The answer is that The Fed now owns so many Treasuries they bought to distort the mortgage market moving those interest rates down that The Fed controls the Treasury Market. We will experience the reverse as The Fed exits the market. That will be brutal economically.

Supply chain disruptions are everywhere which is creating havoc as the world is trying to reopen. A variant of the Wuhan Virus is currently running rampant in China and has shut down one of China’s major ports further exacerbating the supply chain distortion. The lack of parts is causing manufacturers to raise prices reflecting demand being greater than supply. Similar events are happening in service industries as needed employees can earn more money by NOT working. Even when supply gets closer to demand, prices will be “sticky” going down.

Watch gasoline prices. The most recent forecast is that oil will hit $100 per barrel by the end of this year. That means $4 per gallon gas. This is a direct result of Biden destroying our energy independence and returning the USA to being energy dependent on OPEC and Russia. I am still looking for the Demented Marxist (DM) that can actually explain why I want my electricity supply to be much more expensive and much less reliable.

I am reading an excellent book on the so called “Climate Crisis”. The title is “Unsettled” and the author is Steven E. Koonin, Former Undersecretary for Science, U. S. Department of Energy in the Obama Administration. Basically, the media and seem politicians have created a pseudo crisis. The problem is the bad decisions that are being made on erroneous information.

In my career I have been through recessions caused by each of the following – (1) increased energy prices, (2) interest rates being raised to combat inflation, and (3) increased taxes. The recession next year will be the result of a combination of all three of those forces. Get prepared.

163 days into the DM’s coup, each day more details emerge regarding the fraudulent election last November. Eventually we will know all of the facts. The patriot attorney in Antrim County, Michigan has called for the Secretary of State to resign or be impeached and the election to be De-Certified. The Arizona Audit is on pace to be finished with their report issued in July. In Georgia, the Secretary of State decided to investigate the chain of custody of some of the mail in ballots, probably CYA. Election audits and Mr. Dong - can you smell the fear of the DMs?

A great piece of land remains The Best investment long term. Capitalism builds wealth, Marxism/Socialism consumes it in self destruction. Pray for a return to honest elections in the USA. God is in control. Men make plans, but God ALWAYS wins.

“But I am not ashamed, for I know the one in whom I have put my trust, and I am sure that he is able to guard until that day what I have entrusted to him.”

(2 Timothy 1:7) New Revised Standard Version, Oxford University Press)

Stay healthy,

Ned

June 24, 2021

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newstfionline · 7 years

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Security Breach and Spilled Secrets Have Shaken the N.S.A. to Its Core

By Scott Shane, Nicole Perlroth and David E. Sanger, NY Times, Nov. 12, 2017

WASHINGTON--Jake Williams awoke last April in an Orlando, Fla., hotel where he was leading a training session. Checking Twitter, Mr. Williams, a cybersecurity expert, was dismayed to discover that he had been thrust into the middle of one of the worst security debacles ever to befall American intelligence.

Mr. Williams had written on his company blog about the Shadow Brokers, a mysterious group that had somehow obtained many of the hacking tools the United States used to spy on other countries. Now the group had replied in an angry screed on Twitter. It identified him--correctly--as a former member of the National Security Agency’s hacking group, Tailored Access Operations, or T.A.O., a job he had not publicly disclosed. Then the Shadow Brokers astonished him by dropping technical details that made clear they knew about highly classified hacking operations that he had conducted.

America’s largest and most secretive intelligence agency had been deeply infiltrated.

“They had operational insight that even most of my fellow operators at T.A.O. did not have,” said Mr. Williams, now with Rendition Infosec, a cybersecurity firm he founded. “I felt like I’d been kicked in the gut. Whoever wrote this either was a well-placed insider or had stolen a lot of operational data.”

The jolt to Mr. Williams from the Shadow Brokers’ riposte was part of a much broader earthquake that has shaken the N.S.A. to its core. Current and former agency officials say the Shadow Brokers disclosures, which began in August 2016, have been catastrophic for the N.S.A., calling into question its ability to protect potent cyberweapons and its very value to national security. The agency regarded as the world’s leader in breaking into adversaries’ computer networks failed to protect its own.

“These leaks have been incredibly damaging to our intelligence and cyber capabilities,” said Leon E. Panetta, the former defense secretary and director of the Central Intelligence Agency. “The fundamental purpose of intelligence is to be able to effectively penetrate our adversaries in order to gather vital intelligence. By its very nature, that only works if secrecy is maintained and our codes are protected.”

With a leak of intelligence methods like the N.S.A. tools, Mr. Panetta said, “Every time it happens, you essentially have to start over.”

Fifteen months into a wide-ranging investigation by the agency’s counterintelligence arm, known as Q Group, and the F.B.I., officials still do not know whether the N.S.A. is the victim of a brilliantly executed hack, with Russia as the most likely perpetrator, an insider’s leak, or both. Three employees have been arrested since 2015 for taking classified files, but there is fear that one or more leakers may still be in place. And there is broad agreement that the damage from the Shadow Brokers already far exceeds the harm to American intelligence done by Edward J. Snowden, the former N.S.A. contractor who fled with four laptops of classified material in 2013.

Mr. Snowden’s cascade of disclosures to journalists and his defiant public stance drew far more media coverage than this new breach. But Mr. Snowden released code words, while the Shadow Brokers have released the actual code; if he shared what might be described as battle plans, they have loosed the weapons themselves. Created at huge expense to American taxpayers, those cyberweapons have now been picked up by hackers from North Korea to Russia and shot back at the United States and its allies.

Millions of people saw their computers shut down by ransomware, with demands for payments in digital currency to have their access restored. Tens of thousands of employees at Mondelez International, the maker of Oreo cookies, had their data completely wiped. FedEx reported that an attack on a European subsidiary had halted deliveries and cost $300 million. Hospitals in Pennsylvania, Britain and Indonesia had to turn away patients. The attacks disrupted production at a car plant in France, an oil company in Brazil and a chocolate factory in Tasmania, among thousands of enterprises affected worldwide.

American officials had to explain to close allies--and to business leaders in the United States--how cyberweapons developed at Fort Meade in Maryland came to be used against them. Experts believe more attacks using the stolen N.S.A. tools are all but certain.

Inside the agency’s Maryland headquarters and its campuses around the country, N.S.A. employees have been subjected to polygraphs and suspended from their jobs in a hunt for turncoats allied with the Shadow Brokers. Much of the agency’s arsenal is still being replaced, curtailing operations. Morale has plunged, and experienced specialists are leaving the agency for better-paying jobs--including with firms defending computer networks from intrusions that use the N.S.A.’s leaked tools.

“It’s a disaster on multiple levels,” Mr. Williams said. “It’s embarrassing that the people responsible for this have not been brought to justice.”

In response to detailed questions, an N.S.A. spokesman, Michael T. Halbig, said the agency “cannot comment on Shadow Brokers.” He denied that the episode had hurt morale. “N.S.A. continues to be viewed as a great place to work; we receive more than 140,000 applications each year for our hiring program,” he said.

Compounding the pain for the N.S.A. is the attackers’ regular online public taunts, written in ersatz broken English. Their posts are a peculiar mash-up of immaturity and sophistication, laced with profane jokes but also savvy cultural and political references. They suggest that their author--if not an American--knows the United States well.

“Is NSA chasing shadowses?” the Shadow Brokers asked in a post on Oct. 16, mocking the agency’s inability to understand the leaks and announcing a price cut for subscriptions to its “monthly dump service” of stolen N.S.A. tools. It was a typically wide-ranging screed, touching on George Orwell’s “1984”; the end of the federal government’s fiscal year on Sept. 30; Russia’s creation of bogus accounts on Facebook and Twitter; and the phenomenon of American intelligence officers going to work for contractors who pay higher salaries.

One passage, possibly hinting at the Shadow Brokers’ identity, underscored the close relationship of Russian intelligence to criminal hackers. “Russian security peoples,” it said, “is becoming Russian hackeres at nights, but only full moons.”

Russia is the prime suspect in a parallel hemorrhage of hacking tools and secret documents from the C.I.A.’s Center for Cyber Intelligence, posted week after week since March to the WikiLeaks website under the names Vault7 and Vault8. That breach, too, is unsolved. Together, the flood of digital secrets from agencies that invest huge resources in preventing such breaches is raising profound questions.

Have hackers and leakers made secrecy obsolete? Has Russian intelligence simply outplayed the United States, penetrating the most closely guarded corners of its government? Can a work force of thousands of young, tech-savvy spies ever be immune to leaks?

Some veteran intelligence officials believe a lopsided focus on offensive weapons and hacking tools has, for years, left American cyberdefense dangerously porous.

“We have had a train wreck coming,” said Mike McConnell, the former N.S.A. director and national intelligence director. “We should have ratcheted up the defense parts significantly.”

At the heart of the N.S.A. crisis is Tailored Access Operations, the group where Mr. Williams worked, which was absorbed last year into the agency’s new Directorate of Operations.

T.A.O.--the outdated name is still used informally--began years ago as a side project at the agency’s research and engineering building at Fort Meade. It was a cyber Skunk Works, akin to the special units that once built stealth aircraft and drones. As Washington’s need for hacking capabilities grew, T.A.O. expanded into a separate office park in Laurel, Md., with additional teams at facilities in Colorado, Georgia, Hawaii and Texas.

The hacking unit attracts many of the agency’s young stars, who like the thrill of internet break-ins in the name of national security, according to a dozen former government officials who agreed to describe its work on the condition of anonymity. T.A.O. analysts start with a shopping list of desired information and likely sources--say, a Chinese official’s home computer or a Russian oil company’s network. Much of T.A.O.’s work is labeled E.C.I., for “exceptionally controlled information,” material so sensitive it was initially stored only in safes. When the cumulative weight of the safes threatened the integrity of N.S.A.’s engineering building a few years ago, one agency veteran said, the rules were changed to allow locked file cabinets.

The more experienced T.A.O. operators devise ways to break into foreign networks; junior operators take over to extract information. Mr. Williams, 40, a former paramedic who served in military intelligence in the Army before joining the N.S.A., worked in T.A.O. from 2008 to 2013, which he described as an especially long tenure. He called the work “challenging and sometimes exciting.”

T.A.O. operators must constantly renew their arsenal to stay abreast of changing software and hardware, examining every Windows update and new iPhone for vulnerabilities. “The nature of the business is to move with the technology,” a former T.A.O. hacker said.

Long known mainly as an eavesdropping agency, the N.S.A. has embraced hacking as an especially productive way to spy on foreign targets. The intelligence collection is often automated, with malware implants--computer code designed to find material of interest--left sitting on the targeted system for months or even years, sending files back to the N.S.A.

The same implant can be used for many purposes: to steal documents, tap into email, subtly change data or become the launching pad for an attack. T.A.O.’s most public success was an operation against Iran called Olympic Games, in which implants in the network of the Natanz nuclear plant caused centrifuges enriching uranium to self-destruct. The T.A.O. was also critical to attacks on the Islamic State and North Korea.

It was this arsenal that the Shadow Brokers got hold of, and then began to release.

Like cops studying a burglar’s operating style and stash of stolen goods, N.S.A. analysts have tried to figure out what the Shadow Brokers took. None of the leaked files date from later than 2013--a relief to agency officials assessing the damage. But they include a large share of T.A.O.’s collection, including three so-called ops disks--T.A.O.’s term for tool kits--containing the software to bypass computer firewalls, penetrate Windows and break into the Linux systems most commonly used on Android phones.

Evidence shows that the Shadow Brokers obtained the entire tool kits intact, suggesting that an insider might have simply pocketed a thumb drive and walked out.

But other files obtained by the Shadow Brokers bore no relation to the ops disks and seem to have been grabbed at different times. Some were designed for a compromise by the N.S.A. of Swift, a global financial messaging system, allowing the agency to track bank transfers. There was a manual for an old system code-named UNITEDRAKE, used to attack Windows. There were PowerPoint presentations and other files not used in hacking, making it unlikely that the Shadow Brokers had simply grabbed tools left on the internet by sloppy N.S.A. hackers.

Some officials doubt that the Shadow Brokers got it all by hacking the most secure of American government agencies--hence the search for insiders. But some T.A.O. hackers think that skilled, persistent attackers might have been able to get through the N.S.A.’s defenses--because, as one put it, “I know we’ve done it to other countries.”

The Shadow Brokers have verbally attacked certain experts, including Mr. Williams. When he concluded from their Twitter hints that they knew about some of his hacks while at the N.S.A., he canceled a business trip to Singapore. The United States had named and criminally charged hackers from the intelligence agencies of China, Iran and Russia. He feared he could be similarly charged by a country he had targeted and arrested on an international warrant.

He has since resumed traveling abroad. But he says no one from the N.S.A. has contacted him about being singled out publicly by the Shadow Brokers.

“That feels like a betrayal,” he said. “I was targeted by the Shadow Brokers because of that work. I do not feel the government has my back.”

For decades after its creation in 1952, the N.S.A.--No Such Agency, in the old joke--was seen as all but leakproof. But since Mr. Snowden flew away with hundreds of thousands of documents in 2013, that notion has been shattered.

The Snowden trauma led to the investment of millions of dollars in new technology and tougher rules to counter what the government calls the insider threat. But N.S.A. employees say that with thousands of employees pouring in and out of the gates, and the ability to store a library’s worth of data in a device that can fit on a key ring, it is impossible to prevent people from walking out with secrets.

The agency has active investigations into at least three former N.S.A. employees or contractors. Two had worked for T.A.O.: a still publicly unidentified software developer secretly arrested after taking hacking tools home in 2015, only to have Russian hackers lift them from his home computer; and Harold T. Martin III, a contractor arrested last year when F.B.I. agents found his home, garden shed and car stuffed with sensitive agency documents and storage devices he had taken over many years when a work-at-home habit got out of control, his lawyers say. The third is Reality Winner, a young N.S.A. linguist arrested in June, who is charged with leaking to the news site The Intercept a single classified report on a Russian breach of an American election systems vendor.

Mr. Martin’s gargantuan collection of stolen files included much of what the Shadow Brokers have, and he has been scrutinized by investigators as a possible source for them. Officials say they do not believe he deliberately supplied the material, though they have examined whether he might have been targeted by thieves or hackers.

But according to former N.S.A. employees who are still in touch with active workers, investigators of the Shadow Brokers thefts are clearly worried that one or more leakers may still be inside the agency. Some T.A.O. employees have been asked to turn over their passports, take time off their jobs and submit to questioning. The small number of specialists who have worked both at T.A.O. and at the C.I.A. have come in for particular attention, out of concern that a single leaker might be responsible for both the Shadow Brokers and the C.I.A.’s Vault7 breaches.

Then there are the Shadow Brokers’ writings, which betray a seeming immersion in American culture. Last April, about the time Mr. Williams was discovering their inside knowledge of T.A.O. operations, the Shadow Brokers posted an appeal to President Trump: “Don’t Forget Your Base.” With the ease of a seasoned pundit, they tossed around details about Stephen K. Bannon, the president’s now departed adviser; the Freedom Caucus in Congress; the “deep state”; the Alien and Sedition Acts; and white privilege.

“TheShadowBrokers is wanting to see you succeed,” the post said, addressing Mr. Trump. “TheShadowBrokers is wanting America to be great again.”

The mole hunt is inevitably creating an atmosphere of suspicion and anxiety, former employees say. While the attraction of the N.S.A. for skilled operators is unique--nowhere else can they hack without getting into legal trouble--the boom in cybersecurity hiring by private companies gives T.A.O. veterans lucrative exit options.

Young T.A.O. hackers are lucky to make $80,000 a year, while those who leave routinely find jobs paying well over $100,000, security specialists say. For many workers, the appeal of the N.S.A’s mission has been more than enough to make up the difference. But over the past year, former T.A.O. employees say an increasing number of former colleagues have called them looking for private-sector work, including “graybeards” they thought would be N.S.A. lifers.

“Snowden killed morale,” another T.A.O. analyst said. “But at least we knew who he was. Now you have a situation where the agency is questioning people who have been 100 percent mission-oriented, telling them they’re liars.”

Because the N.S.A. hacking unit has grown so rapidly over the past decade, the pool of potential leakers has expanded into the hundreds. Trust has eroded as anyone who had access to the leaked code is regarded as the potential culprit.

Some agency veterans have seen projects they worked on for a decade shut down because implants they relied on were dumped online by the Shadow Brokers. The number of new operations has declined because the malware tools must be rebuilt. And no end is in sight.

“How much longer are the releases going to come?” a former T.A.O. employee asked. “The agency doesn’t know how to stop it--or even what ‘it’ is.”

#NSA leaks #TAO #Tailored Access Operations #Shadow Brokers #NSA hacking tools

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dandrea · 7 years

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The 2016 Election

by Hal Lindsey

The election of Donald J. Trump remains largely a mystery to the political class. They said, “He made a fatal mistake, on the very day he announced his candidacy, one from which he could never recover.” A few days later, he said something else that they were sure would sink him as a candidate. He ran as a Republican, but alienated the last two Republican nominees. Then, he alienated the last two Republican presidents.

The television networks quickly realized that he was ratings gold. Talk about him -- good or bad -- always drew an audience. His actual appearance on their programs sent viewership into the stratosphere.

During the Republican primaries, the mainstream media gobbled up the money they generated from covering his candidacy. They also gathered ammunition against him, should he actually win the nomination.

When he became the Republican nominee, the media games turned into a blood sport. In the fall, they released damaging tapes and information they had been withholding all through the Republican primaries. They not only expected to destroy him, but to give Hillary Clinton an overwhelming victory that she could use to finish “transforming” America.

Then came the great surprise: He won!

But, if you think that ended the war, think again. In Washington, fights don’t end with single elections.

In 1968, American elected a man that the political and media establishment fully hated: Richard Nixon. Their hatred was not just political, but personal. They should have loved him. He did all kinds of things that they wanted him to do. He ended the military draft; established relations with China; and created detant with the Soviet Union. He negotiated the SALT agreements that limited key components that the nation’s nuclear arsenal. Nixon advocated for universal health care. His justice department integrated more schools than all other presidents combined. And, he established the Environmental Protection Agency. He removed America’s money from the gold standard, and he created the petro dollar. He was not able to end President Johnson’s war quickly, but he did get it ended.

Those were accomplishments that the liberal mainstream media should have loved and applauded. Whatever the reason, during his administration, a level of vitriol entered Washington politics that had long been absent.

To one extent or another, it has been there ever since. Nixon won an unprecedented landslide re-election in 1972 taking 520 electoral votes to George McGovern’s 17, but it didn’t matter. The political establishment ferreted out crimes that Nixon certainly committed, but that had been tolerated in certain other presidents. And, they used them to drive him in humiliation from the White House in 1974. But folks, compared to what Donald Trump is facing, Richard Nixon had it easy.

One member of Congress, California representative Maxine Waters, started calling for Trump’s impeachment before he had even been inaugurated. And, that’s only the beginning. Her solo will soon turn into a chorus. The media, Hollywood, academia, and the political establishment are all arrayed against him.

Trump’s election is no reason for his supporters to relax. Just the opposite. Now, the real battle begins. The battle to roll back the damage that has been done to America

First Timothy chapter 2 verses 1 and 2 says,

“I urge that entreaties and prayers, petitions, and thanksgiving, be made on behalf of all men; for kings and all who are in authority, in order that we may lead a tranquil and quiet life in all godliness and dignity.” (NASB)

If ever we needed to do as the Apostle Paul admonishes, it is now.

Representative John Lewis of Georgia refused to attend the inauguration ceremonies. He said, “I don’t see this president-elect as a legitimate president. I think the Russians participated in helping this man get elected.”

Representative Lewis’ role in the Civil Rights movement of the 1950’s and 60’s make him an authentic American hero, but it does not mean he can’t be wrong today, or that he should not be criticized when he is wrong.

Before we look at what the Russians did or did not do, it is important to remember that the first wave of emails that embarrassed Secretary Clinton were not leaked, they were released by the state department because a federal judge ordered them to be released. The emails leaked later were the ones US intelligence agencies believe were stolen by Russia.

Assuming that that is true -- and it’s by no means conclusive that it is -- did Russia’s actions alter the outcome of the election?

There are no allegations of foreign hackers getting into voting machines or county election computers. Numbers were not altered, contrary to what you have been led to believe as a matter of pure fact. Technically, no one was even hacked. The Democratic National Committee and John Podesta, Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager, gave the nefarious individuals access to their email accounts. Podesta and friends were not hacked, they were fooled. Duped.

Podesta fell victim to what is know as “Phishing”. He received an email saying that someone had tried to change his password. The email said:

“Google stopped this sign-in attempt. You should change your password immediately.”

The email included a link labeled: “Change Password”

One of Podesta’s aides clicked the button and the “Phish” was hooked.

The button link to a fake Google page designed to steal passwords. This happens to millions of people. You probably have received similar emails yourself, but you would expect the chairman of a major presidential campaign to be more careful than the average person.

Something similar happened to the Democratic National Committee. Also, some of the DNC emails were exposed by outraged employees [see ] who felt that the Bernie Sanders’ nomination had been stolen by the DNC.

I have not seen the CIA’s data implicating the Russians, but neither of these attacks required great sophistication. They were simple and unfortunately too common.

It is also worth noting that no one has disputed the content of the DNC or Podesta emails. They were real and included messages that could be considered embarrassing to the Clinton campaign.

But that’s not so big a deal. We all know that none of us are as careful in our private communications as we are when we’re speaking in public. Did they have an impact? Outside of Washington, very few people can describe the contents of even one of these thousands of emails. I seriously doubt that they changed the vote of a single American.

So, no. The Russians did not alter the election.

Then there are those who claim that Trump is illegitimate because he did not win the popular vote. Consider this: The Super Bowl 50, just one year ago, the Carolina Panthers had 315 yards of total offense, and the Denver Broncos had only 194 of total offense.

So, Carolina won, right? Wrong. The rules of the contest don’t say that you win by having the most yards. You win by having the most points. If you don’t like that, then try to get the rules changed, but in the meantime, total offense is just an interesting statistic. It does not decide who wins.

In the United States, the Constitution is designed to keep states relevant, and with some power, in the face of a strong federal government. One of the ways the founders did that was by putting states at the center of the process for selecting presidents.

If you think they were wrong, then work to change the Constitution. But don’t say, after the fact, that the contest shouldn’t count because you don’t like the rules. Both sides tried to win as many electoral votes as possible by winning as many states as possible.

Neither Trump, nor Clinton, was trying to win the popular vote. They would like to win the popular vote, but it was secondary. I’m sure the Broncos would have preferred having more total offense than the Panthers in the last year’s Super Bowl, but it wasn’t required to win the game and the championship.

In the election, if the rules had been different, each side would have employed completely different strategies, and we have no way of knowing who would have won. Speculate all you want, but don’t call the winner illegitimate cause you don’t like the outcome.

Either we have a Constitution or we don’t. Either that Constitution means something, or it doesn’t. If we cease to be a nation of laws, we become a nation where only the loud and violent have a voice.

Jesus warned that in the last days “...lawlessness will abound.” (Matthew 24:12 NKJV) And, that’s what people who want to ignore the rules, after the fact, are calling for.

In reflecting about the Obama Administration’s time in office, it struck me just how much change has taken place in such a short time. Most of it is bad. I don’t mean this strictly as an indictment of President Obama. He made plenty of mistakes and many wrong choices, but some things went badly because he was president near the end of the period known in the Bible as the Last Days.

President Obama has always been a favorite of political liberals, but today, if anyone took the position that Obama took eight years ago on the issue of same-sex marriage, political liberals will call him a bigot.

It became the law of the land. Not in a referendum of voters or by an act of the legislature, but by edict of the courts.

The day the Supreme Court ruled in favor of same-sex marriage, President Obama ordered that the White House be lit up in the rainbow colors of the LGBT community. As massive -- as precedential -- as that change was, it didn’t take eight years, it took only five.

Romans chapter 1 describes this as a symptom of a society in the last stages of its own self-destruction.

Eight years ago, ISIS did not even exist. Since then, the nations of the world has spent hundreds of billions of dollars trying to fight this radical Islamic organization. Eight years ago, Egypt was considered one of the most stable governments in the Middle East, but that was before the US backed “Arab Spring”.

Since then, two Egyptian governments have fallen in coup d'états.

Iran was at peace eight years ago, and seemed to be on its way to becoming a stable democracy.

Syria seemed stable.

Libya seemed stable.

In eight years, chaos in those three nations has changed the face of the world. It has driven millions of their former citizens into a Europe that will never be the same again.

The former president claims the Iran Nuclear Deal as an example of progress during his term. But I believe that deal actually ensured that Iran will get nuclear weapons, if they haven’t already.

In eight years, Israel is closer to war and further from peace. It has been damaged immeasurably in the United Nations in just the last month. Russia and Iran now sit on Israel’s doorstep in Syria.

Three years ago, the president dismissed Russia as a “...regional power.” (President Barack Obama) But that regional power now threatens the peace of the whole world. It makes you wonder what will happen in the next few years.

What will happen to the European Union? What will happen in the Muslim world? What will happen to Christians in Africa and in South America?

Pope Frances has pushed the Catholic church far in the direction of liberalism. What will the next pope do? Will there even be another pope or US president? Or maybe onrushing events will now slow down for a while.

Jesus compared the endtimes to a woman having contractions while in labor. They come with intensity, and they ease up for a while. Maybe we’re in for a lull. Or maybe this labor has gone far enough that the contractions will be so close together, that we can’t tell where one ends and the next begins.

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That is why it is so important that all believers in Jesus Christ stay spiritually ready for His coming, because we do not know when it will be. And Scripture shows that it could be at any moment.

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opedguy · 4 years

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Putin Throws in Two Cents on U.S. Protests

LOS ANGELES (OnlineColumnist.com), June 4, 2020.--Sticking it to the United States, 67-year-old Russian President Vladimir Putin urged America to stick to its democrat principles letting protesters express themselves without tear-gas or rubber bullets. Watching Russian news coverage, it’s Putin’s utter delight and other global leaders to laugh at the land of the free and home of the brave, watching the race riots and civil unrest. Nothing makes tyrants like Putin happier than watching the most diverse nation in the world engage in a violent uprisings. Former 55-year-old Obama National Security Adviser Susan Rice said June 1 that the Russians may be behind the current U.S. uprisings, despite providing no proof. Rice was one of the first Obama administration officials to “unmask” Trump campaign officials while in private phone conversations with foreign officials, especially 69-year-old former Russian Amb. Sergey Kislyak and Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn.

Putin’s public remarks about the widespread race riots, looting, arson and anarchy, is the perfect storm for a dictator like Putin that’s destroyed Russia’s free press, incarcerating or vaporizing journalists and citizens. Journalists or private citizens that criticize Putin’s heavy-handed tactics often finds themselves mysteriously disappearing or, if found, usually poisoned or with a bullet in their heads. When the late Los Angeles District Atty. Vicent T. Bugliosi, author of 1974 “Helter Skelter,” exposed Charles Manson’s diabolical plot to create a race war in the United States, it sounded preposterous. But listening to Putin, with his tongue-in-his-cheek, lecturing the U.S. on free speech, Rice might have a point. Putin faced withering criticism by 72-year-old former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton who slammed him in 2011 for rigging Russian elections. Now Putin wants the Duma [Russian parliament] to extend his term to 2036, making him Russian Tsar.

Rice has no evidence that Putin has placed SVR RF [formerly KGB] agents inside the U.S. to support race rioting, looting, arson or anarchy. Weakening the U.S. has always been the goal of the former Soviet Union, working day-and-night to undermine U.S. democracy. Putin doesn’t believe in a diverse society, with Russia showing intolerance of Muslim groups from Chechnya, Dagestan or other Caucasus regions. Russia is primarily a white, Eastern Orthodox nation, with little room for racial or ethnic diversity Since the end of WW II, the U.S. and Russia have been locked in a endless Cold War where both sides tries to weaken the other. Hillary’s comments about Putin’s suppression of dissent in the 2012 Russian election hasn’t been forgotten by Putin. Some think that Putin paid back Hillary giving WikiLeaks dirt on her campaign and the Democratic National Committee in 2016.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman 44-year-old Maria Zakharova said the U.S. use of tear gas and other crowd-control tactics has already injured Russian reporters on the scene. Calling himself a “pure democrat,” Putin displays the Orwellian nature of today’s modern Russian state. Whatever progress of former Russian Premier Mikhail Gorbachev or the late Russian Federation President Boris Yeltsin, Putin has dismantled all democratic gains. His relentless attack on free speech, free enterprise, free anything has been well documented over his long run in office. Putin persecuted Russia’s oligarchs that helped under Yeltsin to privatize state-run industries. Putin expropriated several industries, including the oil industry, communications, utilities, etc., driving oligarchs out of the country. Putin chased his critics into foreign lands, sometimes poisoning them.

Calling Putin an “impeccable democrat,” former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder had to be sarcastic. “Of course I am an absolute, pure democrat. But you know the problem? It’s not even a problem, it’s a real tragedy. The thing is that I am the only one, there just aren’t any others in the world,” Putin said, making zero sense. Putin’s attack on free speech and free enterprise is known by everyone. He’s the “true democrat” that invaded Georgia’s South Ossetia and Abkhazia Aug. 7, 2008. Then when he got no push back in Georgia, he invaded Ukraine March 1, 2014 seizing the Crimean Peninsula. So when it comes to disinformation, deliberately spreading falsehoods to advance as political agenda, Putin has developed it into a science. Calling a “pure democrat,” so perverts the word, that it’s has zero meaning, when his real goal denies citizens the rights to free information and speech.

Whatever role Russia plays in today’s civil unrest is anyone’s guess. One thing’s for sure: Russia wants to destabilize the United States anyway it can, certainly a race war would help upend U.S. society. Raising the Russian connection, Rice raises an interesting perspective on what Russia’s real aims are in the United States. When it came to the Russian hoax, blaming Donald Trump for serving as a Russian asset, Rice knew that Hillary’s paid “dossier” was utter rubbish, tying him to Russia to scare off voters. “The thing is that I am the only one [pure democrat] there just aren’t any others in the world,” Putin said, leaving no doubt that he believes his own twisted propaganda. If Putin were a “pure democrat” would he control Russia’s free press, preventing ordinary citizens for accessing the Internet without the Kremlin’s censorship. Nothing makes Putin happier that watching the U.S. tear itself apart.

About the Author

John M. Curtis writes politically neutral commentary analyzing spin in national and global news. He’s editor of OnlineColumnist.com and author of Dodging The Bullet and Operation Charisma.

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shirlleycoyle · 4 years

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Neo-Nazi Terror Group The Base Linked to the War in Ukraine

This article originally appeared on VICE Canada.

After a string of sweeping indictments and arrests, court documents have illustrated how the neo-Nazi terror group The Base discussed derailing trains and plotted the assassinations of anti-fascist activists in the United States.

But the group also had international ambitions. The Base and its leader wanted to form concrete links between Ukrainian ultra-nationalist military units and the global neo-Nazi movement.

And one American connected to The Base had already traveled to the war-torn country in search of wartime experience, VICE has learned.

Matthew Ryan Burchfield, a 20-year-old Virginia native, went to Ukraine in the fall of 2019. The affiliate of The Base was seeking to join the conflict in Donbas, multiple confidential sources, online records, social media accounts, and his own admission confirm.

It’s an absurd story, involving a young man who by his own account went from participating in an accelerationist group chat to ending up in Ukraine, where Russian-backed paramilitaries are fighting neo-Nazi factions and the regular military, as part of a quest to lead “a normal life.” It’s also yet more evidence that terrorism analysts are right to be concerned that the war in Ukraine is becoming an international insurgent hotbed, drawing in members of American neo-Nazi groups like The Base and sending out radicalized soldiers.

In much the same way jihadist organizations like ISIS and al-Qaeda have exploited wars in Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan to transform their extremist movements into violent, global insurections against world governments, Ukraine is serving as a training ground for the extremist right. Foreign travelers have already gotten involved in the nearly six-year-old conflict by joining Ukrainian military units like Azov Battalion and Right Sector. Both organizations have known ties to an international network of neo-Nazis and active positions on the frontlines of the war in eastern Ukraine.

The FBI would neither confirm nor deny an investigation into Burchfield.

Do you have information about The Base or other extremist groups? We’d love to hear from you. You can contact Ben Makuch and Mack Lamoureux securely on Wire at @benmakuch and @mlamoureux, or by email at [email protected] or [email protected].

According to multiple sources familiar with his plans, Burchfield sought military training and war experience. After considering joining the U.S. armed forces, he traveled to Ukraine instead, looking to join a military unit through a contact.

Burchfield confirmed to VICE over Instagram direct message that he traveled to Ukraine intending to fight Russian separatists on the frontline of the war in the east in order to gain enough war experience for future private military contracting work. His display picture on the site is a photo of a nationalist lion statue in Lviv, Ukraine, a symbol some claim is linked to the Galician division of the Einsatzgruppen (SS) death squads.

Burchfield admitted he was “a part” of The Base and its encrypted chat room until sometime in November 2019. Throughout last year, he actively used an alias known to VICE to covertly communicate with other members of the terror group. As per its group procedures, Burchfield was vetted by senior members of The Base before he was allowed access to the chat room.

He denounced the leader of The Base, known pseudonymously as Norman Spear, after a recent story in The Guardian exposed Spear as a 46-year-old New Jersey native named Rinaldo Nazzaro, currently believed to be based in Russia.

“I do not support any group or people rooted in the dictatorial regime of the Russian Federation,” Burchfield told VICE. “I completely disavow ‘Norman Spear’ and anyone else that supports the Russian state,” adding that he didn’t travel to Ukraine with the help or for The Base. Burchfield now claims to be in Slovakia following the expiration of his Ukrainian visa.

While Spear never publicly discussed his group’s connections to the war in Ukraine, he appeared on a neo-Nazi podcast in 2018 with an American believed to be connected to the the Azov Battalion and who encourages neo-Nazis to join the war in Ukraine. In the podcast, along with other topics, Spear and the host debate neo-Nazis undertaking lone wolf terrorist attacks.

VICE is aware that Spear thought the war in Ukraine could be used as a training ground for members of The Base, where fighters could gain war experience then return stateside, battle-hardened, and contribute to a homegrown insurgency.

When first contacted, Burchfield claimed that he wasn’t connected to The Base, then said he was "added to a chat with a loose group of survivalists/preppers" and that he "didn't even realize it was an organization." (The “survivalist and prepper” description is often used by Spear as a smokescreen to portray The Base as a legal organization, though internally members exchanged bomb-making manuals, discussed terror attacks, and organized paramilitary training.)

In his latest response to VICE he admitted to his involvement with The Base, but downplayed his participation in the terror group. Burchfield claimed he stayed in the group for up to six months, out of fear for his life and the lives of his family members following his identity being doxed and known to The Base after a May 2019 post by Atlanta Antifa.

According to his ex-girlfriend, Georgia resident Arieana Love, who shared texts with VICE, Burchfield traveled to Ukraine looking for war and was a self-proclaimed neo-Nazi who advocated for a white ethno-state—a key pillar to the ideology The Base espouses.

His presence in Ukraine was first reported by the North Carolinan alt-weekly, Triad City Beat, in an extensive feature about the connections between American neo-Nazi hate groups and Ukrainian militants. His affiliation to The Base was then unknown.

“It’s not an excuse, but it’s how things are, I was a young kid without a lot of life experience when I first got into all this. My doxing article back in America effectively ruined my ability to secure jobs and have a normal life,” he told VICE. “So I decided to go elsewhere (Ukraine) to have that normal life, I just wanted my family back home safe before I did. I was and still am a young kid who’s made poor choices in affiliations, and I’m actively working to move past that.”

It isn’t known exactly what Burchfield did in Ukraine. In an interview with Triad City Beat, he told the paper he was there as a food tourist. Burchfield told VICE, after extensive and misleading exchanges, that he did travel to the country with the intention of going to war, but that after the 2019 Normandy Summit—peace talks held in France between Russia and Ukraine—his plans in the country changed. He maintained that he intended to join the cause in Ukraine through “legal channels to serve in the war effort.”

Mollie Saltskog, an intelligence analyst at the Soufan Center, a non-profit terrorism watchdog, said the connections between The Base and the war in Ukraine is yet another harbinger of a global problem.

“The conflict in eastern Ukraine is to the white supremacists what Afghanistan was to the Salafi-jihadists in the 80’s and 90’s,” said Saltskog. “Remember, al-Qaeda, for which the English translation is ‘The Base,’ was born out of the conflict in Afghanistan.”

Saltskog says the threat of returning foreign fighters, affiliated to groups like The Base, presents a particularly frightening risk to national security. Counterterrorism experts hold similar fears for ISIS returnees who may come home undetected from recent wars in Iraq and Syria, battle-hardened with new tradecraft to share.

“Traveling to Ukraine allows American neo-Nazis to gain actual combat experience to bring back home,” she said. “They can then instruct others and use their skills to orchestrate violence and terrorist activities in the Homeland.”

Other open-source information points to Burchfield’s connections to The Base.

Digital breadcrumbs link Burchfield’s online activities under the alias “Alpers” to another member of The Base, Luke Austin Lane. Lane, whose online name is “The Militant Buddhist,” is now facing serious criminal charges, along with two other members of the terror group, for a plot to assassinate anti-fascist activists in Georgia.

Through archival web caches, first outlined by Atlanta Antifa, Burchfield and Lane openly appear on an extremist white-nationalist website founded by one of the senior members of The Base in 2018, who goes by the alias “Mathias.” A profile that uses the same alias as Burchfield's Steam username, outlined how he felt he could learn from his fellow neo-Nazis.

“I hope by being here I can engage with other fascists and improve my understanding of the worldview, and also improve myself in other ways in the presence of like minded comrades,” the post read.

Follow Ben Makuch, Mack Lamoureux, and Zachary Kamel on Twitter.

Neo-Nazi Terror Group The Base Linked to the War in Ukraine syndicated from https://triviaqaweb.wordpress.com/feed/

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terabitweb · 5 years

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Original Post from SC Magazine Author: Bradley Barth

In the film “Ocean’s 11,” Danny Ocean and his team of expert cybercriminals execute a daring casino heist in glitzy Las Vegas.

This past summer at the Black Hat and DEF CON conferences in Sin City, the editorial staff at SC Media attempted to pull off a less ambitious – and decidedly more legal – caper of its own. With far less success.

The job: Complete a full series of video interviews with leading cyber experts, all while riding the world’s largest ferris wheel.

As a bonus, we even invited a pair of wireless researchers from the DEF CON Wireless Village to accompany us on the ride and use their equipment to sniff out whatever devices and signals they could detect along our 360-degree journey.

Our crew was set: one reporter + one cameraman + two wireless researchers + five experts + two PR associates for logistical support = SC’s 11.

As it turned out, Ocean’s 11 would have a much easier time of it.

The first challenge was getting on the ride in the first place, without breaking any rules. Ferris wheel policy didn’t allow professional video cameras, so we steered clear of this problem by filming only with an iPhone. Meanwhile, wireless researchers Rick Falcone and Rick Mellendick inquired in advance to make sure nothing they would bring on board was forbidden and were given a thumbs up that all was well.

Still, it was tempting fate when, for dramatic effect, Mellendick decided to handcuff himself to the protective case carrying his equipment. Surely, even in Vegas, this odd sight would cause a scene once we reached security, wouldn’t it? But after a few curious questions from the guards at the metal detectors, we were sent on our way.

Bradley felt like a big shot when a passerby saw the SC logo on the microphone and asked if he was with SportsCenter. Of course, reporting for SC Media is pretty darn cool too.

The next phase of the plan was to perform four interviews with our five experts (two were a duo who were interviewed together) in 30 minutes of ride time, before we quite literally came full circle. Mission accomplished there – just barely – as we finished our final interview right as it was time to disembark. Feeling victorious, we hurriedly gathered our belongings and stepped out of the cabin.

That’s when we ran into security. And they were not happy.

The woman in charge began interrogating our group, insisting that we should never have been allowed to board the ferris wheel while carrying electronic equipment – especially during DEF CON week. But since we didn’t actually bring any officially prohibited items, she let us pass. But not before making an ominous statement along these lines: “Excuse me, I have to go fire some people.” (We certainly hope no one was actually fired when it appears everyone had followed the rules.)

Whew. That was a close one. But at least we got our footage, right? Well, not exactly. The next morning, we discovered that the audio did not record correctly. Nothing but static. It was the equivalent of the Ocean’s 11 crew escaping the casino with bags of loot, only to find they were filled with Monopoly money.

But we weren’t about to let that stop us. So, nearly three months later, SC Media is finally pleased to present a photo essay of our Las Vegas (mis)adventure, featuring Q&A commentary from our guests, who were kind enough to recreate some of their talking points from the ride.

Who would have thought that a slow, scenic trip on a ferris wheel would turn into such a roller coaster ride?

See our interviews, below:

Sherrod DeGrippo (right), senior director of threat research and detection, Proofpoint.

Our first guest passenger was Sherrod DeGrippo, senior director of threat research and detection at Proofpoint.

SC: Sherrod, during our ferris wheel interview you described some of the recent activity of the cybercriminal threat group TA505, which historically has been associated with the Dridex banking trojan and Locky ransomware. What are the latest developments with this actor?

SD: This summer, we observed TA505 introduce a new downloader malware, AndroMut, which has some similarities in code and behavior to Andromeda, a long-established malware family. Our researchers identified two distinct campaigns by TA505 that used AndroMut to download [the remote access trojan] FlawedAmmyy. These attacks appeared to be targeted carefully by geography and somewhat targeted by industry, especially in Singapore and the UAE, where attacks were dramatically skewed towards financial services organizations.

Our research has followed TA505’s evolution over the last few years from an extremely high-volume actor dealing in global ransomware and banking Trojan campaigns to a targeted actor focused on regional campaigns and malware ranging from downloaders to sophisticated remote access trojans. This group is both adaptable and adept at following the money. They tend to set trends across the malware landscape, so, at this point, it appears that they are adapting to changing conditions based on regional and vertical targeting, as well the types of malware they are distributing. Some of these conditions may relate to cryptocurrency volatility and adaptations of defenders to previous malware strains they distributed en masse.

SC: During the interview, we noted that you are from Georgia, which has been hit repeatedly by ransomware attacks on a local and city level. Please explain why municipalities have become such an appealing target. Also, you mentioned that you may have even been indirectly affected by the SamSam ransomware attack on Altanta. Please explain.

SD: Threat actors recognize that municipalities typically have outdated information security protections and lack the resources necessary to recover quickly from an attack. These factors, along with their broad swath of responsibilities and relatively deep pockets, have made them more attractive targets in recent years. Additionally, ransomware actors look for the best, highest payout potential and focus their efforts there. A municipality has access to funds in excess of what consumer users or most small or medium businesses would have available that they can relatively easily divert to regain access to their systems, making them a lucrative target.

I was actually pulled over by a police officer in Atlanta during the city’s SamSam ransomware attack. Because the police department’s systems were down, I was let go without a ticket.

SC: You also mentioned the most paranoid thing you’ve seen someone do to keep secure at Black Hat and DEF CON. Is there such a thing as being too paranoid?

SD: I don’t think there is such a thing as too paranoid. Everyone should take every possible precaution to protect themselves and their digital identities. However, I have seen extreme acts taken at Black Hat/DEF CON that don’t have any impact on security, like tinfoil-wrapping an entire hotel room. That’s probably more for fun than actual security. I’ve seen people handcuff their tech to their wrist. That’s pretty paranoid, but also important if you’re forgetful.

Tyler Moffitt (left), senior threat research analyst, and Jason Davison (center), advanced threat research analyst, Webroot.

As we climbed toward the apex of our ascent, we were joined by a duo from Webroot: Tyler Moffitt, senior threat research analyst, and Jason Davison, advanced threat research analyst.

SC: Last year, the big ransomware threat was GandCrab. That changed following the developers’ supposed retirement. Now there’s a new threat, Sodinokibi, which also uses a ransomware-as-a-service model. Based on your observations, what makes this threat unique and dangerous? And what has led experts to conclude that Sodinokibi was created by GandCrab’s developers?

TM and JD: GandCrab was one of the most successful RaaS (Ransomware as a Service) operations we’ve seen to date. Due to their success, they [GandCrab’s developers] received attention from researchers and the media alike. It’s not uncommon for successful threat actors who receive a lot of attention to try and start new projects in an attempt remain successful. There are extremely strong ties between Gandcrab and Sodinokibi. We even found an early decryptor binary listed as “gc6” (assumed to be GandCrab 6, since the last known distributed version of GandCrab was version 5.2) in the PDB path.

SC: You’ve also been following several DNS hijacking campaigns in which malicious actors, perhaps government-sponsored, are altering internet records to reroute website visitors to attacker-controlled sites. Explain how this scheme works and explain why this is such a serious threat to the integrity of the internet’s infrastructure?

TM and JD: DNS is an older, fundamental part of networking that didn’t really account for security too much when it was initially designed. Attacks have been reported targeting mainly government and military organizations in the Middle East and North Africa regions. At a high level, the attack is to manipulate DNS name records to then redirect to hacker-controlled servers. This is critical because attackers are leveraging the trust placed on DNS systems to successfully attack users.

SC: We also talked about DEF CON being famous for hackers trying to hack into everything – elevators, hotel rooms, ATMs, etc. What’s the most unusual device/system hack you’ve researched or witnessed, at DEF CON or elsewhere?

TM and JD: I haven’t seen anything too crazy with my own eyes other than construction signs hacked to say “ZOMBIES AHEAD.” Also, all the speakers at the Bellagio casino were once hijacked to play Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up.”

Dr. Richard Gold (left), director of security engineering, Digital Shadows.

Halfway home! Our next guest was Dr. Richard Gold, director of security engineering at Digital Shadows.

SC: Over the summer, the Senate Intel Committee released volume one of a report detailing Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. elections. You have followed reputed Russian APT actor APT 28/Fancy Bear closely. What were your reactions to the report?

RG: The report really lays out how the Russian intrusion groups took an “offense in depth” approach to their activities; that is, they conducted a very broad campaign against a number of targets using a wide variety of methods. The report goes into detail on the activity around the election infrastructure in a number of states. This is all in addition to the intrusions into the DNC [Democratic National Committee] and the DCCC [Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee] and the misinformation campaigns that have also been attributed to Russian groups. With the 2020 election looming large, the report clearly indicates the need for shoring up the security of any systems around elections and political campaigns.

SC: How great is your concern that Fancy Bear is willing and able to take more extreme measures next year and actually alter voter information (to cause chaos or disqualify certain voters) and/or change vote tallies?

RG: It is certainly possible. However, they had this access in 2016 and they did not use it, indicating that they didn’t need to use this access in order to achieve their goals. That does not mean that they will not use this access in 2020 as the target environment for these groups has changed in the last four years. There is more awareness of the threat posed by foreign interference than there was in 2016 so it may require hostile groups to go further in order to achieve their goals.

SC: You also have closely followed Hidden Cobra/Lazarus Group. During Black Hat, news broke that the reputed North Korean ATP group has collected $2 billion in illegal funds. What has made Lazarus Group so effective and lucrative over the years?

RG: Lazarus/Hidden Cobra are adept at “following the money,” to use a well-known phrase. They have consistently targeted organizations that handle large sums of money but do not necessarily have the same level of security as some more mature organizations. They have targeted cryptocurrency exchanges and financial institutions where the attackers had uncovered security weaknesses. This increased the likelihood that their intrusions would be successful, that they would be able to steal substantial amounts of money, and would be unlikely to be detected.

Ben Seri (left), VP of research, Armis.

Our final on-board guest was Ben Seri, vice president of research at Armis. Ben took us through the Armis team’s discovery of URGENT/11, a series of vulnerabilities found in the real-time operating system (RTOS) VxWorks. More than 2 billion devices operate on VxWorks, about 200 million of which were judged to be affected by the flaws.

SC: Ben, please summarize your URGENT/11 presentation at Black Hat, and the nature of the vulnerabilities you discovered.

BS: At Black Hat, we presented our findings, and did a deep dive on some of the most interesting of the discovered vulnerabilities. Many of the discovered vulnerabilities were found in esoteric features of the TCP and IP protocols, that are rarely used but nevertheless implemented, even in modern TCP/IP stacks. These esoteric features tend to be overlooked by both developers and pen testers, and therefore might end up containing very critical vulnerabilities.

SC: We talked about how vulnerability researchers have largely overlooked real-time operating systems. Why is this the case?

BS: There are a couple of reasons researchers overlook real-time operating systems. First of all, researching RTOSs is challenging – many of these operating systems are closed-source, and not easily debuggable. So to start hunting for vulnerabilities in such systems, a researcher would first need to invest significant time in preparing tools. Other reasons might be the competitive nature of researchers, who are mainly focused on the security of their personal devices – PCs and mobile phones. In addition, researchers have a much greater incentive to search for vulnerabilities in devices of companies that have bug bounty programs, for instance.

SC: I understand that since we last spoke in Vegas, it was determined that other RTOSs are similarly affected by the vulnerabilities because they share the flawed TCP/IP stack component known as IPnet. Please elaborate.

BS: The IPnet TCP/IP stack was indeed a standalone product that was licensed to users of various RTOSs in the past. Armis actually discovered this through the BD Alaris Infusion pump, a widely used Infusion pump that was detected as running the IPnet stack in a hospital environment where the Armis solution is used. The surprising factor was that this device is not based on VxWorks. That fact led us to further investigate the reach of these URGENT/11 [vulnerabilties]. It is surprisingly difficult to determine the OS used by medical devices, and embedded devices in general, let alone the TCP/IP stack that powers the network connectivity function of these devices. A vulnerability in a widespread component, such as the IPnet stack, is a case of a software supply chain vulnerability that unfortunately affects any device or operating system that uses it.

Rick Mellendick (left), chief security officer, PI Achievers, and Rick Farina (right), senior product manager, Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Company.

With our feet firmly planted back on earth, we finally turned to our wireless detectives Rick Mellendick, chief security officer at PI Achievers, and Rick Farina, senior product manager with Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Company. The two Ricks ran this year’s Def Con Wireless Village, and so we had asked them to bring some special equipment aboard the ride to passively – and legally – monitor the local environment for notable device activity. (You might remember them from our 2019 Trolley Talk segment at the RSA conference.)

SC: Explain your point of view of what happened at the end of the ride with ferris wheel security.

RF: The most likely explanation? The manager saw what appeared to be an interview and accosted the people who looked like they were carrying camera equipment. When she realized we didn’t have professional camera equipment, she claimed DEF CON attendees aren’t allowed to bring any electronics, which seems reductio ad absurdum. In truth, their physical security was about what would be expected at most places. We had a briefcase full of stuff, we showed them inside, it wasn’t dangerous or otherwise prohibited, so they let us through (despite the silliness with the handcuffs). Once we were past main security, and we powered up the kit, I am a bit surprised no one cared that Rick and I were tethered together. Again, all of our stuff was already checked, but I would say we behaved sufficiently atypical in a manner that would have easily justified additional scrutiny.

SC: Describe the equipment you brought with you for this particular mission, and what you were looking for.

RF: We brought a hard case full of wireless monitoring equipment; specifically, a small Intel compute stick, four general purpose software-defined radios for looking at different types of standard sensors and wireless remotes, one ADS-B-specific SDR (Software Defined Radio) for tracking airplanes, three Wi-Fi cards for monitoring Wi-Fi traffic, one Bluetooth dongle for monitoring Bluetooth and Bluetooth smart, two 802.15.4 (Zigbee) dongles for monitoring 802.15.4 in 900 MHz and 2.4GHz, and 2 Crazyradio PA dongles for monitoring wireless keyboards and mice. Basically, our goal was to see everything we could easily see passively, specifically using a free open-source tool called Kismet.

SC: Did the height of the ferris wheel present any unique opportunities to capture data? Also, did the ferris wheel present any unique challenges or obstacles that hindered data collection?

RF: The overall design of a ferris wheel does obviously lend a great opportunity for gaining some altitude, which removes the lower height obstructions like buildings and lets us pick up signals from farther away. Being Vegas, however, the pods of the ferris wheel likely use nice expensive low-e glass, which works as a shielding against much of the electromagnetic spectrum, as it is specifically designed to block out things such as infrared light. While these two things balanced out quite a bit, being in an enclosed space that was moving around (a ferris wheel in our case, but it could be a subway or a train or a bus) gave us the unique opportunity to really “get to know” everyone around us. We profiled how many phones we saw, and based on signal strength and duration seen it was obvious who was in the pod with us and who was not. While we only acted passively, there was more than enough time to consider a targeted attack against our fellow ride enthusiasts, which remained purely theoretical. The same thing could easily happen every day on the yellow or blue metro lines in Washington DC, or anywhere else where it may be interesting to profile people via their electronics.

SC: Ultimately, what did you find? Give us some specific examples of interesting observations, and then share with us your total statistics!

RM: We saw seven wireless mice and keyboards, as well as hundreds of active Bluetooth radios (both associated and probing). We saw a typical amount of Wi-Fi, and many other associated signals.

The stats: * 1,496 Bluetooth devices * 1,286 Wi-Fi devices including both clients and access points * two temperature sensors * seven wireless mice and/or keyboards * 65 aircraft

RF: So here’s how I broke it down and my assumptions: Wireless keyboards and mice have a fairly short range. The low-e glass also limits our range. As such, it’s extremely likely that the wireless keyboards and mice were in use on the [cocktail] bar-equipped ferris wheel cars.

The temperature sensors are also pretty short range typically. We saw one that was an appropriate temperature for a refrigerator, and one that was the current outside temperature. Range is a bit further on these things, but I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that one was in a refrigerator and one was monitoring outdoor temperature for some monitor system or a sign with the temperature.

SC: Finally, a question for Rick M.: Explain why you handcuffed yourself to the equipment and, since you didn’t have a key, how long did it take to pick yourself out of it?

RF: I’m not Rick M, but I’m going to go out on a limb and say “because it was funny.” It does prevent security from attempting to confiscate things if they don’t like something, but we did unlock the case and show them everything inside before gaining entry. As for the picking, I think it was about 20 seconds for the first cuff and 10 for the second. Don’t let him convince you he did both cuffs in 10 seconds.

RM: The handcuffs were just for show, and to be different. It forced questions, and allowed for us to possibly have some teaching moments. If we just had backpacks, no one would have asked much of anything. And I think Rick’s estimation of the time to get out is a bit high, but it was very quick and during a discussion, while talking to a colleague.

* Q&A responses were minimally edited for content and clarity.

Trolley Talk, RSA 2019 edition: SC’s second annual cable car chats (video)

Trolley Talk: SC cruises the cable car line with cyber experts

Trolley Talk – The Full Ride

TA505 cybergang debuts ‘AndroMut” downloader to deliver FlawedAmmyy RAT globally

Report suggests GandCrab’s developers may have created Sodinokibi ransomware

‘Brazen’ nation-state actors behind ‘Sea Turtle’ DNS hijacking campaign

DHS issues emergency directive to protect federal domains from DNS hijacking campaign

Report: Russian-sponsored hackers could have modified U.S. voter data, but didn’t

Second Senate Intel committee report confirms Russia social media campaign to influence 2016 election, skewer Clinton

U.S. sanctions North Korea hacking groups, says attacks funded missile program

Over 200M devices affected by critical flaws found in real-time operating system

The post We interviewed leading cyber experts on the world’s tallest ferris wheel. Then security showed up. appeared first on SC Media.

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Go to Source Author: Bradley Barth We interviewed leading cyber experts on the world’s tallest ferris wheel. Then security showed up. Original Post from SC Magazine Author: Bradley Barth In the film “Ocean’s 11,” Danny Ocean and his team of expert cybercriminals execute a daring casino…

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CIA, FBI, and Hillary Clinton use CrowdStrike software to infect rather than protect nation's cyber networks

The CIA and FBI use CrowdStrike software as a back door into the nation's cyber systems.

CrowdStrike software is installed in nearly every federal agency and department including Congress, the FBI, the Defense Department, and the White House.

Stuart McClure, a founder of CrowdStrike, said their software "doesn't do anything around prevention", "only ... detection". And CrowdStrike software doesn't "do it all that well." McClure was quoted in Forbes, a global business PR network.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2016/07/06/duelling-unicorns-crowdstrike-vs-cylance-in-brutal-battle-to-knock-hackers-out/#3fe40fd7303f

To prove McClure's point, Google has never used CrowdStrike software.

http://fortune.com/2015/07/13/google-100-million-series-c-crowdstrike/

As an FBI contractor, CrowdStrike has top secret clearance.

According to a FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) ruling, CrowdStrike has "unrestricted illegal access" to the nation's surveillance data.

https://brassballs.blog/home/fisa-court-rules-fbi-illegally-and-routinely-gave-70-private-contractors-unrestricted-access-to-secret-spy-data

Homeland Security's first head, Tom Ridge, routinely called the FBI "a propaganda machine". If alive today, Ridge would say the FBI has upped its game. That FBI public relations (PR) fiasco is compounded at CrowdStrike by its President, Shawn Henry, who retired from the FBI.

A search of "CrowdStrike" on Reuters, a global PR service for businesses, shows 240 posts since 2012.

CrowdStrike was part of the Department of Defense's cyber program that granted top secret clearances to non-government employees and corporations. The program was designed by the Obama Administration in 2011 to fill the gaps in the nation's cyber defense programs.

http://www.doncio.navy.mil/chips/ArticleDetails.aspx?id=6312

Pictured above is Shawn "Uncle Fester" Henry. He retired from the FBI to become President of CrowdStrike. Henry's real picture will appear later in this post. Uncle Fester was a character on the "Addams Family" television show. A light bulb would turn on whenever it was inserted into his mouth.

According to George Webb Sweigert, Henry is one of Hillary Clinton's "Three Henchmen" with FBI connections. The other two are former FBI Directors Robert Mueller and James Comey.

Deleting the back door in CrowdStrike software may be impossible. It may require a new non-CrowdStrike system, an act of Congress, or an Executive Order to plug CrowdStrike's back door.

Pulling CrowdStrike's troika is the CIA, FBI, and Michael Alpernovitch or "Papa Bear". According to George Webb Sweigert, "Papa Bear" heads "Hillary's Hackers" (Clinton).

CrowdStrike and its top executives have a history of fiascoes and hacks.

CrowdStrike is the cyber world's Clinton Foundation without the charity.

CrowdStrike has a real Russian connection. The key players, the Alpernovitch family, were born in Moscow. They are known as "Mueller's Moscow Mules" by the FBI after their former director, Robert Mueller.

https://www.news4jax.com/news/weird-news/moscow-mueller-drinks-offered-at-dc-bar-for-indictments

What is worse than being exiled to Siberia? Being "assigned" to the Chernobyl clean-up team. The Chernobyl nuclear disaster occurred in 1986. Chernobyl is 65 miles north of Kiev, in the Soviet Ukraine.

Michael was to be sent to Chernobyl as part of a rescue mission. Many of Michael's close friends and colleagues died of radiation poisoning within months of the mission.

After 30 years, the Russians are still cleaning up the nuclear radiation mess in Chernobyl.

https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2016/04/still-cleaning-up-30-years-after-the-chernobyl-disaster/476748/

The CIA made "Papa Bear" Michael Alpernovitch an offer he "couldn't refuse".

Come to America and work for the CIA. Or stay in Russia.

America! America!

To get him out of Russia, Canada approved a visa in 1994 for "Papa Bear". Once in Canada, the CIA made Michael an American citizen. He was granted top security clearance to work for the Tennessee Valley Authority, Chattanooga office.

https://www.tva.gov/About-TVA/Contact-Us

Alpernovitch may have found the work boring.

He was reputed to be one of Russia's top hackers.

His academic background was in mathematics. Only his son, Dmitri, said his father was a nuclear scientist.

The CIA has used the Canadian embassy before to get CIA assets out of foreign countries and into America.

https://www.cia.gov/about-cia/cia-museum/experience-the-collection/text-version/stories/rescue-of-the-canadian-six-a-classic-case-of-deception.html

Dmitri was 15 years old when his family moved in America.

The Oak Ridge National Laboratory near Knoxville, Tennessee, claimed it was hacked on Dec. 10th, 2007.

Oak Ridge is home to the world's five largest super computer. Oak Ridge is part of the Department of Energy. Its lab is 18 square miles. It is 111 miles from Oak Ridge to Chattanooga.

It has a Chattanooga office.

https://www.zdnet.com/article/china-connection-eyed-in-oak-ridge-cyber-attack/

Dmitri's citizenship papers were approved Oct. 25th, 2010. The public record of his citizenship application is blocked from pubic records by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. His file is marked, "Withheld pursuant to (b)(6) COW2010000515".

https://search.uscis.gov/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&affiliate=uscis_gov&query=alpernovitch

Baby Bear earned a bachelor’s degree in computer science in 2001 and a master’s in information security in 2003, both at Georgia Tech

https://gvu.gatech.edu/news/georgia-tech-alumni-earn-spots-mit-technology-review-innovators-list

"Papa Bear" Michael (me KYLE) and son, "Baby Bear" Dmitri Alperovich (al PEAR oh VITCH).

There is no "Mama Bear" unless it is Hillary Clinton.

Margarita Alpernovitch is Papa Bear's sister. She retired from the FBI. She has no official connection to CrowdStrike.

Alperovich, Margarita CONTRACTOR 203-777-6311 US [email protected]

https://archive.org/stream/TOPSECRETCIAFILES/THE%20FBI%20MEGA%20DIRECTORY_djvu.txt

Russian President Vladimir Putin with "Mama Bear" Hillary Clinton

J. Keith Mularski sold furniture for five years before working for the FBI.

"But I've kind of always liked computers," said Mularski. "It kind of looked like cyber was the wave of the future."

The FBI transferred Mularski to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the FBI's Silicon Valley. He helped start the FBI's Cyber Division in 1999 with seven other agents.

"The majority of all my computer training was just on-the-job training at the bureau," said Mularski.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2690798/Top-FBI-cybercrime-expert-discount-furniture-salesman-joining-thwarting-online-theft-fraud-worldwide.html

J. Keith Mularski, FBI Cyber Unit, PIttsburgh

In 2005, the FBI named Mularski to lead in an undercover operation believed to be a Russian credit-card-theft syndicate. He admitted to Esquire Magazine that he had no Internet experience.

https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a49902/the-russian-emigre-leading-the-fight-to-protect-america/

Keith relied on "Baby Bear" Dmitri Alperovitch, "a good guy and a friend," to teach him. For the FBI sting, Dmitri posed as a “Russian gangster” on spam discussion forums.

The sting started in November, 2006 and was called "Dark Market".

Mularski told Esquire he was working 24 hours a day for two years. His wife "didn't like it."

Mularski admitted to Esquire that he blew the operation by logging in from an FBI computer in Pittsburgh. That's when a real cyber criminal found the location. The hacker was "The Iceman", "Max Ray Vision". An FBI press release had his name as Max Ray Butler.

https://archives.fbi.gov/archives/pittsburgh/press-releases/2010/pt021210b.htm

Even after the FBI sting was exposed, Mularski kept the Dark Market operation open.

Based on Butler's warning though, the real criminals stopped using the FBI's site. Only the posers, the non-criminals, many operating out of unsecure coffee shops, stayed on the site. These were the ones arrested.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2010/jan/14/darkmarket-online-fraud-trial-wembley

The hacker impostors never stole a thing, but craved the attention of acting like a sly cyber thief.

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/10/14/darkmarket_sting/

When a German radio network reported the Dark Market operation from court documents, the FBI shut down its sting.

One hacker offered 3.7 million records from a compromised online dating site for $110.

Eight of the 56 arrests were made in the U.S. Five were in Pittsburgh, two in Wisconsin, and one in Louisiana.

http://triblive.com/news/allegheny/8733238-74/agents-pittsburgh-darkode

It resulted in "preventing $70 million in losses", according to an FBI press release linked here:

https://archives.fbi.gov/archives/news/stories/2008/october/darkmarket_102008

Inside Keith Mularski's FBI Cyber Office in Pittsburgh.

The FBI's press release about Mularski's role in Dark Market was approved by the FBI's Cyber Division Assistant Director Shawn Henry. (In 2012, Henry became CrowdStrike's President.)

The taxpayers paid a lot of FBI overtime for nothing.

No one was convicted. No money was stolen. Therefore, the Justice Department was unable to charge anyone with a crime.

Regardless of the results, the FBI still promoted themselves as super cyber sleuths. To the FBI, Mularski was like a national hero. He received an Award for Excellence in the field of Public Policy. He spoke at a convention for security cyber specialists.

https://archives.fbi.gov/archives/news/stories/2009/may/cyber_rsa050509

It is unknown who referred "Baby Bear" to the FBI.

Dmitri was V.P. of Threat Research at McAfee in 2008.

Prior to that, he worked for CipherTrust. They were bought by Secure Computing (SC) in 2006.

Before Baby Bear started working for McAfee, on April 21st, 2008, the Hillary Clinton Campaign for President received a unique gift from an admirer. The website for Barack Obama's Campaign for President received no traffic. Blocked? No. They were transferred to Hillary's web site. i

Who was showing off?

https://news.netcraft.com/archives/2008/04/21/hacker_redirects_barack_obamas_site_to_hillaryclintoncom.html

https://www.zdnet.com/article/obama-site-hacked-redirected-to-hillary-clinton/

Here's the video:

A video of how the Obama for President Campaign site was flipped to Hillary Clinton's.

George Webb Steiger worked with "Baby Bear" at McAfee. According to George, their job was to hire a dozen "Russian hackers to write viruses to stimulate software sales".

"That was a common practice that we ran at the end of every quarter. (to write viruses to spike sales)

"You are most likely to buy the software when something like that happens", said Webb. Like what? Like your company's entire computer network freezes.

One of the hacker groups McAfee hired were "The Dukes". A 30-page report on them is linked here:

https://www.f-secure.com/documents/996508/1030745/dukes_whitepaper.pdf

Webb's comments are in the video below. He has over a dozen videos on the Russian hacking groups, the Alpernovitch family, and CrowdStrike. They are on the internet's YouTube channel.

Google's Chief Legal Officer, David Drummond, said his company suspected that a selected group of email accounts in China were hacked by unknown source or sources.

His press release was dated Jan. 12th, 2010 and appears here on Google's site:

https://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/01/new-approach-to-china.html

Baby Bear led the investigation into Operation Aurora. Out of all the people in the world, Google chose Dmitri to lead the investigation.

https://www.wired.com/2010/01/operation-aurora/

David Drummond, Chief Legal Counsel of Google

Three years later on April 22nd, 2013, Google discovered Dmitri's China email investigation was incomplete and its focus misguided.

What was stolen? The data base of current spy surveillance warrants from the FISA Court (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court), according to Dave Aucsmith. He is Senior Director of Microsoft's Institute for Advanced Technology in Governments.

"What we found was the attackers were actually looking for the accounts that we had lawful wiretap orders on", said Aucsmith.

https://www.cio.com/article/2386547/government/-aurora--cyber-attackers-were-really-running-counter-intelligence.html

Aucsmith was brought to protect Microsoft from being blamed for Google's loss.

Dave Aucsmith, Sr. Dir. of Microsoft's Institute for Advanced Technology in Governments

Ongoing investigations were compromised. No numbers were given. Warrants includes names of targets, spies, terrorists, government employees with surveillance data and contact information.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/chinese-hackers-who-breached-google-gained-access-to-sensitive-data-us-officials-say/2013/05/20/51330428-be34-11e2-89c9-3be8095fe767_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.5b11d12b7a99

Aucsmith was Chief Security Architect for Intel Corporation from 1994 to 2002. According to President Donald J. Trump, Intel is the world's largest defense contractor. Intel is another company created by DARPA.

Like Baby Bear, Aucsmith was graduated from Georgia Tech.

https://www.cc.gatech.edu/people/david-w-aucsmith-ics-84

David Aucsmith, Sr. Principal Research Scientist at the Applied Physics Laboratory of the University of Washington

Unlike Dmitri, Aucsmith is on the faculty of the Intelligence Academy. It consists of former senior executives from several national security agencies, including the major intelligence agencies: CIA, DIA, NSA, NGA, NRO, State/INR, and Dept. of Defense.

Dmitri Alpernovitch is no where on the Intelligence Academy's faculty listing.

https://www.theintelligenceacademy.net/about/faculty-bios/

Why did Baby Bear come to a different conclusion than Aucsmith?

Why did Aucsmith come to a different conclusion than Dmitri?

Was the Google suspected "hack" really a leak?

https://www.theintelligenceacademy.net/about/

Intel buys McAfee on Aug. 21st, 2010. Intel reported record quarterly profit of $2.9 billion. Baby Bear keeps his job at McAfee. For now. The name McAfee is kept and operates as a separate company under Intel.

https://www.reuters.com/article/idUS372474677420100821

At a corporate publicity event for McAfee, Alperovitch admitted to a reporter that his personal information, his phone number, was hacked.

“They (N.Y. Times, CNN, Reuters, PBS) started calling me on my personal phone,” Dmitri told Joris Evers, McAfee's Director of Public Relations.

“How did they get my phone number?”, said Dmitri.

Evers said, “Maybe you should change it.”

https://venturebeat.com/2011/08/04/black-hats-spotlight-falls-on-mcafees-dmitri-alperovitch-for-uncovering-cyber-spying/

Joris Evers

Alperovitch wrote a 14-page report called "Operation Shady Rat" for McAfee. It was a five-year review of cyber attacks around the world. Baby Bear said he found "the “biggest transfer of wealth in terms of intellectual property in human history.”

https://www.scribd.com/document/75451632/Mcafee-Shadyrat-Report

While being interviewed by Esquire Magazine, Renee James, President of Intel, called Baby Bear.

"Dmitri, Intel has a lot of business in China. You cannot call out China in this report", said James.

Baby Bear told Esquire that Intel was "terrified of losing their ability to market products in China."

https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a49902/the-russian-emigre-leading-the-fight-to-protect-america/

Alperovitch removed the word "China" from his report. He renamed it "Shady Rat". The date of Dmitri's report was deleted.

The McAfee name remains on Baby Bear's 14-page report and is linked here:

http://www.cmi-inc.ca/downloads/mitigation-strategies/McAfee_Operation_Shady_RAT_Report.pdf

https://www.scribd.com/document/75451632/Mcafee-Shadyrat-Report

Baby Bear told Esquire that James' phone call "accelerated" his plans to leave Intel. Alpernovitch said he was "being censored because I'm working for a company that's not really an American company."

James told Esquire she had "no comment".

Renee James, President of Intel

http://www.oregonlive.com/silicon-forest/index.ssf/2018/02/renee_james_former_intel_presi.html

Baby Bear's report was timed to be released the day of the Black Hat USA convention in Las Vegas, July 31st, 2011.

The Black Hat event is for information security specialists. Black Hat also has conventions every year in Europe and Asia.

According to Black Hat, "All presentations are vetted thoroughly by the Black Hat Review Board. Each submission is reviewed for uniqueness, overall content expertise and accuracy before any selections are made."

https://web.archive.org/web/20171120070446/https://www.blackhat.com/review-board.html

The Review Board never approved Alperovitch's report for presentation at their convention.

A District of Columbia based media source posted a story about McAfee's report the day before the convention.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/national-security/report-identifies-widespread-cyber-spying/2011/07/29/gIQAoTUmqI_story.html?utm_term=.40f49f63e61a

The week before the convention, Alperovitch made confidential briefings on Shady Rat to Senior White House officials. He also met with Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), Chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2011/09/chinese-hacking-201109

After the convention, the fallout began over the "Operation Shady Rat" report. How big of a fiasco was it?

McAfee deleted Dmitri's report, Operation Shady Rat, from its website.

It took the smile right off his face.

Five weeks after the Black Hat Convention, Baby Bear was no longer working for McAfee. Neither were his friends and co-workers, George Kurtz and Steve McClure.

Dmitri "Baby Bear" Alpernovitch, smiling for the cameras at the Black Hat Convention

George Kurtz and Stuart McClure are to business ethics as Dmitri Alpernovitch is to cyber skills.

Kurtz and McClure started a company called Foundstone in 1992. They were accused of copying computer hacking prevention classes from Ernst & Young.

In 2003, Kurtz and McClure stole other companies software and sold it as theirs, according to Saumil Shah, a former employee. Shad called it "piracy".

https://www.blackhat.com/asia-17/speakers/Saumil-Shah.html

In 2006, Kurtz and McClure increased their pay by backdating stock. The practice is illegal. It happened for ten years. It increased their pay when they sold the company to McAfee. As a result, Foundstone lost $150 million. Foundstone's new President said he was fired because "it happened on my watch."

http://archive.fortune.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2003/06/23/344587/index.htm

George Kurtz

Kurtz has top secret clearance as an FBI contractor. McClure no longer works for CrowdStrike. It is unknown whether he also has top secret clearance as an FBI contractor for Cylance. Now Kurtz and McClure are competitors.

McClure told Forbes, CrowdStrike "doesn't do anything around prevention. They only do detection. And they don't do it all that well."

https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2016/07/06/duelling-unicorns-crowdstrike-vs-cylance-in-brutal-battle-to-knock-hackers-out/#3fe40fd7303f

Gregg Marston was CrowdStrike’s other co-founder. He worked as chief financial officer of Foundstone.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-security-startup/ex-mcafee-execs-start-security-firm-crowdstrike-idUSTRE81M21Q20120223

CrowdStrike started with $14,842.

https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1535527/000153552711000002/xslFormDX01/primary_doc.xml

New business filings were made on Sept. 12th, 2011 by CrowdStrike. It was incorporated in California the next day.

https://businesssearch.sos.ca.gov/CBS/Detail

https://businesssearch.sos.ca.gov/Document/RetrievePDF?Id=03411768-14202551

https://businesssearch.sos.ca.gov/CBS/SearchResults?SearchType=CORP&SearchCriteria=crowdstrike&SearchSubType=Keyword

Kurtz started working for Warburg Pincus two months after he left Intel/McAfee.

The Warburg Pincus firm invested $26 million into CrowdStrike on Feb. 24th, 2012. With it, CrowdStrike hired 20 employees and set up offices in San Francisco, Seattle, and Washington, D.C.

Kurtz said CrowdStrike was "developing technology" and promised their first software product by June.

Why would private investors dump $26 million into a new company with no existing, pending, or developing products or services?

The only background check this troika of CrowdStrike co-founders could pass was with the FBI. Yet their top security clearance has never been revoked.

Would money laundering crime syndicates trust CrowdStrike with $26 million? They would if there was no risk and exponential reward.

Is the reward intelligence data? What else could it be?

https://www.networkworld.com/article/2186194/security/startup-crowdstrike-promises--game-changer--in-fight-vs--advanced-persistent-threats.html

Alperovitch told Reuters that the company hopes to release its first products in late 2012.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-security-startup/ex-mcafee-execs-start-security-firm-crowdstrike-idUSTRE81M21Q20120223

Denis O’Leary was named to CrowdStrike's Board of Directors on May 7th, 2012. In his 25-year career at JP Morgan, O'Leary was Chief Information Officer, Director of Finance, Head of Branch Banking and a member of its nine-member executive committee.

O’Leary is currently managing partner of Encore Financial Partners Inc, a company that acquires and manages U.S.-based banks.

https://www.reuters.com/article/crowdstrike/security-startup-crowdstrike-adds-board-members-idUSL1E8G7P5220120507

Warburg Pincus history dates back to 1913. The Federal Reserve System was Paul Warburg's idea. He represented the U.S. at the Treaty of Versailles conference that ended World War I.

Who was sitting across the table from Paul in Versailles? His brother, Max, who represented Germany.

Warburg Pincus was the first one to begin venture capital associations in China. Warburg Pincus has a vested interest, like Intel, of never accusing the Chinese of hacking into anything American.

When Warburg Pincus invests, it is always as majority owner.

Tim Geithner is President of Warburg Pincus.

http://www.warburgpincus.com/people/timothy-f-geithner/

Tim Geithner, President of Warburg Pincus and Secretary of the Treasury under President Barack Obama

Geithner was Treasury Secretary in 2010 and headed the committee that approved Hillary Clinton's Uranium One.

https://www.treasury.gov/about/history/Pages/tgeithner.aspx

President Obama credited Geithner with the plan to prop up Obamacare with $260 billion. The plan caused the 2008 market meltdown of the housing market. Federal mortgage investors were the victims of this theft.

https://brassballs.blog/home/2017/8/9/260-billion-swiped-from-investors-to-prop-up-obamacare-causing-2008-market-meltdown

Before he joined the Obama administration, Geithner was President of the New York Federal Reserve Bank. He along with Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson designed the bailout program. It saved the banks from bankruptcy in the 2008 subprime lending fiasco. The crisis was caused by the banks.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2016/02/09/ex-treasury-secretary-geithner-cashing-wall-street/80057762/

Google Capital invested $100 million in CrowdStrike on July 13th, 2015. Google knows better than use CrowdStrike software. When asked by directly by Fortune Magazine whether Google was a customer, CrowdStrike's CEO George Kurtz said, "No comment."

The first thing CrowdStrike executives Kurtz and President Shawn Henry did was pose with their race cars for Fortune Magazine. It is unknown what country their party was in.

http://fortune.com/2015/07/13/google-100-million-series-c-crowdstrike/

CrowdStrike's President Shawn Henry (left top in black) with his CEO, George Kurtz.

Shawn Henry (above). The Patriots' in the FBI continue to call him "Uncle Fester" even after he retired in 2012.

Shawn Henry retired from the FBI on March 31st 2012. While at the FBI, he was the bureaucrat in charge of all the FBI's investigations around the world. Former FBI Director Robert Mueller promoted "Uncle Fester" more times than anyone else in the FBI.

https://archives.fbi.gov/archives/news/pressrel/press-releases/shawn-henry-named-executive-assistant-director-of-the-criminal-cyber-response-and-services-branch

https://archives.fbi.gov/archives/news/pressrel/press

https://archives.fbi.gov/archives/news/pressrel/press-releases/shawn-henry-named-assistant-director-of-fbi-cyber-division

Five private equity firms invested $256 million into CrowdStrike. Google was good for $100 million.

https://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2015/07/13/google-capital-leads-100-million-cybersecurity-investment/

Four other firms invested $156 million. They were Warburg Pincus LLC, Accel Partners, March Capital Partners and Telstra, a telecommunications provider in Australia.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/17/business/dealbook/crowdstrike-hacking-investment.html

President Barack Obama has direct ties to CrowdStrike too.

President Obama appointed Steven Chabinsky to his cabinet on April 13th, 2016. Chabinsky became a member of the Commission on Enhancing National Cybersecurity. At the time, Chabinsky was General Counsel and Chief Risk Officer for CrowdStrike.

https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/2016/04/13/president-obama-announces-more-key-administration-posts

Chabinsky was Chief of the FBI's Cyber Intelligence Section before quitting to join CrowdStrike in 2012. He also served as the Senior Cyber Advisor to James Clapper, Director of National Intelligence.

https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/2016/04/13/president-obama-announces-more-key-administration-posts

ttps://www.theverge.com/2016/4/13/11427182/president-obama-cybersecurity-panel-uber-microsoft-mastercard-nsa

Chabinsky's job at the FBI was to protecting the country from cyber attacks and espionage, online child exploitation, and internet fraud.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/postlive/steven-chabinsky/2012/10/30/35a3ff02-22e7-11e2-ac85-e669876c6a24_story.html?utm_term=.d5edfa0e7065

Chabinsky worked for CrowdStrike as General Counsel, Senior V.P., and Chief Risk Officer from Sept. 20th, 2012 to Dec. 1st, 2016.

Chabinsky quit CrowdStrike to become a partner in a law firm on Dec. 1st, 2016. Donald J. Trump was elected President Nov. 9th, 2016.

https://www.whitecase.com/news/white-case-expands-cybersecurity-and-national-security-capabilities

If President Donald J. Trump has failed to fire him, Chabinsky has retained his top security clearance.

Dmitri Alpernovitch is a "good fella" for the Atlantic Council. He is listed under "Cyber Statecraft Initiative".

http://www.atlanticcouncil.org/about/staff

Soros has given the Atlantic Council $181 million for Ukrainian military action against neighboring Russia. Soros routinely says that "Russia is a greater danger to the U.S. than ISIS."

http://www.atlanticcouncil.org/component/content/article?id=27683:thank-you-george

http://www.irf.ua/about/25-years/infografika/irf_gen/

http://www.larouchepub.com/eiw/public/2017/eirv44n08-20170224/04-21_4408.pdf

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko (left) awarded philanthropist George Soros the Order of Freedom.

CrowdStrike's full report dated June 15, 2016 regarding Russia hacking the Democratic National Committee (DNC). It is linked here:

http://archive.is/hv1eM

A test conducted by NSS Labs concluded that CrowdStrike software was 70 per cent effective on identifying cyber threats. Their competitors were over 90 per cent.

At $1500 per computer, CrowdStrike software was also the most expensive. The best brands in the study cost between $400 and $500.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C4ovtorUYAEhw91.jpg:large

https://medium.com/@bontchev/some-thoughts-on-the-crowdstrike-vs-nss-labs-debacle-19bc15d01a2b

NSS Labs' original publication date for their study was February 14, 2017. The authors were Thomas Skybakmoen and Morgan Dhanraj. It was published April 13, 2007 because filed a law study to prevent its release.

CrowdStrike never said an upgrade of their software was necessary to reach and surpass industry standards. They never announced their budget for research and development.

https://research.nsslabs.com/reportaction/report-413/Marketing

https://www.zdnet.com/article/crowdstrike-denied-bid-to-block-security-report-in-legal-challenge-against-subversive-nss-labs/

A federal court issued a 12-page ruling against CrowdStrike on Feb. 13th, 2017 in "Case 1:17-cv-00146-GMS". It is linked.

https://regmedia.co.uk/2017/02/14/crowdstrike_tro.pdf

https://www.nsslabs.com/blog/company/aep-public-test-announcement/

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/02/14/crowdstrike_falcon_vs_nss/

John Carlin headed the FBI's National Security Department.

https://brassballs.blog/home/john-p-carlin-is-the-deep-states-wizard-behind-the-curtain-in-the-russian-collusion-fiasco

Carlin worked with Shawn Henry, Steven Chabinsky, and "Baby Bear" Dmitri Alpernovitch. Carlin was asked by CrowdStrike to moderate a panel discussion at an April convention of security professionals with Henry and Alpernovitch.

https://www.crowdstrike.com/blog/crowdstrike-exemplifies-rsa-2018-theme-now-matters/

Carlin was called "a trusted adviser" by Loretta Lynch, Attorney General, for President Obama.

https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/statement-attorney-general-loretta-e-lynch-departure-assistant-attorney-general-national

When Robert Mueller directed the FBI, he named Carlin his right hand man.

Carlin's official title was Deputy Chief of Staff and Counselor. Carlin's job was to advise Mueller on legal and policy matters and to manage the FBI.

https://archives.fbi.gov/archives/news/pressrel/press-releases/john-p.-carlin-named-as-deputy-chief-of-staff-and-counselor-to-fbi-director-mueller

John Carlin (to left with red tie), Loretta Lynch (sitting down), and James Comey

The dots connected in this post are:

CIA, FBI, CrowdStrike, Michael "Papa Bear" Alpernovitch, Keith Mularski, Robert "Moscow Mule" Mueller, Canadian Embassy, Tennessee Valley Authority, Oak Ridge Nuclear Laboratory, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, Georgia Tech, Dark Market, Max Ray "The Iceman" Butler, Shawn Henry, President Barack Obama, Eric Holder, Steven Chabinsky, James Clapper, CipherTrust, TrustedSource, SecureComputing, McAfee, Intel, Operation Aurora, Google, John Carlin, Loretta Lynch.

https://brassballs.blog/home/john-p-carlin-is-the-deep-states-wizard-behind-the-curtain-in-the-russian-collusion-fiasco

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jorgerbastos · 6 years

Text

Armenia isn’t in many people’s list of countries to visit. However, if you are considering visiting Armenia soon, you will probably have a few problems finding correct and reliable information. Why? There aren’t many people traveling to Armenia an even less writing about it. That’s why after visiting Armenia we built this list!

Armenia and the locals

#1 Armenia isn’t a “tourist ready” country, but that’s probably one more thing that makes it even more interesting! This doesn’t mean that tourists aren’t welcome, we were always pleasantly received in Armenia. However, the country still lacks many infrastructures to receive big amounts of tourists.

#2 Barely anyone speaks English, only Russian and Armenian. We believe it’s the least English speaking country we have been to… Communication can be very difficult, though it’s manageable.

#3 Armenia is a very dry country, at least in summer. Yellow is the prevailing color and makes it quite scenic 🙂 There’s something about it that’s soothing…

#4 It’s very mountainous or wouldn’t still be a Caucasus country… The mountains aren’t as high as its neighbor Georgia but the whole country is marked by mountains, gorges, and valleys.

#5 There are more Armenians outside Armenia than in the country! In fact, there are almost 3 times more Armenians outside Armenia (8M) than living in Armenia (3M)! This happened due to the Armenian Diaspora.

#6 During WWI the Ottoman Government (nowadays Turkey) killed 1-1.5 M Armenians in what it’s called the Armenian Genocide or Armenian Holocaust. Until today Turkey does not recognize what happened as a Genocide.

#7 Armenia is considered the first Christian country! Christianity was implemented as the state religion in 301 A.D. Though it was introduced in Armenia even earlier, during the 1st century by Christ’s disciples Bartholomew and Thaddeus. They are known as the “Illuminators of the Armenian world”. Even today Armenia is still a very conservative and religious country, 95 % of the population is Armenian Apostolic.

#8 Armenia (and Georgia) connects Europe and Asia. For centuries was a center of trade between continents. It was also the epicenter of many wars! It has been attacked and invaded by Greek, Mongols, Persians, Turks, Russians, etc…

#9 However, today Armenia is in a geopolitical tough spot! It has no access to the ocean and has a conflict with many of their neighbors country. It has no relation with Turkey and Azerbaijan. Iran to the south mostly supports they fellow Islamic countries. This leaves only Georgia, who wasn’t too happy with their support to Russia during the recent war…

#10 All this made Armenia’s economy struggle and made Armenia’s transition to a market economy more difficult. Though, Armenia is still a very poor country!

#11 However, don’t feel discouraged Armenia is a stable and safe country. Moreover, it feels safe… As a tourist, I always felt relaxed and comfortable, almost as in Georgia or Western Europe.

Travel and tourists

#12 Armenia is one of the least touristy countries in Europe. Out of the few tourists, they host even fewer are western backpackers… We only saw a handful of them!

#13 Even in the peak season, in the biggest tourist attractions we just saw a few tourists and no ques. It was great not being overwhelmed by people everywhere we went!

#14 If you are planning an overland trip be aware that Armenia borders are closed with both Turkey and Azerbaijan. If you want to go to any of these countries your best option is to go through Georgia.

#15 While traveling through Armenia, one thing will catch your eyes… The country seems to abandoned to their own fate… There are way too many half-deserted towns with buildings falling apart.

#16 Yerevan is the exception, the center is much more developed than the rest of the country. It’s known as the pink city because of the color of the stones of the beautiful old and new buildings. Yerevan is a buzzing city and very pleasant to walk around both during the day and at night!

#17 If we had to choose the best travel attraction of Armenia, that would be the Tatev monastery and the Wings of Tatev aerial roadway! The Tatev monastery is amazing and situated in an incredible scenic mountain range, which you can appreciate from the Wings of Tatev.

#18 Mount Ararat is a very important part of Armenian National identity, however, it’s nowadays part of Turkish territory! Though you can see it from Armenia and it’s an incredible view that allows some amazing pictures particularly from Khor Virap! Unfortunately, when we were closer to it, there was a strong fog ruining the pictures…

#19 Sevan Lake is the biggest lake in Armenia and occupies 5% of the territory! We read how beautiful it was and that it’s a beach destination within Armenia… Well, the lake is impressive and being at 1900 makes it quite unique, however, most of the surrounding felt abandoned! it definitely wasn’t a place where we wanted to beach…

#20 Moreover, the town of Sevan itself was probably the worst place we have been in Armenia! Felt completely abandoned and with nothing to do… I would suggest visiting the lake as a stopover on a road trip, but nothing more!

#21 Armenia is the place to go if you want to see unique monasteries in a beautiful setting, usually hidden away in the Mountains. The most interesting we visited were Noravank, Tatev, and Geghard. Khor Virap isn’t that impressive by itself, but the view to Ararat is incredible! We also went to Etchmiadzin, which is supposedly the first cathedral ever built (between 301-303)!

Food and drinks

#22 Armenian food is pretty cheap, even in restaurants. With 5-10 Euros one couple can have a very good meal in a nice restaurant.

#23 However, it isn’t easy to find quick meals or fast food. Definitely, the country isn’t prepared for travelers… We ended up going to supermarkets and buy supplies to being able to eat “on the road”.

#24 Lavash is the staple bread in Armenia. When you ask for bread, usually you get Lavash. It’s a soft, thin flatbread. “lavash, the preparation, meaning, and appearance of traditional bread as an expression of culture in Armenia” was inscribed in the UNESCO’s Intangible Cultural Heritage list.

#25 The best things we tried in Armenia were Zhingyalov hats and Dolma. Zhingyalov hats are flatbread stuffed with finely diced herbs and green vegetables. Dolma is a dish of minced meat wrapped in grape leaves.

Zhingyalov hats

Dolma

#26 Be careful when you ask for a Lemonade! It may not be what you expect… We learned that, in Armenia, a Lemonade is Soda, and it doesn’t have to be a Lemon Soda! you can easily have a pear or Tarragon (Yeap…) Lemonade! 🙂

#27 Fruit (fresh and dried) is very good in Armenia, particularly peaches and figs! You will also see lots of melons and watermelons… Enjoy them, it’s a great way to eat some healthy food during the trips!

Money & expenses

#28 Overall Armenia is a very cheap country to travel in! Food, accommodation, fuel, and tickets to attractions are all very inexpensive. Overall, in 5 days we only spent 190 Euros, which means less than 20 Euros per person per day. This doesn’t include the car rental!

#29 You can withdraw money from almost any ATM with your foreign card, without extra fees! It’s similar to Georgia and very different better!) from SE Asia! Note: We are talking about the local ATM fees, not the fees charged by your bank… those depend only on your bank!

#30 The problem is that in most places it can be difficult to find ATMs! It was actually easier to find shops than ATMs. I would advise you to take a few extra Eur/USD just in case you need an alternative… The exception is Yerevan, where there’s ATM everywhere like you would expect in a big capital city.

#31 Accommodation is also very cheap! It’s fairly easy to find a private double room in a nice guesthouse under 20 Euros. Most of the times we ended up paying about 15 Euros per night.

#32 Expect to pay an added service fee of 10% in every restaurant. That information is usually on the menu.

#33 Cash is King in Armenia. Many places only accept cash, even some that have Visa’s and Mastercard’s signs (no internet, no service or any other problem). Mostly supermarkets and big restaurants/hotels are the exceptions. Almost every guesthouse will have to be paid in cash and you can’t even pay with card when booking.

Transportation

#34 Roads in Armenia are terrible, much worse than in Georgia. They are full of potholes, even some of the main roads that connect the country. Also, be aware that just because a road is considered a highway or a main road doesn’t mean that is any good, or even paved… You may need to drive gravel in places you won’t expect it!

#35 Therefore, you cannot blindly trust Google Maps (or maps me) expected time or you’ll be in for a bad time! In our experience, add 30 – 50% to the ETA to be safe…

#36 However, you don’t have to drive a 4 x 4 / SUV! It will make your journey more pleasant and allow you to go to more extreme places, but the most of the usual destinations can be reached with a normal car. We did it with a small Toyota and it was OK.

#37 If roads terrible, drivers are even worse… mostly because they are impatient and will overtake you in the craziest places. We think they are more reckless than actually aggressive. Anyway, it can be dangerous and if you are driving you should be aware of it. Our experience driving in Angola was very very useful 🙂

#40 Fuel is very cheap at half the price of western Europe countries, which is great for road trippers!

#41 In Armenia you can (or may really need to) fill up your car in these pumps… how cool is that? 🙂

#42 Armenia is part of the silk road and one of its most famous passes was the Selim pass (now called Orbelian’s pass). The scenery is amazing and the road is actually good and enjoyable to drive in. Selim pass goes as high as 2410 meters!

#43 If you are driving in Armenia please note that there are way too many speed cameras on the main roads! In almost every small town you’ll see one or several! We didn’t get any ticket, however, be careful because they used to enforce the speed limit.

#44 If you are planning to bring a car from Georgia to Armenia you will need a cross-border authorization para cross border to Armenia. It’s a documented from the car rental authorizing you to take the car to Armenia in Georgian and translated to Armenian! It will cost at least 50 USD and you’ll probably need to request it 1 or 2 days in advance.

#45 Additionally you will also need to buy car insurance in Armenia, but you’ll need to buy it in Armenia. Right after crossing the border you’ll find many places selling insurance. Just stop and buy it. It’ll probably cost 10-15 USD.

Other travel stuff and useful information

#46 In Armenia you’ll find free WIFI everywhere, restaurants, bars, hotels, guesthouses and even some tourist attractions! However, if you want you can also easily buy a sim card close to the borders. We didn’t buy and didn’t miss it!

#47 If you can buy products on the side of the road. This way you will get great products at very reasonable prices and will help directly the local economy! Fruits, nuts, honey, and wine are some of the great things you can buy…

#48 Be aware that the working day starts very late… There’s nothing open before 9:00… However, at night many things come to live, particularly in Yerevan.

#49 Crossing borders between Georgia and Armenia is perfectly easy and fairly quick. One time took us 30 minutes, the other almost 2 hours. But most importantly it was peaceful and without any “problems” from the Police. We were particularly worried about Brava Border (because it’s very small) but it was very simple and without any trouble!

#50 If you want to travel to a country that it’s still off the radar of tourism, visiting Armenia is probably one of your best options! It’s safe, cheap, relaxed, fairly easy to travel. It has many interesting destinations and a unique culture and history!

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50 Things you want to know before traveling to Armenia Armenia isn't in many people's list of countries to visit. However, if you are considering visiting Armenia soon, you will probably have a few problems finding correct and reliable information.

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