Russian Info, Cyber and Disinformation (Jan-June 2017).

[OUTLAW 09]

Answers to Senate why US Intel Community missed Russia election connection:
-focus on ISIS/terror
-less likely to believe "open source" info

Fmr FBI agent Watts: We missed Russian intervention because they were happening in open source, and intel community obsessed w/secret info

[/U][/I][/B]NOTE: I have been saying for years...80% of all intel comes from OSINT...

[OUTLAW 09]

Stunning exchange at Senate Intel:

Q: GOP Sen - ‘Why do #Russia active measures work?

A: @selectedwisdom - “Because #Trump embraces them."

[OUTLAW 09]

Russia’s Info War on the U.S. Started in 2014
http://thebea.st/2ocv4AB
#

[OUTLAW 09]

This is one the Russian troll heavy hitters that has been around since Crimea....

Kremlin Trolls CI @KremlinTrolls
=>@GCINEWS sounds like outed Russian intelligence provocateur Tommy Theiner. Must be coincidence.

[OUTLAW 09]

Friends of Putin: Russia’s western elite networks
http://on.ft.com/2of8yI1

[OUTLAW 09]

There is just not Russian propaganda...disinformation and hacking....

The Trump WH matches the Russians step for step.....

Sean Spicer, on 3/23: The idea that White House gave Nunes info "doesn't pass the smell test."

https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2017/03/23/daily-press-briefing-press-secretary-27#


BUT WAIT....TWO WH officials have been named as those that passed SIGINT information to the HPSCI Nunes.....

Trump White House officials gave Nunes the intel—& Trump team wasn't monitored; it was foreigners talking about them
http://nyti.ms/2nny2io

[OUTLAW 09]

The Real Russian Threat to Central Eastern Europe - Russian disinformation undermining Western democracy.
http://foreignpolicy.com/2017/03/30/the-real-russian-threat-to-central-eastern-europe-2/#

[OUTLAW 09]

Excellent example of US fakes news being generated by supporters of the Trump WH........

Spicer says Evelyn Farkas confirmed WH suspicion that Obama ordered wiretaps. That's not what she said.
http://www.snopes.com/2017/03/30/evelyn-farkas-leak/#

[OUTLAW 09]

My latest piece “Russia’s toolbox for undermining democracy: Cyber warfare” by @FSIStanford
https://medium.com/freeman-spogli-institute-for-international-studies/russias-toolbox-for-undermining-democracy-cyber-warfare-67527373a877#

[OUTLAW 09]

A bit of humor.....

OTD in 1867 the US illegally annexed Alaska from Russia. Our compatriots yearn to return to the Motherland and plan a referendum

BUT MORE SERIOUSLY
Russia claims Alaska is yet another place where Russian speakers are being abused.Little green men are on their way?

[OUTLAW 09]

Skeptical about Russia's meddling in US election? Read @RidT's masterful statement to Senate Intelligence Committee
http://goo.gl/YsxBDX

BTW...actually worth following the twitter comments from @RidT

Especially on former KGB/GDR Stasi influence and active measures during the Cold War...

[OUTLAW 09]

Rubio says former members of his presidential campaign team were targeted by unsuccessful cyber attacks within past 24 hours

Rubio bombshell -- Russians tried to hack my campaign team both last year and yesterday:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2017/03/30/marco-rubio-was-targeted-by-russian-infowar-ex-fbi-agent-reveals.html#

[davidbfpo]

Skeptical about Russia's meddling in US election? Read @RidT's masterful statement to Senate Intelligence Committee
http://goo.gl/YsxBDX

BTW...actually worth following the twitter comments from @RidT

Especially on former KGB/GDR Stasi influence and active measures during the Cold War...

Excellent catch there. Plus I note he is @ Kings War Studies.

[OUTLAW 09]

Excellent catch there. Plus I note he is @ Kings War Studies.

Actually he caught my attention several months ago on his research on the KGB especially GDR Stasi influence ops and their active measures out of the 80s period....

He set the tone of yesterday long before MSM caught on.....

I was amazed yesterday by the open admission in from the SSCI that the USG IC and that includes FBI...totally missed Russian influence ops and active measure moves because they failed to track open sources that social media had been pointing to for literally the last two years....

Yes that is a lot of useless chatter on social media but surprisingly there is some discussions afoot backed by actual evidence....

Those of us from the HUMINT world have long ago known that 80% of all intel comes from OS.....the missing 20% is from the technical side that is used to then conform and or deny.

People do not realize that it is a lot of times HUMINT/OSINT that triggers the repositioning of satellite cameras and other sensors...

Example..how many warning postings have I done on Russian botnets and Russian twitter botnets working the Crimea and eastern Ukraine front... together with link analysis charts...long before the US elections...

Evidently Congress does not read SWC/SWJ....

[OUTLAW 09]

Remember the current WH and those around Trump at actively using disinformation, fake news and propaganda in order to side step anything connecting them to Russia....just as the Russians use it...

Remember Russian propaganda works on the Russian 6Ds Principle....

Distort...Deflect...Dismay....Dismiss.....ALL designed to create Doubt and Distrust.....

Replying "Absolutely not!" to every other question does not qualify as "debunking."

[OUTLAW 09]

“Sockpuppets, Secessionists, and Breitbart” by @jonathonmorgan
https://medium.com/data-for-democracy/sockpuppets-secessionists-and-breitbart-7171b1134cd5#

How Russia May Have Orchestrated a Massive Social Media Influence Campaign

[OUTLAW 09]

What was the role of Russian bots in the US election?
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/politics-government/white-house/article139695453.html#

[OUTLAW 09]

Golden Rule Number One learned the hard way in eastern Ukraine....

When Russians deny something THEN in fact it is true....called "the reverse mirror principle"....

Top Putin spokesman: 'Fake news' that Flynn meaningfully discussed sanctions with Kislyak
http://read.bi/2oh8Ihu

[OUTLAW 09]

This account and the linked article and website are examples of Russian active measures, SCR propaganda


I AM....DEPLORABLE!‏#
@Right_This_Ship
Follow

More
Middle School Moms Attacked for Exposing Muslim Propaganda Video Shown in School [Video]
http://100percentfedUp.com

[OUTLAW 09]

Putin meddling in French vote? @thedailybeast is all over it.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/10/30/vladimir-putin-s-campaign-to-seduce-subvert-and-screw-over-western-democracies-including-ours.html#
… &
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2017/01/06/france-s-far-right-is-wary-of-trump-but-head-over-heels-for-putin.html#
… &
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2017/03/24/russia-s-putin-picks-le-pen-to-rule-france.html#
…

[OUTLAW 09]

Cyber expert Clinton Watts: 'You're not putting America first if you're putting out Russian propaganda'
http://ow.ly/MwOY30asDsC

[OUTLAW 09]

Geeeeeezzzzzzzz....Trump propaganda, disinformation and actually just down right lying is getting as bad and as daily as Russian....

Sean Spicer Misquotes Evelyn Farkas in Latest Defense of Trump’s Wiretapping Claim
https://nyti.ms/2nJ2m9A

[OUTLAW 09]

Trump's antics are just as deep as the Russian hacking and influence operations are inside the US...

CBS Evening News‏
Verified account
#@CBSEveningNews 7h
7 hours ago

BREAKING: US investigators are looking into whether Trump campaign reps helped Russian intel carry out cyberattacks, @jeffpeguescbs reports

FBI looking into whether Trump campaign reps had role helping #Russian operatives as early as March 2016.

It is no longer potential collusion BUT rather now open treason....

[OUTLAW 09]

NOTICE again the closeness of what FOX News carries as stories and or comments that come directly from Russia Today and Sputnik International....

IT is almost as if the Russians serve it up and FOX runs with it.....

Adam Housley‏
Verified account
Our sources: This surveillance that led to the unmasking of private names of American citizens started before Trump was the GOP nominee.

STRAIGHT out of RT and Sputnik on the very same day....

[OUTLAW 09]

WikiLeaks’ latest release of CIA cyber tools could blow the cover on agency hacking operations
http://wapo.st/2nFJTJs

BTW..just a reminder...any code that has been in Russian hands for months should and I repeat should never be trusted that there is not a single backdoor????

[OUTLAW 09]

“Sockpuppets, Secessionists, and Breitbart” by @jonathonmorgan
https://medium.com/data-for-democracy/sockpuppets-secessionists-and-breitbart-7171b1134cd5#

How Russia May Have Orchestrated a Massive Social Media Influence Campaign

Russia had the capacity to influence key precincts in swing states with fake news-disseminating bots. via @CBSNews
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/russian-bots-still-interfering-in-u-s-politics-after-election-expert#
…

[OUTLAW 09]

"Think of Russia as the Sopranos and Vladimir Putin as head Capo"
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/think-of-russia-as-the-sopranos-and-vladimir-putin-is-head-capo-k5mqhdf3r#

[OUTLAW 09]

Clint Watt’s Testimony: Russia’s Info War on the U.S. Started in 2014
http://thebea.st/2ocv4AB

NOTICE the connection time wise to Crimea and the Russian invasion of eastern Ukraine...all in 2014...

[OUTLAW 09]

Light humor for today....

Russian Foreign Ministry humor: 'You've reached the Russian Embassy.

For hackers press 2.

For election interference press 3.

[OUTLAW 09]

Russia had the capacity to influence key precincts in swing states with fake news-disseminating bots. via @CBSNews
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/russian-bots-still-interfering-in-u-s-politics-after-election-expert#
…

This journalist first broke the FISA warrant story on Alfa Bank and Trump Tower and has a theory which knowing her sources is probably very accurate and supports the CBS link above....

well worth reading as she also broke who had passed WH intel to the HPSCI Chairman Nunes...

Alfa Bank, Trump Tower and a Social Media Impeachment
April 1, 2017
https://patribotics.blog/2017/04/01/alfa-bank-trump-tower-and-a-social-media-impeachment/

AND no it is not a April Fools joke!!!

[OUTLAW 09]

Finnish intelligence warns foreign powers targeting young politicians
http://yle.fi/uutiset/9540600

[OUTLAW 09]

Am tracking this coming posting. and will post it when it becomes available...a solid open source analyst.....

Special report coming up, on how Russia uses epic amounts of fake #Twitter a/c's to spread disinformation (crap) about #Ukraine.

Coming on the wknd: An insight into how the Kremlin & Russia's embassies buy and use epic amounts of fake #Twitter a/c's.

[OUTLAW 09]

'Russia has upgraded from information-gathering to influence-gathering' — Simon Kuper
http://on.ft.com/2nHkdO2

[OUTLAW 09]

Excellent catch there. Plus I note he is @ Kings War Studies.

@RidT in front of the Senate Intelligence Committee explaining Ruskie Active Measures. His CYBERSEC course drinking.

[OUTLAW 09]

With WANTED posters now even in Russian. The gloves are off. https://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/charges-announced-in-massive-cyber-intrusion-case#…

[OUTLAW 09]

Italian sources, officials suspect Russia behind 4-months+ "sustained hacking attack" against MfA in spring 2016

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/feb/10/russia-suspected-over-hacking-attack-on-italian-foreign-ministry

[OUTLAW 09]

Did "Russia" hire them, or did Manafort hire the trolls he used before in Ukraine?
https://amp.ibtimes.co.uk/russia-hired-army-1000-web-trolls-make-fake-news-about-hillary-clinton-swing-states-1614574#

[OUTLAW 09]

The RNC paid an intel firm with Russia ties for dirt on Hillary Clinton

http://www.politico.com/story/2017/03/rnc-hillary-clinton-intelligence-firm-payments-236436

So RNC paid a Russian–former KGB agent Gennady Vasilenko–to dig up dirt on an American citizen

[OUTLAW 09]

Russia had the capacity to influence key precincts in swing states with fake news-disseminating bots. via @CBSNews
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/russian-bots-still-interfering-in-u-s-politics-after-election-expert#
…

Trying to get more confirmation on this particular article and trying to avoid fake news but it is getting harder to do....does tie into other similar articles that have popped up in the last day......key is trying to confirm the amount of money spent...

NOTICE though the date of the article which was long before the Trump Russian ties hit the MSM.....

16 NOV 3016.....worth noting.....check Zuckerberg's comments THEN on fake news and what he now says in MAR 2017....total different story.


How the Trump Campaign Built an Identity Database and Used Facebook Ads to Win the#Election
https://medium.com/startup-grind/how-the-trump-campaign-built-an-identity-database-and-used-facebook-ads-to-win-the-election-4ff7d24269ac

[OUTLAW 09]

.@rianru says @MoscowTimes falsely accused it of misrepresenting remarks by a U.S. official on Alaska.

So why'd they rewrite their headline?

Here's the whole story:
https://themoscowtimes.com/articles/clarification-how-the-russian-media-distorted-comments-by-an-alaska-state-official-57608#

[mirhond]

Russan Embassy hotline
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-FhnUWCDYnU

Mod adds: voice on the video is all in Russian

[OUTLAW 09]

In the Russian propaganda world this below is called "mirroring"....accuse others of exactly what you are actually doing....

Russian has been doing this first in Crimea..then on to eastern Ukraine then onto Syria finally landing in US...

BUT now it is Trump pulling the same exact "mirroring"....

NUT WAIT....Russian propaganda uses their 6Ds Principles........

Distort....Deflect....Dismay.....Dismiss....ALL designed to create Doubt and Distrust....

FROM these Trump tweets below how many of the Russian 6Ds is being used....????

@realDonaldTrump
It is the same Fake News Media that said there is "no path to victory for Trump" that is now pushing the phony Russia story. A total scam!

Donald J. Trump‏
Verified account
#@realDonaldTrump
When will Sleepy Eyes Chuck Todd and @NBCNews start talking about the Obama SURVEILLANCE SCANDAL and stop with the Fake Trump/Russia story?

Donald J. Trump‏
Verified account
#@realDonaldTrump Wow, @FoxNews just reporting big news. Source: "Official behind unmasking is high up. Known Intel official is responsible. Some unmasked....

Donald J. Trump‏
Verified account
#@realDonaldTrump ..not associated with Russia. Trump team spied on before he was nominated." If this is true, does not get much bigger. Would be sad for U.S.

Trump will keep throwing out incoherent word salad tweets -- Unmasked! Wiretapp! Obama! FAKE NEWS! Right until indictments are unsealed.

[OUTLAW 09]

Latvian Special Services accuse Russia of cyber-espionage
http://uawire.org/news/latvian-special-services-accuses-russia-of-cyber-espionage#

[OUTLAW 09]

That awkward moment when Russian trolls attack @th3j35t3r and it exposes @PutinRF's catfishing of the US Military @DeptofDefense

This site is how Vladimir Putin attacks the United States military. your troll shouldn't have messed w @th3j35t3r
http://anysoldier.com/index.cfm

Hi @FBI @CIA @NSAGOV and @DeptofDefense this site is run by Russian active measures.

The Agency, nondescript office building in St.
Petersburg, Russia, an army of well-paid “trolls”
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/07/magazine/the-agency.html?_r=0

Interestingly this Russian trolling company was reported on by social media and on the SWJ Ukrainian thread long before the US election as a main source of Russian trolling against Ukraine starting with Crimea in 2014....

Reference the FAIL below....
.....it's a guy from Russia who forgot to turn off his geolocation #FAIL.

[OUTLAW 09]

French polling watchdog warns over Russian news agency's election report
http://reut.rs/2nL460v

[OUTLAW 09]

Feds accuse Giuliani of undermining officials in Turkish banker case
By Kaja Whitehouse
March 31, 2017 | 11:43pm

http://nypost.com/2017/03/31/feds-accuse-giuliani-of-undermining-officials-in-turkish-banker-case/amp/

This is the Iranian sanctions busting case that the Turkish government wants Trump to release the CEO .......they immediately hired Giuliani for his ties to the Trump WH....

REMEMBER Giuliani was the one to release a press comment concerning the potential release of WikiLeaks Podesta emails...it was as if he knew they were coming three days before they were actually released....

[OUTLAW 09]

General Flynn's son just retweeted this.

This is a Russian disinformation attempt started by a number of Russian trolls that got picked up by Flynn's son...

JW states they never sent this...perfect forgery of JW logos...

[OUTLAW 09]

Fake news alert: @Arron_banks defends Putin theft of Crimea by claiming it is '85% ethnic Russian'.

Census before invasion found 58% Russian

[OUTLAW 09]

Russian Disinformation 2.0: Sowing chaos, confusion, and anger in the west
http://internetfreedom.io/rferl__russian-disinformation.php#

Excellent work: “Russian Narratives on NATO’s Deployment” by @DFRLab
https://medium.com/dfrlab/russian-narratives-on-natos-deployment-616e19c3d194#

HOW #PUTIN USES FAKE NEWS TO WAGE WAR ON #UKRAINE
By Nolan Peterson
http://www.newsweek.com/how-putin-uses-fake-news-wage-war-ukraine-577430#
NOTE: This writer was former USAF SOF.

[OUTLAW 09]

Network Analysis by @d1gi of top hashtags and account activity leading up to Nov 8 for detecting signs of automation

Can Elections Be — Bot?

https://medium.com/@d1gi/can-elections-be-bot-970d4b4ae430

Really well worth reading.....

[OUTLAW 09]

Louise Mensch‏Verifizierter Account
@LouiseMensch

I'm upgrading this story from "theory" to a report, according to my sources with links to the intelligence community

NOTE...she broke the initial story months ago concerning the FISA Warrant being issued in the Trump Russian connection story......

Alfa Bank, Trump Tower and a Social Media Impeachment
April 1, 2017
https://patribotics.blog/2017/04/01/alfa-bank-trump-tower-and-a-social-media-impeachment/

[OUTLAW 09]

How Russia hacks you
http://cnnmon.ie/2no9d5R

[OUTLAW 09]

Russian twitter troll and for a long time now.....

Kevin Rothrock
✔ @KevinRothrock

[OUTLAW 09]

New: we made an interactive map of UK surveillance company exports. IMSI catchers, internet monitoring tech, more
https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/uk-surveillance-export-map …

[OUTLAW 09]

"New details emerge about 2014 Russian hack of the State Department: It was ‘hand to hand combat’ "
http://wapo.st/2otPiX8?tid=ss_tw#

[OUTLAW 09]

Kremlin Trolls CI‏#@KremlinTrolls
We've just had repeated attempts to access our Twitter acc, which means Moscow is mad b/c we're right over the target

KI has been naming an unusual number of Russian twitter troll accounts over the last days......

[OUTLAW 09]

"Moonlight Maze evolved into what today we know as Turla APT, a Russian cyber-espionage group first spotted in 2007"

21 Years Later, Experts Connect the Dots on One of the First Cyber-Espionage Groups
https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/21-years-later-experts-connect-the-dots-on-one-of-the-first-cyber-espionage-groups/


Back in the 90s, in 1996, when the Internet was barely a few years old, two cyber-espionage groups dominated the cyber-space: Moonlight Maze and the Equation Group.
Their operations shocked the world and made people realize that hackers are also capable of stealing state secrets, not just money from bank accounts. That's when the term cyber-warfare became reality and not just the plot B-rated Hollywood movies.
While details collected about the Equation Group across the years have allowed researchers to issue theories on its connections with the US National Security Agency, very few details were collected about Moonlight Maze, the first ever APT.
Moonlight Maze, the first ever APT
The group was active in the late 90s and seemed to have disappeared at the turn of the century. Their attacks were studied and studied again and their mode of operation became standard practice for malware and cyber-attackers.
The group and its attacks achieved mythical status in the cyber-security world and were the subject of many books.
Through the years, Moonlight Maze hacked many important US targets such as government agencies and top universities. Victims included the Pentagon, NASA, the US Navy, and the Department of Energy, just to name the bigger ones.

Moonlight Maze group evolves, investigators fall behind
For years investigators collected mountains of evidence but failed to make any headway into the investigation. They said Moonlight Maze operators stole so much information that if printed on paper it would stand three times higher than the Washington Monument. Data on all attacks was classified.
As years went by, cyber-espionage became standard practice. Multiple groups had become active, and investigators needed to focus on current-day threats. That's why all Moonlight Maze data, on which the investigation was stalling, was permanently destroyed in 2008.
The world seemingly forgot about the Moonlight Maze group, as its attacks stopped. In reality, they just developed new tools and deployed new infrastructure. Researchers were still detecting their attacks, but they didn't know it was this mythical group from the 90s.
Researchers catch a break
The mystery about Moonlight Maze's disappearance lived on until 2016 when a misredacted FOIA request revealed the name of a British sysadmin, David Hedges.
A team of investigators from King's College London and Kaspersky Lab tracked down Hedges during 2016. Their persistence was eventually rewarded, as they discovered that Hedges had kept an old Linux machine that was compromised by the Moonlight Maze group in one of their operations.

Called HRTest, this was a Linux server that was hacked and used as a relay point in a giant network of proxies operated by the Moonlight Maze group.
Data would travel through these proxies for countless of hops until it would reach a dropping point where attackers could download it. Unknown to the Moonlight Maze group was that Hedges discovered the intrusion.
Working with UK authorities he transformed the HRTest machine into a honeypot, sniffing all the traffic that went through. All traffic details (no actual stolen data) were logged and saved offline.
Moonlight Maze's Linux backdoor
While US authorities classified data on Moonlight Maze attacks in an attempt to safeguard the stolen data from third-party investigators, it soon became clear they didn't have the experience of security researchers working in the private sector. Investigations stalled and eventually stopped, as Moonlight Maze disappeared from the face of the Earth during the early 2000s.
In reality, the group revamped all its infrastructure after attacks in 1999 became the subject of news headlines all over the world.
They did this by slowly refashioning their attack tools, shifting from Linux tools to Windows malware. They did this progressively, still using some of their older tools, learning along the way.
One of this tools that evolved during this transition period was a Linux malware family based on the LOKI2 backdoor published in a Phrack magazine in 1997.
Despite being used in attacks for almost 17 years, Kaspersky researchers unearthed evidence of attacks with this backdoor only in 2014.
At the time they didn't knew they had discovered a tool from the Moonlight Maze group and named the backdoor Penquin Turla, assigning it to a new APT discovered in the 2000s, named Turla.
Moonlight Maze operators made mistakes
But in 2016, data from the HRTest logs that wasn't destroyed by the FBI in 2008 came to light. This data was a goldmine for researchers, a forensics "time capsule."
It also helped that Moonlight Maze operators kept their own logs, which they forgot to delete, of all the actions they took.
These and the HRTest traffic logs from 1998 and 1999 revealed not only the humongous size of the Moonlight Maze network but also operational details, including the presence of the LOKI2 backdoor.
Jaws dropped when researchers realized the implications. They just solved one of the biggest mysterious in cyber-security: "What happened to the mythical Moonlight Maze?"
The Turla connection
In a presentation at the Kaspersky Security Analyst Summit (SAS) taking place this week in St. Maarten, researchers say Moonlight Maze evolved into what today we know as the Turla APT, a Russian-speaking cyber-espionage group first spotted in 2007, which has been behind some of the advanced hacks in recent years.

The group is most famous for using malware to hijack communications satellites and spy on targets in remote areas. In reality, its arsenal of tools includes many Windows malware families and UNIX attack tools.
The connection between Moonlight Maze and Turla shows that a nation state has gathered a# group of highly-talented hackers that are breaking ground on new ways to hack into systems.
The Moonlight Gaze group was one of the first groups to launch coordinated cyber-attacks on targets across the world using the Internet, and then they shifted to using satellites in the 2010s.
What's missing is a period in the early 2000s. The same research team believes that Moonlight Maze/Turla is also the group behind a series of attacks referenced as Storm Cloud, reported in 2003. These attacks targeted the Department of Defense and also used the LOKI2 backdoor.
The hunt continues
While 100% attribution is never certain in cyber-espionage campaigns, the clues uncovered on the HRTest server revealed more insight into Moonlight Maze operations than ever before.
Kaspersky researchers are now making a public plea to other sysadmins that still have old servers running or tucked somewhere on their network. If they still have logs going back to those early days of the Internet and they have evidence the server was compromise, researchers can be reached via email.
The full Kaspersky report can be found here, IOCs are here, and YARA rules for discovering Moonlight Maze malware is here.


Great video.....

https://youtu.be/9RorL9y70GU

This video is highly correct as some of us are in fact still chasing elements that are functioning and still under Russian control....

[OUTLAW 09]

Franklin Foer's @FranklinFoer story will go down in history. So will @EricLichtblau's, but not in a good way.

Was a Trump Server Communicating With Russia?

This spring, a group of computer scientists set out to determine whether hackers were interfering with the Trump campaign. They found something they weren’t expecting.

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/cover_story/2016/10/was_a_server_registered_to_the_trump_organization_ communicating_with_russia.html

CHECK the date of the article....

[OUTLAW 09]

Cyber attack on Singaporean defence ministry occurred weeks before being detected
http://buff.ly/2nXFQKr

[OUTLAW 09]

NSA penetrated hacker's computers, “So we were able to see them teeing up new things to do"
http://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/natosource/it-took-hand-to-hand-cyber-combat-for-nsa-to-remove-russian-hackers-from-state-department-networks#

This is in reference to the DoS hacking of 2014.....

NSA learned #Russian hackers were inside State Dept network from a Western intelligence agency.

[OUTLAW 09]

US FAKE News.....

RICE ORDERED SPY DOCS ON TRUMP?
http://drudge.tw/2oUA1uA

Anyone who understands how NSA works absolutely knows that they will have you pound sand if they feel the request is illegal...

Every NSA knows that....

[OUTLAW 09]

Sweden is one of the countries that was the target of a major cyber-attack "Cloud Hopper", using phishing, says civil defence agency

The attack was mainly against USA, Taiwan and Japan, but also hit Sweden, Norway, Finland, UK, France and Swizerland, says MSB

A MUST READ.....it was a sustained state sponsored attack....

https://www.pwc.co.uk/cyber-security/pdf/cloud-hopper-report-final-v3.pdf

[OUTLAW 09]

https://www.buzzfeed.com/amphtml/josephbernstein/from-utah-with-love

It is just not Russians driving propaganda, disinformation and fake news....

Nevermind The Russians, Meet The Bot King Who Helps Trump Win Twitter

“It’s All Us, Not Russians. And We’re Not Going To Stop”

Posted on April 05, 2017, 06:01 GMT

Joseph Bernstein


At 7:23 on Sunday evening, the conservative internet personality Mike Cernovich tweeted that former national security adviser Susan Rice had requested the “unmasking” of Americans connected to the Trump campaign who were incidentally mentioned in surveillance readouts. At 7:30, the owner of the Twitter account MicroMagicJingleTM noticed, and began blasting out dozens of tweets and retweets about the story.
“Would be nice to get 'Susan Rice' trending,” he tweeted at 8:16. And then, he made exactly that happen.
MicroMagicJingleTM is the latest incarnation of MicroChip, a notorious pro-Trump Twitter ringleader once described by a Republican strategist as the "Trumpbot overlord.” He has been suspended from the service so frequently, he can’t recall the exact number of times. A voluminous tweeter, his specialty is making hashtags trend. Over the next 24 hours, following his own call to arms, MicroChip tweeted or retweeted more than 300 times about Rice, everything from a photoshopped image of Donald Trump eating her head out of a taco bowl to demands that she die in jail, almost always accompanied by the tag #SusanRice. Meanwhile, in massive threaded tweets and DM groups, he implored others to do likewise.
By 9 a.m. Monday, the tag was being tweeted nearly 20,000 times an hour, and was trending on Twitter; by 11 a.m., 34,000 an hour. (As of Tuesday morning, the tag was still trending, partially thanks to a tweet from Donald Trump Jr.) At 4:48 p.m. Monday, 18-odd hours after he started his campaign, MicroChip was ready to call it a success:
Before? What did he mean by “before"? Before the election, before the campaign, and long since before “Russian interference” was the mantra of every political consultant, British former member of parliament, and American senator turned Tolstoy enthusiast, MicroChip has been figuring out how to make pro-Trump tags go viral on Twitter. When people talk about Russian Twitter bots, they are, very likely, sometimes talking about his work. They’ve ranged from the innocuously rah-rah (#TrumpTrain) to the wildly xenophobic (#Rapefugees) to the extremely unconfirmed (#cruzsexscandal and #hillarygropedme). What they’ve all had in common is a method, the focus of speculation for nearly a year, and a chief promulgator, MicroChip, about whom little is known.
Indeed, MicroChip, who operates behind a VPN (a special secure network that obscures his location), is an object of fascination and fear, even among some of his political and ideological fellow travelers, who hope not to end up on the wrong side of one of his Twitter campaigns. One conservative observer of the alt-right, who spoke to BuzzFeed on the condition that his name not be used, claimed he once hired private investigators to trace him.
“You can’t,” the observer wrote in a text message. “He’s too good.”
Unconvincing internet investigations have suggested that MicroChip may be anyone from the prominent alt-righter Baked Alaska to Justin McConney, the director of social media for the Trump Organization, to a shadowy Russian puppet master.
But in an interview with BuzzFeed News — his first with a media organization — MicroChip said the truth, both about his identity and the method he developed for spreading pro-Trump messages on Twitter, is far more prosaic. Though he would not divulge his real name or corroborate his claim, MicroChip said that he is a freelance mobile software developer in his early thirties and lives in Utah. In a conversation over the gaming chat platform Discord, MicroChip, who speaks unaccented, idiomatic American English, said that he guards his identity so closely for two reasons: first, because he fears losing contract work due to his beliefs, and second, because of what he calls an “uninformed” discourse in the media and Washington around Russian influence and botting.
“I feel like I'm a scientist showing electricity to natives that have been convinced electricity is created by Satan, so they murder the scientist,” he said.
Indeed, in a national atmosphere charged by unproven accusations about a massive network of Russian social media influence, the story of how MicroChip helped build the most notorious pro-Trump Twitter network seems almost mundane, less a technologically daunting intelligence operation than a clever patchworking of tools nearly any computer-literate person could manage. It also suggests that some of the current Russian Trumpbot hysteria may be, well, a hysteria.
“It’s all us, not Russians,” MicroChip said. “And we’re not going to stop.”
MicroChip claims he was a longtime “staunch liberal” who turned to Twitter in the aftermath of the November 2015 terrorist attacks in Paris, and “found out that I didn’t like what was going on. So I redpilled myself.” Through Twitter, he found a network of other people who thought liberal politicians had blindly acceded to PC culture, and who had found a champion in Donald Trump. In his early days on the platform, MicroChip said, he started “testing,” dabbling in anti-PC tags like #Rapefugees and seeing what went viral. His experience as a mobile developer had exposed him to the Twitter API, and a conversation with a blogger who ran social media bots convinced him he could automate the Twitter trending process.
“Micro is a true believer alt-right guy,” wrote the alt-right observer who had MicroChip investigated. “He’s brilliant and is not LARPing. His tech skills are real as is his opsec.”
As MicroChip found other like-minded accounts, he said, they began to organize themselves into enormous, 50-person direct message groups. Within these groups, members would distribute content from the Drudge Report and Reddit’s r/The_Donald subreddit, then tweet it with a commonly decided hashtag, and retweet one another’s tweets ad infinitum. MicroChip called the DM rooms, simply, “retweet groups,” and by September of last year, there were 15 of them. Some of the groups were chock-full of egg and anime avatars, according to MicroChip, but others were composed of Christian conservatives or hardcore Zionists. Taken together, they were like a strange Twitter mirror image of the Trump coalition.
MicroChip added automation to these dedicated DM groups, which he insisted are populated entirely by real people with real accounts. He started using AddMeFast, a kind of social media currency exchange, in which people can retweet or like other tweets in exchange for points that they can then can spend to list their own content (such as pro-Trump hashtagged tweets) to be promoted. You can also buy these points, and an investment of several hundred dollars, according to MicroChip, can yield thousands or even tens of thousands of retweets.
A third component of MicroChip’s blended army of DM groups and crowdsourced social media signal boosters were simple Google script bots. These bots, which MicroChip said “you don’t have to do any programming at all to run,” can be programmed to find and like or retweet tweets featuring certain terms or hashtags.
At its height, MicroChip said, the network he helped create could reliably generate 35,000 retweets a day.
“It’s high volume and it takes work,” he said. “You can’t take a break — you sit at the screen waiting for breaking news 12 hours per day when you’re knee-deep in it.” It’s hard work: MicroChip would sometimes reach his daily limit of 1,000 tweets a day, sometimes taking Adderall to focus — though he added, “Shaping a message is exhilarating.”
Along the way, Twitter started to suspend MicroChip’s accounts — first his original handle @WDfx2EU, then subsequent variations, each started with a link to his Keybase page to verify his identity, and each presided over by the same avatar: the Instagram hunk Brock O’Hurn wearing a Make America Great Again hat and eating an ice cream cone. MicroChip showed BuzzFeed dozens of other accounts he owns, ready to activate if and when his current account, @WDFx2EU95, gets suspended.
While it may take work to stay active, MicroChip says he has has an ideal platform in Twitter with which to shape a message. "Twitter is easier [than other social networks] and more volatile," he said. "Emotions run high at 140 characters. The chaos is perfect."

Continued.....

[OUTLAW 09]

https://www.buzzfeed.com/amphtml/josephbernstein/from-utah-with-love

It is just not Russians driving propaganda, disinformation and fake news....

Nevermind The Russians, Meet The Bot King Who Helps Trump Win Twitter

“It’s All Us, Not Russians. And We’re Not Going To Stop”

Posted on April 05, 2017, 06:01 GMT

Joseph Bernstein

It now appears that a large number of bots being used by this so called American from Utah are in fact Russian and Russian controlled....

Nothing says "non-Russian" like an unverified claim of being American plus an admission you made a botnet for Trump back in 2015

[OUTLAW 09]

Russia has launched over 7,000 cyber attacks on Ukraine over the last 3 years. - Defense Minister Poltorak
https://www.ukrinform.net/rubric-defense/2205993-russia-has-launched-over-7000-cyber-attacks-on-ukraine-defense-minister-poltorak.html#.WOUhvdA6aWR.twitter#

[OUTLAW 09]

Russian state TV host says Russia is defending itself in hacking DNC to get Trump elected

[OUTLAW 09]

AND there is no intertwining of Russian and US driven propaganda...fake news and disinformation.....??

Former Breitbart writer launches radio show for Sputnik: “I’m on the Russian payroll now."
http://theatln.tc/2oJZ2JK

A US alt rightist conspiracy theorist working now for the 300% Russian owned propaganda media outlet Sputnik International...

Russian softpower IE black money hard at work.....

Sputnik’s Unknown Brother – another vital must read investigation by @rebaltica
http://en.rebaltica.lv/2017/04/sputniks-unknown-brother/#

FAKE NEWS.....
Sputnik
✔
@SputnikInt
#SyrianArmy has never used and will never use #chemicalweapons against civilians and terrorists – Syrian FM
https://sptnkne.ws/ead

14 chlorine gas attacks alone in the second half of 2016....

Totally unsurprising investigation finds that @LtBaltnews and other marginal news sites are linked to Rossia Segodnya.

[OUTLAW 09]

Baltic Defence @Baltic_Defence
#Latvia’s Special Services accuses #Russia of #cyber-espionage #cyberwar http://www.ehackingnews.com/2017/04/latvias-special-services-accuses-russia.html?m=1#

[OUTLAW 09]

Apparently this guy is now controlling an official government twitter account. http://www.politico.com/blogs/media/2015/05/charles-johnson-banned-from-twitter-207688.html#…

So the Twitter account of the US nuclear bomber and missile operations is now run by Bannon?

This "block" by a US military site of a legal US person came ONLY when I insulted the Bannonite troll account @RoguePOTUSStaff this morning

Chuck C Johnson controls the account

[OUTLAW 09]

Wikileaks now pushing Russian government line that the Syrian chemical weapons attack was a false flag, joining InfoWars and Cernovich.

NOTICE now how WikiLeaks and the Russian info war medial outlets are working with US conspiracy blogsites

[OUTLAW 09]

NOW a very serious question MUST be asked.....SINCE WHEN does a US ultra right wing conspiracy blogsite "INFOWARS" REPEAT virtually word for word Russian state media propaganda...AND still claim to be a Us right wing media site????

InfoWars now promoting stories saying the Syrian gas attack was a hoax & Trump shouldn't yield to neocon pressure to strike.

[OUTLAW 09]

Responding to barrage of Russian propaganda, German law to hold Twitter, Facebook etc responsible for fake news
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/how-do-you-stop-fake-news-in-germany-with-a-law/2017/04/05/e6834ad6-1a08-11e7-bcc2-7d1a0973e7b2_story.html?hpid=hp_hp-cards_mhp-card-world%3Ahomepage%2Fcard&utm_term=.41a1c10d1881#

[OUTLAW 09]

BTW..this is the most perfect example of just how info warfare is flowing these days....

The first tweets under the hashtag #SyriaHoax came from Russia. Cernovich picked up on it; now it's trending in the U.S via the US alt right sites....Infowars and Breitbart.com and Drudge Reports.....

So is this to be considered "a small war being fought via information warfare"....or is it "political warfare"....or "hybrid warfare"......or just good ole fashioned everyday politics"

In the 21st century these terms are fluid and will constantly change....but there is an underlining term that covers them all..."war short of violence".....

[OUTLAW 09]

Perfect example of just how Russian info warfare flows these days....


The first tweets under the hashtag #SyriaHoax came from Russia. Cernovich picked up on it; now it's trending in the U.S via the US alt right sites....Infowars and Breitbart.com and Drudge Reports.....

[OUTLAW 09]

This bot-op (from Feb) started in Macedonia. It bears similarities to today's #SyriaHoax hashtag.
https://twitter.com/RVAwonk/status/832551506092105728#

Another way to identify involvement of bots in promoting a story/hashtag (in this case, #SyriaHoax): Activity patterns that look like this:

[OUTLAW 09]

Trump’s troll army isn’t ready for war in Syria
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/04/trump-alt-right-syria-war-214998#

NEITHER were the Russian trollers...

Boss of Russia Today, which heaped praise on Trump and said Hillary would start WW3: "We had a chance. But now it's ####ed. And not by us."

[OUTLAW 09]

Russian deliberate Fake News.......

The Russian reporter filming Shayrat airbase post-US strike showed the same surviving hangars at different times
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ow5Ux17YKdM#…

[OUTLAW 09]

WOW...now the US alt right blogsites and conspiracy theory sites are working together with Russian propaganda medial outlets....

Trump’s alt-right allies say Trump is being tricked by #fakenews to intervene in #Syria.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2017/04/06/trump-loves-a-conspiracy-theory-now-his-allies-in-the-media-say-hes-falling-for-one-in-syria/?hpid=hp_hp-top-table-main_fix-media-620a%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&utm_term=.b0eec52e4e96#

The New York Times
✔
@nytimes
"I'm officially OFF the Trump train." Trump's far-right supporters turn on him after the Syria missile strike.
http://nyti.ms/2njDFBX

"alt right" means here "white nationalist and or white supremacists....

[OUTLAW 09]

A "Western intelligence agency" has video footage of Russian hackers carrying out the 2014 State Dept. hack.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/new-details-emerge-about-2014-russian-hack-of-the-state-department-it-was-hand-to-hand-combat/2017/04/03/d89168e0-124c-11e7-833c-503e1f6394c9_story.html?utm_term=.46a357e4ae3a …

[OUTLAW 09]

NOW a very serious question MUST be asked.....SINCE WHEN does a US ultra right wing conspiracy blogsite "INFOWARS" REPEAT virtually word for word Russian state media propaganda...AND still claim to be a Us right wing media site????

InfoWars now promoting stories saying the Syrian gas attack was a hoax & Trump shouldn't yield to neocon pressure to strike.

Alex Jones is the head of Infowars...and a major conspiracy theorist....

Alex Jones brands Jared and Ivanka ‘enemies of the republic’ after Trump ally blames them for Syria strike
http://ow.ly/RRlb30aFVmO

[OUTLAW 09]

This bot-op (from Feb) started in Macedonia. It bears similarities to today's #SyriaHoax hashtag.
https://twitter.com/RVAwonk/status/832551506092105728#

Another way to identify involvement of bots in promoting a story/hashtag (in this case, #SyriaHoax): Activity patterns that look like this:


Put #SyriaHoax in Keyhole
http://keyhole.co/#
and it shows which accounts tweeted it and that 64% of them came from America.

[OUTLAW 09]

FireKushner hashtag is an orchestrated effort that started w/ a few alt-right accts. The pattern of activity is definitely not organic

Roger Stone started anti-Kushner/pro-Bannon narrative on Breitbart 3 days ago
-Guy who started #FireKushner hashtag tweeted the article

[OUTLAW 09]

How the US alt-right promoted the #SyriaHoax conspiracy theory explained by @DFRLab
https://medium.com/dfrlab/how-the-alt-right-brought-syriahoax-to-america-47745118d1c9#

[OUTLAW 09]

If you want to see Russian information warfare at its worst, visit these countries
https://lnkd.in/giN5mzY

[OUTLAW 09]

EU Mythbusters
✔
@EUvsDisinfo
Pro-Kremlin outlets claim that Europe has started a war against Russia in Ukraine. Check the facts.
http://eepurl.com/cJR-Br

[OUTLAW 09]

When a hashtag isn't what it seems: The international far right tags Sweden
https://medium.com/dfrlab/the-international-far-right-tags-sweden-3d4034d55812#

[OUTLAW 09]

EXTREMELY IMPORTANT.....reference Russian interference in the US election

Since November 2016, over 4,000 bitcoins have been trafficked through Wikileaks blockchain account.

Assange has 20 bitcoins in his blockchain right now. Find the rest of the money.

On November 18th, 92 bitcoins were transferred. 50 BTC went here:
https://blockchain.info/address/1PJc9Q6dADnK6VJCVKkziiFmJFJG9tqTSH#…

[OUTLAW 09]

Information Wars: A Window into the Alternative Media Ecosystem
https://medium.com/hci-design-at-uw/information-wars-a-window-into-the-alternative-media-ecosystem-a1347f32fd8f#.arvcj4d35#

How do rumours spread during a crisis? And why are some Russian-linked websites keen to spread them?

This takes a bit of a look at one of the folks behind "Veterans Today". A former ISI general was on the board:
https://newrussians.wordpress.com/2014/12/08/russian-propaganda-and-the-americans-who-make-it/#

[OUTLAW 09]

Trump's missile attack has unleashed some major Russian/US bot trolling and anti Trump comments

A solid number of Russian twitter bots have been identified...and retweeted then by US based trolls....

[OUTLAW 09]

Alt-right is trending #firekushner using all the same anti-Semitic sxxxxt they used on Trump opponents during campaign. Chickens, meet roost.

Trending heavily today.....driven by the twitter account @bakedalaska

[OUTLAW 09]

Russian software engineer was detained in Barcelona in possible connection to U.S elections hack:

Barcelona has the largest Russian expat community outside of Russia...and the largest mob collection point as well...

Background story on the worldwide hunt for Russian hackers in general...this particular arrest has not been signaled yet in western MSM but picked up in Russian MSM.......
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/nati...141998499.html

Was actually surprised to see Russian reports of a Russian hacker arrested for US elections hacking....

LOCATED original Russian source....

First mentioned in this Russia twitter account
Mikhail Golub‏#
@golub
Программист из Петербурга задержан в Испании по запросу США.
Не хочет русский хакер отдыхать на Байкале

Actual referenced Russian media source.
http://www.rosbalt.ru/world/2017/04/09/1606078.html

Article is in Russian.....

[OUTLAW 09]

Israel's Communist Party consistently backs Assad & Russian intervention. Apparently when it's Russia+Iran intervening it's not imperialism

Israel's Communist Party prevented issuing of an Arab Joint List condemnation of the chemical massacre in Syria

It is extremely interesting to watch how the left and right in Europe together with the US ultra right IE white nationalists and white supremacists rally around Russian propaganda when it comes to the Syrian CWs attack...

Kremlin's pet Italian fascist @matteosalvinimi is only "following orders"

"Use of gas in Syria? I want proof"
https://twitter.com/lega_nord/status...0789265711106#

[OUTLAW 09]

Russian software engineer was detained in Barcelona in possible connection to U.S elections hack:

Barcelona has the largest Russian expat community outside of Russia...and the largest mob collection point as well...

Background story on the worldwide hunt for Russian hackers in general...this particular arrest has not been signaled yet in western MSM but picked up in Russian MSM.......
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/nati...141998499.html

Was actually surprised to see Russian reports of a Russian hacker arrested for US elections hacking....

LOCATED original Russian source....

First mentioned in this Russia twitter account
Mikhail Golub‏#
@golub
Программист из Петербурга задержан в Испании по запросу США.
Не хочет русский хакер отдыхать на Байкале

Actual referenced Russian media source.
http://www.rosbalt.ru/world/2017/04/09/1606078.html

Article is now being reported in English.....

Russian computer programmer arrested in Spain. RT claims authorities suspect connection to U.S. election hacking

Article is in Russian.....

Article is now being reported in English.....

Russian computer programmer arrested in Spain. RT claims authorities suspect connection to U.S. election hacking

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-spain-russia-idUSKBN17B0O2

Russian hacker Petr Levashov allegedly created virus used to help Trump win, per HK-based publication

THIS may in fact be key as there is solid evidence that the large scale bot nets that drove proTrump social messaging were controlled from a central point...the how has been the puzzle we are looking for....

The New York Times
✔
@nytimes
Spain Arrests Russian Thought to Be Kingpin of Computer Spam
http://nyti.ms/2ogoS9W

[OUTLAW 09]

Booby-trapped Word documents in the wild exploit critical Microsoft zero-day
https://arstechnica.co.uk/?post_type=post&p=200327#


I am way old enough to remember when MS Word Marco virus was the thing of the day and when the Monkey virus was "in"......

We have come a long way...but surprisingly some of the newer malware are going back to those early days and incorporating some of those features to throw off viral detectors....as the latest viral detectors are not geared to detect such basic ones...

[OUTLAW 09]

Article is now being reported in English.....

Russian computer programmer arrested in Spain. RT claims authorities suspect connection to U.S. election hacking

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-spain-russia-idUSKBN17B0O2

Russian hacker Petr Levashov allegedly created virus used to help Trump win, per HK-based publication

THIS may in fact be key as there is solid evidence that the large scale bot nets that drove proTrump social messaging were controlled from a central point...the how has been the puzzle we are looking for....

The New York Times
✔
@nytimes
Spain Arrests Russian Thought to Be Kingpin of Computer Spam
http://nyti.ms/2ogoS9W

Apparently Pyotr Levashov linked to Russia's FSB in years past
https://www.opendemocracy.net/od-russia/irina-borogan-andrei-soldatov/kremlin-and-hackers-partners-in-crime#…

He has been around since the 90s....considered to be the one of the world's top 5 spammers and has been known to FBI and CIA since early 2000s for his work with Russian FSB....

Article has his alias and some of the other hackers he's operated with in the past:
https://krebsonsecurity.com/2012/12/a-closer-look-at-two-bigtime-botmasters/#more-17872#…

This was one of his most potent Trojan's.....

https://threatpost.com/neverquest-trojan-gets-big-summer-update/120605/


The once prolific banking Trojan Neverquest received a major code revamp over the summer and is now armed with modifications that can more adeptly hijack a victim’s PC, inject code into webpages and steal credentials. The update represents a significant enough change to the malware that researchers have dubbed the latest samples Neverquest2.
Over the past several months Arbor Networks’ Security Engineering and Response Team (ASERT), along with#other members of the security research community, have been tracking the slow and steady improvements added to Neverquest. There is consensus that the team behind the Trojan is gearing up for a new Neverquest2 assault.
Related Posts
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February 28, 2017 , 3:17 pm
Neverquest is a version of the Gozi Trojan that was responsible for stealing millions of dollars from victims’ bank accounts during its run several years ago. The Neverquest malware family, also known as Vawtrak, has been around for more than three years and has in the past been distributed by the Neutrino EK.
With this latest version, Arbor researchers note in a soon to be published technical analysis of the Trojan, that the team behind Neverquest2 has modified the malware to include plugins capable of delivering 266 new web-inject rules targeting specific type websites. Bank and financial websites make up the majority of sites targeted by Neverquest2 followed by: government agencies, wireless providers, payroll services and online public record aggregators. Notable, say ASERT researchers, is the addition of web-injection rules that now target Bitcoin commerce sites for the first time.
Neverquest2, as with Neverquest, is designed to kick into action on infected computers whenever a user visits one of the pre-programmed targeted sites. Next, the web-injections occur, inserting extra fields into targeted web forms in order to steal PINs and other sensitive information.
In 2014, several people were arrested and indicted in connection with using Neverquest in a web-injection attack that resulted in more than $1.5 million in fraudulent transactions on StubHub, the online ticket portal.
The Trojan has evolved over the summer. Last month, cybersecurity firm PhishLabs noted that Neverquest2 uses a new domain generation algorithm to produce a large number of domain names that can be used to link to its command-and-control server.
Another recent modification to Neverquest2, ASERT observed, has been the introduction of new modules to the Trojan adding new functionality. Two modules added to Neverquest2 over the summer include a “backconnect” and a certificate-stealing plugin.
The backconnect module (bc_32.dll) adds support for general purpose remote access to an infected client. It includes a VNC server that can be installed on the infected host, according to ASERT. “The infected computer allows an attacker to be logged into the computer and see the victim’s desktop and get access to webcam video and see the browsing history of the victim. They have full access to the victim’s PC and can run arbitrary CMD commands and interact with the Task Manager,” according to an ASERT researcher.
The second additional module (dg_32.dll) is a general purpose information stealing module that will hunt for and steal certificates stored on the victim’s infected computer. The dg_32.dll plugin “uses the CertOpenSystemStore() and related cryptographic APIs to gain access to certificate stores associated with private keys, certificate authorities, etc. It will scan the infected system for browser profiles, cookies, browsing history and browser cache entries,” according to ASERT’s report.
ASERT said the improved Neverquest2 can also remotely access an infected system to install the Pony Trojan, also referred to as Fareit.
Despite what researchers describe as a major overhaul for Neverquest, they say the primary goal for the Trojan remains the same: to modify the web page presented to the victim in order to steal account credentials or other sensitive information.
“This particular recent sample of Neverquest2 is a well-written, modular, professional grade malware platform,” wrote ASERT researchers. “(Neverquest2) does not appear to contain a great deal more actual functionality beyond what was already present in the some of the original Neverquest samples going all the way back to 2015. But its incremental changes, such as the recent adoption of a DGA-style mechanism for the specification of its C&C servers, indicates that the threat is still under active development.”


Another good article on him from Krebsonsecurity....

10Apr 17
Alleged Spam King Pyotr Levashov Arrested
Authorities in Spain have arrested a Russian computer programmer thought to be one of the world’s most notorious spam kingpins.
https://krebsonsecurity.com/2017/04/alleged-spam-king-pyotr-levashov-arrested/

[OUTLAW 09]

This white nationalist was one of Trump's biggest supporters and especially read on social media during the campaign...and was to be the main speaker at CPAC until his interview where he favored pedophilia with younger boys...kinda killed his career at Breitbart.com..

Mediaite‏
Verified account
#EXCLUSIVE: Milo Yiannopoulos Breaks With Trump on Syria: ‘Not Why People Voted for Daddy’
http://bit.ly/2oaLoRH

"Daddy".......???????

[OUTLAW 09]

EU Mythbusters
✔
@EUvsDisinfo
Why do we talk about "pro-Kremlin disinformation campaign" and not "Russian disinformation campaign":
https://euvsdisinfo.eu/kt-kremlin-today/#

[OUTLAW 09]

One of Russia's main social media trolls....in action...tied heavily into GRU...

BREAKING #GRU InfoOp #Kots has been quickly deployed to Shairat aviation base in Syria to assess Tomahawks volley BDA.

[OUTLAW 09]

Apparently Pyotr Levashov linked to Russia's FSB in years past
https://www.opendemocracy.net/od-russia/irina-borogan-andrei-soldatov/kremlin-and-hackers-partners-in-crime#…

He has been around since the 90s....considered to be the one of the world's top 5 spammers and has been known to FBI and CIA since early 2000s for his work with Russian FSB....

Article has his alias and some of the other hackers he's operated with in the past:
https://krebsonsecurity.com/2012/12/a-closer-look-at-two-bigtime-botmasters/#more-17872#…

This was one of his most potent Trojan's.....

https://threatpost.com/neverquest-trojan-gets-big-summer-update/120605/



Another good article on him from Krebsonsecurity....

10Apr 17
Alleged Spam King Pyotr Levashov Arrested
Authorities in Spain have arrested a Russian computer programmer thought to be one of the world’s most notorious spam kingpins.
https://krebsonsecurity.com/2017/04/alleged-spam-king-pyotr-levashov-arrested/

US says global spam scheme targeted after Russian mastermind nabbed
http://wapo.st/2pkVrBz?tid=ss_tw#

[OUTLAW 09]

How does Kremlin influence work in Central Europe?
A new @cepolicy report
https://goo.gl/9fSiLF

[OUTLAW 09]

While Trump has been bashing Assad and Putin...Russia wants back Alaska...

Alaska's Arctic policy adviser falls victim to Russian media provokatsiya.
https://www.adn.com/arctic/2017/04/11/alaskas-arctic-policy-adviser-falls-victim-to-fake-news-in-russia/#

Reverse fake news hits Russia....

[OUTLAW 09]

Kremlin Trolls CI @KremlinTrolls
That Kremlin Troll changed her name from @ArianaGicPerry to @GicAriana to cover her trail.

She has been active ever since Crimea annexation by Russia and is definitely a solid Russian troll account...

You will find that a number of Russian trolls often change their account names to provide the "fog of war"....

[OUTLAW 09]

Cyber breaches have cost shareholders billions since 2013:
http://reut.rs/2nDzf9h

[OUTLAW 09]

Another Russian troll on the move again...after a period of silence....


Return of pro-CW use @PartisanGirl ally Ted Postol and his affinity for Assad's regime.

Remembering when Postol got himself aligned with holocaust denier @RyLiberty to talk about how neocons were after pro-CW use @PartisanGirl.

Nobody should be surprised that Ghouta truther #1 Ted Postol ("the MIT") is back defending the "Axis of Resistance".

[OUTLAW 09]

Best defense is offense: Russian Foreign Ministry spox Zakharova announces millions of US bots have attacked Russia

[OUTLAW 09]

another reactivated Russian troll...
EHSANI2‏#
@EHSANI22
Instead of reading and critiquing the document, some people are taking issue with my leading CW expert comment. Ok he is HMAR at MIT. Happy?

[OUTLAW 09]

Fakenews alleging troops poisoned in #Latvia #released on @BNSLithuania wire, #cyberattack suspected
http://bit.ly/2ozoPH3

[OUTLAW 09]

Yes open source OSINT can push back....

Open-source citizen journalists are fighting back against Russian hacking of Western institutions - via @techreview
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/604084/how-to-fight-back-against-russian-hacking/?utm_campaign=add_this&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=post#


Problem is MSM never really seems "to get it"....until way to late...

[OUTLAW 09]

Russian info warfare inside UK hard at work....

Guess who just became a “Director” of Ghaith Armanazi’s British Syrian Society?

RT’s favorite Brit, Peter Ford:https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/04619563


Guess who organized the infamous #Damascus “conference” attended by Western analysts & journalists?

= The British #Syria Society.

Who's the head of #Syria's chemical weapons program?

= Amr Armanazi (L)

Who's the head of British #Syria Society?

= Ghaith Armanazi (R)

More info on the Armanazis can be found here: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/s...ck-fsnkrk6fw#…

Here: https://en.zamanalwsl.net/news/25201.html#

& here: http://foreignpolicy.com/2017/04/07/...assad-sarin/#…

[OUTLAW 09]

Say goodbye to the chemical weapons warehouse and hello to the Saudi missile for your Khan Sheikhoun conspiracy needs

THIS individual is a confirmed Russian troll.....and who has been extremely active since the gas attack....

[OUTLAW 09]

US ultra rightists actively supporting Assad and Putin....

How a pair of self-publicists wound up as apologists for Assad

Mod adds: Link is behind a pay wall
http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21720627-trail-damascus-alex-jones-and-mike-cernovich-how-pair-self-publicists#

[OUTLAW 09]

@seansrussiablog podcast with @Alexey__Kovalev on the evolution of Russian media & propaganda.
http://seansrussiablog.org/2017/04/12/the-russian-propaganda-machine-2/#

[OUTLAW 09]

Yes open source OSINT can push back....

Open-source citizen journalists are fighting back against Russian hacking of Western institutions - via @techreview
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/604084/how-to-fight-back-against-russian-hacking/?utm_campaign=add_this&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=post#


Problem is MSM never really seems "to get it"....until way to late...

MIT Tech Review
✔
@techreview
Russia gets “the true nature of the battlefield” in a way the West does not. The power lies in information.
http://trib.al/7ibtNhY

[OUTLAW 09]

Well worth reading.....

PENQUIN’S MOONLIT MAZE

The Dawn of Nation-State Digital Espionage

Juan Andres Guerrero-Saade, Costin Raiu (GReAT)
Daniel Moore, Thomas Rid (King’s College London

https://securelist.com/files/2017/04/Penquins_Moonlit_Maze_PDF_eng.pdf


The origins of digital espionage remain hidden in the dark. In most cases, codenames and fragments of stories are all that remains of the ‘prehistoric’ actors that pioneered the nowubiquitous practice of computer network exploitation. The origins of early operations, tools, and tradecraft are largely unknown: official documents will remain classified for years and decades to come; memories of investigators are eroding as time passes; and often precious forensic evidence is discarded, destroyed, or simply lost as storage devices age. Even ‘Moonlight Maze,’ perhaps the oldest publicly acknowledged state actor, has evaded open forensic analysis.
Intrusions began as early as 1996. The early targets: a vast number of US military and government networks, including Wright Patterson and Kelly Air Force Bases, the Army Research Lab, the Naval Sea Systems Command in Indian Head, Maryland, NASA, and the Department of Energy labs. By mid-1998 the FBI and Department of Defense investigators had forensic evidence pointing to Russian ISPs. After a Congressional hearing in late February
1999, news of the FBI’s vast investigation leaked to the public.1 However, little detail ever surfaced regarding the actual means and procedures of this threat actor. Eventually the code name was replaced (with the attackers’ improved intrusion set dubbed Storm Cloud’, and later ‘Makers Mark’) and the original ‘MM’ faded into obscurity without proper technical forensic artefacts to tie these cyberespionage pioneers to the modern menagerie of APT actors we are now all too familiar with.

[OUTLAW 09]

Russian Hackers Have Used the Same Backdoor for Two Decades

https://www.wired.com/2017/04/russian-hackers-used-backdoor-two-decades/


“We can see an evolution of tradecraft,” says Rid, who teaches at King’s College Department of War Studies, and last week testified at#a Senate hearing on Russian hackers meddling in the 2016 election. “They’ve been doing this for 20 years or even more.”

[OUTLAW 09]

Justice Dept finds 90 pages of Voting Machines Malfunctions in Swing States. PA, FL, NC, WI and MI.

[OUTLAW 09]

Russia proposes new UN convention on coop vs #cybercrime - framed so can still protect own state-linked hackers
http://www.kommersant.ru/doc/3270121

Sorry in Russian but Google translate is not bad with Russian...

[OUTLAW 09]

BREAKING: DOJ traces millions from $230m crime that Sergei Magnitsky exposed to UK account of Renaissance Capital
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/04/13/exclusive-66m-linked-death-lawyer-traced-russian-firms-uk-account/#


Appears that right now DoJ is massively involved in a money laundering hunt of gigantic size never seen before.....but recently outlined in the articles I have posted on the Russian washing machine for black monies....

Russian hacking even state sponsored and Russian cybercrime go hand in hand as well as money laundering activities.....black money is Russia's "soft power"....in the West....

[OUTLAW 09]

Russia may have been involved in the collapse of a voter registration website leading up to Brexit vote
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/apr/12/foreign-states-may-have-interfered-in-brexit-vote-report-says?CMP=share_btn_tw#

[OUTLAW 09]

Analysts identify #SyriaHoax as Russian-fueled propaganda designed to undermine credibility of U.S. government.
http://abcn.ws/2of25YQ

[OUTLAW 09]

“The Kremlin’s Audience in France” by @DFRLab
https://medium.com/dfrlab/the-kremlins-audience-in-france-884a80515f8b#

[OUTLAW 09]

The US guys who have been disseminating Russia fake news from day 1 are @Cernovich and @JackPosobiec

[OUTLAW 09]

A day in the life of the darknet.....

[OUTLAW 09]

https://krebsonsecurity.com/2017/04/fake-news-at-work-in-spam-kingpins-arrest/#more-38975

11Apr 17

Fake News at Work in Spam Kingpin’s Arrest?


Over the past several days, many Western news media outlets have predictably devoured thinly-sourced reporting from a Russian publication that the arrest last week of a Russian spam kingpin in Spain was related to#hacking attacks linked to last year’s U.S. election. While there is scant evidence that the spammer’s arrest had anything to do with the election, the success of that narrative is a sterling example of how the Kremlin’s propaganda machine is adept at manufacturing fake news, undermining public trust in the media, and distracting attention away from the real story.

Russian President Vladimir Putin tours RT facilities. Image: DNI
On Saturday, news broke from RT.com (formerly Russia Today) that authorities in Spain had arrested 36-year-old Peter “Severa” Levashov, one of the most-wanted spammers on the planet and the alleged creator of some of the nastiest cybercrime#engines in history — including the Storm worm, and the#Waledac and Kelihos spam botnets.
But the RT story didn’t lead with Levashov’s alleged misdeeds or his primacy among junk emailers#and virus writers. Rather, the publication said it interviewed Levashov’s wife Maria, who claimed that Spanish authorities said her husband was detained because#he was suspected of being involved in hacking attacks aimed at influencing#the 2016 U.S. election.
The RT piece is fairly typical of one that covers the arrest of Russian hackers in that the story quickly becomes not about the criminal charges but about how the accused is being unfairly treated or maligned by overzealous or misguided Western law enforcement agencies.
The RT story about Levashov, for example, seems engineered to leave readers#with the impression that some bumbling cops rudely disturbed the springtime vacation of a nice Russian family, stole their belongings, and left a dazed and confused young mother alone to fend for herself and her child.
This should not be shocking to any journalist or reader who has paid attention to U.S. intelligence agency reports on Russia’s efforts to influence the outcome of last year’s election. A#25-page dossier released in January by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence#describes RT as a U.S.-based but Kremlin-financed media outlet that is little more than an engine of anti-Western propaganda controlled by Russian intelligence agencies.
Somehow, this small detail was lost on countless Western media outlets, who seemed all too willing to parrot the narrative constructed by RT regarding Levashov’s arrest.#With a brief nod#to RT’s “scoop,” these publications back-benched#the real story (the long-sought capture of one of the world’s most wanted spammers) and led#with an angle supported by the flimsiest of sourcing.
On Monday, the U.S. Justice Department released a bevy of documents detailing Levashov’s alleged history as a spammer, and many of the sordid details in the allegations laid out in the government’s case echoed those in a story I published early Monday. Investigators said they had dismantled the Kelihos botnet that Severa allegedly built and used to distribute junk email, but they also emphasized that Levashov’s arrest had nothing to do with hacking efforts tied to last year’s election.
“Despite Russian news media reports to the contrary, American officials said Mr. Levashov played no role in attempts by Russian government hackers to meddle in the 2016 presidential election and support the candidacy of Donald J. Trump,” The New York Times reported.
Nevertheless, from the Kremlin’s perspective, the RT story is almost certainly being viewed as an unqualified success: It distracted attention away from the real scoop#(a major Russian spammer was apprehended); it made much of the news media appear unreliable and foolish by regurgitating#fake news; and it continued to sow doubt in the minds of the Western public about the legitimacy of democratic process.
Levashov’s wife may well have been told her husband was wanted for political hacking. Likewise, Levashov could have played a part in Russian hacking efforts aimed at influencing last year’s election. As noted here and in The New York Times earlier this week, the Kelihos botnet does have a historic association with election meddling: It was#used during the Russian election in 2012 to send political messages to email accounts on computers with Russian Internet addresses.
According to The Times, those emails linked to fake news stories saying that Mikhail D. Prokhorov, a businessman who was running for president against Vladimir V. Putin, had come out as gay.#It’s also well established that the#Kremlin has a history of recruiting successful criminal hackers#for political and espionage purposes.
But the less glamorous truth in this case is that the facts as we know them so far do not support the narrative that Levashov was involved in hacking activities related to last year’s election. To insist otherwise absent any facts to support such a conclusion only encourages the spread of more fake news.

[OUTLAW 09]

http://thehackernews.com/2017/04/cia-longhorn-hacking.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheHackersNews+%28The+Hackers +News+-+Security+Blog%29&_m=3n.009a.1469.cw0ao0651a.vgy

Symantec Connects 40 Cyber Attacks to CIA Hacking Tools Exposed by Wikileaks



Security researchers have confirmed that the alleged CIA hacking tools recently exposed by WikiLeaks have been used against at least 40 governments and private organizations across 16 countries.

Since March, as part of its "Vault 7" series, Wikileaks has published over 8,761 documents and other confidential information that the whistleblower group claims came from the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

Now, researchers at cybersecurity company Symantec reportedly managed to link those CIA hacking tools to numerous real cyber attacks in recent years that have been carried out against the government and private sectors across the world.

Those 40 cyber attacks were conducted by Longhorn — a North American hacking group that has been active since at least 2011 and has used backdoor trojans and zero-day attacks to target government, financial, energy, telecommunications, education, aerospace, and natural resources sectors.

Although the group's targets were all in the Middle East, Europe, Asia, and Africa, researchers said the group once infected a computer in the United States, but an uninstaller was launched within an hour, which indicates the "victim was infected unintentionally."

What's interesting is that Symantec linked some of CIA hacking tools and malware variants disclosed by Wikileaks in the Vault 7 files to Longhorn cyber espionage operations.

Fluxwire (Created by CIA) ≅ Corentry (Created by Longhorn)

Fluxwire, a cyber espionage malware allegedly created by the CIA and mentioned in the Vault 7 documents, contains a changelog of dates for when new features were added, which according to Symantec, closely resemble with the development cycle of "Corentry," a malware created by Longhorn hacking group.
"Early versions of Corentry seen by Symantec contained a reference to the file path for the Fluxwire program database (PDB) file," Symantec explains. "The Vault 7 document lists removal of the full path for the PDB as one of the changes implemented in Version 3.5.0."
"Up until 2014, versions of Corentry were compiled using GCC [GNU Compiler Collection]. According to the Vault 7 document, Fluxwire switched to an MSVC compiler for version 3.3.0 on February 25, 2015. This was reflected in samples of Corentry, where a version compiled on February 25, 2015, had used MSVC as a compiler."

Similar Malware Modules

Another Vault 7 document details 'Fire and Forget' specification of the payload and a malware module loader called Archangel, which Symantec claims, match almost perfectly with a Longhorn backdoor called Plexor.


"The specification of the payload and the interface used to load it was closely matched in another Longhorn tool called Backdoor.Plexor," says Symantec.

Use of Similar Cryptographic Protocol Practices

Another leaked CIA document outlined cryptographic protocols that should be used within malware tools, such as using AES encryption with a 32-bit key, inner cryptography within SSL to prevent man-in-the-middle attacks, and key exchanges once per connection.

One leaked CIA document also recommends using of in-memory string de-obfuscation and Real-time Transport Protocol (RTP) for communicating with the command and control (C&C) servers.

According to Symantec, these cryptographic protocol and communication practices were also used by Longhorn group in all of its hacking tools.

More About LongHorn Hacking Group

Longhorn has been described as a well-resourced hacking group that works on a standard Monday to Friday working week — likely a behavior of a state-sponsored group — and operates in an American time zone.

Longhorn's advanced malware tools are specially designed for cyber espionage with detailed system fingerprinting, discovery, and exfiltration capabilities. The group uses extremely stealthy capabilities in its malware to avoid detection.

Symantec analysis of the group's activities also shows that Longhorn is from an English speaking North American country with code words used by it referring, the band The Police with code words REDLIGHT and ROXANNE, and colloquial terms like "scoobysnack."

Overall, the functionality described in the CIA documents and its links to the group activities leave "little doubt that Longhorn's activities and the Vault 7 documents are the work of the same group."

[OUTLAW 09]

How @TheArabSource began a “#Russia influence campaign” to spin conspiracy/disinformation around #Syria CW attack:
http://abcn.ws/2oabGkQ

[OUTLAW 09]

Interesting report from Poland of #fakenews targeting NATO deployment. Accusation vs "dark-skinned" US troops:
http://nowe.kresy.pl/wydarzenia/pijani-amerykanscy-zolnierze-pobili-polaka-zaganiu-prokuratura-zaprzecza-dziennikarze-podejrzewaja-cyber-wlamanie/#

Fakenews alleging @3ABCT4ID troops beat young Pole in #Zagan released on local media, #cyberattack suspected.
http://bit.ly/2pB1O3F

[OUTLAW 09]

Perfect example of MSM....large headlines this morning....question is though who is the hacking group releasing these files for????

Hackers release files indicating NSA monitored global bank transfers
http://reut.rs/2pl1A1a

Well is that not interesting...truly really absolutely not...if they had not been doing this then they are negligent in their Mission Set Taskings...

BTW....this is a true non news item...why ..standard internal banking regulations since 9/11 practiced by all Western banks under SWIFT foresees all money transfers of over 5K USDs being monitored to begin with...and when coming into the US or out of the US an individual must declared any money amount over 10K USDs...

So again just what is the massive "new news" that this article is trying to convey????

[Azor]

Interested in your take on claims of Russian aid to the Taliban. See my post here:
http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/showpost.php?p=203747&postcount=20

[OUTLAW 09]

Interested in your take on claims of Russian aid to the Taliban. See my post here:
http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/showpost.php?p=203747&postcount=20

They are real..exist deeper than many think at the Spetsnaz/PMU level and have been actually confirmed but Trump and strangely DoD is holding back the info...

Confirmed also by European intel sources who are watching it as they are part of the NATO effort...

[OUTLAW 09]

Now it appears that the raving US white nationalist wing that supported Trump are going wild....this individual was the one that pushed the Russian disinformation campaign around the Assad CWs use under the hashtag #Syrianhoax which was started by Assad and then picked up by Russian FSB and then driven into the US by the individual below which then made it to Breitbart.com and Infowars and YES even FOX News....

Cernovich is threatening White House with smear stories & they still give him first dibs on scoops and then Eli Lakes second take....

Cernovich said he'll drop "scoops" that will "destroy marriages, relationships" if Bannon is fired by Trump.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2017/04/14/alt-right-ringleader-mike-cernovich-threatens-to-drop-motherlode-if-steve-bannon-is-ousted.html#…

So who needs the alleged sex tapes of Trump mentioned in the Steele Dossier WHEN we have white nationalist willing to destroy their own....with evidently photos...tapes....etc...

Sex...drugs and rock and roll.....all from the US ultra right...who would have thought that months ago....and then mix in the Russians.....

[OUTLAW 09]

House Democrats call for revoking Kushner’s security clearance
http://thehill.com/homenews/house/328671-house-democrats-call-for-revoking-kushners-security-clearance#.WPG5EqQ18zQ.twitter#

REASON...he basically lied on his SF86 under the Section....Foreign travel and foreign contacts....

Anyone who knows the SF86 process also knows that if you check this section as YES then you better be prepared to list every single contact...every single business deal...every single piece of property you hold outside of the US....and in his case....it would have taken tens of pages....

AND if you fail to disclose and they find during the investigation such contacts...one normally does not get a TS/SCI....

He failed to fully and complete disclose....ask the simple question...WHY?

[Azor]

They are real..exist deeper than many think at the Spetsnaz/PMU level and have been actually confirmed but Trump and strangely DoD is holding back the info...

Confirmed also by European intel sources who are watching it as they are part of the NATO effort...

Sources? More info? Congressional testimony doesn't give much other than to say there's classified intel...

[OUTLAW 09]

Russian black money....Cyprus and corruption all go in one sentence....

Congressman Investigating Trump Goes to Russia’s Money Laundromat, Cyprus
http://thebea.st/2pfsGtG

Cyprus has been the master in flowing Russian black money into EU and onwards as a number of Russian laundering banks are in Cyprus and have been black listed as such....

Manafort who is being investigated by FBI for his Russian connections had 12 shell companies in Cyprus and flowed his Ukrainian earnings through Cyprus....

[OUTLAW 09]

Some light humor this Easter weekend....

Trump conspiracy-bots may have uncovered the ancient document that gives secret power to the "Deep State." It's called "The Constitution."

[OUTLAW 09]

Shadow Brokers previously advertised these Windows exploits, with codenames, in January. NSA knew what was coming
https://www.emptywheel.net/2017/04/14/the-shadow-brokers-vulnerability-equities-process-nsa-has-had-at-least-96-days-to-warn-microsoft-about-these-files/#

[OUTLAW 09]

Twitter has a serious problem—and it’s actually a bigger deal than people realize
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2017/04/what-twitter-going-do-about-disinformation-campaigns#

THIs is an extremely serious issue just not on US election meddling but from a criminal activity perspective especially Russian cyber crime gangs...

Twitter does not want to accept the simple fact that there are 45M uncontrolled and registered accounts in play...they state that the research is wrong....

IMHO the research is highly accurate and worse of all if tied to the Internet of Things (IoT) it creates one heck of an massive attack machine can be computer linked and controlled....

[OUTLAW 09]

Facebook closed 30,000 fake accounts in France ahead of elections
http://bit.ly/2oINbyf

[OUTLAW 09]

How many computers are affected on the Internet? @Balgan has identified 1,951,075 Windows 2008 hosts online impacted by ETERNALBLUE...

If you are just tuning in, TLDR; Windows NT, 2000, 2003, XP, Vista, 7, 2008, 8 and 2012 are vulnerable to RCE 0day public exploits/malware.

Microsoft response that ShadowBrokers exploits were patched in the last month updates - MS17-010 ETERNALBLUE -

[OUTLAW 09]

Sources? More info? Congressional testimony doesn't give much other than to say there's classified intel...

Will hunt up the German and French links and post them....

[OUTLAW 09]

Churchill said: "A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on."

Luckily, the truth is catching up

[OUTLAW 09]

James Comey: 'People need to be aware of the possibility that what they're reading has been shaped by troll farms.'
http://apne.ws/2orZtZw

[OUTLAW 09]

EU Mythbusters
✔
@EUvsDisinfo
UK's media watchdog warns Russia Today (RT): Content is "materially misleading”, lacks "due impartiality":
http://euvsdisinfo.eu/inside-rts-world-of-alternative-news#

[OUTLAW 09]

Estonia has a very simple counterintelligence policy: it names and shames agents of the Kremlin annually:
http://thebea.st/2pgQblY

[OUTLAW 09]

Interesting article where Parscale is asked if he's behind Macedonia bots related to an online NBA vote
http://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/18679858/zaza-pachulia-justin-bieber-macedonian-twitter-bots-insanity-nba-all-star-voting#…

Pretty amazing that in just a few months, Brad Parscale goes from making a few websites for Trump for $1200 a pop, to suddenly making 20mil

NOTE: the Macedonia botnet was driven by a Russian owned company paying 1200 USD per month for young English speaking Russians to push proTrump social messaging.....at one time they accounted for 37% of all proTrump social media tweets....

[OUTLAW 09]

The Cyber and Information Space: a new formation in the Bundeswehr
https://www.osw.waw.pl/en/publikacje/analyses/2017-04-12/cyber-and-information-space-a-new-formation-bundeswehr#

[OUTLAW 09]

Here though is my concern and you see it in my postings here that while suppose to be for Russian activities...we are now seeing a converging and or collusion between Russian disinformation/propaganda and fake news and the US ultra right (white nationalist/white supremacists) and also not least the US left feeding and using each others disinformation/propaganda and fake news...

BOTH using effectively social media and botnets to carry their narratives into MSM...

Example:

If you look intently at a lot of Trump's statements he is actually dog whistling to white supremacists and white nationalists...

Trump supporters, opponents clash in California park
http://reut.rs/2oiSSPC

The demo was organized and led by....
Damigo, who founded Identity Europa, is a convicted felon who served time for drunkenly pulling a gun on a cab driver he thought was Iraqi.

Identity Europa appeals to whites not people of color or ethnic backgrounds does it not?

Nathan Damigo, a California white supremacist, apparently punched a woman in Berkeley. Profile:
https://www.google.com/amp/www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-nathan-damigo-alt-right-20161115-story,amp.html#

REMEMBER the Trump tweet after a major demo clash in Berkeley where a well know white nationalist/supremacist attempted to speak on campus and was forces off campus and he could not speak.....

"The federal funding for Berkeley should cut because they are not allowing free speech"....

THEN that same individual a big gun on Brietbart.com comes out during a TV interview supporting pedophilia with young boys and get immediately canned by CPAC as their main speaker....

That was the individual Trump was tweet supporting.....

NOW another clash on Berkeley's campus....

AND Twitters response to white supremacists/nationalists spreading as much hate as IS...is what? Deletes IS/AQ and allows white supremacist/nationalist comments...

Complicit in spreading Russian propaganda & now in terrorizing #Berkeley. Now would be a good time for @twitter to ban Nazis planning riots.

Berkeley was not a clash between anti/pro Trump groups. This was a pre-planned assault by a group of violent alt-right Trump supporters.

A "call to arms" was issued to Trump supporters a month ahead of events @ Berkeley today. Don't let this get pinned on anti-Trump protesters

[OUTLAW 09]

If one wants to understand the Russian use of Provocation here is a great article on it from 2014....

https://20committee.com/2014/03/29/understanding-provocation/

Understanding Provocation

March 29, 2014


One of the most powerful tools the Kremlin has in its secret arsenal of Special War is provocation, what they call provokatsiya. While Moscow cannot claim to have invented this technique, which has existed as long as there have been secret services, there’s no doubt that Russians have perfected the art and taken it to a whole new level of sophistication and deviousness. At times, it can become a strategy all on its own (not always, mind you, with edifying results).
Provokatsiya simply means taking control of your enemies in secret and encouraging them to do things that discredit them and help you. You plant your own agents provocateurs and flip legitimate activists, turning them to your side. When you’re dealing with extremists to start with, getting them to do crazy, self-defeating things isn’t often difficult. In some cases, you simply create extremists and terrorists where they don’t exist. This is causing problems in order to solve them, and since the Tsarist period, Russian intelligence has been known to do just that.
While this isn’t a particularly nice technique, it works surprisingly well, particularly if you don’t care about bloody and messy consequences. Credulous Westerners are a big help. Perhaps the most infamous Kremlin case of provokatsiya was the TRUST operation of the 1920s. In the aftermath of the Russian Civil War, Bolshevik control was incomplete and Moscow faced the problem that a large number of Whites, their recent enemies, had gotten sanctuary in Europe, where they plotted the reconquest of Holy Russia.
Soon the White emigration klatched in the cafes of Paris and Berlin was invigorated by tantalizing rumors that there existed a secret anti-Bolshevik movement underground in the USSR, calling itself the Monarchist Union of Central Russia. Before long, prominent Whites gave this shadowy group their political and financial support, as did several Western intelligence services who desired the end – or at least the harassment – of Bolshevism. Intelligence from inside the Soviet Union was a scarce commodity at the time. Some emigres were even prompted to clandestinely return to Russia in the hope of aiding the resistance. Among them was the famous revolutionary Boris Savinkov, who had broken with the Bolsheviks and was one of Moscow’s top public enemies.
But word of Savinkov dried up once he reached Russia, as it did for all the emigres and spies who tried to enter the Soviet Union to establish contact with the underground resistance. They were dead. The TRUST operation was all a mirage; there in fact was no Monarchist Union of Central Russia, it was a front for Soviet intelligence. By 1926, Western intelligence began to suspect the truth, but by that point the Soviet secret police had been running their false-flag operation for five years, during which time it had eliminated or neutralized several of its top enemies while causing them, and several Western spy services, to waste time, money, and energy on a mirage that was actually Soviet-run.
Russians have employed this crafty model countless times since, as have the many intelligence services that have received training in the dark arts from Moscow. Cuban intelligence is notorious for this – it can be reliably assumed that many of the most hard-line anti-Castro exiles are actually on their payroll – while in the 1990s the Algerian military intelligence service, the feared DRS, executed an enormous version of the TRUST operation against its Islamist foes, defeating them in detail, but at the cost of thousands of innocent lives.
This model must be kept in mind during current discussions of Ukraine, where the Kremlin assures us that the government in Kyiv are “fascists” planning a “Nazi” takeover. While there are right-wingers in Ukraine who have troubling views, their numbers are inflated for effect by Moscow, something which too many Westerners accept uncritically. Moreover, some of the most hardline Ukrainian nationalists are secretly under Moscow’s control, and there’s nothing new about this.
The Soviet secret police infiltrated far-right Ukrainian emigre groups in the 1920s and 1930s, provoking them into self-defeating acts and killing off their leaders. Similar provocation was employed after the Second World War by Stalin’s secret police to crush resistance in Western Ukraine, which lasted into the early 1950s, while throughout the Cold War, Ukrainian rightists abroad were targets for surveillance, harassment, and sometimes assassination by the KGB.
Since the Soviet collapse, similar Russian provocations in Ukraine are broadly understood by security circles in Kyiv, which is part of why the SBU, Ukraine’s Security Service, is now attempting to reign in far-right groups like the Right Sector (Pravyy Sektor): not only are they potentially dangerous to democracy, they may be on Moscow’s payroll too. This has come to a head due to the death this week of the notorious far-right activist Oleksandr Muzychko, AKA Sashko Billy, a vocal hater of Russians and Jews, who fell in a murky shootout with police in the Western Ukrainian city of Rivne. Muzychko was so extreme that he actually fought in Chechnya in the 1990s with the local resistance – Moscow accused him of war crimes there – and his funeral turned into a far-right rally against the government in Kyiv. Predictably, all this got huge coverage in Russian media, which is eager to demonstrate the “fascist” nature of all Ukrainians who do not wish to be ruled by the Kremlin.
Unfortunately, we can expect more provocations as this crisis continues. A directly relevant example of what may happen is a series of events in Croatia in 1991, another country where the position of Jews is politically sensitive due to the Second World War and the Holocaust. As Yugoslavia was collapsing, Slobodan Milosevic and his Serbian allies constantly parroted the line that the government in newly independent Croatia was really “fascist” and they planned to resurrect Nazi-era war crimes against minorities, including Jews, and intervention was required from outside the country to prevent “genocide” (if this all sounds to you remarkably like Kremlin propaganda now against Ukraine, it should). As in Ukraine today, there were neo-fascists in Croatia in 1991, but they were politically marginal and considered a threat by the government.
Just like the Soviet Union, Communist Yugoslavia had manipulated, harassed, and killed off Croatian nationalists for decades. In a Balkan version of the TRUST, in the late 1940s, Tito’s secret police lured would-be guerrilla fighters into the country – you knew this was coming – to support a shadowy resistance army: of course it didn’t exist, and it served to get the infiltrators killed. For decades, Yugoslav secret police kept close tabs on Croatian emigres involved in anti-regime activities, employing provocation to discredit them very effectively. Several dozen Croatian exiles in the West were also murdered by Yugoslav assassins. Croatians understood that many of their most radical nationalists were actually under Yugoslav control.
Fears that newly independent Croatia was under threat by “fascists” – just as Belgrade was telling everyone loudly – reached a fever pitch in the summer of 1991 with a series of attacks on Jewish targets in Zagreb. That August, bombs went off at a Jewish community center and the main Jewish cemetery; although there were no casualties, the explosions caused a panic in Croatia’s tiny Jewish community, particularly because there were other bombings at the same time on rail lines in several locations, leading to a sense of anarchy. Soon unverified reports emerged placing blame for the attacks on the government, explicitly fingering President Franjo Tudjman as the figure behind the bombings.
This was all strenuously denied by Tudjman and his government, which moved quickly to reassure Jews they were in no danger. This was all a significant distraction while Croatia was fighting for its life as Yugoslav troops and Serbian irregulars took over one-third of the country that summer and fall. The bombings and accompanying propaganda earned Croatia a black eye internationally when it least needed it, and before long Jewish groups were pondering a mass evacuation from the country, just in case.
It turned out it was all one big provocation engineered by the Yugoslav military’s Counterintelligence Service (KOS), which boasted a substantial agent network in Croatia, including several prominent right-wingers. The Zagreb bombings and accompanying anti-Croatia propaganda were termed Operation LABRADOR by KOS, which considered it to be highly successful. On the heels of the attacks, Zagreb security services worked hard to roll up the KOS networks in the country, but by that point the damage had been done. The false-flag bombings were a reminder to the world that Zagreb was “really” under the control of “fascists,” a lie that the Tudjman government never fully overcame in certain quarters.
Provocation combined with propaganda can be powerfully effective in transmitting Big Lies about people, places, and even whole countries, especially in times of crisis. The Kremlin has been honing this unpleasant skill for more than a century. The next time you hear about violence in Ukraine – and, sadly, you certainly will – it’s good to remember that provokatsiya is real.

[OUTLAW 09]

Here though is my concern and you see it in my postings here that while suppose to be for Russian activities...we are now seeing a converging and or collusion between Russian disinformation/propaganda and fake news and the US ultra right (white nationalist/white supremacists) and also not least the US left feeding and using each others disinformation/propaganda and fake news...

BOTH using effectively social media and botnets to carry their narratives into MSM...

Example:

If you look intently at a lot of Trump's statements he is actually dog whistling to white supremacists and white nationalists...

Trump supporters, opponents clash in California park
http://reut.rs/2oiSSPC

The demo was organized and led by....
Damigo, who founded Identity Europa, is a convicted felon who served time for drunkenly pulling a gun on a cab driver he thought was Iraqi.

Identity Europa appeals to whites not people of color or ethnic backgrounds does it not?

Nathan Damigo, a California white supremacist, apparently punched a woman in Berkeley. Profile:
https://www.google.com/amp/www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-nathan-damigo-alt-right-20161115-story,amp.html#

REMEMBER the Trump tweet after a major demo clash in Berkeley where a well know white nationalist/supremacist attempted to speak on campus and was forces off campus and he could not speak.....

"The federal funding for Berkeley should cut because they are not allowing free speech"....

THEN that same individual a big gun on Brietbart.com comes out during a TV interview supporting pedophilia with young boys and get immediately canned by CPAC as their main speaker....

That was the individual Trump was tweet supporting.....

NOW another clash on Berkeley's campus....

AND Twitters response to white supremacists/nationalists spreading as much hate as IS...is what? Deletes IS/AQ and allows white supremacist/nationalist comments...

Complicit in spreading Russian propaganda & now in terrorizing #Berkeley. Now would be a good time for @twitter to ban Nazis planning riots.

Berkeley was not a clash between anti/pro Trump groups. This was a pre-planned assault by a group of violent alt-right Trump supporters.

A "call to arms" was issued to Trump supporters a month ahead of events @ Berkeley today. Don't let this get pinned on anti-Trump protesters

This event really does need to be intensively looked at....

From an interesting white nationalist blogsite that was previously in the shadows until this clash...

Wearechange.org
https://wearechange.org/based-stick-man-becomes-cult-hero-nearly-70k-raised-defense-24-hours/


A “based” cult hero has emerged from the violent showdown between antifa and supporters of President Donald Trump in Berkeley over the weekend — and after learning of his arrest, the right banded together to raise $70,000 in just 24 hours to support his legal defense.

As the violence continued, Chapman emerged — wearing a helmet and respirator mask and holding a shield adorned with an American flag in one hand and a big stick in the other. The “alt-knight,” better known as “Based Stickman” was born.

NOW you see the tie in to this twitter account
Mike Cernovich us
✔
@Cernovich

This US twitter account was used to massively push the Russian infowar narrative on twitter @Syrianhoax in order to disprove Assad used chemical wepaons....which started out over Damascus into Russian and then to this account and from there to Infowars and Breitbart.com

AND there is no connections between Russian info warfare and the US white nationalist/supremacist blogsites and social media?????

Right now they are basically feeding off of each other....

More interesting is the evidently planned for violence aspect .....
So.. it definitely looks like the tweet on the R is providing instructions for making a weapon to get past security at Berkeley.

[OUTLAW 09]

From 30 MAR 2017

NEW: According to Paul Wood of the BBC, here's what Russia did w/ state voter registration databases they breached:
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-39435786#…

While initially not fully confirmed some of it is now being confirmed.......

One sentence stands out though..."US intelligence confirmed that voter rolls had indeed been scanned by server in Russia in October 2016"....


If one goes back to the initial reporting about the voter roll breaches...no one could actually state anything had actually been changed on them by the hackers....which puzzled some in the IT security business....

Apparently what was not considered was the downloading of key individual information for key districts into a server based in Russia...because when people hear hacking...they assume automatically something was changed and or damaged...

Coupled with the ability of using that dataset against similar datasets being analyzed by a "big data company"....Cambridge Analytics

[OUTLAW 09]

This event really does need to be intensively looked at....

From an interesting white nationalist blogsite that was previously in the shadows until this clash...

Wearechange.org
https://wearechange.org/based-stick-man-becomes-cult-hero-nearly-70k-raised-defense-24-hours/



As the violence continued, Chapman emerged — wearing a helmet and respirator mask and holding a shield adorned with an American flag in one hand and a big stick in the other. The “alt-knight,” better known as “Based Stickman” was born.

NOW you see the tie in to this twitter account
Mike Cernovich us
✔
@Cernovich

This US twitter account was used to massively push the Russian infowar narrative on twitter @Syrianhoax in order to disprove Assad used chemical wepaons....which started out over Damascus into Russian and then to this account and from there to Infowars and Breitbart.com

AND there is no connections between Russian info warfare and the US white nationalist/supremacist blogsites and social media?????

Right now they are basically feeding off of each other....

More interesting is the evidently planned for violence aspect .....
So.. it definitely looks like the tweet on the R is providing instructions for making a weapon to get past security at Berkeley.

The same alt-right account (Baked Alaska) involved in orchestrating chaos in Berkeley today did the same to BLM in Dec 2016.

Same account, on Mar 19, called for other Trump supporters to "fight the fascists" on April 15. Events at Berkeley were planned a month ago.
@BasedStickMan

NOTICE a pattern?

[OUTLAW 09]

Kremlin Trolls CI @KremlinTrolls
Olga Kostina is a former aide to the FSB director, & she's had close ties to the FSB for years, just fyi:

Kremlin Trolls CI @KremlinTrolls
When @Snowden arrived in #Russia, the FSB's Olga Kostina got the 'invite' to facilitate the well executed defection

[OUTLAW 09]

Intertwining of Russian propaganda and US ultra right actions.....

My family just witnessed alt-right Nazis descend on Berkeley to flex their hate muscle. And like clockwork, Russia Today is ready.

[OUTLAW 09]

Intertwining of Russian propaganda and US ultra right actions.....

My family just witnessed alt-right Nazis descend on Berkeley to flex their hate muscle. And like clockwork, Russia Today is ready.

Straight up nazis in Berkeley. Guy on left said he was a "national socialist.

[OUTLAW 09]

EU Mythbusters
✔
@EUvsDisinfo
After every terror attack in Europe, disinformation outlets relay conspiracy theories and manipulated images:
http://euvsdisinfo.eu/how-pro-kremlin-outlets-abuse-the-tragedy-of-terror/#

[OUTLAW 09]

Identified US Russian trolls......

John Cardillo
@johncardillo

Stonewall
@wvkiller64

Thomas Doherty
@dohertytjp

[OUTLAW 09]

There have been two US Congressmen who have been extremely vocal in their support for Putin..approved the Crimea annexation and who are adamantly anti Ukrainian...

Both have travelled a number of times to Moscow since 2013....King got recently into deep trouble for quoting a Dutch white supremacist Wilders..WHICH he claimed he did not believe was rascist.

Here is a 2013 article about the Moscow trip and how King/Rohrabacher carried water for Putin by praising his crackdown of free speech.

During their trip to Moscow Rohrabacher and King also heaped praise on Putin for ARRESTING the band Pussy Riot, for protesting in church.

Here is the article from 2013 wherein 2 US members of congress praise an autocrat for clamping down on free speech:
http://thehill.com/policy/international/303029-rep-steve-king-raises-conservative-ire-with-pro-putin-comments-during-moscow-trip#…

[OUTLAW 09]

HAS the US just completed it's second recorded actual cyber attack??????

Multiple intelligence sources: US govt "digital interference" (hacking) disrupted North Korea missile launch attempt.
@i24NEWS_EN

[OUTLAW 09]

It is just not the Us alt right using fake news in the US.....

BBC News - The rise of left-wing, anti-Trump fake news
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-trending-39592010#

[OUTLAW 09]

Complete ideological flexibility, ie omnidirectional deza, is a big advantage Putin's spies have over Cold War KGB.

Omnidirectional disinformation campaigns aren't something ultra partisan Americans are naturally equipped to handle.

Our current dysfunctional political culture makes it easy for Moscow to fool us -- easier than it should be.

[OUTLAW 09]

Identified US Russian trolls......

John Cardillo
@johncardillo

Stonewall
@wvkiller64

Thomas Doherty
@dohertytjp

Kevin Gosztola
Verified account
@kgosztola
Managing editor of @Shadowproofcom

[OUTLAW 09]

I would argue that while we still have TLAMs flying around the countryside to impress Iran...Russia and Assad which it did not..and we are dropping MOABs to impress IS/NK and that is about it...

Before we really look at the traditional side of "war".....we seriously need to understand cyber warfare and information warfare in true support to political warfare.....

In some aspects while the Trump WH and their former and active duty Generals are reacting to political warfare using tactical level actions but with not a single well defined "end state" they are trying to achieve.....and seemingly are not paying attention to the "second....third and even fifth order of effects"....

While I disagree with mentioning Clausewitz on this quote....this definition of "political warfare" is critical...and if one has taken the time to thoroughly research the Russian military doctrine of "Non linear warfare" this is exactly what the Russians...Iranians...Chinese and yes even NK is currently doing...

AND our answers are always "tactical in nature"....does that make sense to anyone?

QUOTE
Political warfare is the logical application of Clausewitz's doctrine in time of peace. In broadest definition, political warfare is the employment of all the means at a nation's command, short of war, to achieve its national objectives. Such operations are both overt and covert. They range from such overt actions as political alliances, economic measures (as ERP—the Marshall Plan), and "white" propaganda to such covert operations as clandestine support of "friendly" foreign elements, "black" psychological warfare and even encouragement of underground resistance in hostile states.

IMHO I would not argue that the 21st century political warfare has anything to do with Clausewitz...it is just the basic approach to political problems in the 21st century where outright open war between superpowers and or power arguing they are superpower are competing with each other...will not happen as all parties understand the outcome of open war.......

Heck we cannot even define what is a cyber war and or an information/influence war and when is the red line crossed and a response is needed?

Until that set of definitions are achieved all we have left or TLAMs and MOABs at the tactical level..

Really a sad state if one thinks about it long enough...

PERFECT example:
QUOTE
"Kelly says 'confusion' spurred by Trump administration is stemming illegal immigration".

SO confusion is now a practical tactical level weapon to answer "immigration and economic issues"?

AND the net effect of this "confusion being created by Trump" is a massive decline in US tourism down 18% and climbing with a projected loss of 8-9B USD in revenue......as it appears the entire "travelling world" is just as "confused about US intentions".......

[OUTLAW 09]

I assume that you mean the GRU/KGB and the GRU/SVR, respectively. FSB now handles counter-intelligence and domestic intelligence, albeit it has been involved in Ukraine. Having said that, Moscow considers various parts of Ukraine to be part of Russia, so the FSB would be involved there as opposed to say developing and managing assets in the United States.

The HVA was certainly not above direct assassination or the use of terrorist proxies. Yet in the end, the MfS failed in its primary mission to protect the SED and the DDR. The reunification process was rather lenient on a service whose activities went well beyond espionage, and which deliberately committed murders and terrorist atrocities.

I have heard it argued that the greatest success of the Warsaw Pact intelligence services was to promote anti-nationalism, anti-Christianity, political correctness and multiculturalism in Western Europe, in a bid to sap patriotic sentiment, demoralize the population and thereby undermine the ideologies most resistant to Communist rule. As an example, it was said that Olaf Palme was under such influence. I have not investigated this line of thought, so it may well be wrong.

Given the relatively recent discoveries of Herman Simm, Aleksei Dressen, Shigehiro Hagisaki and Jeffrey DeLisle, I would say that the Russians are still quite capable of turning key NATO insiders. The fact that two of these names are Estonian should put to bed your praise for Estonian intelligence, as it takes more than a few years to recover from such blows; moreover, they are indicative of deeper rot. Incidentally, the former President of Estonia under whose watch these traitors were operating became quite agitated when reminded of them by yours truly.



I have no doubt that the CIA created a dragnet across East-Central Europe in the early 1990s. I would imagine that the CIA and other Western intelligence services have replaced the FSB/GRU/SVR in Ukraine: those parts under Kiev’s control.



Interesting. I think the same checks should be applied to spouses. After fifteen years they can be very different from when they were on honeymoon. ;) Of course, with no-fault divorces and little recognition of prenuptial agreements, CI is difficult…



Germany is by comparison a police state. The fact that the police happen to wear green and are generally friendly is irrelevant. I worry about German liberal democracy, as it is largely an Anglo-American imposition from 1945 to present, irrespective of the failed Liberal Revolutions and the brief interwar experiment.

I am highly suspicious of a society that can turn on a dime in lockstep, as Germany has been wont to do.

You really do have to spend some time here in Germany...you might be surprised how many US expats are here and they are not the older types....

1. Germany strangely is now the defender of liberal democracy as the US has claimed it is has been since 1776.....

2. Germany is lowering the voting age to 16..why because they say the younger generation needs a voice in what their futures will look like...AND the US over 50% do not even vote in a presidential election....

3. That country that can turn on a dime when a three set IED exploded on a soccer team bus immediately started a thorough investigation taking it wherever it would go and thoroughly named it the responsibility of the extreme right wanting to blame refugees ie jihadists.....

BUT WAIT. there is a proTrump organized by US Nazi rally held in Berkeley that goes out of control surprise surprise that makes the UK MSM as a proTrump demonstration that was attacked by non Trump supporters...NOT a single word of it being Nazi organized...either in US or UK MSM.....

It is the only EU country that can organize and pull off a Salafist series of raids in 45 locations all over Germany with 500 police behind those raids and no one knew it was coming.....

We telegraph coming TLAM strikes TWO days in advance....and tweet it one hour before the actual strike....

I had two attempted break-ins in my company which were triggered by silent alarms...police were there within minutes and a total of four people were arrested....

NOW try to call any US police force and state there is an impending break-in and see how long it takes for them to respond if they respond at all...

And IT privacy and privacy in general....extremely defended in Germany and many think it is to well defended and hurts the policing...all based on good ole Hitler and the Gestapo.....CCTV....only in critical locations but totally against it due to the same privacy issues.....right to control photos taken of you...a non right in the US...a total right in Germany...do I need to go on.....??

So do not tell me that Germany is somehow a goose stepping non democratic country when what US limited internet privacy rights were signed away recently under Trump and since 9/11 virtually all US private rights no longer really exist...

Remember it was Germany leading the EU that forced the US to "safe harbor personal internet data" when the US wanted access to all European personal internet data under GWOT.....

AND it was Merkel to mentioned it again to Trump when the US wanted to cancel "safe harbor"...she told him...then US internet/IT companies could no longer do business in EU areas....as simple as that...he caved BTW...

[OUTLAW 09]

Now back to the thread at hand......

Make sure to follow @partisangirl for the worst and also the most hilarious Syria propaganda.

Identified proRussian troll...Europe based....BTW...she writes often for the US white nationalist blogsite from Alex Jones..Infowars

AND who reads often Infowars....and quotes from them in some of his recent tweets.....Trump ......

Lying blatantly, writing for @infowars and being totally crazy: the Assadist/"Resistance" poster girl Maram Susli.

@Partisangirl Pro-Assadist uses video from Dec 2016 and pretends it's from the recent Fuah Kafraya attack

[davidbfpo]

I endeavour to keep threads on subject / theme regularly, as some may have noticed.

I have just moved seven fascinating posts in an Azor & Outlaow09 exchange on Russian intelligence & German counter-intelligence to the thread on Recent Russian Intelligence Operations.:)

[OUTLAW 09]

MOSCOW WILL HELP LE PEN TO WIN THE ELECTION

Tweeted by #Kremlin-loyal TV and deleted 5 minutes later.

Let it sink in.

[OUTLAW 09]

Here though is my concern and you see it in my postings here that while suppose to be for Russian activities...we are now seeing a converging and or collusion between Russian disinformation/propaganda and fake news and the US ultra right (white nationalist/white supremacists) and also not least the US left feeding and using each others disinformation/propaganda and fake news...

BOTH using effectively social media and botnets to carry their narratives into MSM...

Example:

If you look intently at a lot of Trump's statements he is actually dog whistling to white supremacists and white nationalists...

Trump supporters, opponents clash in California park
http://reut.rs/2oiSSPC

The demo was organized and led by....
Damigo, who founded Identity Europa, is a convicted felon who served time for drunkenly pulling a gun on a cab driver he thought was Iraqi.

Identity Europa appeals to whites not people of color or ethnic backgrounds does it not?

Nathan Damigo, a California white supremacist, apparently punched a woman in Berkeley. Profile:
https://www.google.com/amp/www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-nathan-damigo-alt-right-20161115-story,amp.html#

REMEMBER the Trump tweet after a major demo clash in Berkeley where a well know white nationalist/supremacist attempted to speak on campus and was forces off campus and he could not speak.....

"The federal funding for Berkeley should cut because they are not allowing free speech"....

THEN that same individual a big gun on Brietbart.com comes out during a TV interview supporting pedophilia with young boys and get immediately canned by CPAC as their main speaker....

That was the individual Trump was tweet supporting.....

NOW another clash on Berkeley's campus....

AND Twitters response to white supremacists/nationalists spreading as much hate as IS...is what? Deletes IS/AQ and allows white supremacist/nationalist comments...

Complicit in spreading Russian propaganda & now in terrorizing #Berkeley. Now would be a good time for @twitter to ban Nazis planning riots.

Berkeley was not a clash between anti/pro Trump groups. This was a pre-planned assault by a group of violent alt-right Trump supporters.

A "call to arms" was issued to Trump supporters a month ahead of events @ Berkeley today. Don't let this get pinned on anti-Trump protesters

Chapman (an already-convicted felon) is trying to raise $ for his bail through @PayPal.
(Pinned tweet:
https://twitter.com/BasedStickMan_/status/838617358918799361#
…)

[OUTLAW 09]

EU investigates how its cash is being used by anti-EU proRussian parties
http://on.wsj.com/2pHIfH0

[OUTLAW 09]

The Russian "Firehose Method of Propaganda"....

http://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/perspectives/PE100/PE198/RAND_PE198.pdf

A good article by RAND...not their usual expertise area...

[OUTLAW 09]

Trump's use of "Wag the Dog" with TLAMs and MOAB did not get him anyhwere in trying to deflect from his Russian connections investigation at all..it just has actually gotten worse.........

Donald J. Trump‏Verifizierter Account
@realDonaldTrump

The Fake Media (not Real Media) has gotten even worse since the election. Every story is badly slanted. We have to hold them to the truth!

If KremlinGate is FakeNews, Trump is now tweeting that a dozen Western Intel agencies & hundreds of journalists are complicit in creating a global hoax THAT even the Russians could not pull off.....

Trumps...Real Media which he has admitted to use is.....Fox, RT, ZeroHedge, Thermovich, Sputnik, InfoWars, plus various Lizard People outlets..80% being used to pass Russian propaganda and fake news every day....

[Azor]

I endeavour to keep threads on subject / theme regularly, as some may have noticed.

I have just moved seven fascinating posts in an Azor & Outlaow09 exchange on Russian intelligence & German counter-intelligence to the thread on Recent Russian Intelligence Operations.:)

Truly "fascinating" or merely off-topic? ;)

It must be be positively tranquil to have May as leader, as opposed to Hollande, Merkel or Trump. She is far less controversial, seems competent enough, and is quite simply an improvement on that pudgy-faced bloviator who occupied No. 10 before her.

[OUTLAW 09]

Alex Jones creator of Infowars in U.S plays same role as Dmitry Kisilyov or Vladimir Solovyov of Russian TV

Right now he is in the middle of a major divorce trial in TX and trying to distance himself from Infowars based on the large amount of money he has made with it and does not want to share with his wife....

Interesting trial in U.S: "alternative truth" by Alex Jones of Infowars hits him back, and he is retreating

So Alex Jones of @infowars is "just a performance artist"? This could well be the "I was just following orders" defense of the Fake News Age

This trial could be the first step to debunk all the lies that are spreading via Jones resource & their stuff.

[OUTLAW 09]

Very interesting that this popped up in my Google search when I searched for Khan Sheykhoun.
Fake news is a booming industry.

[OUTLAW 09]

US Deploys Two More Aircraft Carriers Toward Korean Peninsula: Yonhap | Zero Hedge
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-04-17/us-deploys-two-more-aircraft-carriers-toward-korean-peninsula-yonhap …

Zerohedge is a known fake news site.....

[Azor]

You really do have to spend some time here in Germany...you might be surprised how many US expats are here and they are not the older types...

I have spent enough time in Germany. I do enjoy the lovely chaos of Berlin and the eastern cities, as well as the calmness of Magdeburg’s promenade along the Elbe.

Yet a country is more than its objects and nature, and I found the people rather curious and emotionally repressed.


1. Germany strangely is now the defender of liberal democracy as the US has claimed it is has been since 1776...

2. Germany is lowering the voting age to 16..why because they say the younger generation needs a voice in what their futures will look like...AND the US over 50% do not even vote in a presidential election....

3. That country that can turn on a dime when a three set IED exploded on a soccer team bus immediately started a thorough investigation taking it wherever it would go and thoroughly named it the responsibility of the extreme right wanting to blame refugees ie jihadists…

Who appointed Germany “defender of liberal democracy”? Liberalism refers to individual freedom and the responsibility of the state to protect and maximize individual freedom. Democracy refers to sovereignty residing equally among the individuals of a nation.

Yet Germany has restrictions on freedom of expression, which have increased notably under Merkel’s rule, as “hate speech” has been steadily broadened to conveniently silence reporting on and criticism of government policies. Merkel’s decision to open Germany’s borders was undemocratic, and taken without the consent of the German people. They only acquiesced out of fear of being branded xenophobic and racist, and because Merkel framed her decision in the context of atonement for World War II and the Holocaust.

U.S. federal election turnout has always varied, but has been trending upward since 1996. By comparison, German federal election turnout has been declining consistently since 1998.

A country that had liberalism and democracy imposed on it by forces of occupation cannot be considered a “defender of liberal democracy”. The United States and Great Britain were and remain its defenders, whatever their flaws and internal struggles.

German popular support for NATO is in decline and may well fall below 50% before 2020, and a majority of Germans opposing using force to defend its NATO allies.

By the way, the U.S. never began assuming the mantle of "defender of democracy" until World War II, when U.S. power was crucial to defeat Fascism and contain Communism.

RE: Russia Thread

Again, I will remain on-topic and not bite on your lure about Trump. The Berkeley riot included genuine peaceful protesters and violent rioters on both sides. The airstrike on Shayrat AB has been comprehensively discussed elsewhere.

[OUTLAW 09]

I have spent enough time in Germany. I do enjoy the lovely chaos of Berlin and the eastern cities, as well as the calmness of Magdeburg’s promenade along the Elbe.

Yet a country is more than its objects and nature, and I found the people rather curious and emotionally repressed.



Who appointed Germany “defender of liberal democracy”? Liberalism refers to individual freedom and the responsibility of the state to protect and maximize individual freedom. Democracy refers to sovereignty residing equally among the individuals of a nation.

Yet Germany has restrictions on freedom of expression, which have increased notably under Merkel’s rule, as “hate speech” has been steadily broadened to conveniently silence reporting on and criticism of government policies. Merkel’s decision to open Germany’s borders was undemocratic, and taken without the consent of the German people. They only acquiesced out of fear of being branded xenophobic and racist, and because Merkel framed her decision in the context of atonement for World War II and the Holocaust.

U.S. federal election turnout has always varied, but has been trending upward since 1996. By comparison, German federal election turnout has been declining consistently since 1998.

A country that had liberalism and democracy imposed on it by forces of occupation cannot be considered a “defender of liberal democracy”. The United States and Great Britain were and remain its defenders, whatever their flaws and internal struggles.

German popular support for NATO is in decline and may well fall below 50% before 2020, and a majority of Germans opposing using force to defend its NATO allies.

By the way, the U.S. never began assuming the mantle of "defender of democracy" until World War II, when U.S. power was crucial to defeat Fascism and contain Communism.

RE: Russia Thread

Again, I will remain on-topic and not bite on your lure about Trump. The Berkeley riot included genuine peaceful protesters and violent rioters on both sides. The airstrike on Shayrat AB has been comprehensively discussed elsewhere.

So a organizational social media campaign started by the white nationalist IE neo Nazi side months before this specific demo pushed by several well known twitter accounts pushing for a violet clash does not qualify somehow .....arguing that "the other side was violent too"...does not cover up the simple fact it was neo Nazi organized and led......

Also the same exact players were involved in the DEC BLM demo that turned to violence.....

Notice the trend...

BUT you ignored the way it then was played in European/US MSM...."a proTrump demonstration attacked by anti Trump protesters"....not a single mention anywhere of the neo Nazi element was there?

I find it interesting that right now on any given day virtually any of the well known white nationalist or white supremacist social media or blogsites carry at least one conspiracy myth started out of the Russian bot net and further pushed via RT or Sputnik.....then ending up in either Infowars and or Breitbart.com

And you do not find that "interesting"??

[OUTLAW 09]

Students Say There’s No Such Thing as Truth, 'Truth' Is a Tool of White Supremacy
http://reason.com/blog/2017/04/17/pomona-college-students-say-theres-no-su#

[OUTLAW 09]

SWIFT warns on vendor security after documents leaked by hackers
http://reut.rs/2pc33dl

ProRussian/Assad trolls favorite weapon lately used to stymie critique by social media sites of Assad and Putin actions in Syria.....

Hey hey!
My #AssadPutin fan club registered me at another 10 gay porn sites this afternoon.
Well ... If that's all you have to offer ...

[OUTLAW 09]

Six days before #France election, #Russia meddling mostly targeted centrist pro-EU Macron

https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/04/17/world/europe/french-election-russia.html?_r=0&referer=https://t.co/q2XFfedKIR#…

This is now Russian SOP: coordinated cyber attacks on specific candidates in western elections, often with success. No hoax here.


REMEMBER Russian TV right after the Le Pen recent Putin visit stated...Russia would help Le Penn win...then suddenly tweet was deleted..WAS posted here.

[OUTLAW 09]

FSB says it quashed plot to smuggle vast amount of weapons from Europe/Ukraine into Russia
http://www.fsb.ru/fsb/press/message/single.htm%21id%3D10438114%40fsbMessage.html#

AND as always with FSB accusations of this type...they NEVER publish a single photo or evidence..all just words as if the world is suppose to believe the FSB????

Another disinformation attempt being used to set the stage to something else...

[OUTLAW 09]

Fake news could swing #France's elections, with a heavy Russian footprint detected in this new report.
https://www.bakamosocial.com/blog/french-

[OUTLAW 09]

Russian CW attack fake news

Because the victims were taken to Turkey for treatment, funny @mod_russia doesn't know that
https://sputniknews.com/middleeast/2...haykhun-fake/#

[OUTLAW 09]

It is just not Russians that produce FAKE NEWS.....

UK MSM is spreading fakes news as do the Russians and Assad it seems...
Dear @Daily_Star desk,
there has NEVER been an #ISIS presence in #Lataminah.
Next ISIS area is 70km away.
http://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/latest-news/606284/Russia-bomb-attack-Syria-Hama-video-footage-war-ISIS-clip-jihadi#…

[OUTLAW 09]

There has been a massive hack of the Georgia Sixth District that in a special election today.....

Is a Republican district BUT Democrats are on the verge of actually winning the district with a strong performance...

IMPORTANT-> Georgia's Sec of State is asking the public to report "any and all irregularities at the polls" on Tues.
Phone #: 404-656-2881

The machines hold a list of names & addresses of *every voter* in Georgia. Drivers license #'s are also in there, but harder to access.

Those stolen voter machines contain voter rolls. Meaning personal info. Incredibly shady.
http://www.ajc.com/news/state--regional-govt--politics/breaking-voters-personal-data-risk-cobb-theft/FYDyqME5bqLG4ip4snYLwO/#…

[OUTLAW 09]

So again explain to me why is a critical district there was a sudden computer hack

WHY the sudden connections between US elections and hacking...started by first Russians....

Donald J. Trump‏
Verified account
#@realDonaldTrump 2h
2 hours ago
Republicans must get out today and VOTE in Georgia 6. Force runoff and easy win! Dem Ossoff will raise your taxes-very bad on crime & 2nd A.

Donald J. Trump‏
Verified account
#@realDonaldTrump 2h
2 hours ago
Democrat Jon Ossoff would be a disaster in Congress. VERY weak on crime and illegal immigration, bad for jobs and wants higher taxes. Say NO

Donald J. Trump‏
Verified account
#@realDonaldTrump 11h
11 hours ago
With eleven Republican candidates running in Georgia (on Tuesday) for Congress, a runoff will be a win. Vote "R" for lower taxes & safety!

[OUTLAW 09]

Many Americans would be surprised that an American citizen residing in first California and now Moscow is behind the drive to separate California from the US...he even opened a so called Yes California Moscow embassy there....

.@YesCalifornia's leader worked for Bernie, voted for Trump and will resettle in Russia.

Amazing how one man ties it together.

[OUTLAW 09]

Astonishing. Roughly 1 in 4 articles shared in #France about the election are from sites that promote fake news.
https://www.bakamosocial.com/blog/french-presidential-election-fake-news#

[OUTLAW 09]

This is key point re Jill Stein's alleged Russia ties: did Moscow have a 2nd horse in the US presidential race? @rwindrem suspects it did.

Jill Stein won't comment on how she ended up at that Moscow dinner w Putin and Michael Flynn
http://nbcnews.to/2oHWwpE

[OUTLAW 09]

Ukraine twitter accounts complain of sudden drop in Russian trolls attack. Worried that their budget is cut.

Possibly true as the US government has recently taken down a series of Russian botnet servers with the arrest of a top Russian hacker in Barcelona....

[OUTLAW 09]

.@Twitter bots in action - #Russian #informationwarfare methods designed for "easy exploitation - high impact"
http://bit.ly/2p3b30p

[OUTLAW 09]

"I graduated with a degree in philosophy and didn’t know where to turn." So s/he joined a Russian troll factory.
https://themoscowtimes.com/articles/revealed-confessions-of-a-kremlin-troll-57754#

Another Kremlin troll factory whistleblower: apparently workforce being cut back to only include true believers.

[OUTLAW 09]

How the Kremlin uses #Russia’s criminal networks in Europe | by @markgaleotti
http://buff.ly/2pP343g

[OUTLAW 09]

TASS breaks the news about evidence found of USA meddling in Russian 2016 election.
https://twitter.com/VVP2_0/status/854318898103169024#

[OUTLAW 09]

Many Americans would be surprised that an American citizen residing in first California and now Moscow is behind the drive to separate California from the US...he even opened a so called Yes California Moscow embassy there....

.@YesCalifornia's leader worked for Bernie, voted for Trump and will resettle in Russia.

Amazing how one man ties it together.

Citing Russophobia and his Russian wife finally securing a green card, the head of the California separatist movement calls it quits.

Leader of #CalExit secession from US exits US permanently, for a more welcoming home for separatists–#Russia
http://www.yescalifornia.org/louis_marinelli_farewell_statement#

[OUTLAW 09]

Russian Math Instructor Faces Criminal Charges for Online Posts He Says He Didn’t Write · Global Voices
https://globalvoices.org/2017/04/18/russian-math-instructor-faces-criminal-charges-for-online-posts-he-says-he-didnt-write/#

Just as @tvrain reports on Kremlin campaign vs Navalny, website releases hitjob against his anticorruption org
https://linforusse.wordpress.com/2017/04/18/russian-media-the-kremlin-is-about-to-get-tough-on-navalny/#

[OUTLAW 09]

IoT malware clashes in a botnet territory battle
http://www.cio.com/article/3190179/security/iot-malware-clashes-in-a-botnet-territory-battle.html#
… via @CIOonline

[Azor]

So a [sic] organizational social media campaign started by the white nationalist IE neo Nazi side months before this specific demo pushed by several well known twitter accounts pushing for a violet clash does not qualify somehow .....arguing that "the other side was violent too"...does not cover up the simple fact it was neo Nazi organized and led......

Also the same exact players were involved in the DEC BLM demo that turned to violence.....

Notice the trend...

BUT you ignored the way it then was played in European/US MSM...."a proTrump demonstration attacked by anti Trump protesters"....not a single mention anywhere of the neo Nazi element was there?

I find it interesting that right now on any given day virtually any of the well known white nationalist or white supremacist social media or blogsites carry at least one conspiracy myth started out of the Russian bot net and further pushed via RT or Sputnik.....then ending up in either Infowars and or Breitbart.com

And you do not find that "interesting"??

I find it off-topic.

For the record, Antifa and BAMN rioters arrived at the demonstration to commit violence and did so. Whereas in Europe, it is typically a one-sided affair when the “black bloc” lashes out, at Berkeley, they met their opposite numbers. The full video clip of Damigo punching the rioter clearly shows that she delivered an ineffective short-hand to his chest before he slugged her with a stiff right-punch to the jaw. To paraphrase Mercutio: “a plague on both their houses”.

While organized skinhead violence in the U.S. is concerning to you now, where have you been when “anti-Trump” rioters ran amok following the election?

As for the Kremlin, it will support whatever it feels like. Its support did not make the anti-Vietnam War or anti-nuclear weapons movements any less genuine during the Cold War, and it certainly does not diminish the aspirations of Western peoples to protect their sovereignty from supranational institutions, control their borders and undo the official multiculturalism and political correctness ideologies that have disrupted social cohesion.

[OUTLAW 09]

To all readers of this thread….


I have been reading SWJ since 2004 when I first became aware of it…and I have since then contributed a few articles to it as well as FP…

But since the Russian military annexation of Crimea…their unleashing of non linear warfare with cyber and information warfare as it’s core and then their military invasion of Ukraine and their adventure into Syria in the name to defeat IS which we all know is a farce……

During the last two years I have posted roughly 30,000 posts on these two areas and then starting posting more and more information on Russian infor and cyber warfare.

Alone on the Ukrainian thread Views have in the last two years climbed to over 980,000 …the Syrian thread climbed in the same time to over 360,000. I also noted that in the last two months the Russian disinformation and hacking has climbed over 8,000 Views.

While it is hard to see if readers were looking/researching or just skimming through I am happy that they “viewed” anything as I have seen that basically a lot of what I posted never did make it into US MSM or if it did…then days later.

During this process I have learned the value of social media OSINT and the ability of conducting excellent information warfare using social media….and took pains to show how Russian info warfare was being conducted both in Ukraine and Syria….and developed along the way a working relationship with @bellingcat one of the best social media OSINT types going these days..actually produces better quality open reporting than anything I have previously seen in the IC which also uses OSINT...

Along the way I have bashed the Obama WH for basically changing the entire ME in the desire to tilt fully to Iran and for their apparent lack of a solid strategic strategy on virtually anything…and they walked away from engaging in the Ukraine…..the Obama WH was great smoke and mirrors machine and the US MSM never really challenged that…

We then transitioned to the Trump WH….and suddenly and truly we are seeing for the first time the somehat serious political theory of “Wag the Dog” in it’s full glory being applied to cover up for a total lack of any strategy on anything other than “tweets” being used as a FP……using "on a whim and a prayer" as FP....

I learned a long time ago after VN if one does not ever speak truth to power things get worse….and in my work career that was a principle I held to which cost me sometimes, but I always learned even then you in fact move forward…because some along the way respected that.

The posting has led me to fully “see” and “understand” the intertwining of a lack of US FP built on well thought through strategies and allowed me to see at the same the interesting development of the Russian non linear warfare which is pushing their political war with the US….and they do view it as an actual war…somehow we do not…

BTW I have posted many comments on this concept of “seeing” and “understanding” something that drives me in all these years as I learned long ago ground reality “does talk to you..if you are willing to listen”….

After being recently chastised and sidelined for three days “for being on a soap box” that not many were willing to actually share…..even though reading and then responding by cut and pasting comments….I have decided it is now a good time to withdraw from SWC…it has been a great ride , the knowledge I gained in the postings has flowed into my company in a far different way than I even imagined and is openly up a startling new realm in integrating hacking defense with customers demanding now how to counter the everyday info war they are in….

It has been one heck of a long ride and I really enjoyed it…will comment on occasions if an article interests me…….

The killing in eastern Ukraine and Syria will just continue until someone stands up in the US and truly leads….and leads not by tweets….but by the realization of what Putin’s geo political goals really are guided by a strategic strategy...finally.....

Based on evidence I have had the opportunity to be shown/review the person tweeting might not be in office much longer IF treason counts for anything these days in the US…

[OUTLAW 09]

AND if readers of this thread have not learned at least the following....Russian propaganda is no different than what the current US President is doing.....with his tweeting and then lack of clarification of what he tweeted......

The White House insists Trump is not trying to tilt outcome of #frenchelection after #ParisAttack.
http://tinyurl.com/kjb2nmu

Donald J. Trump‏
Verified account
#@realDonaldTrump
Another terrorist attack in Paris. The people of France will not take much more of this. Will have a big effect on presidential election!

NO US President prior to Trump ever used twitter to impact anything ....ALL previous Presidents have basically refrained from commenting on the internal elections of other countries.....

It has been the white nationalist Bannon and Trump who have repeatedly talked about the demise of EU after Brexit....they both in theory stated that Holland would go the way of UK followed by France......will be more than happy to provide the links to their statements....

AND this WH attempts to then deflect that Trump actually was supporting a French anti-Semitic white nationalist with a neo Nazi father...who wants to destroy NATO and walk away from EU and the Euro...as her stated goals....

WHICH actually are the same goals as Bannon and Trump....

EUobserver
✔
@euobs
[Investigation] Le Pen and Putin friendship goes back a long way
https://euobserver.com/elections/137629#

BTW...all her past meetings with Putin have always been held under tight secrecy.....and she recently stated she had not met him the last time she was in Moscow...but then social media did in fact prove she and then she attempted to lie further about the so called "non meeting"....

[OUTLAW 09]

AND if readers of this thread have not learned at least the following....Russian propaganda is no different than what the current US President is doing.....with his tweeting and then lack of clarification of what he tweeted......

The White House insists Trump is not trying to tilt outcome of #frenchelection after #ParisAttack.
http://tinyurl.com/kjb2nmu

Donald J. Trump‏
Verified account
#@realDonaldTrump
Another terrorist attack in Paris. The people of France will not take much more of this. Will have a big effect on presidential election!

NO US President prior to Trump ever used twitter to impact anything ....ALL previous Presidents have basically refrained from commenting on the internal elections of other countries.....

It has been the white nationalist Bannon and Trump who have repeatedly talked about the demise of EU after Brexit....they both in theory stated that Holland would go the way of UK followed by France......will be more than happy to provide the links to their statements....

AND this WH attempts to then deflect that Trump actually was supporting a French anti-Semitic white nationalist with a neo Nazi father...who wants to destroy NATO and walk away from EU and the Euro...as her stated goals....

WHICH actually are the same goals as Bannon and Trump....

EUobserver
✔
@euobs
[Investigation] Le Pen and Putin friendship goes back a long way
https://euobserver.com/elections/137629#

BTW...all her past meetings with Putin have always been held under tight secrecy.....and she recently stated she had not met him the last time she was in Moscow...but then social media did in fact prove she and then she attempted to lie further about the so called "non meeting"....

This white nationalist US President cannot simply keep his mouth shut especially when it comes to European affairs when he cannot get a single thing passed in Congress and the government will shut down on the 28th...

Claiming to know anything about France and French politics when he has not read a single book...watches only ultra right/right wing social media and cannot put a complete sentence together and cannot spell when typing his own tweets says everything...


Speaking to the Associated Press, Trump called Le Pen the “strongest on borders, and she’s the strongest on what’s been going on in France.”

Trump told the AP he was not making a formal endorsement ahead of Sunday’s vote in France, expected to produce two finalists for a May 7 runoff vote to replace outgoing President Francois Hollande.
But the comments reignited alarms in Europe and the U.S. about Trump’s commitment to the continent’s key institutions—including the European Union and the NATO alliance—after several weeks of reassuring signals from Trump and his top officials.
They followed a Friday morning tweet in which Trump said that a Thursday shooting on Paris’s Champs Elysees, believed to be an act of terrorism, would "have a big effect” on the country's election.

Trump and his WH merry white nationalist band of brothers in Miller and Bannon have been exceptionally quiet but it appears they are coming out again....

[davidbfpo]

Eight posted warnings about Malware etc by Outlaw09 have been moved to a separate thread 'Malware & other nasty IT / cyber things' as they refer to matters beyond this thread's focus. Link:http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/showthread.php?t=25325

[OUTLAW 09]

True in many cases, not all. However, that gets to my point about security forces being the COG versus a competitive idea or ideology. If the autocratic government is unpopular, then its center of gravity is arguably their control of their security forces. Severing the relationship is not sufficient, the opponent of the autocrat (whether internal or external to the country) still needs to generate a mass movement.

KJU in DPRK is an extreme case, where many people seemly believe the rest of the world lives in the same condition and KJU is truly the anointed one. However, more information getting in via business contacts, balloons, DVDs, etc. may develop cracks that can be exploited. If messaging from outside via the U.S., China, or South Korea promises a degree of economic and safety status quo to the security forces then a regime change is possible, but it will still be an autocratic government, but maybe one willing to work with the rest of the world?

Just throwing ideas out, the topic of PW fascinates me, and the Russians actually think we're quite good at it, even if we don't agree :D

Bill...the Russians think we are good at it because we are good at it....what Putin refers to often as neo liberalism of the US focuses on our "soft power" which expresses itself in the economic power of our business model...control of IMF..control over the G7 and G20 mechanisms and actually they view the US as controlling even WTO...virtually all recent global free trade agreements which if one really looks at them ...locks out Russia even though it only is a two product country...oil and gas....and even there they would argue the US has a large hand over the actions of OPEC...now with US shale oil pressuring decisions made by OPEC and the non OPEC members........or what happens to oil pricing if the US even slightly threatens to open the US strategic oil reserves and sell off just 4% of those reserves....

One could actually argue that all the Trump rhetoric on the US being badly treated in trade deals is a farce designed to gain an economic advantage on bilateral trade talks as Trump and his WH are somehow afraid that they are not good at multilateral talks...or at least that is exactly what the Chinese and EU feel is behind the rhetoric.....if one really looks at the US proposed positions on TTP and TTIP...they were far more interested in driving strong protection for/tariff free movement of US financial services and high tech than say selling corn and beef...and other manufactured US products...why is that?...that is where the strength of the US "soft power" lies....

Putin is just modernizing the Communist rhetoric directed at those institutions during the Cold War....

AND then they will point at the ultimate US economic nuclear power ie SWIFT....this is exactly why Obama ever so quietly "allowed two Russians to be placed onto the SWIFT board"....to alleviate those Russian specific complaints....and attempted to use this to leverage direct discussions over Ukraine...which were driven by Nuland and Kerry and in the end failed.....why because Putin got what he wanted...membership positions in SWIFT...thus he no longer needed to discuss anything.

This is exactly why in their non linear doctrine they focus on what their current strengths are 1) cyber warfare and 2) information warfare.....for Putin the economic "soft power" of Russia is in it's "black money" via money laundering...at any given time 20B to an estimated 4T USDs are on the move illegally....if you look at all sudden positon shifts of those in the West who first were against anything Russian then suddenly proRussian...it has the "signs" of large amounts of money changing hands either legally or illegally.....

This comes from a recent article from a government insider who is considered to be a true SME on cyber warfare.....


Cybersecurity relies on a partnership between the public and private sectors. Private industry is attacked as often as government, and must therefore invest in robust cybersecurity technology, software and personnel. The government has been deficient in cyber defense and needs to invest similarly. Both public and private must coordinate cyber efforts and share threat information among a defense community.

The uphill battle for individuals and the business community is still awareness — I’m shocked that the very high profile attacks on the DNC and Clinton campaign, the extraordinary amount of ransomware attacks and the high profile government breaches haven’t brought home the very present threat to a more general public.

I fear that the message won’t hit home for most people until a cyber attack rises to the level of a kinetic attack. At some point attackers will successfully target our critical infrastructure — once the lights are out for a significant period of time, cybersecurity will be taken more seriously, but the hope is that we can begin to wake up before then


Notice the use of the term kinetic attack...

While TC discusses the concept of war....we are already at war ...and if one really reads Russian non linear warfare used as the mechanism to drive Russian political warfare they attempt to keep the "kinetic" one step below actual warfare......until it is to late to even respond at the kinetic level.

While the CIA and NSA coupled with recent FBI actions are fighting a "strategic cyber defense" we do no yet see a clear and concise strategy coming out of either the Obama and now Trump WH......

Remember we are still awaiting that Trump promised 90 day cyber defense study and an action plan from him and Giuliana...and we are long after the 90th day..

Yet the Russian cyber and information war against the US continues unabated.....and Trump just tweets about a 90 day plan.

[Bill Moore]

Come on Outlaw, you have bee letting your biases get ahold since Trump has been elected. This is just another example:


Remember we are still awaiting that Trump promised 90 day cyber defense study and an action plan from him and Giuliana...and we are long after the 90th day..

It isn't two weeks past the 90th day, and if it is done within 2 months of the stated due date, that is good speed for government. At least try to be objective and focus on the facts, not the subjective focus on emotional responses to everything someone tweets.

Regan, Clinton, Bush Jr., and Obama all failed to meet their first 100 day agenda. You can't get squat done in D.C. in 90 days, it was simply politically rhetoric to get elected. No one should be surprised to hear politicians aren't exactly the most honest people in the world.

Now back to Political Warfare, which may be playing out in subtle ways in France at the moment if an external hand is at play.

[OUTLAW 09]

Come on Outlaw, you have bee letting your biases get ahold since Trump has been elected. This is just another example:



It isn't two weeks past the 90th day, and if it is done within 2 months of the stated due date, that is good speed for government. At least try to be objective and focus on the facts, not the subjective focus on emotional responses to everything someone tweets.

Regan, Clinton, Bush Jr., and Obama all failed to meet their first 100 day agenda. You can't get squat done in D.C. in 90 days, it was simply politically rhetoric to get elected. No one should be surprised to hear politicians aren't exactly the most honest people in the world.

Now back to Political Warfare, which may be playing out in subtle ways in France at the moment if an external hand is at play.

BUT the core answer to Russian political warfare which is definitely being directed right now at this very moment the US ...I could show you if you were in Berlin an attack ongoing since early morning US time against a power grid in the US coming out of deep Russia via four different cutouts....which is successfully being deflected from here and out of Europe BTW not the US.

This is the real world of kinetic activity that the previous quote refers to....and that is daily now...and silence out of Trump WH...

I have my biases and it is one of having the earned right to those biases when it comes to the defense of democracy.....and if I recall correctly I warned about Trump being elected. I took and still take the sentence in the oath....defend against domestic and foreign enemies seriously..

I like that I no longer have to ask permission to respond....as I own the response and it is my decision....

We spent the last week basically blocking Russian control servers handling a massive botnet which was supporting Le Pen on the info war front...so yes there was a hardcore hand at work....and no support came out of the US for these efforts....

So on the European populist front....Wilders blocked in the Netherlands...Le Pen down 26 points and will not make it....Austrian FPO lost even though winning first time around...German AfD down in polls to 7% from a high of 14% and going even more far right since yesterday.....

Europe is doing a rather good job of pushing back on the far right populism and the US response has been?

BTW...26 US proTrump twitter accounts were identified by us as being involved in this active Russian influence operations botnet effort....which had supported Trump in his campaign and now are suddenly "involved in France"???

We tracked a series of Russian started comments into the US and then suddenly watched them being picked up by these US proTrump accounts and fired back into France...coincidence...hardly....

Is it not strange that the majority of efforts to track/stop Russian influence ops with their fake news and fake/info war social media messaging comes out of Europe and not the US.....why is that?

Why is it that the democracies of Europe are far more involved in this "kinetic fight" than the democracy of the US?

This goes BTW to your political warfare thoughts...and not carried much in the US MSM was it?

They generate black cash for black ops; they carry out assassinations.
They smuggle weapons; they carry out cyberattacks.
And they run all sorts of errands the Kremlin wants to keep its fingerprints off.
Meet Russia's nationalized and weaponized organized crime syndicates -- a deadly tool of statecraft for a highly criminalized state.
On this week's Power Vertical Podcast, we discuss co-host Mark Galeotti's new report for the European Council on Foreign Relations: Crimintern: How The Kremlin Uses Russia's Criminal Networks In Europe.
http://www.ecfr.eu/publications/summary/crimintern_how_the_kremlin_uses_russias_criminal_n etworks_in_europe

Quoted in the article..by a Russian criminal who claimed to have quit in 2016...

"In Russia we have power and safety...in Europe we have wealth and comfort"...

BTW here is a chart of some of those proTrump accounts supporting actively this week Le Pen.....up through mid day yesterday French time...:D

So explain to me why a GOP Tennessee twitter account under Ten_GOP is supporting a far right anti Semitic nationalist French political party which has nothing to do with US politics?

BTW...this twitter account had been relatively "quiet" then suddenly spiked in tweet numbers starting the morning time for Paris...coincidence?

Or were they just out there supporting Trumps' own Le Pen tweet?

[OUTLAW 09]

BUT the core answer to Russian political warfare which is definitely being directed right now at this very moment the US ...I could show you if you were in Berlin an attack ongoing since early morning US time against a power grid in the US coming out of deep Russia via four different cutouts....which is successfully being deflected from here and out of Europe BTW not the US.

This is the real world of kinetic activity that the previous quote refers to....and that is daily now...and silence out of Trump WH...

I have my biases and it is one of having the earned right to those biases when it comes to the defense of democracy.....and if I recall correctly I warned about Trump being elected. I took and still take the sentence in the oath....defend against domestic and foreign enemies seriously..

I like that I no longer have to ask permission to respond....as I own the response and it is my decision....

We spent the last week basically blocking Russian control servers handling a massive botnet which was supporting Le Pen on the info war front...so yes there was a hardcore hand at work....and no support came out of the US for these efforts....

So on the European populist front....Wilders blocked in the Netherlands...Le Pen down 26 points and will not make it....Austrian FPO lost even though winning first time around...German AfD down in polls to 7% from a high of 14% and going even more far right since yesterday.....

Europe is doing a rather good job of pushing back on the far right populism and the US response has been?

BTW...26 US proTrump twitter accounts were identified by us as being involved in this active Russian influence operations botnet effort....which had supported Trump in his campaign and now are suddenly "involved in France"???

We tracked a series of Russian started comments into the US and then suddenly watched them being picked up by these US proTrump accounts and fired back into France...coincidence...hardly....

Is it not strange that the majority of efforts to track/stop Russian influence ops with their fake news and fake/info war social media messaging comes out of Europe and not the US.....why is that?

Why is it that the democracies of Europe are far more involved in this "kinetic fight" than the democracy of the US?

This goes BTW to your political warfare thoughts...and not carried much in the US MSM was it?

They generate black cash for black ops; they carry out assassinations.
They smuggle weapons; they carry out cyberattacks.
And they run all sorts of errands the Kremlin wants to keep its fingerprints off.
Meet Russia's nationalized and weaponized organized crime syndicates -- a deadly tool of statecraft for a highly criminalized state.
On this week's Power Vertical Podcast, we discuss co-host Mark Galeotti's new report for the European Council on Foreign Relations: Crimintern: How The Kremlin Uses Russia's Criminal Networks In Europe.
http://www.ecfr.eu/publications/summary/crimintern_how_the_kremlin_uses_russias_criminal_n etworks_in_europe

Quoted in the article..by a Russian criminal who claimed to have quit in 2016...

"In Russia we have power and safety...in Europe we have wealth and comfort"...

BTW here is a chart of some of those proTrump accounts supporting actively this week Le Pen.....up through mid day yesterday French time...:D

So explain to me why a GOP Tennessee twitter account under Ten_GOP is supporting a far right anti Semitic nationalist French political party which has nothing to do with US politics?

BTW...this twitter account had been relatively "quiet" then suddenly spiked in tweet numbers starting the morning time for Paris...coincidence?

Or were they just out there supporting Trumps' own Le Pen tweet?

Bill...in the cyber/info war front we are already at least in Europe in the kinetic trenches and it is getting worse by the day and out of the US total silence.....

If you took the time as we do to analyze twitter accounts then the info war being driven by proTrump twitter accounts needs some serious thoughts tied around them....

Who owns them..what is the messaging intent and who is driving that intent is just a few of the basic 5Ws and 1H.....but it is not being asked.

Check the previously posted chart and notice the proTrump accounts Ten_GOP....Basedmonitored and then take a look as we did to their twitter activities the day before the French elections and on the day of the elections...

You will notice a sudden distinct spike in twitter numbers in outbound messages up from a rather quiet period before the election ...if one is an twitter analyst this is an indicator of a controlled account....because the volume is to high for a personal to type them out...

Then and this is the key....MLP_Officiel is the official Le Pen account who then took these US inbound tweets and retweeted them giving her account followers the distinct feel that she had massive support from proTrump accounts.....

Then if you read through both US accounts you will notice the following account being often shown.....
Mike Cernovich #
Verified account
#@Cernovich 14h
14 hours ago
Every single mainstream media article on the French elections has to put "far-right" before Marine Le Pen. Almost seems coordinated.

Cernovich has been tied to the twitter account #syrianhoax which pushed countless tweets about the rebels being behind the Syrian sarin attack...was constantly pushing Russian tweets as his own and which actually many twitter analysts named as leading the Russian disinformation tweet campaign on the sarin attack in the US.

Then Cernovich's #Syrianhoax tweets are picked up and pushed by an alt right white nationalist site run by Alex Jones called Infowars WHICH Trump has admitted to often reading...

Now convince me we are not a ongoing brutal trench warfare kinetic fight....on the cyber and info warfare side....

Still stand by my biases....

[OUTLAW 09]

Bill...this is the current "war on the invisible front"...a GDR Stasi term.....

In German...who is behind the PR millions being spent on the ultra right German AfD ..Posters coming via a Swiss PR firm and the IP addresses of the computer hacking machines that attacked the researcher for this article came strangely from St. Petersburg....Rostov on Don....Kasan...and Jekaterinburg ALL in Russia.

Wer steckt hinter dem Verein, der Werbung für die AfD macht? Spuren fhren ins Ausland.

http://www.faz.net/aktuell/politik/inland/machen-auslaendische-nationalisten-werbung-fuer-die-afd-14983480.html

Out of that article is now a hunt on for information concerning a ultra right organization with the name of which no one seems to know anything about who funds them since they only have two members in the EU Parliment.........although the EU funds would not cover such a large scale operation.

"Foundation for a Europe of Nations and Freedom"......
http://www.fenl.eu/


The Foundation for a Europe of Nations and Freedom is a Foundation at European level composed of national parties and individuals as members and which is represented in several Member States as France, Belgium, Austria, Italy, Poland, Romania, United Kingdom.

Our members are convinced that the sovereignty of states and peoples, relying on the cooperation between nations, and therefore reject any policy designed to create a supra-state or supra-national model. The opposition to any transfer of national sovereignty to supranational bodies and/or European institutions is one of the fundamental principles uniting members of the Foundation.

European ultra right parties that are members of this "Club"......

Vlaams Belang (Flemish Interest) is a long time ally of Front National, FPÖ and Lega Nord and was from the beginning partner of the pre-group that Marine Le Pen formed after the last European election. Vlaams Belang is a Flemish independentist and right wing party that acts in line withe the importance of the national identity concept and operates in the Northern Dutch speaking part of Belgium

Northern League for the Independence of Padania
Founded on December 4th 1989 from the merger of several regional autonomist movements in northern Italy, with the main political aim to make Italy a federal State. In this respect, in 2006 it was able to make a constitutional reform approved by the Parliament, unfortunately rejected in the subsequent referendum in all Regions but Lombardy and Veneto.

Le Pen's The Front National aims to gather the Nation to defend its sovereignty, protect its integrity and to promote its historic values of civilization. Acting in strict compliance with the principles of freedom and democracy, we want to restore the Nation and its greatness by the application of republican laws and the establishment of a community of justice and solidarity. Attached to equality in law for all French citizens, without distinction of their origin, race or religion, the Front National defends national sovereignty and independence of the Nation.

The Austrian FPÖ sees itself as a social and patriotic movement and as an ideological representative of the political camp of German national and national liberal voters. The party is strongly associated with the legacy of the national-liberal ideas of the bourgeois-democratic revolution of 1848. The FPÖ is committed, in particular, to the protection of our cultural identity and the freedom of citizens in a constitutional state. The party also takes a stand for the traditional family and for the preservation of Austrian interests.

In considering the policy towards Europe, the FPÖ favours a Europe of historically evolved peoples and indigenous ethnic groups and rejects any form of forced multiculturalism, globalisation, centralisation and mass immigration.

So why would Russian hackers attack a server of a German researcher who publishes information on this group and their ties to the ultra right German AfD?

The deeper we dug on the research side on the Russian IP addresses and who they were talking to..the browner it became...all tied somehow back to Russian servers...

[OUTLAW 09]

Again this goes to the heart of my argument...just how can this President even think of a Russian counter cyber/informational warfare strategy??

Honestly can he even spell cyber correcty?

Trump boasts of highest TV ratings since ‘the World Trade Center came down’

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2017/04/24/trump-boasts-of-highest-tv-ratings-since-the-world-trade-center-came-down/?utm_term=.abf5eae8144c



Donald Trump has long been television ratings gold, and, even as president, he has kept his eye squarely on the small screen as a gauge of his popularity, a barometer for his governing agenda and his ability to dominate the airwaves, as The Washington Post's Ashley Parker and Robert Costa reported Monday.

Now, in an interview with the Associated Press released Sunday, Trump set a new standard of hubris even for himself — comparing his ratings prowess to one of the darkest days in U.S. history: Sept. 11, 2001.

“It's the highest for 'Face the Nation' or as I call it, 'Deface the Nation,' " Trump told the AP's Julie Pace, referring to the CBS News Sunday political talk show. “It's the highest for 'Deface the Nation' since the World Trade Center — since the World Trade Center came down.”

Trump said he helped the CBS Sunday morning political talk show score 5.2 million viewers, although it was not clear which appearance he was referring to. Trump's appearance in January 2016 registered 4.6 million viewers, according to TV Newser. His subsequent appearances on “Face the Nation” during the campaign last year got lower ratings, including after a Republican primary debate in February 2016.

As a New York real estate promoter, Trump certainly would have had a unique perspective on the al-Qaeda terrorist attacks on the twin towers. But his choice of using that moment, considered one of the most-filmed events in history at a time of emerging technology, as a measuring stick could strike many as tin-eared and inappropriate.

Trump made the comparison during a long, boastful interview in which he touted his ability to bring viewers. He said he scored 9.2 million viewers on Fox News when he spoke to anchor Chris Wallace last fall.

“It had 9.2 million people,” Trump said. “It's the highest they've ever had.”

At the same time, Trump used the opportunity to denounce, as he has repeatedly, the press corps again as “fake media” that treats him “very unfairly.” Trump, who has elected to skip the White House correspondents' dinner Saturday, has announced that he will hold a campaign rally in Harrisburg, Pa., to mark his 100th day in office on the same evening, in a bit of counterprogramming.

Some of the media, Trump said, “bears no relationship to the truth.”

Still, the president can't quite quit the mainstream press that he has so long been obsessed with. The White House announced that Trump will grant an exclusive interview to “Face the Nation” host John Dickerson to mark his 100th day, set to air this weekend.

[OUTLAW 09]

Bill...in the cyber/info war front we are already at least in Europe in the kinetic trenches and it is getting worse by the day and out of the US total silence.....

If you took the time as we do to analyze twitter accounts then the info war being driven by proTrump twitter accounts needs some serious thoughts tied around them....

Who owns them..what is the messaging intent and who is driving that intent is just a few of the basic 5Ws and 1H.....but it is not being asked.

Check the previously posted chart and notice the proTrump accounts Ten_GOP....Basedmonitored and then take a look as we did to their twitter activities the day before the French elections and on the day of the elections...

You will notice a sudden distinct spike in twitter numbers in outbound messages up from a rather quiet period before the election ...if one is an twitter analyst this is an indicator of a controlled account....because the volume is to high for a personal to type them out...

Then and this is the key....MLP_Officiel is the official Le Pen account who then took these US inbound tweets and retweeted them giving her account followers the distinct feel that she had massive support from proTrump accounts.....

Then if you read through both US accounts you will notice the following account being often shown.....
Mike Cernovich #
Verified account
#@Cernovich 14h
14 hours ago
Every single mainstream media article on the French elections has to put "far-right" before Marine Le Pen. Almost seems coordinated.

Cernovich has been tied to the twitter account #syrianhoax which pushed countless tweets about the rebels being behind the Syrian sarin attack...was constantly pushing Russian tweets as his own and which actually many twitter analysts named as leading the Russian disinformation tweet campaign on the sarin attack in the US.

Then Cernovich's #Syrianhoax tweets are picked up and pushed by an alt right white nationalist site run by Alex Jones called Infowars WHICH Trump has admitted to often reading...

Now convince me we are not a ongoing brutal trench warfare kinetic fight....on the cyber and info warfare side....

Still stand by my biases....

Current activity of @Basedmonitored is off the charts again today

432
POSTS

310
USERS

1,310,165
REACH

1,515,62
IMPRESSIONS

Timeframe
12am 22 APR to 12am 24 APR

Key stats are REACH and IMPRESSIONS

Most active retweeter of this account is the following account which is a well known Russian troll....active for the last two years
He started just right after the Crimea annexation.

Paul Joseph Watson
@PrisonPlanet

Here is his stats for just from 10am to now 6pm today

238
POSTS

181
USERS

932,530
REACH

1,010,765
IMPRESSIONS

The key stats of his effectiveness are REACH and IMPRESSIONS....

So exactly what does an evidently solid US proTrump twitter account have to do with Le Pen and a well known Russian troll even though the troll is using a US persona...and based in Macedonia??

[OUTLAW 09]

Bill..I said this morning that the Russians really do believe we the US are waging a non linear against them........

Nice to see that their TASS media outlet agrees with me.....
http://tass.com/politics/942643

Kremlin advisor reveals 'cure for US aggression'
Russian Politics & Diplomacy
April 21, 19:22 UTC+3

Putin's advisor also believes that Donald Trump is just "doing what the ruling elite expects him to do"



YALTA, April 21. /TASS/. The only way to stop US aggression is to get rid of dollar addiction, a Kremlin advisor said on Friday.

"The more aggressive the Americans are, the sooner they will see the final collapse of the dollar and by getting rid of the dollar this would be the only way for victims of American aggression to stop this onslaught. As soon as we and China dump the dollar, it will be the end of the US’ military might," Sergey Glazyev said in an interview with TASS.
Commenting on the policy of the new US president, Glazyev noted that Donald Trump is doing what the ruling elite expects him to do.

"I had no illusions about him, regarding any change in policy. First, America’s aggression around the world is rooted in its aspiration to preserve US hegemony when they have already yielded economic leadership to China," he said.

"The United States has no tools to make all others use the dollar other than a truncheon. That is why they are indulging in a hybrid war with the entire world to shift their debt burden on to other countries, to confine everyone to the dollar and weaken territories they cannot control."

"In this context, the anti-Russian hysteria and growing Russophobia can be seen as a long-term factor linked with the specific interests of the United States’ ruling elite," the Kremlin advisor said.

"In objective terms, they are conducting a global hybrid war and in subjective terms, this war is aimed at us. Moreover, as it always happens when a global leader is changed, the war is for control over rimland nations. During WWI and WWII, Britain acted as an instigator in a bid to keep its global leadership. Now the United States is doing the same. And Trump expresses these interests," he said.

Fun fact: Glazev is a paid member of Malofeev's NGO. Malofeev bankrolled & tried to deliver coup in Montenegro. Extremely strong evidence held by Montenegro with them requesting an Interpol arrest warrant for Malofeev....

NOTE...Reuters recently reported that the USIC had two key documents from this Malofeev NGO that were the actual plans for the hacking and influence operations conducted by Russia against the US election adamently denied by Russian FM....and that they were signed off on by Putin....

Katehon 2nd member Glazev is a figure in #FrolovLeaks, commands active hybrid war branch frm Orthodox Church side against ukraine

Head of #Russian Institute of CIS Zatulin, in Jan 2013, writes a memo using terms "Sacred Crimea & Novorossiya"
https://informnapalm.org/de/frolovleaks-vi-und-morgen-kam-der-krieg/
Only in German and or Russian

That memo, one year and one month prior to Crimean annexation, ends up on desk of Glazev, Putin advisor on developments in CIS.

Ukrainian Cyber Alliance (UCA) hacktivists shared with InformNapalm a massive data dump from the mailbox of Kirill Frolov, Vice-Director of the Institute for CIS Countries, spokesman of the Union of Orthodox Citizens and ROC expert....

Russian response was initially that it was all "fake" but in the end admitted he had been indeed hacked BUT by the CIA.....

https://informnapalm.org/en/frolovleaks-church-going-kremlin-influence-expert-in-ukraine-episode-1/

https://informnapalm.org/en/frolovleaks-anathema-as-instrument-of-influence-on-the-ukrainian-politics-episode-ii/

https://informnapalm.org/en/frolovleaks-church-scheming-episode-3/

https://informnapalm.org/en/frolovleaks-goebbels-patriarch-recruitment-ukrainian-generals-baptism-fire-syria-episode-iv/

https://informnapalm.org/31475-frolovleaks-pussy-riot-epizod-v/
Only in Russian and or Ukrainian

https://informnapalm.org/de/frolovleaks-vi-und-morgen-kam-der-krieg/
Only in German

NOTE...the UCA has also hacked into the email account of the Putin's personal adivsor to the Russian mercenaries in eastern Ukraine Surkov WHICH the US is now trying to open a back channel to by Trump's appointing of "WH special advisor" which does not need Congressional approval as a way to finally establish a back channel link between Putin and Trump.....

Again Russia claimed this hack was done after they first stated Surkov had no email account...by again the CIA.....they defintely were not about to admit UCA pulled it off....

Russian political warfare hard at work.....

BTW...it is extremley important to understand the Russian foreign spy service (SVR) chief who replaced Malefeev......and how he fits now into Russian political warfare.....as a mjaor player as he is very close to Putin....
http://russia-insider.com/en/putin-a...ine-again/5433

[OUTLAW 09]

Now one can see what some of us are actively and aggressively trying to fend off with the coming German general election......our efforts are aimed squarely at the Russia info war side of the house....BUT in that effort we find ourselves drawn straight into the proTrump social media front which is showing very strong ties to that Russian info war aimed at France right now and currently well underway since yesterday.........

When this election is over we will be publishing our findings on the depth of that proTrump social media support to Le Pen as a way to understand the depth and breath of the Russian info war against both US and Europe in general....and how many Americans are part and parcel of that effort.....based on their social media activities...

Macron Campaign Wards Off Hacking Attempts Linked to Russia

Presidential candidate’s campaign suffers multipronged phishing attack beginning in mid-March

www.wsj.com/articles/macron-campaign-wards-off-hacking-attempts-linked-to-russia-1493054240?mod=e2tw …

April 24, 2017 1:17 p.m. ET


PARIS—Hackers matching the profile of a pro-Kremlin Fancy Bear group have tried in recent weeks to access campaign email accounts of French presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron, a cybersecurity firm said Monday, raising fears of election interference in the final two weeks of the France’s presidential campaign.

Sound vagely familiar...it should...almost a carbon copy of the DNC hacking....with Wikileaks promising to release emails on Marcon..but then did nothing as they had nothing as the attacks failed because the French were forewarned....and waiting....

BUT WAIT.....
Russian TV host Vladimir Soloviev is hopeful: "Terrorist attacks can still play a role in helping Le Pen... Two weeks is a long time."

[OUTLAW 09]

Rough draft - second part of PCoG discussion.

"Secondary Types. All Political Entities exist within a socio-cultural system. They are a part of that system, but not the only part. Other elements of that system interact with the Political Entity and can either support it or oppose it. The oft cited elements of national power – Diplomatic, Information, Military, and Economic (DIME) -- are just such elements and represent tools that one nation can use to influence another. But, like tracers, they go both ways.

There are a myriad of supporting, or secondary types. The easiest way to think of these secondary types is through the metaphor of a man standing on a stool. The man is the primary PCoG. If I can influence him directly, I win. If I can’t, then I must look for another way. The secondary types are the legs of the stool. If I can cut deeply enough into one or more of those legs, I might be able to make the man unsteady, thus influencing the man just as if I had done it directly. Although there are probably dozens of secondary types, this paper only addresses a few.

Economic System/Support. Humans are economic animals. The complex social systems we build depend on economic activity. The people who make up every polity depend on the economic system to provide them with the opportunity to obtain the goods and services they need to survive and thrive. Even in the most independent of systems, the people still look to the political entity to provide the framework for a dependable economic system.

Security Forces. Security forces provide the basis of power for all political entities. In the case of a State, these are often the military and/or other security and intelligence agencies. In States, and lessor polities, these can also include private contractors or mercenaries, or militias made up of irregular forces.

Vassals or Key Supporters. These are individuals who provide the political leadership critical financial, military, or political support. In an Ideological System, these will include the actual leadership.

Ethnicity. Outside of family, ethnicity is probably the strongest physiological bond humans experience. It is often a critical part of how one defines themselves. It most likely defines what language a person speaks, what type of food the person grew-up eating, what region of the world the person lives, and potentially what religion they believe in as well as a plethora of cultural icons, common myths and fables, and historical stories. It provides an instant connection with others of the same ethnicity.

Religion. Religions provide not just a set of guiding moral principals, but also a sense of purpose. Religious leaders often are well respected in the community and are looked upon to provide guidance in difficult times.

Political Ideology. There are many political ideologies. Sometimes these are pure political theories, like Democracy or Anarchy. Sometimes they are a combination of political and economic theory, like Communism, Monarchy, and Socialism. On occasion, the political ideology and the Political System align, as in Democracy, but this is usually not the case. In most cases, the political ideology acts as a framework that bolsters and justifies the Political System. As such, while attacks against a political ideology will be useful, they are unlikely to be dispositive.

Individual Human Rights. Historically speaking, this is a new concept that is primarily a 17th Century Western invention. This is the idea that each person is a coequal with all other people when it comes to certain aspects of human life. These aspects are usually referred to as rights or freedoms, and include freedom of religion, freedom of speech, and freedom to choose one’s own path in life.

National myths and Icons. Although often overlooked, a people are also bound by their common myths and Icons. In America, the Icon of Uncle Sam looms large in patriotic symbolism, as do stories of the founding fathers. These icons and stories can be used to support a political leader, or to attack them."

Are you not moving really into an "eco-system" which Kilcullen often used...was in vague for awhile then fell out of favor but inside the IT security world it is making a comeback lately as the easiest explanation for the intersection between criminal and state sponsored cyber and information warfare...?

Your stool mechanism is interesting as I often use it to describe exactly the current power structures inside Russia....that Putin juggles in moving his political war forward...

Which was a four legged stool.....1) Russian oligarchs ...2) the Russian state security services...3) Russian military and lastly 4) Russian transnational gangs.....overlaying all of this was the ideological foundation provided by the drive of the Russian Orthodox Church.

Right now Putin has actually done an excellent job of balancing all of their needs and demands to remain in their individual power spheres...and to maintain their support for him.

What is interesting is to go back and review what Kilcullen first wrote in 2004 and then sit back and slowly inhale and actually notice how close he was to the current reality of IS and AQ...13 years later which we have largely overlooked...

http://smallwarsjournal.com/documents/kilcullen.pdf

Might actually well worth it to go back reread and then adapt to what you are doing....this is actually what now advance IT security types are doing say with botnets automated and those individually controlled....but we are using an interesting AI algorithm developed along the lines of IBMs Watson that then allows us to "see" that ecosystem in a 3D model

Here is a recent stab at it by a security analyst.....while the chart is a formal structured line and block one..you have to think of a spider web concept where as in a spider web every time there is a touching point there is a potential ecosystem.....interacting with another ecosystems and if one thing happens to the right of the web that are often ripples effecting the left side of the web and it those ripples that have to be watched which we have never done well....

The problem many had during the Iraq war was actually taking what Kilcullen was envisioning and putting it into something that actually reflected the living world around us in Iraq...AFG or Syria....and I am sad to say many do not have that ability and that is largely why the concept of an "ecosystem died a slow death"...but due to the complexity now seen in cyber and information warfare it makes perfect sense....and in our business we are fully able to "see" the intersecting points....

Many tend to forget that cyber and information warfare are human driven environments carried out either via machines and or by the human himself..and it is the human that derives the attack methodologies not a machine...and it is the human that discovers the tech failures on the engineering side that allow for such attacks.....thus a human ecosystem is easy to understand and build....and now with the advent of AI software programs far easier to envision than say 2006...

The chart below takes into account all the known elements of a criminal ecosystem for the internet side.....once you understand all the components then it is easy to config them into an ecosystem based on their "value" inside the system meaning who is important.....middlle important and less important and more critically what is the single point of failure and or points of failure...or where do I have to push myself into the system in order to disrupt the system....stop the system or simply gain time to figure out something else....because the human on the other side is doing the exact same thing as I am and trying to find my single point of failure....

The problem I have had over the years is that many studies/research articles are to "technical" in their structure and then it turns one off ....keep it simple...describe in a simplistic way that a ten year can understand and show examples tied to ground reality.....gets one further down the acceptance road than a study with tens of footnotes that no one ever really reads and or looks up...

Example.....if you have ever learned morse code you will learn that each and every MC operator has a "specific key rhythm" that makes him identifiable.... his "fingerprint" that allows monitors to then identify him when he is transmitting MC....hackers are no different each individual hacker and or group has a specific attack thought pattern and will always use it if it was successful and that is what gets them into trouble as we have been very good lately at "seeing" those "signatures"....

Just as we know the Russian state sponsored Fancy Bear was behind the DNC attack and now the same exact methodology is used in the French Marcon attack....hacker success breeds often complacency....just as we can tell the difference between a human driven attack vs. how a machine is carrying out the attack...

If you had read the posting on the Russian hacking site of the Russian state sponsored attack in 2014 on DoS where a western intel service actually got DoS/NSA into the actual computers of the hackers and turned on a video camera in the room for the first time it was key stroke for key stroke...actual war in the cyber trenches...never seen again....

The problem for cyber and information warfare is when to declare it an "actual war" thus triggering say Article 5 of NATO...Actually no one really has the honesty to stand up and define it as then the hackers would test the definition and see if there is a reaction by a nation state...

12 years ago when Kilcullen first used the "ecosystem" we had no data points that we could fall back on and it was hard to generate it so the model fall out of favor...now we have the data points and it is easy to do...

Just a thought...

[OUTLAW 09]

This goes to the question of when is cyber and information warfare true "war"..

When would NATO Article 5 be triggered is it was declared to be "war"...

That is exactly where we are now....I have seen the results and analysis and when the three top GRU Russian state sponsored hacking teams attack you...you are in fact under "attack and in a true sense it is a "kinetic war" as Russia is trying to force a political decision on France...or "bending France to the will of Russia" which is why "physical wars were fought in the past....

Russian state sponsored hacking attacks and influence meddling in the US election went unchallenged thus we see Russia repeating the exact same attack style...

Fancy Bear, Pawn Storm and other Russian hackers reportedly turning to France vote .
https://www.buzzfeed.com/sheerafrenkel

The same attack style from the Russian state sponsored hacking teams is now being seen and has been seen a few months ago now in Germany ahead of that major election....


“I think some of this activity is even happening today, some of these spear phishing emails are going out today,” said Ed Cabrera, chief cybersecurity officer at Trend Micro. In one screenshot Trend Micro provided to BuzzFeed News, the hackers appeared to be targeting the Konrad Adenueu Stiftung, a German think tank which is affiliated with the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) Party of German Chancellor Angela Merkel. The hackers set up multiple internet addresses that mirrored those of the think tank to trick people into entering their passwords and other information

I will take this idea of triggering Article 5 in another direction......

Yesterday...the main Russian evening TV announcer basically in Russian stated that the French election could be won for Le Pen IF there was another terrorist attack...which we even saw Trump inject into the race with his tweet as well....and if we really looked closely at Trump his support for Le Pen goes actually deeper....than a tweet......

In January, Marine Le Pen held a fundraiser for her presidential campaign... at Trump Tower.
https://euobserver.com/elections/137613#

SO if in fact there is another terror attack and the French can trace it back to Russia....WOULD then NATO Article 5 be triggered?

An interesting question is it not?

[OUTLAW 09]

Bill..I said this morning that the Russians really do believe we the US are waging a non linear against them........

Nice to see that their TASS media outlet agrees with me.....
http://tass.com/politics/942643

Kremlin advisor reveals 'cure for US aggression'
Russian Politics & Diplomacy
April 21, 19:22 UTC+3

Putin's advisor also believes that Donald Trump is just "doing what the ruling elite expects him to do"




Fun fact: Glazev is a paid member of Malofeev's NGO. Malofeev bankrolled & tried to deliver coup in Montenegro. Extremely strong evidence held by Montenegro with them requesting an Interpol arrest warrant for Malofeev....

NOTE...Reuters recently reported that the USIC had two key documents from this Malofeev NGO that were the actual plans for the hacking and influence operations conducted by Russia against the US election adamently denied by Russian FM....and that they were signed off on by Putin....

Katehon 2nd member Glazev is a figure in #FrolovLeaks, commands active hybrid war branch frm Orthodox Church side against ukraine

Head of #Russian Institute of CIS Zatulin, in Jan 2013, writes a memo using terms "Sacred Crimea & Novorossiya"
https://informnapalm.org/de/frolovleaks-vi-und-morgen-kam-der-krieg/
Only in German and or Russian

That memo, one year and one month prior to Crimean annexation, ends up on desk of Glazev, Putin advisor on developments in CIS.

Ukrainian Cyber Alliance (UCA) hacktivists shared with InformNapalm a massive data dump from the mailbox of Kirill Frolov, Vice-Director of the Institute for CIS Countries, spokesman of the Union of Orthodox Citizens and ROC expert....

Russian response was initially that it was all "fake" but in the end admitted he had been indeed hacked BUT by the CIA.....

https://informnapalm.org/en/frolovleaks-church-going-kremlin-influence-expert-in-ukraine-episode-1/

https://informnapalm.org/en/frolovleaks-anathema-as-instrument-of-influence-on-the-ukrainian-politics-episode-ii/

https://informnapalm.org/en/frolovleaks-church-scheming-episode-3/

https://informnapalm.org/en/frolovleaks-goebbels-patriarch-recruitment-ukrainian-generals-baptism-fire-syria-episode-iv/

https://informnapalm.org/31475-frolovleaks-pussy-riot-epizod-v/
Only in Russian and or Ukrainian

https://informnapalm.org/de/frolovleaks-vi-und-morgen-kam-der-krieg/
Only in German

NOTE...the UCA has also hacked into the email account of the Putin's personal adivsor to the Russian mercenaries in eastern Ukraine Surkov WHICH the US is now trying to open a back channel to by Trump's appointing of "WH special advisor" which does not need Congressional approval as a way to finally establish a back channel link between Putin and Trump.....

Again Russia claimed this hack was done after they first stated Surkov had no email account...by again the CIA.....they defintely were not about to admit UCA pulled it off....

Russian political warfare hard at work.....

BTW...it is extremley important to understand the Russian foreign spy service (SVR) chief who replaced Malefeev......and how he fits now into Russian political warfare.....as a mjaor player as he is very close to Putin....
http://russia-insider.com/en/putin-a...ine-again/5433

Further information on the UCA's hacks of Surkov Putin's personal man in eastern Ukraine.......

Surkov leaks show Russia funds and manages conflict in Ukraine http://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrainealert/russia-funds-and-manages-conflict-in-ukraine-leaks-show#…

[OUTLAW 09]

CRITICAL to understand this new Russian hack methodology......


Everyone needs to get their hands on the Micro Trend study of the Russian hacking attacks on the French president candidate Marcon.....

Russian hacking group Fancy Bear is using a new type of cyberattack to target Macron that's never been seen before
http://www.businessinsider.com/what-is-fancy-bear-russian-hacking-group-2017-4#

It has now been seen in other hacks in the last two weeks not focused only on the French.....


"They're taking advantage of vulnerabilities in cloud-based email services like Gmail to trick people into downloading fake applications, and compromising their inboxes without even having to steal a password."

Believe me cloud services are not as secure as the providers claim they are.....

[OUTLAW 09]

How @MFA_Russia spreads #fakenews. 3 @Twitter a/c's have 12,000+ fake followers. Some promo prostitution & rape porn
https://youtu.be/Xzg6lWa65es

[OUTLAW 09]

Montenegro Coup Suspect Linked to Russian-backed “Ultranationalist” Organisation via @bellingcat
https://www.bellingcat.com/news/uk-and-europe/2017/04/25/montenegro-coup-suspect-linked-russian-backed-ultranationalist-organisation/#

BUT WAIT..this goes exactly to what I have been saying about Russian trolls and US proTrump trollers.....they work together....

Breaking: Suspect in Putin backed coup attempt in Montenegro associated with pro Trump activists.

[OUTLAW 09]

Identified proRussian troll.....

Kremlin Trolls CI‏#@KremlinTrolls

=>@noclador heavily edited 2010 Polish AF plane crash page: removing refs to explosives that could implicate Russia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:2010_Polish_Air_Force_Tu-154_crash&diff=prev&oldid=525287253#…

[OUTLAW 09]

Here's a good example of how Russian media (Kremlin) spread fake news (lied) about events in #Ukraine #Donbass
https://youtu.be/TIyaTukjcvs

[OUTLAW 09]

Time and time again, #NATO keeps on pointing out the #facts when #misinformation is being spread. The list is long
https://goo.gl/H2X5Ad

[OUTLAW 09]

Russia Seeks to Influence European Politics Through Youth Wings of Far-Right and Far-Left Parties via @bellingcat
https://www.bellingcat.com/news/uk-and-europe/2017/04/27/russia-seeks-influence-european-politics-working-youth-wings-far-right-far-left-parties/#

[OUTLAW 09]

Russian FM spox speaking just now : "We ask them (the West) to give an example of Russian fake news."

She says no one can think of any.

[OUTLAW 09]

US cybersecurity firm says China tried to hack group linked to US missile defense system in South Korea
http://www.cnn.com/2017/04/27/asia/china-south-korea-thaad-hack/#

[OUTLAW 09]

Russia foreign intelligence chief Naryshkin: “The battle for the minds will become more intense & cover new areas"
https://www.rt.com/politics/386364-russia-west-information-war-naryshkin/#

[OUTLAW 09]

Dept. of @ENERGY ‘Liberty Eclipse’ shows just how bad a power grid cyberattack could be
http://fifthdomain.com/2017/04/21/does-liberty-eclipse-shows-potential-effects-of-cyberattack-on-u-s-power-grid/#

[OUTLAW 09]

Russia’s Neo-Feudal Capitalism
https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/russia-neofeudal-capitalism-putin-by-anders-aslund-2017-04#

[Azor]

From WOTR: https://warontherocks.com/2017/04/in-his-own-words-vladimir-putins-foreign-policy-analyzed/

I tend to agree more with Kofman, and I regard Putin as an opportunist and tactician without a grand strategy or vision. I disagree with the authors that cooperation to fight Daesh is possible, given Russia's actions in Syria and now Afghanistan.


According to Greg Miller of The Washington Post, Donald Trump and his advisers differ on how to approach Vladimir Putin. While Trump tweets that “[e]verything will work out fine between the U.S.A. and Russia,” and looks forward to “lasting peace,” his advisors air scathing assessments of Russian policies.

Indeed, Putin has confounded and confused U.S. presidents and their advisors, intelligence analysts, and academics since his unlikely rise to power. He has been portrayed variously as a master chess player, a reckless egoist, a business-like statesman, and a street thug.

Here at War on the Rocks, Joshua Rovner and Michael Kofman have disagreed on the wisdom and clarity of Putin’s grand design, and indeed whether any such thing can be said to exist. “Putin is a bad strategist,” Rovner writes. “He does not understand the relationship between military violence and political objectives,” and his “ham-fisted” seizure of Crimea, amongst other blunders, has “almost ruined” the chances of Russia’s return to great power status.

Kofman disagrees, arguing that Putin is playing a weak hand — as the leader of a “regional power in structural decline” — with some skill. It’s too soon to judge the ultimate success of his challenge to the rules-based international system, but Putin has made progress on this score, and seems secure at home. The Russian leader understands strategy perfectly well, in Kofman’s view. The real problem is that America doesn’t understand Putin.

To try to cut through the confusion, we analyzed every word President Putin has ever said on the major issues of foreign policy — a big data approach to the vexing problem of understanding one man.

We use a technique known as operational code analysis. The origins of this approach lie in U.S. government efforts to understand the behavior of the Bolsheviks after World War II. Nathan Leites, a Soviet expert and sociologist, posited that the regime was acting based upon a set of rules and political maxims rooted in their ideology and revolutionary experiences: a Bolshevik operational code. Alexander George saw the potential for the approach to be useful beyond the single case of the Bolsheviks. More recently, the technique has been refined into a rigorous framework for the content analysis of public speech by computer algorithm.

In this modern form, operational code analysis involves isolating the imagery of power and control deployed by leaders as they talk about the political world. Statements a leader makes about other actors and their own approach are categorized as hostile (punishments, threats, or words of opposition) or cooperative (appeals, promises, or rewards.) By aggregating a large number of these statements, the approach produces a read-out of how the leader expresses their beliefs about international relations. Public speech is taken to reveal, at least to some extent, the world as it exists in the mind of the speaker.

To fuel the analysis, we collected Putin’s speeches and interviews about foreign policy from the Kremlin’s archive. With our analysis based upon over one million words spoken by Putin, we think this is the most extensive study of the Russian president undertaken so far.

What we found was surprising: On most issues of foreign policy, Putin scores as a fairly mainstream world leader. To reach this conclusion, we compared Putin’s rhetoric to other states-people of his era: leaders of the great powers on the one hand — such as Xi Jinping, Barack Obama, and Angela Merkel — and leaders of rogue states on the other — such as Saddam Hussein, Bashar al-Assad, and Mahmood Ahmadinejad. We established that great power leaders talk about international politics differently than rogue state leaders, and found that Putin spoke (and by implication, thought) more like the standard great power leader than the rogue leader.

Except for one thing: his obsession with control. Putin talks about his own and Russia’s control over events to an extent rarely seen, scoring consistently above the normal levels of other political leaders. All politicians want to stay in charge, and all states-people like to think of their country as shaping international affairs, but Putin represents an extreme case.

Combing the biographical literature for explanations, we were drawn to the hypothesis advanced by Mary Elise Sarotte, Ben Judah, and Fiona Hill, which suggests that Putin’s firsthand witnessing of the collapse of Soviet power in East Germany left a lasting mark on his worldview. As a KGB officer stationed in Dresden, he felt personally threatened by crowds protesting the East German regime, and appalled that Soviet power was not employed to protect the KGB building: “I got the feeling then that the country [the Soviet Union] no longer existed. That it had disappeared. It was clear that the Union was ailing. And it had a terminal disease without a cure — a paralysis of power.” We are convinced that avoiding a similar paralysis of Russian power is the central motivation of Putin’s international strategy.

While our techniques generate no direct measure of strategic competence — and so we cannot definitively settle the Rovner-Kofman debate — we can say that Putin’s strategy appears protean and multifaceted. We found little evidence that Putin is a great chess player with a consistently pursued grand design. Instead, he is more of a shameless opportunist. Our data supports the views of Gleb Pavlosky, Putin’s longtime associate, that “Putin is good at tactics. He has a vision. But there is no strategy in between.”

Those who see him as a master grand strategist argue that he has always been driven by opposition to NATO — a classic realist reading of how a Russian leader should think about the encroachment of a competitor military alliance into his sphere of influence. We did indeed find that his recent public speech about NATO, and the Western powers more generally, was hostile.

But this is a recent development, dating to the crisis that led to the ouster of former Ukrainian president and Putin ally Victor Yanukovych. During the early to mid-2000s when his economy was riding high on the oil market boom, he expressed a moderately cooperative attitude toward NATO, the United States, and the European Union.

In short, our analysis is more supportive of the views of Russia specialists such as Michael McFaul, Kimberly Marten, and Lilia Shevtsova — that Putin is an opportunist who deploys anti-Western rhetoric as it suits his tactical purposes — than those of John Mearsheimer, who sees Putin as a master strategist driven by a consistently anti-NATO worldview.

So what? We think, first, that systematic analysis of public speech is a useful technique, providing copious open-source intelligence that can give a read-out on the puzzling behaviors of inscrutable leaders. But our approach has inherent limitations. If Kofman is correct, then Western confusion about Putin is already the result of taking his statements too literally — an error we will merely have confounded with our content analysis. Putin’s comments, Kofman asserts, are “not official declarations of policy, but instead [play] a supporting theatrical role to whatever strategy is being implemented.”

While we do not agree that public speech contains only or primarily misleading information, it is important to remember that our dataset almost certainly includes some disingenuous speech and excludes transcripts of private deliberations and records of secret operations. That is merely to acknowledge the obvious: that no one approach to understanding a world leader’s thinking is sufficient on its own. The work of integrating multiple sources of intelligence and applying policy judgements must still be done.

Nonetheless, there are policy implications to this analysis of Putin. First, he has behaved for the majority of his time in office as the rational leader of a great power. Throwing up one’s hands and declaring him outside of the mainstream is to underestimate his normalcy, or, put another way, to overestimate the virtue and cooperative instincts of the standard leader.

Second, our data show that Putin’s approach varies by issue. It should be possible to work with him on some policies, like fighting ISIL (his rhetoric on terrorism is astonishingly violent and brutal), while segmenting others. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s comments at his Senate confirmation hearing — that the United States should cooperate with Putin based on common interests and be steadfast in defense otherwise — seem to us to be essentially correct.

Finally, given the centrality of control to Putin’s formative political experiences, and its prevalence in his public rhetoric, it is important to recognize that the disintegration of order and threats to his own power are red-lines for Putin. On the one hand, this suggests being cautious about making any move that looks like it targets the basis of his authority. On the other, should coercive diplomacy be necessary, Putin’s fear of losing control represents the sharpest stick with which to poke him.

[OUTLAW 09]

As is with many Russian analysis articles and yes they looked at thousands of words...that is in fact the core problem.....

In the Cold War days we had individuals who spent a life time in understanding the Soviet/Communist "ways"...commonly called "Kremlinologists" who were also solid Russian historians and Russian linguists who understood the fine nuances of the Russian language....

They are no longer there for us to fall back on...thus everyone is swimming as basically Russia fell to the way side in studies after the fall of the Wall and the break up of the Soviet Union.

Example...take a look at the numbers of Russian and even German linguists trained for the US military during that period..heck even German was no longer taught...

I would point to the simple fact that the "Russian words" are in fact a form of disinformation and camouflage designed to create a smokescreen from which to operate.....

If one took literally all Russian "words" and then compared them against Russian "actions" since 2003 you actually see a disconnect between the "words and actions"....

There have been exactly four major Russian articles ...two on FP doctrine and two on military doctrine that actually had been the underpinning of what Russia has been doing since 2003...why they are overlooked is interesting....

The next item that the authors totally missed is the ability of both the SU and now Russia to follow a longer term effort once a leadership position has been decided..something totally foreign to the way the US does business with a Presidential election every four years thus FP changes and or the continuation of existing policy until the next President comes in..then sudden and usually complete changes of directions.

Here is the advantage of an authoritarian system...

Next problem they did not address is the internal power structures of the old SU vs the new Russia....in some ways if one looks closely there has been little difference...but there is as the power players are much stronger now and are much more vocal in their defense of their individual power structures...take the Russian Orthodox Church..viewed under the Soviets as undermined by the KGB and distrusted by Russians and a haven for military draft dodgers is now a major FP player both internally and externally...and carries a major voice in all political over the border Russian decisions as well as setting the ideological stance inside Russia...

Same goes for the Russian transnational gangs that were largely controlled and used by the KGB, but now have their own internal and external power foundations and are an accepted part of Russian decision making....and used to extend Russian overseas reach especially in the areas of black money...black ops and hacking....

So to sum it up....the authors focus was to narrow and totally missed what is ongoing .....follow the "actions" not the "words"....

You will notice that during the SU their actions were far more controlled and measured actually far more conservative in nature...now Russian actions are not...they are used as a political war driver...

In some aspects I miss that simple fact that the writers totally overlooked the Putin single driver right now..a political war against what Putin views to be neoliberalism in all it's forms as represented by the US.....that he has voiced a number of times since Crimea..why that was missed in their "words review" is also interesting.....

All one level below actual military conflict thus stymieing the US ability to counter it because we are simply not good at countering cyber and information warfare even though we the US drove the internet and social media.....and actually he are really bad at countering political warfare when it is directed against US....in the days of the Cold War that would not have happened....

As a set of examples to look at are the "words" used by Russian in their defense of we did not shot down MH17 and the rebels used sarin....check "their actual actions" against their "words".....

This paragraph actually sums up the failure of this article.....


Second, our data show that Putin’s approach varies by issue. It should be possible to work with him on some policies, like fighting ISIL (his rhetoric on terrorism is astonishingly violent and brutal), while segmenting others. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s comments at his Senate confirmation hearing — that the United States should cooperate with Putin based on common interests and be steadfast in defense otherwise — seem to us to be essentially correct.


Let's take the Putin "words" on fighting terrorism against his current "actions" inside Syria where if we again look at his "words" in the UNGA he stated we are going into Syria to fight terrorism...ie IS/AQ.

BUT WAIT...what were then Russian "actions"....completely the opposite.....

Or can the authors actually state that Assad with massive Putin military support has been totally focused on the destruction inside Syria of both IS and AQ.....ABSOLUTELY not....would be the answer if they were honest with themselves.

Thus Russian "actions" completely contradicted the entire article built around the analysis of Russian "words".....

Then......

As a KGB officer stationed in Dresden, he felt personally threatened by crowds protesting the East German regime, and appalled that Soviet power was not employed to protect the KGB building: “I got the feeling then that the country [the Soviet Union] no longer existed. That it had disappeared. It was clear that the Union was ailing. And it had a terminal disease without a cure — a paralysis of power.” We are convinced that avoiding a similar paralysis of Russian power is the central motivation of Putin’s international strategy.

I would argue that if we look at every move Putin has made since them...it has one central goal....restore Russian power and influence to that of an equal superpower and eliminate the US unipolar power position....

The Russian political warfare has three distinct and clear geo political goals.....which have if we look closely Russian "actions" in support to those geo political goals has not wavered a single millimeter since 2003....

1. damage and discredit NATO
2. damage and discredit EU
3. totally disconnect US from Europe and ME

Apparently the authors overlooked the repeated statements by both Russian FM Lavrov and Putin since 2004 that envisioned a geo political economic/political zone running from the coastline of Portugal to the Russian Far East...ALL under the sphere of Russian influence....it is there and it must have been overlooked by the authors....BTW also repeated after their military annexation of Crimea....

So again "did his actions" since then actually match his "words" during the same period?

[OUTLAW 09]

Azor...again referencing your posted article...does this look like a lot of "Russian words" or outright "Russian actions" which were not covered in your posted article......

Russian-controlled telecom hijacks financial services’ Internet traffic. Visa, MasterCard, Verisign all affected
https://arstechnica.com/?p=1085633

KEY..Russian controlled telecom...not some rouge group..person or company...BUT hardcore Russian government controlled.......

So again..."actions" trump "words"...

BTW...in my former days with Cisco Systems as a main trouble shooting engineer BGP just "does not suddenly hiccup and go someplace else without a major PER HUMAN hand generated change".....


On Wednesday, large chunks of network traffic belonging to MasterCard, Visa, and more than two dozen other financial services companies were briefly routed through a Russian government-controlled telecom under unexplained circumstances that renew lingering questions about the trust and reliability of some of the most sensitive Internet communications.
Anomalies in the border gateway protocol—which routes large-scale amounts of traffic among Internet backbones, ISPs, and other large networks—are common and usually the result of human error. While it's possible Wednesday's five- to seven-minute hijack of 36 large network blocks may also have been inadvertent, the high concentration of technology and financial services companies affected made the incident "curious" to engineers at network monitoring service BGPmon. What's more, the way some of the affected networks were redirected indicated their underlying prefixes had been manually inserted into BGP tables, most likely by someone at Rostelecom, the Russian government-controlled telecom that improperly announced ownership of the blocks.

We were watching this from the European side and it definitely was a Russian generated state sponsored "hiccup"...

Interestingly ...was this a "not so subtle signal to the West that Russia can disrupt all major western financial internet backbone traffic when it wants to in advance of more possible sanctions against them"?

In my world....yes it was.....

[OUTLAW 09]

This is exactly why the US cannot and is not capable of responding to Russian political warfare and countering Russian cyber and information warfare....

"The world is moving too fast for the institutions we created in the 20th century." - General Jones

That is why social media and IT security companies are in fact leading the pushback...not the US government or it's agencies...and that includes DoD/DoS...

[Azor]

As is with many Russian analysis articles and yes they looked at thousands of words...that is in fact the core problem...I would point to the simple fact that the "Russian words" are in fact a form of disinformation and camouflage designed to create a smokescreen from which to operate...If one took literally all Russian "words" and then compared them against Russian "actions" since 2003 you actually see a disconnect between the "words and actions"...

I don’t disagree.

However, all leaders tend to say one thing and then do another. For instance, despite Obama’s speech in Cairo in 2009, he actually disengaged from the Muslim world and pursued a rather ruthless strategy of containment and attrition in failed Muslim states with no real efforts made at reconstruction or development.


The next item that the authors totally missed is the ability of both the SU and now Russia to follow a longer term effort once a leadership position has been decided…something totally foreign to the way the US does business with a Presidential election every four years thus FP changes and or the continuation of existing policy until the next President comes in…then sudden and usually complete changes of directions. Here is the advantage of an authoritarian system...

Yet conversely, such authoritarian states see patterns in the chaos of democratic foreign policy. To Moscow and Beijing, Operation Odyssey Dawn in 2011 is merely a continuation of Operation Allied Force in 1999: NATO being used as an offensive military alliance in pursuit of American imperialism. They do not believe in or understand the dynamics of democracy, much as they doubtless believe that spontaneous peaceful protests never occur without a hidden foreign hand.


Next problem they did not address is the internal power structures of the old SU vs the new Russia....in some ways if one looks closely there has been little difference...but there is as the power players are much stronger now and are much more vocal in their defense of their individual power structures...take the Russian Orthodox Church…viewed under the Soviets as undermined by the KGB and distrusted by Russians and a haven for military draft dodgers is now a major FP player both internally and externally...and carries a major voice in all political over the border Russian decisions as well as setting the ideological stance inside Russia...Same goes for the Russian transnational gangs that were largely controlled and used by the KGB, but now have their own internal and external power foundations and are an accepted part of Russian decision making...and used to extend Russian overseas reach especially in the areas of black money...black ops and hacking...

Agreed. Russian power is now based upon a dynamic, fluid and inherently unstable blend of various state and non-state actors and special interests. It is difficult to say whether this fusion has strengthened or weakened the state. What happens when the consensus breaks down?


You will notice that during the SU their actions were far more controlled and measured actually far more conservative in nature...now Russian actions are not...they are used as a political war driver...In some aspects I miss that simple fact that the writers totally overlooked the Putin single driver right now…a political war against what Putin views to be neoliberalism in all its forms as represented by the US...that he has voiced a number of times since Crimea…why that was missed in their "words review" is also interesting...

This is where it becomes clear that Putin is no grand strategist. He should have known from the outset that cooperation with the West was impossible, because free, democratic, prosperous and secure societies were a threat-in-being to the unfree and undemocratic society that Putin wanted to build on the assumption that such a society was necessary for prosperity and security. Putin’s early flirtations with the West were opportunistic and tactical. He finally realized that conflict was inevitable and expressed his concerns at Munich in 2007, using his words. He later conveyed his concerns with action in Georgia in 2008.

I do believe that Putin was wrong-footed by the Western reaction to the Russo-Georgian War, particularly the media portrayal of Russia as an invader and war criminal, whereas Georgia was fighting to uphold Western values. By the time that the dust had settled and T’bilisi’s less-than-innocent role as instigator became clear, months had passed and the West no longer cared whether Georgian tanks had fired into basements or the Georgians had used cluster munitions. I believe that this public relations disaster in 2008 was the impetus for the well-oiled propaganda machine that Putin subsequently built.


Or can the authors actually state that Assad with massive Putin military support has been totally focused on the destruction inside Syria of both IS and AQ...

Indeed. I noted this major flaw in my introduction to the article.


Apparently the authors overlooked the repeated statements by both Russian FM Lavrov and Putin since 2004 that envisioned a geo political economic/political zone running from the coastline of Portugal to the Russian Far East...ALL under the sphere of Russian influence...it is there and it must have been overlooked by the authors...BTW also repeated after their military annexation of Crimea...

I doubt that the talk of forming a Eurasian union including Europe, Russia, Central Asia and China will ever lead to anything. The cultural, linguistic, geographic and political barriers are simply too high. Russian isolationists compete with "Europeanists" and "Eurasianists", whilst the EU and SCO steadily advance. How can the “Third Rome” possibly compete with Brussels and Beijing? In addition to these two fronts, there is also a southern Muslim front...

Currently, Russia sees the western threat as more immediate than the eastern one. Arguably, Moscow would believe itself in conflict with the EU and NATO regardless of whether it sought to re-establish its former empire or whether it sought to be surrounded by neutral buffer states. Yet vacuums get filled and international relations is never static, so if the EU and NATO were dismantled tomorrow, Russia would inexorably fill the void. Therefore, one can conclude that Russia’s actions are at once defensive and offensive.

[OUTLAW 09]

I don’t disagree.

However, all leaders tend to say one thing and then do another. For instance, despite Obama’s speech in Cairo in 2009, he actually disengaged from the Muslim world and pursued a rather ruthless strategy of containment and attrition in failed Muslim states with no real efforts made at reconstruction or development.



Yet conversely, such authoritarian states see patterns in the chaos of democratic foreign policy. To Moscow and Beijing, Operation Odyssey Dawn in 2011 is merely a continuation of Operation Allied Force in 1999: NATO being used as an offensive military alliance in pursuit of American imperialism. They do not believe in or understand the dynamics of democracy, much as they doubtless believe that spontaneous peaceful protests never occur without a hidden foreign hand.



Agreed. Russian power is now based upon a dynamic, fluid and inherently unstable blend of various state and non-state actors and special interests. It is difficult to say whether this fusion has strengthened or weakened the state. What happens when the consensus breaks down?



This is where it becomes clear that Putin is no grand strategist. He should have known from the outset that cooperation with the West was impossible, because free, democratic, prosperous and secure societies were a threat-in-being to the unfree and undemocratic society that Putin wanted to build on the assumption that such a society was necessary for prosperity and security. Putin’s early flirtations with the West were opportunistic and tactical. He finally realized that conflict was inevitable and expressed his concerns at Munich in 2007, using his words. He later conveyed his concerns with action in Georgia in 2008.

I do believe that Putin was wrong-footed by the Western reaction to the Russo-Georgian War, particularly the media portrayal of Russia as an invader and war criminal, whereas Georgia was fighting to uphold Western values. By the time that the dust had settled and T’bilisi’s less-than-innocent role as instigator became clear, months had passed and the West no longer cared whether Georgian tanks had fired into basements or the Georgians had used cluster munitions. I believe that this public relations disaster in 2008 was the impetus for the well-oiled propaganda machine that Putin subsequently built.



Indeed. I noted this major flaw in my introduction to the article.



I doubt that the talk of forming a Eurasian union including Europe, Russia, Central Asia and China will ever lead to anything. The cultural, linguistic, geographic and political barriers are simply too high. Russian isolationists compete with "Europeanists" and "Eurasianists", whilst the EU and SCO steadily advance. How can the “Third Rome” possibly compete with Brussels and Beijing? In addition to these two fronts, there is also a southern Muslim front...

Currently, Russia sees the western threat as more immediate than the eastern one. Arguably, Moscow would believe itself in conflict with the EU and NATO regardless of whether it sought to re-establish its former empire or whether it sought to be surrounded by neutral buffer states. Yet vacuums get filled and international relations is never static, so if the EU and NATO were dismantled tomorrow, Russia would inexorably fill the void. Therefore, one can conclude that Russia’s actions are at once defensive and offensive.

Azor...have you ever noticed you use the BUT concept way to often?

I will repeat it again..."actions" speak "volumes"...Russian "words" have never translated themselves into "actions" until such time as the "actions occurred first "....then the "words" are used to misled...misinform...are lies...or fake news and or propaganda.....

[OUTLAW 09]

Macron campaign bans #Russia|n media from events because Russian state media spreads ‘false information,’.
http://www.politico.eu/article/emmanuel-macron-bans-russia-media-fake-news/#

MORE Russian fake news against Ukraine

RU investig committee accused UA exPM Yatsenuk in murder of 30 RU soldiers, wounded 13 w/AK.
pic.twitter.com/ruaLYeMmi5

Interesting thought about Russian propaganda...fake news and disinformation efforts.....

It isn't compulsive liars that are the problem. It's compulsive believers.

[OUTLAW 09]

EU Mythbusters
✔
@EUvsDisinfo
"Evil West" preparing a war: disinformation about NATO on Russian State TV. #DisinfoReview:
http://mailchi.mp/euvsdisinfo/syria-attack-a-predictable-disinformation-strategy-disinformation-review-879533#

[OUTLAW 09]

For those that deal with the Russian state sponsored hacking group APT 28 which has been involved in the DNC hacking....and lately against the French Presidential candidate Marcon.

For those that actively track Russian hacking events...this is a highly interesting read that can in fact be easily replicated as a defense mechanism to APT 28...intrusions.

http://securityaffairs.co/wordpress/58435/apt/cracking-apt28-traffic.html

Security experts from security firm Redsocks published an interesting report on how to crack APT28 traffic in a few seconds.


Introduction
APT28 is a hacking group involved in many recent cyber incidents. The most recent attack allegedly attributed to this group is the one to French presidential candidate#Emmanuel Macron’s campaign. Incident response to this Advanced Persistent Threats (APT) and damage limitation heavily relies on network traffic investigation.
In late 2016, Redsocks security identified one expired domain attributed to APT28. Our effort to sinkhole APT28 based on using this domain was impeded by the encrypted communication channel. Although many published white papers concerning APT28 such as ESET mentions RC4 encryption algorithm, they do not dig into the details of the used key and the details of APT28 implementation of RC4; whether the key is static and breakable. In this report, we aim to reveal the result of our comprehensive dynamic analysis of x-agent malware towards decrypting its traffic. We started our investigation by using one of the APT28 droppers (see Table 1).

[OUTLAW 09]

I am posting this as it addresses Russian botnets and a particular Russian botnet believed to be tied to the Russian hacking of the DNC and meddling in the US election.....

The Russian hacker Petr Levashov has been indicted in connection with the infamous Kelihos Botnet that was recently dismantled.
It isn’t a good period for Russian cyber criminals, last week#Roman Valeryevich Seleznev, aka “Track2”,#was sentenced to 27 years in prison, he was#convicted of causing $170 million in damage by hacking into point-of-sale systems.
Today the United States Department of Justice announced that Peter Yuryevich Levashov#(36) (also known as Petr Levashov, Peter Severa, Petr Severa and Sergey Astakhov) has been arrested a couple of weeks ago in Barcelona#for his involvement with the infamous Kelihos botnet.

According to research conducted by CheckPoint Security, the global malware landscape was characterized by some interesting changes in the first part of 2017.

The Kelihos botnet climbed to the top position, while the Conficker worm dropped to fourth on the chart of malware.

I include this article on the potential tie in of the Kelihos botnet to the alleged Trump Russian ties...this particular journalist has been posting article after article and has not been proven wrong yet with what her intel sources are passing to her....
https://patribotics.blog/2017/04/29/sources-boris-epshteyn-paid-russian-hackers-for-both-team-trump-and-fsb/

She broke the very first story on the issuing of a FISA Warrant concerning someone who was potentially dealing with Russians and inside the Trump WH....and took heavy hits for it until the FBI confirmed in fact she was correct....since them her postings are getting tighter and tighter on verified intel source information....

The individual named in this article was actually deeply involved in the Trump campaign......transition and in the WH and then as more reports came out about potential Russian connections "he suddenly and unexplained left his WH employment to do something else".....

[OUTLAW 09]

It's not just the effect of propaganda, it's the effect of not countering it.

[OUTLAW 09]

How Much Did Moscow Pay for Destruction of Ukrainian Insurgent Army Memorial in Hruszowice, Poland?
https://informnapalm.org/en/much-moscow-pay-destruction-ukrainian-insurgent-army-memorial-hruszowice-poland/#

[OUTLAW 09]

Spot a bot guide
Fake pic
User name full of numbers
Auto-tweets
Spamming Kremlin critical article
New

https://twitter.com/viktori27008845/status/858232141490073600

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Referencing the active measures elements of fake news.....

Facebook’s white paper on active measures is a significant step in the right direction for a number of reasons …
https://fbnewsroomus.files.wordpress.com/2017/04/facebook-and-information-operations-v1.pdf#…

Facebook acknowledges “governments & non-state actors” exploit its platform, then conceptualise problem *publicly* in order to tackle it.

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Reference Iranian state sponsored hacking yesterday of 129 Israeli targets......

Remarkable: Iran (OilRig) apparently re-used an NSA exploit dumped by Shadowbrokers to target Israeli gov, inc, edu

http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/1.785839#…

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For those that deal with the Russian state sponsored hacking group APT 28 which has been involved in the DNC hacking....and lately against the French Presidential candidate Marcon.

For those that actively track Russian hacking events...this is a highly interesting read that can in fact be easily replicated as a defense mechanism to APT 28...intrusions.

http://securityaffairs.co/wordpress/58435/apt/cracking-apt28-traffic.html

Security experts from security firm Redsocks published an interesting report on how to crack APT28 traffic in a few seconds.

Reference APT 28 hacking of the Danish MoD.......

APT28 phishing site for Danish military looked very convincing. Well done.

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Major Russian troll......

Within 20 mins of Putin critic Voronenkov shot dead in cold blood, @GicAriana was smearing him, making provocations (w/ Kremlin help)
Out Kremlin Trolls, they immediately denounce the source as the "real" Kremlin Troll.

This is Chekism 101 at it's best....



Kremlin Trolls CI @KremlinTrolls
Russia's Silent War Against The West
#KremlinTrolls
http://blogs.ft.com/beyond-brics/2015/04/15/russias-silent-war-against-the-west/#
Sorry behind paywall...

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Critical comment...the core question is then if they did in fact take large amounts of internal data and emails WHY was it not released as they did on the DNC/Clinton?

FBI's Comey Says Russia Also 'Harvested' Data From Republicans
https://n.pr/2id7QDx

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CRITICAL and I do not understand why this fact has not been far more in the front page news....

30 million Facebook users had their data harvested by Trump campaign affiliate
https://interc.pt/2mTAwIT

There is an inherent danger of "big data" companies mining all of social media and then building profiles on each end user....extending way past privacy issues...

This particular "big data" company Cambridge Analytica is deeply tied now to the ongoing FBI investigation into Trump WH connections to Russia...and is tied to a number of indicators that their illegal collection of personal data was misused by the Russian influence operation during the election campaign....

[OUTLAW 09]

The US Takes On the World in NATO’s Cyber War Games in Tallinn
https://www.wired.com/2017/04/us-takes-world-natos-cyber-war-games/?mbid=social_twitter_onsiteshare#… via @WIRED

In this cyber war game, the Czechs won. The US came in 12th—a step up from last year's dead last.

And many readers here wonder why I keep repeating over and over..we are in fact losing to the Russian cyber and information war directed straight at the US..

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Gamers, Bots, and Memes: Understanding closed networks & their Impact on the #Frenchelection
http://bit.ly/2qg6e0T
#

[OUTLAW 09]

Milo Yiannopoulos announces formation of media company aimed at "the destruction of political correctness"
http://hill.cm/oFURwUG

Milo is/was a major player in the alt right ie white nationalist social media movement and was often carried on Breitbart.com and Infowars....

He had been scheduled to be the main speaker at CPAC this year but in a TV interview he was caught defending sex between older men and young boys which got him tossed as the main CPAC speaker and he was then fired by Breitbart.com....

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Russia's state-owned Channel One really jumps the shark with this heavily anti-Macron, pro-Le Pen report on Sunday news summary show.

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One has to wonder why Americans tend to buy into the Russian info warfare narrative.....

Preston has high level Russian biz ties, defends Putin & tainted Russia election, but said US election had violations bc of Obama sign

[OUTLAW 09]

One has to wonder why Americans tend to buy into the Russian info warfare narrative.....

Preston has high level Russian biz ties, defends Putin & tainted Russia election, but said US election had violations bc of Obama sign

This is a standard Russian info warfare narrative and I find it interesting that Preston uses it...