Analysis of the Shadow Brokers release and mitigation with Windows 10 virtualization-based security
https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/mmpc/2017/06/1
Shadow Brokers is a Russian state sponsored hacking group....
Challenge any SWJ reader or commenter to state "all US social media companies" are fully and completely under control of Americans.....
Twitter suspends Al-Jazeera Arabic amid Qatar dispute. Among its top investors is Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal.
http://www.nydailynews.com/newswires...662?cid=bitly#
BTW...Russian trolling in Twitter over eastern Ukraine, Syria and now with Trump never seems to be under control by Twitter Support....spamming of accounts by automated Russian botnets is rampart inside Twitter and Twitter when asked by Russian trolls to block specific twitter accounts complies....
WHY is that????
The second largest investor into Twitter is a Russian oligarch to the tune of 800M USDs.....
Analysis of the Shadow Brokers release and mitigation with Windows 10 virtualization-based security
https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/mmpc/2017/06/1
Shadow Brokers is a Russian state sponsored hacking group....
The Underground Propaganda Machine - cyber experts expose the black market driving fake news.
https://www.byline.com/column/67/article/1728#
Last edited by OUTLAW 09; 06-17-2017 at 11:20 AM.
Fake news is everywhere. Why? Because it’s unbelievably cheap -
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/6...m_medium=post#
RAND Corporation
✔
@RANDCorporation
New report: DoD should establish clear policies on the use of #SocialMedia analysis to support its information ops.
http://r.rand.org/4pd1
Mark Galeotti: The ‘Trump Dossier,’ or How Russia Helped America Break Itself
From Mark Galeotti at Tablet Magazine: http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news...r-russia-putin
Selected Excerpts:
In many ways, one can blame the so-called Trump Dossier, a collection of often dubious and dramatic allegations about the then-candidate collected by former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele.
In general terms, the dossier may well accurately characterize the U.S. president’s character. The problem is that the details given of Trump’s alleged Russian links were so often questionable and, indeed, open to being disproved. Steele, an agent-runner who had not been back to Russia since the late 1990s, somehow was citing multiple sources with extraordinary access, including senior figures in the Kremlin.
The trouble with the Trump Dossier is that it’s a recognizable product of a specific milieu: If you spend an evening or two in the bars where Moscow’s chattering classes hang out, you’ll hear an equal complement of political tall tales about Putin and his presidential administration.
The kind of gossip that fills the Trump Dossier is common currency in Moscow, even if very little of it has any authority behind it aside from the speaker’s own imagination.
The author of the Trump Dossier, though, appears enthusiastically to have transcribed every bit of tittle-tattle that fit the overarching narrative of a grand Kremlin scheme to elevate Donald Trump to the presidency.
In doing so, the dossier not only fatally overestimated the Kremlin—it also fatally underestimated it. Stock clichés about Russians notwithstanding, Putin is not a chess player. He does not have carefully calculated long-term schemes planned out a dozen moves ahead. He and his people are improvisers and opportunists. They try to create multiple potential points of leverage, never knowing which may prove useful and which not. They take advantage of the fact that they can operate covertly, break the rules, act without worrying about legislative oversight or constitutional niceties.
The suggestion of a cunning conspiracy years in the making is a questionable one: Person after person in Russia’s foreign-policy, national-security, and expert community last year told me there was no chance of Trump being elected. In a telling example of the way members of the Russian establishment mirror-image, assuming that Western democracy is like Russian pseudo-democracy, one airily assured me that “the American establishment would not allow this to happen.”
At the same time, the Kremlin is also realizing it should have been more careful in what it wished for...They now faced a U.S. president who could and would change state policy in unpredictable ways literally overnight, felt no need to telegraph his moves or sound out responses in advance, and had a relatively low threshold for the use of force.
Putin has long capitalized on American restraint and predictability. In carefully crafting for himself a persona as an unpredictable risk-taker, he has relied on Washington to be the responsible adult in the relationship. However, the Russian diplomat I spoke with feared those days were over, with an American president who no longer felt constrained by working institutions or was even willing to believe his own government, and no longer felt the need or saw the possibility of creating any kind of bipartisan policy consensus.
Last edited by davidbfpo; 06-18-2017 at 10:21 AM. Reason: Quote trimmed to fit ToR
BUT here is the simple counter...while I like the work done by this author..he failed to take notice that it was a raw HUMINT report and right now minus the sex tape..80% of the dossier has been largely confirmed either by leaked social media articles and then reenforced by actual MSM articles confirming then the social media leaked reports...Originally Posted by Azor
BTW...he actually confirms the Steel Dossier was in fact raw HUMINT bar/taxi/plain conversation talk..that is exactly what HUMINT delivers...as the stated quality for such reports is a F6....source unknown--cannot be confirmed...THEN it is up to the the other ints' to either confirm or deny...
Only after the raw HUMINT is analzyed and put together with other information does the quality of the original HUMINT information climb.
Secondly, while the author has a vast Russian contact base I have noticed he has not done much research on the internal competition between SVR, GRU and the good old FSB...which if one thoroughly understands the recent Russian state sponsored hacking you inherently see all three RISs hard at work trying to "trump" each other...
BUT what the author does not indicate is that HUMINT gets one through the front door....and potentially to the last door....meaning it tells you something that say SIGINT or ELINT or MASINT has never even indicated.....because these int's cannot tell you what goes on inside the human head...or what the key codes are for a particular security door...
BLUF...
The Steele Dossier did exactly what it was designed for..it woke up people...pointed the direction and stated there are a number of serious issues here.....now confirm my information...using simple straight forward raw HUMINT.....exactly the way it is suppose to work....
Go back and reread why the Steel released it...he had felt it was not being properly paid attention to...and the issues he reported were in fact if true...massive....
Last edited by OUTLAW 09; 06-18-2017 at 10:53 AM.
Russian influence operations not only targeted Trump and the election it also targeted Sanders campaign.....
Little known fact.....
Bernie's senior advisor Tad Devine worked as a senior advisor for Yanukoych? Bernie hired him knowing that.
BTW the bank accounts that Manafort used while doing consulting for Yanukoych located in both Cyprus and Cayman are still open....
People do not even have to trust Russia’s propaganda outlets for its saturation strategy to work
http://econ.st/2twUWXg
There is a very old saying ion the learning of a foreign language...repeat the word seven times...why seven times as it then locks it into deep memory and allows for recall....
Propaganda, disinformation and fakes news does the exact same thing...repeat it SEVEN times and then the targeted individual or society believes it to be the "truth" and does not even question it...
Russian Senator: European understanding of gender is a threat to the national security of Russia
http://tass.ru/obschestvo/4334698#
State election officials to testify on possible Russian involvement in 2016 election
https://www.wsj.com/articles/state-o...on-1497787201#
Germany Builds an Election Firewall to Fight Russian Hackers
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...ssian-hackers#
AGAIN Trump's own lawyer stated Trump has over 100M "Followers"....
BUT on his twitter account it states 32.5M
NOTE...there has been a pick up of 100,000 followers in less than 24 hours...indications are that these are automated server controlled non human twitter bots....
17M such automated proTrump bots are now being used to magnify what Trump thinks is a great social media following...
#
Last edited by davidbfpo; 06-18-2017 at 02:34 PM.
Some states review election systems for signs of intrusion
https://www.apnews.com/2dfaa4ca00534...um=AP_Politics
RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — Officials in some states are trying to figure out whether local election offices were targeted in an apparent effort by Russian military intelligence to hack into election software last fall.
The efforts were detailed in a recently leaked report attributed to the U.S. National Security Agency.
North Carolina is checking on whether any local systems were breached, while the revelation prompted an election security review in Virginia. Both are considered presidential battleground states.
In Illinois, officials are trying to determine which election offices used software from the contractor that the report said was compromised.
The three are among eight states where election offices had contracts with VR Systems, a Florida-based company that provided software to manage voter registrations. The others are Florida, California, Indiana, New York and West Virginia.
Russian hackers must have/have to have discovered when probing State election databases that any election is most vulnerable at the county level where true hacking has most impact
Massive collections of fake accounts are lying dormant on Twitter, suggests research.
http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-38724082
Nearly 48 million Twitter accounts could be bots, says study - CNBC.comThe largest network ties together more than 350,000 accounts and further work suggests others may be even bigger.
UK researchers accidentally uncovered the lurking networks while probing Twitter to see how people use it.
Some of the accounts have been used to fake follower numbers, send spam and boost interest in trending topics.
Hidden purpose
On Twitter, bots are accounts that are run remotely by someone who automates the messages they send and activities they carry out. Some people pay to get bots to follow their account or to dilute chatter about controversial subjects.
"It is difficult to assess exactly how many Twitter users are bots," said graduate student Juan Echeverria, a computer scientist at UCL, who uncovered the massive networks.
Mr Echeverria's research began by combing through a sample of 1% of Twitter users in order to get a better understanding of how people use the social network.
However, analysis of the data revealed some strange results that, when probed further, seemed to reveal lots of linked accounts, suggesting one person or group is running the botnet. These accounts did not act like the bots other researchers had found but were clearly not being run by humans.
His research suggests earlier work to find bots has missed these types of networks because they act differently to the most obvious automated accounts.
http://www.cnbc.com/2017/03/10/nearl...ays-study.html
A big chunk of those "likes," "retweets," and "followers" lighting up your Twitter account may not be coming from human hands. According to new research from the University of Southern California and Indiana University, up to 15 percent of Twitter accounts are in fact bots rather than people.
The research could be troubling news for Twitter, which has struggled to grow its user base in the face of growing competition from Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and others.
Researchers at USC used more than one thousand features to identify bot accounts on Twitter, in categories including friends, tweet content and sentiment, and time between tweets. Using that framework, researchers wrote that "our estimates suggest that between 9% and 15% of active Twitter accounts are bots."
Since Twitter currently has 319 million monthly active users, that translates to nearly 48 million bot accounts, using USC's high-end estimate.
To Outlaw 09 RE: Russian Intelligence Operations
Outlaw,
You actually agree with nearly all of Galeotti’s analysis and conclusions, but just as the alleged sex tape is at the core of the Steele Dossier, the story that Trump is a Russian agent is at the core of your perspective on the election and its outcome. To Trump, we must add Sanders and Stein - according to you - to which you will probably add other also-rans such as “What is Aleppo?” Johnson. You seem more interested in ascribing Clinton’s election loss to Russia than in delving into Russian intelligence operations targeting the United States, which “active measures” fall under. If her loss can be completely attributed to Russia, then what of the vitriol against the “vast right-wing conspiracy” that has been undermining Clinton since Arkansas? Or of Comey being a secret Republican operative.
You may have decades of intelligence experience, but you have followed every twist and turn in Clinton’s story, much as a novice investor follows the newspapers and analysts up and down and sideways on various stock picks. Either your judgment is clouded by your bitterness at not having Hillary at the helm of state, or you are cynically parroting every excuse her and the Democrats can fling at the wall. Which is it? Much of the smears against Comey are sliding down that wall and smell quite foul.
Saturday Night Live understood the meaning of the Dossier better than you, and capitalized on its one “new” allegation: the “pee pee tape”.
Galeotti has discussed inter-agency rivalries in Russia before, but Putin has also broken down the “power” ministries and agencies as bureaucratic institutions in order to consolidate his personal rule. From a high-level perspective, it is a chaotic nebula of individuals and groups competing for favor and resources, not unlike Hitler’s mafia state.
Yet your reference to inter-service rivalries and Russia backing any and all candidates who were assumed to be “less hawkish” than Clinton, only speaks to the multiple brushfires and piranhas that Galeotti speaks of. If Trump was truly a “Siberian Candidate” then one would assume that Putin would have been far more careful.
Trump’s recent disclosure indicates exactly what I thought: Trump wanted to keep secret that his net worth was well below “$10 billion”, not that he had borrowed from Russia (). I suppose that all of those German, Swiss and American banks are merely intermediaries between Trump and the Kremlin? But feel free to regale us about Chinese and Russian investors buying condos. I suppose that the entire business and political class of the UK has been turned by Russia because of Russian investments in London, no?
As for the howling and wounded Beast of Chappaqua, it is doubtful whether she would have been more aggressive with Assad than the Entertainer-in-Chief. If you think that the Republicans and “anti-imperialist” piranhas would not have kept her too busy to do much, and suspicious of any “wag the dog” homages to her husband, I have got a ten-lane bridge over the Strait of Kerch to sell you.
Lastly, I have my own contacts, and my Serbian acquaintance called it years ago: Putin indicates his preferences, and his minions scurry about to carry it out, including at each other’s expense.
I am glad that you refer to “fake news” as propaganda. We don’t need new words for old things.
Last edited by davidbfpo; 06-19-2017 at 09:16 AM. Reason: Remove photo as unsuitable
Azor...here is what you do not realize nor probably will not agree with.....
IF a single US voter changed their vote from say a Mullen, Stein, Sanders and Clinton to Trump because of "fake news"...targeted twitter and FB messaging largely designed and implemented into the US election via alt right twitter/bot accounts and FB..AND Russian social media accounts......key BTW is the word "targeted"....
THEN that vote was "hacked" just as effectively as say via an actual hacking attack....
NOW get real...the difference in this election was over a grand total of 70,000 votes in the four key states that "won" Trump the electoral college NOT the "election" as you know he lost the general election vote total by over 3M....
So just how many of those 70,000 votes were impacted by Russian and alt right influence operations ie propaganda, fake news, disinformation and just plain out right lying being supported by literally millions of tons of "dark money" driven by the Citizens United SC decision????
BTW...if you do not want to agree with this then watch the FBI investigation unfold in the coming months...this is exactly what they are chasing and believe me with FinCen is involved you will see the "dark money" come to light....
It is already coming to the "light"......
Last edited by davidbfpo; 06-19-2017 at 09:16 AM. Reason: brevity
Azor...goes to the heart of what I just posted....read and then reread it...
The Danger of Ignoring Alex Jones and Infowars....
https://t.co/XVErc8indA
This goes to the core of influence operations run either by the Russians and right now the Trump WH and Trump himself....
Alex Jones recently called himself a "performance artist" and yet many believe every word he states as the "truth"...why is that????
Democracy is hard work and it is daily and Americans really do not like hard work......they want immediate gratification also in politics....
Also the US does not have a true political culture and political parties as seen in Europe ie France, Germany excluding UK...that allow changes to occur that many can agree with....as the US and UK have basically faded politically speaking.... we are seeing a renewal among EU politics as the Anglo Saxon side is failing...why is that????
Last edited by davidbfpo; 06-19-2017 at 09:18 AM. Reason: Remove duplicate imagery
Azor...goes again to what I have been posting above.....
We need to address the reasons why the FinsburyPark terrorist was radicalised....WAY too much time has been wasted on jihadists and not on the extreme radical right....SAME development is in the US right now....
Actually if you think about it...excluding the 60/70s terror waves around Israel and Palestina..... the radical right terror has been with us far far longer....
Last edited by OUTLAW 09; 06-19-2017 at 08:55 AM.
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