Russian Info, Cyber and Disinformation (Catch all till 2017)

[OUTLAW 09]

Regardless of what many think....there is in fact a true war being fought on social media....a non linear warfare that involves not a single round being fired or a single solider killed but nevertheless a war....


Number of criminal cases brought in Russia for likes and shares on Facebook doubled in 2015, to 203.
https://republic.ru/posts/76452

Like, share, become a prisoner:
Oh, US, welcome to the club!

[AdamG]

Washington Post Disgracefully Promotes a McCarthyite Blacklist From a New, Hidden, and Very Shady Group
Ben Norton, Glenn Greenwald

November 26 2016, 1:17#p.m.
https://theintercept.com/2016/11/26/...y-shady-group/

The Washington Post on Thursday night#promoted the claims of a new, shadowy organization that smears dozens of#U.S.#news sites that are critical of U.S. foreign policy as being “routine peddlers of Russian propaganda.” The article#by reporter Craig Timberg – headlined “Russian propaganda effort helped spread ‘fake news’ during election, experts say” – cites a report by a new, anonymous#website calling itself “PropOrNot,” which claims that millions of Americans have been deceived this year in a massive Russian “misinformation campaign.”
The group’s list of Russian disinformation outlets#includes WikiLeaks and the Drudge Report, as well as Clinton-critical left-wing#websites such as Truthout, Black Agenda Report, Truthdig and Naked Capitalism, as well as libertarian venues#such as Antiwar.com and the Ron Paul Institute.
This Post report#was one of the most widely circulated political news articles on social media over the last 48 hours, with dozens, perhaps hundreds, of U.S. journalists and pundits with large platforms hailing it as an#earth-shattering exposé. It was the most-read piece on the entire Post website after it was published on Friday.
Yet the article is rife with obviously reckless and unproven allegations, and fundamentally shaped by shoddy, slothful journalistic tactics. It was not surprising to learn that, as BuzzFeed’s Sheera Frenkel noted,#“a lot of reporters passed on this story.” Its huge flaws are self-evident. But the Post gleefully ran with it and then promoted it aggressively, led by its Executive Editor Marty Baron

[OUTLAW 09]

Washington Post Disgracefully Promotes a McCarthyite Blacklist From a New, Hidden, and Very Shady Group
Ben Norton, Glenn Greenwald

November 26 2016, 1:17#p.m.
https://theintercept.com/2016/11/26/...y-shady-group/

Interesting the same Greenwald associated directly with WikiLeaks and the Snowdon releases who we now fully understand has worked with the Russian FSB/SVR.....

Of the long list of links/accounts associated with this list there has been an interesting debate between social media open source analysts and the group that released the article....

NOT an actual debate on the accounts which in 99% of the cases...ACTUALLY did actively push "fake news" but a debate over methodology on how they decided an account drove "fake news".........

So when we discuss articles like this one needs to fully understand the background chatter and the players like Greenwood and where he sits in relationship to both WikiLeaks and Snowdon.....and the Russian SVR/FSB....

IF you had been tracking the Ukrainian thread you would have seen twitter network link diagrams done by Global Voices on how the proRussian twitter bots and accounts were chatting with each other and how they were driven...a total of over six very interesting charts if one took the time to read them...

The exact same concept seen by US IT types when dealing with the proTrump bot network being driven out of Macedonia which accounted for ONE THIRD of all proTrump social media comments...paid for by a Russian company.....

AND that is not chump change in the social media world.....ONE THIRD....of the total volume

[AdamG]

IF you had been tracking the Ukrainian thread...

I gotta ask, is your tone argumentative?

This onion is even beginning to unpeel and quite frankly, given the revelations of the LA Times/UCLA 2016 polls I'm thinking all the social media hubaloo had little effect on those who voted for Trump/against Clinton. *Shrug*

[AdamG]

Notable in that the source is the WaPo, see bold

Considering that the American mainstream media generated most of the Fear, Uncertainty & Doubt in this situation the Russians seem to have effectively gotten their target to do the heavy lifting.

Recently, New York magazine#set the Internet on fire with a piece speculating that hacked voting machines may have tipped November’s presidential election.
This is dangerous, and not just because there’s no evidence that Russia “stole the election.” Talking about these voting machines distracts us from what such speculation represents: the success of a broader Russian strategy to weaken Americans’ trust in democracy.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/poste...=.86ef5a18fcf6

[OUTLAW 09]

I gotta ask, is your tone argumentative?

This onion is even beginning to unpeel and quite frankly, given the revelations of the LA Times/UCLA 2016 polls I'm thinking all the social media hubaloo had little effect on those who voted for Trump/against Clinton. *Shrug*

Argumentative...question mark...maybe but I am one after two long years of Russian info warfare and hacking of US groups and federal government ....that does believe in the power of social media to mobilize voters.....when I see the millions of followers of the alt right social media sites...and their comments on B in the millions and when I hear in direct MSM interviews that many Trump voters get their information from social media and trump's on use of twitter....

REMEMBERING that a 1/3rd of all proTrump Twitter and FB comments came from Macedonia and that 70% of all anti Ukraine/proSyrian comments come right now from a single Russian troll company in St. Petersburg.....

Draw your own conclusions.....

But if I was you I would give it some serious thought....

I could take the time do a single link analysis of one single fake story and how it worked it's way from St. Petersburg...through four right wing US sites..then onto Brietbart.com and then to Fox and then to CNN....

Eye opener....

BUT one must thoroughly understand the 6Ds of propaganda....and or disinformation driven by all these days....and disinformation driven by the US WH as well....

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

If everyone took the time to view and read articles using the above 6Ds ...we would be a lot better off these days....and after reading ask the question...WHAT is the underlying narrative and WHY....

[OUTLAW 09]

I just keep pounding away on this theme....all Russian and Iranian non linear warfare is all intertwined now.....whether in eastern Ukraine....the US elections....Syria....the EU and coming German elections...ALL intertwined when Russian info warfare and Russian cyber warfare are involved.....

Cyber warfare and info warfare are the two key cornerstones to a successful Russian non linear war....regardless where it is....

We now see the Russian cyber attacks across Europe picking up and directly striking say German infrastructure ..ie yesterday which kept my company and others jumping through hoops to backtrack the Russian activities which was in fact determined much to the surprise of the Russian hackers...we in the West now fully understand just how to track them.....we tracked down to the malware they inserted...where...when and how...the question becomes at some point if a nation state does not retaliate in kind the other side Russia feels totally free to continue as they seem no pushback...that was the inherent failure by the Obama WH when the US IC definitely identified Russian hacking in the US election process.

Proud to say Brandenburg was defended well if one looks at the outage map..Berlin took a hit..but that was it even though DT controls the vast network infrastructure around Berlin.

AND do not think the Iranians do not work with a non linear concept....

Deutsche Telekom confirmed that more than 900,000 routers began to have serious problems connectivity problems due to a cyber attack.
More than 900,000 routers belonging to Deutsche Telekom users in Germany were not able to connect to the Internet due to an alleged cyber-attack.
The affected routers were used by the Deutsche Telekom customers also for fixed telephony and TV services.
The problems lasted at least two days, the outage began on Sunday, November 27, at around 17:00, local time.
Deutsche Telekom users all over the country were not able to connect online using the routers provided by the company.

Deutsche Telekom didn’t provide further technical details about the alleged cyber attack either the affected router models.
It is not clear which is the threat that compromised the#Deutsche Telekom routers, experts speculated the involvement of a malware that could have#prevented equipment from connecting to the company’s network.

'Security experts from#ISC Sans#published an interesting report that revealed a significant#increase in scans and exploitation attempts for a SOAP Remote Code Execution (RCE) vulnerability via port 7547 against Speedport routers.

This specific model of routers is widely used by Deutsche Telekom for German users.
“For the last couple days,#attack#against#port 7547#have increased substantially. These scans appear to exploit a vulnerability in popular DSL routers.

This issue may already have caused severe issues for German ISP Deutsche Telekom and may affect others as well (given that the US is just “waking up” from a long weekend). For Deutsche Telekom, Speedport routers appeared to be the main issue.”#added#the ICS SANS.#
“According to Shodan, #about 41 Million devices have port 7547 open. The code appears to be derived from Mirai with the additional scan for the SOAP vulnerability. Currently, honeypots see about one request every 5-10 minutes for each target IP.”

According to the ICS SANS report, it seems that attackers tried to exploit a common vulnerability in the TR-069 configuration protocol. Experts highlighted the availability of a#Metasploit module#implementing the exploit for this vulnerability.
An unconfirmed List of vulnerable routers includes the Eir D1000 Wireless Router (rebranded Zyxel Modem used by Irish ISP Eir) and the Speedport Router (Deutsche Telekom).

Of course. when dealing with#IoT devices#and cyber threats, the most dreaded malware is the#Mirai bot#that was recently involved in several massive#DDoS attacks.

According to#BadCyber, the responsible is the Mirai botnet that was designed to#exploit Eir D100 (Zyxel Modems) via port 7547.
“TR-064 protocol is based on HTTP and SOAP and its default port is TCP 7547. Commands are sent as POST requests to this port.”#states#the BadCyber.#

!The malware itself is really friendly as it closes the vulnerability once the router is infected. It performs the following command:
busybox iptables -A INPUT -p tcp –destination-port 7547 -j DROP
busybox killall -9 telnetd
which should make the device “secure”, unless until next reboot. The first one closes port 7547 and the second one kills the telnet service, making it really hard for the ISP to update the device remotely.”

SO what was the cost of the outage to the sales of CyberMonday companies....MILLIONS of Euros in lost sales....

Included also is the US outage map from the last Russian cyber attack which was a massive DDoS attack...to remind us that we tend to have a very short memory.

[OUTLAW 09]

Old and new US Syrian FP....

when facts don't matter...

[OUTLAW 09]

AND information warfare marches on.....whether in the US or driven by Russia itself....

“Fake News Is Not the Only Problem” by @gilgul
https://points.datasociety.net/fake-...cb#.48aafeppl#

This article is well worth reading and then rereading one more time as it is the basis for the new "Post Truth era" we are currently in where truth no longer matters....that is just how successful propaganda and disinformation has become....in Europe as well as in the US.....

It actually has become quite difficult to counter Russian info warfare simply by using "the truth" backed up by facts...as we have seen especially lately in the US....facts no longer matter...it is the person with the loudest voice throwing the challenge I am going to lie...SO disprove I am lying that has taken hold in the US and especially even more so in Europe....

We saw this yesterday and today with a series of Trump twitter rants....blatantly all lies but his challenge to MSM was "prove me wrong'.....very typical from virtually all statements coming lately from the Russian FM on say eastern Ukraine or Syria or on the US elections.....or even from Putin himself.....

With Russian statements it is now common to treat them as a lie ONLY when they deny something..THEN what they deny as a lie is in fact "the truth"....

[OUTLAW 09]

I just keep pounding away on this theme....all Russian and Iranian non linear warfare is all intertwined now.....whether in eastern Ukraine....the US elections....Syria....the EU and coming German elections...ALL intertwined when Russian info warfare and Russian cyber warfare are involved.....

Cyber warfare and info warfare are the two key cornerstones to a successful Russian non linear war....regardless where it is....

We now see the Russian cyber attacks across Europe picking up and directly striking say German infrastructure ..ie yesterday which kept my company and others jumping through hoops to backtrack the Russian activities which was in fact determined much to the surprise of the Russian hackers...we in the West now fully understand just how to track them.....we tracked down to the malware they inserted...where...when and how...the question becomes at some point if a nation state does not retaliate in kind the other side Russia feels totally free to continue as they seem no pushback...that was the inherent failure by the Obama WH when the US IC definitely identified Russian hacking in the US election process.

Proud to say Brandenburg was defended well if one looks at the outage map..Berlin took a hit..but that was it even though DT controls the vast network infrastructure around Berlin.

AND do not think the Iranians do not work with a non linear concept....



SO what was the cost of the outage to the sales of CyberMonday companies....MILLIONS of Euros in lost sales....

Included also is the US outage map from the last Russian cyber attack which was a massive DDoS attack...to remind us that we tend to have a very short memory.

NCSC-FI @CERTFI
Alert 04/2016: Thousands of Finnish modems attacked - reboot removes the malware
https://www.viestintavirasto.fi/en/2...oitus-2016-04#
…

[OUTLAW 09]

NSA doc in Snowden leak shows Russian intel hacked into email of Anna Politkovskaya a year before she was killed
https://theintercept.com/2016/12/29/...sian-hacking/#

Anna Politkovskaya was gunned down in 2006 to stop reporting a truth on Chechnya massacre and Putin's role.

[OUTLAW 09]

Russian Hackers Began Honing Their Election-Tampering Skills in 2010
https://medium.com/defiant/russian-h...c5#.aa8xht9d5#

[OUTLAW 09]

Russian Hackers Began Honing Their Election-Tampering Skills in 2010
https://medium.com/defiant/russian-h...c5#.aa8xht9d5#

"He's not afraid to use this stuff": Michael McFaul explains the persistence of Putin's cyber power
https://www.theatlantic.com/internat...tm_source=twb#

Meet The Russian Hacker Claiming She's A Scapegoat In The U.S. Election Spy Storm
http://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbr...ia-sanctions/#

[davidbfpo]

I have merged several small threads into this one, plus a larger thread which was in the Europe arena.

One thread remains as a 'stand alone' a failed Russian info operation in Germany, Operation Liza:http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/...ad.php?t=23567

This thread has been renamed as Russian Info, Cyber and Disinformation (Catch all till 2017).

A new thread will appear, with the same title, but 2017 onwards.