12.19.16

Keep playing that good ol’ Russian roll

Posted in Culture of Lickspittle, Cyberterrorism at 2:52 pm by George Smith

Chris Hedges, at TruthDig, one of the news sites labelled as a Russian tool in a story published by the Washington Post:

Is the Democratic establishment so clueless it believes its party lost the presidential election because of the leaked John Podesta emails and FBI Director James Comey’s decision, shortly before the vote, to send a letter to Congress related to Clinton’s private email server? Can’t the Democratic leadership see that the root cause of the defeat was that it abandoned workers in order to promote corporate interests? Doesn’t it understand that although its lies and propaganda worked for three decades, Democrats eventually lost credibility among those they had betrayed?

The best response? Jeering laughter, rude noises.

12.10.16

The minds of the Democratic Party are tossed upon an ocean of desperation

Posted in Culture of Lickspittle, Cyberterrorism at 4:01 pm by George Smith

The harder the Democratic Party lobbies to deligitimize the election before handover by pushing their downfall and failures onto Central Intelligence Agency “reports” (Remember “It’s a slam dunk!”) about Russian efforts the harder they’re going to be hit in the next mid-term, I’ll bet.

Another famous they-did-it they-did-it story of yesteryear, found wanting.

North Korea hacked Sony and it was the end of the world — or not.

The establishment newspapers, the Washington Post and the New York Times, are desperate to prevent Trump from entering the White House. Between now and then (and after), they’ll probably print just about anything that serves the cause, no evidence required.

A more likely reason for failure was mentioned by the President, here quoted by Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone:

“You know, I won Iowa not because the demographics dictated that I would win Iowa. It was because I spent 87 days going to every small town and fair and fish fry and VFW hall, and there were some counties where I might have lost, but maybe I lost by 20 points instead of 50 points. … There are some counties maybe I won that people didn’t expect because people had a chance to see you and listen to you.???

“Ouch. There’s no way to read that except as a stinging indictment of the Clinton campaign’s failure to compete in lost territory.

“In the past week, Obama has ventured some explanations for Donald Trump’s rise. He pointed out that Trump had made a ‘connection’ with his voters that was ‘powerful stuff.’

“This felt like a double-edged dig…???

Alternatively, a long dissection at the Intercept.

“That Democrats are now venerating unverified, anonymous CIA leaks as sacred is par for the course for them this year, but it’s also a good indication of how confused and lost U.S. political culture has become in the wake of Trump’s victory,” it reads.

12.03.16

The Sore Losers

Posted in Culture of Lickspittle, Cyberterrorism, Decline and Fall at 3:29 pm by George Smith

“A senior administration official … said in a statement that the government didn’t observe any increased level of malicious cyber activity aimed at disrupting the election on election day and believes the elections were free and fair from a cybersecurity perspective,” read a statement on the mythology of Russian hackers tossing the election to Trump last week.

Obama recognized, correctly I think, that the recounts only stand to potentially rip the country further apart. They create the impression, and a reasonable one, on the side of those who turned out en masse for the winning side in the Rust Belt states, that “the establishment” it just said “screw you” to is trying to flip the election on a technical issue for which there is no evidence at present.

On the other hand, there is a great deal of evidence that HRC underperformed badly in the same states while the vote againt her in the hinterland counties came out in an unanticipated wave.

Even the computer scientist who pushed the idea in the media and to the Clinton people, J. Alex Halderman, conceded in an essay that Trump’s margins didn’t look like the result of hacks

Last weekend I theorized Jill Stein was being used as a stalking horse for the Democratic Party (I’m a member, although that may no longer be guaranteed). And the party now lies crushed.

The cynicism now exhibited matches the denial of the election result. The party just spent an election cycle, along with the mainstream media, dismissing Jill Stein as a clueless booby. I had considered voting for her but, no, the argument went, that would only be a throwaway vote for someone not even fit to be allowed into public debate.

But now, it’s go Jill, go! How refreshing this genuine belief in democracy.


It is also worth note how “independent” computer scientists seemed to keep running into the middle of the road, wavng their hands (this means sending emails to the HRC machine at the same time they were furiously lobbying the NYT and WaPo for publicity), claiming to only want to guarantee the “integrity” of democracy.

They’re such good people. Whip smart, too.

Disrupt! Technology uber alles. Obvious shortcomings of the loser mean nothing. Voting machines in swing states might have been hacked. The Trump network was in mysterious contract with a computer in Moscow. Fake news on Facebook, planted by an army of Russians sealed the deal.

11.02.16

You can’t hide on the Dark Web

Posted in Bioterrorism, Cyberterrorism, Ricin Kooks at 11:56 am by George Smith

If you’re going to do anything with real goods, illicit, dangerous, or both, you can’t hide on the Dark Web. If there’s enough manpower to investigate and it’s present at the right time, your anonymity is pierced.

From Sweden, on a recent ricin case:

A Swedish court has sentenced a 27-year-old German man to one year’s imprisonment for stealing toxic substances from a university where he was a student.

The Uppsala District Court on Friday said Gurkan Korkmaz used the alias LarryFlow to offer lethal substances like ricin on dark-web online markets, but added that it could not be proven he actually sold the substances.

Swedish police started the investigation in the fall of 2015 after receiving tips from U.S. police.

The FBI has put a not insignificant amount of resources into penetrating marketplaces on the dark web. The most public part of the operation has been the tracking, arrests and convictions of those buying and selling poisons like ricin or abrin.

Korkmaz was arrested as the supplier of a ring of blackmailers that had sent ricin letters to a government offical in the Czech Republic in hopes of extorting payment in bitcoins through the use of threats. No digital money was paid out.

From a newspaper report:

[Events] follow the initial arrest of the [Korkmaz] in April on suspicion of selling poison through the internet to a group that blackmailed a Czech minister for large sums of money.

“There was an attempt to blackmail the Czech state. There was a threat to spread different kinds of poison among the general public in the country if the state did not pay out quite a lot of money in bitcoin to the blackmailers. This man’s participation is that he is alleged to have supplied the poison,??? prosecutor Henrik Söderman explained.


Swedish authorities were initially alerted to the man’s trail when the FBI notified their colleagues in Sweden that poison had been sold via a website.

The police have not yet identified the buyers …

Korkmaz did not attempt to make ricin. Instead, he stole it from a lab, one that presumably used a purified source for research.

11.01.16

The Water Cooler Union of Concerned Computer Scientists

Posted in Culture of Lickspittle, Cyberterrorism, Phlogiston at 11:30 am by George Smith

“[A] small, tightly knit community of computer scientists who pursue such work—some at cybersecurity firms, some in academia, some with close ties to three-letter federal agencies—is also spurred by a sense of shared idealism and considers itself the benevolent posse that chases off the rogues and rogue states that try to purloin sensitive data and infect the internet with their bugs,” it reads at Slate.

Important stuff! “A Union of Concerned Nerds” are about to explain how they almost discovered Donald J. Trump was in league with Russia!

“We wanted to help defend both campaigns, because we wanted to preserve the integrity of the election,??? explained one of the academicians who, naturally, wished to remain anonymous.

One of the defenders of election integrity, nicknamed Tea Leaves (BTW, Tea Leaves is Cockney slang for “thieves,” which I lernt from watching The Limey)

They soon began “scrutinizing” a computer in Moscow, from a bank, that was connecting with Donald J. Trump’s domain “in a strange way.” Strange ways on the internet…

The information and data was passed on to a man named Vixie. There was “no higher authority” when it came to this kind of thing.

The transmissions of the suspicious computer in Moscow were deemed indeed very suspicious.

“The data has got the right kind of fuzz growing on it,??? according to Vixie, as told to the reporter. It’s the interpacket gap, the spacing between the conversations, the total volume.”

Growing fuzz. Interpacket gap.

What could be going on? Influence peddling and other skullduggeries yet to be determined, but suspiciously, very suspiciously, tied to events in the election cycle, like the days between two debates!

You could read it here. Or just go to the NY Times and skip the jargon and fog of cyberwar:

F.B.I. officials spent weeks examining computer data showing an odd stream of activity to a Trump Organization server and Alfa Bank. Computer logs obtained by The New York Times show that two servers at Alfa Bank sent more than 2,700 “look-up??? messages — a first step for one system’s computers to talk to another — to a Trump-connected server beginning in the spring. But the F.B.I. ultimately concluded that there could be an innocuous explanation, like a marketing email or spam, for the computer contacts.

“Agents scrutinized advisers close to Donald J. Trump, looked for financial connections with Russian financial figures, searched for those involved in hacking the computers of Democrats, and even chased a lead — which they ultimately came to doubt — about a possible secret channel of email communication from the Trump Organization to a Russian bank,” reads a sentence from the top of the story.

Oh well. With a week to go democracy still needs saving. Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead.


Listen for the “hee’s” and sinister theme invoking the terror of cyberwar near the end.

10.24.16

Take that, ISIS!

Posted in Culture of Lickspittle, Cyberterrorism at 11:56 am by George Smith

From here.

“World War III is already here, and it’s happening on the internet,” [a] hacker said.

And now you know why the mockery hee laughter and wowowowows are in “Cyberwar Boogie.”

10.21.16

Bomb Russia

Posted in Culture of Lickspittle, Cyberterrorism, Shoeshine at 1:44 pm by George Smith

“A massive cyberattack is blocking your favorite websites,” blares the LA Times, right now.

Twitter, Tumblr, Netflix and music-streamer Spotify, the discussion site Reddit, Airbnb and the Verge. Imagine not being able to hear your fremium music, or tweet or watch Netflix.

The attack was “impactful,” said a comsex expert to the LAT.

You realize cyberwar could cause the empire to fall over. The Department of Homeland Security is “investigating.” The government is looking for someone to retaliate against, probably Russia, because an attack in cyberspace is just like an attack in the real world, according to the debate. Arch-fiends!

So listen to “The Cyberwar Boogie,” featuring ex-cyberwar czar Richard Clarke, saying, “it’s big ol’ DOS,” which is what it was. Today. Poor man’s Jimmy Riddle-eafing included.

Sidebar related story: Cybersecurity expert [name redatced] was silenced by a huge hacker attack. That should terrify you.

Terrify.

10.04.16

Ahem

Posted in Culture of Lickspittle, Cyberterrorism at 3:49 pm by George Smith

09.27.16

One tremendous headache

Posted in Culture of Lickspittle, Cyberterrorism, Extremism, Made in China at 1:10 pm by George Smith

Blacked out for a few minutes during the middle of the debate.

I’ll be voting for HRC despite her being a pedant who talks nonsense about reviving the middle class through the fostering of small business. Sell your curios on eBay, in other words. Innovation!

Everything Trump said except the opening bits on trade and globalism sounded like gobble.

I blacked out again when the debate got to cyberwar, Putin being behind hacking us poor Dems and Trump going on about his 10-year old son being good with computers. Neither of the candidates has anything worth listening to on the subject. A few extra points off for HRC who assuredly knows about Stuxnet and our cyberwar with Iran but who insisted upon putting up a facade indicating the country’s behind in capability.

Blanked for a third and fourth time when it got to arguing about who was more likely not to use nuclear weapons first against a theoretical enemy. Trump seemed to say he would adhere to no-first-use then appeared to reverse himself seconds later.

Still unanswered, how to fix the wreckage caused by “free trade” in the US. Clinton had nothing for it last night. Expected nothing, got nothing.

However, since she’s going to be president she ought to have to keep answering for it, not just send her husband out the next day as cover:

“Mr. Clinton, who was president 1993 through 2000, acknowledged that the international trade deals have not always worked out as well as planned.” [the Toledo Blade]

“Not always worked out as well as planned,” accurate but like saying, “Deepwater Horizon was a bad oil spill.” It kinda leaves a lot out.

From Politico:

“Her opponent blamed NAFTA, but that’s not really what happened. You want to know what happened? It’s really important you understand this, because any president who wants to trade with other countries has got to take this into account.???

Clinton said Carrier wanted to break the union in a rush toward profits and in turn blew off an offer from employees to try to save the Midwestern plant from going to Mexico.

“They wanted to break the union, make the money in a hurry and give it to their activist shareholders, we used to call them raiders, and give it to their CEO. So an American president, until we go back to being a stakeholder country, where corporations take account not just their most active shareholders, but their workers, their communities and their customers and their future, we have to be a lot more careful,” Clinton said. “And that is something we have all learned.”

The Clintons would love to squirm out of this by throwing up a dust screen of nit-picky details. Economists, and authors like Thomas Frank, have written quite a bit about how NAFTA was made to give corporate wealth power at the expense of labor.

In this case, Bill Clinton is being slippery and it’s because his wife is extremely vulnerable in this area.


So it’s a choice between the teacher’s pet and the class clown. Between Reese Witherspoon and Jack Black.Barbara Ehrenreich, today


And do listen to all 90 seconds of China Toilet Blues from “Old White Coot.” It helps me out, if only psychically.

09.01.16

Democratic Party McCarthy-ism

Posted in Culture of Lickspittle, Cyberterrorism, Shoeshine at 1:15 pm by George Smith

For the past six months the press and Democratic Party have been trying to fit Julian Assange as a Putin/Russian intelligence service sock puppet. Not buying it.

Assange has always been quixotic, sometimes erratic, but no one manipulates him. Animosity on his part toward the US government is understandable. It’s always been my impression he was and is inimically opposed to the American empire.

Assange wound up seemingly forever stuck in the Ecuador embassy in London when HRC was Sec’y of State after it was her department that was hashed by Chelsea Manning’s Wikileaks Cablegate release. By definition, Clinton’s position at the virtual apex of our empire has made her a natural target for Wikileks spills. Why this would be considered shocking or unusual is a mystery to me.

Paradoxically, at one time the NYT and others were all too happy to work with Julian Assange. In truth, his relationship with the domestic and western press has always been fraught.

A long long time ago and before Wikileaks, Assange was a hacker and he subscribed to my old electronic newsletter.

Suelette Dreyfus, an Australian journalist whose book, Underground, I reviewed for it featured Assange as one of that country’s notable hackers. On Assange and Wikileaks, Dreyfus had this to say to the New York Times this week:

“This is not an East-West fight …[though] it is being presented as such by people with an agenda.”

The Clinton campaign is behind a great part of the effort to paint Assange as a tool of Russia. Not really a surprise, considering how Wikileaks has fed into the perpetual aggravation of Hillary Clinton and her private server e-mails. However, thinking that Assange and Wikileaks might tilt the election with an “October surprise” of some kind is a bridge way too far.


In sort of related news from the left, the idea that journalist Michael Isikoff would know how hackers might/could sway the election in a swing state is just laughable.

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