06.09.11
Posted in Cyberterrorism, Permanent Fail, War On Terror at 4:19 pm by George Smith
A few times this week I was contacted by news reporters who wanted to discuss cybersecurity and terrorism.
I spent time on the telephone with each and won’t mention names. The stuff that’s critical of the general received wisdoms just never gets into the news narrative. And you can count the number of national security experts in the news who aren’t shills for the status quo on less than the fingers of one hand. In fact, no one like this even seems to exist anymore.
Anyway, all these journalists were tracking stories which have no real currency.
The primary threat to American security is the economy. Full stop.
If it fails disastrously again, or the nation is run aground by nuts people who have steered it irresponsibly, that’s a threat to everyone.
When half the political leadership structure in the US believes global warming is a hoax, that’s a long term threat to the world.
If it were the leadership of Lichtenstein or Andorra, this would be on no consequence. But it’s us and it has great consequence.
So when someone asked me if al Qaeda can launch a devastating cyberattack against the US, I had to take a mental step back and think about how to gently deliver an answer like: “What on earth made you think that was realistic?”
Al Qaeda can easily be dismissed as a cyber-threat. No one will go broke taking the short position that they’re never going to amount to anything in this area.
I pointed out that if there’s any evidence that they might wish to use cyberspace to attack the US it’s the same order of wishful thinking that made the terror men think it would be easy for it to make weapons of mass destruction.
Al Qaeda, or any jihadists, believe these things because they have read for years in the western press that it is easy to get or make them. Experts have said so in newspapers and on television. And there are people, including many terrorists, who actually believe that shit.
Which says something about their actual capability and powers of discernment and critical thinking.
The other question that has been coming up is one having to do with what would a devastating cyberwar look like?
Dunno. And I don’t make predictions. However, I do know many normal people find laughable, as do I, the idea that we need to be really concerned right now about cyberterrorists attacking Wall Street and the American financial system.
You mean to argue that’s more a threat than what our insiders have already done? On the other hand, how ’bout a cheer for a cyberattack on Wall Street.
And then there’s one last point. If it’s not an attack on Wall Street, or something by al Qaeda, what about a cyberwar that has consequences in the physical world?
Been watching Live Free or Die Hard too many times in rerun, buddy? (It was showing just this week on cable. It’s the worst of the Die Hard movies and, as a bit of trivia, was based on some piece written about “electronic Pearl Harbor” about fifteen years ago.)
In a related matter it has to be said that America’s national security think tanks are havens for people who are simply threat-mongering salesmen or high button warehouses for those currently out of power.
After over ten years of reading their reports and pronouncement I can assert with absolute confidence that they generally produce no “analytic” product we couldn’t live without.
I’m going to give you some current copy, something that’s a workmanlike sample from an alleged academician at the RAND Corporation.
What are economists, good ones, writing about in their many blogs now?
Not a trick question. You know the answer. The wretched economy, stupid.
But that’s not what an “economist” from the RAND Corporation tepidly wrote about in a piece entitled “How Might Bin Laden’s Demise Affect Business?”
The title telegraphs the message: Don’t read me.
Here’s the lede graph:
Given how markets are responding thus far, Osama Bin Laden’s death is likely to have a modestly positive and buoyant effect on equity markets. Business abhors uncertainty. With Bin Laden gone, one major source of uncertainty is removed …
Business abhors uncertainty. Gnomic, like something my dad would have said.
Here’s the RAND Corporation from Google Maps.
Everyone who works for RAND lives in the high rent zipcodes on the west side of LA. Maybe a couple are little different and have places in the mansion districts of Pasadena and San Marino.
They sure know what’s going in national security threats to the country.
Everyone would laugh at America’s think-tankers if the reality wasn’t that they’re really well compensated to actively ignore reality so that more better crap can be made up to support the various endless war efforts.
Stock story on nose gold “trove” of information recovered from bin Laden’s broken down mansion in Abottabad.
Nice to know we’re sharing it with those trustworthy pantywaists in the Pakistan military. You just know that’s going to end well, too.
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06.03.11
Posted in Cyberterrorism, War On Terror at 12:46 pm by George Smith
UPDATED
What do you do when people don’t notice your cyberspace offensive against al Qaeda?
You leak it to the US press a long time after it amounted to very little.
From Reuters today:
Spies hacked into an al Qaeda website to replace instructions on how to build a bomb with recipes for making cupcakes, newspapers reported on Friday.
The cyber offensive took place last year when the English language magazine called Inspire, aimed at Muslims in the West, was launched by supporters of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP).
British intelligence officers based at the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), the state eavesdropping service, attacked the 67-page magazine, leaving most of it garbled, British newspapers said.
Instead of being able to read how to “Make a Bomb in the Kitchen of Your Mom,” readers were greeted with computer code which actually contained recipes from The Best Cupcakes in America, published by U.S. chat show host Ellen DeGeneres.
The Washington Post reported that the British action followed a dispute between the CIA and the newly formed U.S. Cyber Command.
The cyber unit had wanted to block the al Qaeda magazine but the CIA, which had countered such an attack would expose sources and intelligence methods, won the debate and declined to allow an attack on Inspire.
In this case, the CIA would seem to have been the wisest in the group.
As a matter of fact, the leaked intelligence is misleading.
British intelligence effectively botched portions of the attack. Or, are misleading journalists now with an angle on it that made no difference at the time.
For most people who downloaded Inspire’s initial offering, all of it except its initial teaser pages were gibberish.
There was no visible recipe for cupcakes. DD had a copy. A number of colleagues had copies. All were the same.
One initial suspicion was that there had been an attempt to make the archive into a malicious download, which would have been counterproductive for al Qaeda but immediately obvious as western intelligence work. The download was not, however, malicious.
In the time since, western intelligence — most notably the US, though contractors (see here), has actually moved into the business of making old jihadi electronic documents into malicious downloads.
These actions have come very late in the game. The potential is now patently obvious and, because of that, only effective against suckers.
Which is not to say al Qaeda is sucker free.
From this blog, on the first issue of Inspire, last year:
If the purpose is to get the maximum number of readers, the insertion of digital gobble into the .pdf as padding — as this commenter details here – is astonishingly counterproductive.
It essentially creates impressions that the publication is either unfinished, a fake or that its creator greatly overestimated his own cleverness.
“[I] have no idea why it would occur to anyone to try it in the first place,??? commented one of DD’s colleagues in e-mail. [Hat tip to SA.]
And the publication’s relatively small number of downloads, in proportion to the news of it, would seem to be proof of fail.
“The language of the magazine, such as ‘Make a bomb in the kitchen of your mom,’ reflects either a poor command of English or a light-hearted sense of self-parody,??? writes someone — not very perceptively — at the Atlantic.
“Since I am not completely certain that the clean PDF doesn’t contain a hidden virus, I’ve elected not to post it just yet,??? adds Marc Ambinder.
Armbinder’s presumption is silly. The file [was] harmless.
Looking at today’s news, the British meddling, rather than being some great victory, accomplished very little, if anything, other than cause mystification in the western press.
The publishers of Inspire subsequently upped their game.
Clean copies of the magazine were published and subsequent issues have not been subject to noticeable interference.
Unless it’s western intelligence making them look stupid by published articles on Ford F-150 truck terror.
And al Qaeda comic book, number four.
The measure of the Washington Post story on cupcake recipes and British intelligence can be seen today by its pass-along value with chumps.
Dylan Ratigan of MSNBC just spent thirty seconds going on about it.
Ratigan can be counted on to be notoriously uninformed when he dives into brief news items concerning things with which he has no real
experience.
Therefore, the fact that Inspire was not noticeably hindered, in the long run, is overlooked. Or that cupcake recipes from Ellen DeGeneris just weren’t visible in the original corrupted pdf that most people had a look at.
Now, the real value of the intelligence operation is in today’s action resulting in the subtle misinforming of people who read English-language news in the US. For the vain benefit of a cyber-spying operation.
From the standpoint of observing the mainstream media’s reaction to this story, common-sense is beggared. But not if you’re someone who is baiting journalists with a silly and irresistible piece of misinformation.
Any actually visible cupcake recipe from Ellen Degeneris would, again, have been obvious as a plant. For the corrupt filler to work in raising doubt, it would have of necessity needed to appear just as simple garbage.
And this is because it has been the practice of Inspire to publish in readable English so as to not only “inspire” potential jihadis, but also to jab the US and “inspire” consternation and apprehension in the enemy’s camp.
In any case, there was a short span of time before a clean copy was issued and in this period some people wondered about the nature of what appeared to be stumble in the art and process of al Qaeda’s fancy new publication. One possibility, discussed briefly, was that it had been interfered with.
Or that it was an example of incompetence on the part of al Qaeda.
Which, if that was the sole aim, was only very briefly successful.
As an effort to jam or deter actual publication of Inspire, eventually it had little effect.
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06.01.11
Posted in Cyberterrorism, Extremism at 7:33 am by George Smith
From the BBC:
In future, a US president could consider economic sanctions, cyber-retaliation or a military strike if key US computer systems were attacked, officials have said recently.
The planning was given added urgency by a cyber-attack last month on the defence contractor, Lockheed Martin.
A new report from the Pentagon is due out in a matter of weeks.
Via tip from Pine View Farm, where it is drily noted:
This is a gross over-reaction to making a little-visited website unavailable for a few hours.
Or condensed, as I told SecurityNewsDaily a couple weeks ago re this brewing matter:
“You can frame or phrase it in a different way — the aim [is] to create the impression, through ambiguity, that the U.S. will resort to unreasonably scary escalation if someone who actually controls the levers decides in favor of it … “The U.S. always reserves the right to overdo things. That’s the legacy of the last 10 years,” Smith said. “And to the world at large, it’s viewed as a nation that sees every potential problem as a nail to be hit with the hammer of the military and/or security contractors.”
So could Smith think of any possible cyberattack that would warrant military response? Blacking out the entire Eastern Seaboard? Opening the floodgates on the Hoover Dam?
“I’m not really in the business of making predictions, particularly here. Too many variables, and the intelligence on such matters is always fuzzy,” Smith replied. “I’m going with a conservative ‘no.'”
We’re not going to be seeing the opening of the floodgates of the Hoover Dam in our lifetimes. Or the former.
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05.26.11
Posted in Cyberterrorism at 11:49 am by George Smith
From the wires:
The fact that Mac users have fallen victim to “scareware” scams — the kind that have long plagued Windows users — shouldn’t come as a surprise … Mac users, for all their pretensions otherwise, are as fallible as the next person.
What is surprising is that it took so long.
The story references MacDefender, scareware that works exactly likes the Windows malware it’s modeled on.
How does it wind up on Mac systems?
Simple. The user winds up on a malicious website that puts up a phony message that their system is infected.
Want us to clean it up for you, huh, huh?
[Click]
And MacDefender is installed. Then the extorting begins.
It’s a big money business on Wndows machines.
Anyway, scareware — been there, done that, as part of my ‘research’ for what would become “The Virus Creation Labs” book.
It was fifteen years ago and there was no way to monetize such programs. There was no global on-line payment network, nothing like that on the early Internet. Instead, much of the action in cyberspace could also be found on old antique things like the Fidonet and Usenet.
Urnst’s Scareware programs weren’t malware. They didn’t do anything but display virus-like activity on the monitor.
But because they were made to deceive users, anti-virus software developers immediately put detection for them as viruses into their scanners.
Today, anti-virus scanners will still detect them as viruses. If you click on the link and your anti-virus scanner is programmed to look inside archived files, it will give you a warning. If you extract the files — you won’t be able to run them unless you can open a DOS box — your scanner will have a fit.
In 1994 most malware still spread only two ways, one very slow, but efficient. Puckishly called “sneaker net,” it was by sharing floppies and diskettes.
The other way, which was how Urnst’s Scareware circulated, was basically the same way Mac scareware spreads. You had to be tricked into downloading and running it from bulletin board nodes.
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05.19.11
Posted in Cyberterrorism at 3:47 pm by George Smith
From PC World, the methods makers of malicious software use to set up targets haven’t changed in twenty years:
So increasingly, instead of hacking the browsers themselves, the bad guys try to hack the people using them. It’s called social engineering, and it’s a big problem these days. “The attackers have figured out that it’s not that hard to get users to download Trojans,” said Alex Stamos, a founding partner with Isec Partners, a security consultancy that’s often called in to clean up the mess after companies have been hacked.
Social engineering is how the Koobface virus spreads on Facebook. Users get a message from a friend telling them to go and view a video. When they click on the link, they’re then told that they need to download some sort of video playing software in order to watch. That software is actually a malicious program.
Me, from the Village Voice, recounting what was procedure in the early Nineties:
In 1992 I finished programming a computer virus called Heevahava using a colorful tool called the Virus Creation Lab. Heevahava was a Pennsylvania Dutch word for the person who held the bull’s johnson when it was time to collect semen. A heevahava was a dolt and a rube, someone to put at a disadvantage and the virus was published in the Crypt Newsletter, an e-zine I wrote devoted to probing the world of computer viruses …
For a few years in the early ’90s, the Crypt Newsletter published a stream of frequently brutish and malicious programs. Anyone could reconstitute them, easy as powdered milk. Through Crypt, I gathered experience in the applications of digitized badness and gained an ability to see it in the work of others, whether that of teenagers out for kicks or businessmen grasping at ways to retaliate against kids thought to be stealing the company’s music. Crypt knew the textures and flavors of rotten in the machine world. It published a virtual landmine based on a useful program, only overturned and corrupted to harshly prune the directory tree of a disk. Booby traps were written to show filth to moochers of porn while, in the background, the machine was being fouled. Viruses multiplied slowly and, when finished, either displayed vulgar quotes, logged keystrokes, or played idiotic music.
The Heevahava, dumb as it was, mocked the infected by associating them with its name. In one version, it obstructed efforts to unravel its instructions. In other words, it was managing its digital rights, a copy-protected Heevahava. Face-to-face, an anti-virus software programmer threatened to punch me in the mouth at a security convention because the protection had taken him hours to dissect, time he wished to spend with his family.
You could always gets people to run malicious programs by offering them free stuff. Back then the enticements were mostly pornography and pirated software.
Now it’s disguised as free video software player applications. Or bad code shoved at you when you’re surfing link aggregating sites looking for some rip of a CD you want for free.
Not that different from conning people with the lure of viewing free dirty pictures, which, by the way are still big.
One piece of malicious software I’d written for the Crypt Newsletter around ’93 or so searched through your applications and made copies of itself under the same name. When you typed or clicked on the name of the program to run, this was under MS-DOS, the malicious software ran first and went out looking for another one of your programs to turn into a zombie. Then it passed control to the program you actually had wanted to execute. This happened so fast users didn’t notice.
When the virus had mimicked every program on the disk it halted operation of all your legitimate programs and played the previously cited “idiotic music” over the PC speaker.
It was a diagnostic point, in a manner of speaking. An acquaintance of mine in the computer underground had been called to one local victim’s house and recognized the infection. He phoned and asked me to listen to the music playing in the background.
At which point he asked if I could tell him to remove it over the telephone. Fifteen minutes later the computer had been cleared.
Back then, the people who were actually getting infected were almost always boys and young men, often still living at home and using the family PC — a luxury. They were frequently reluctant to tell Dad or Mom just how the computer got crashed.
Good times, good times.
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05.18.11
Posted in Cyberterrorism, Permanent Fail at 8:43 am by George Smith
Nothing changes. The rest of the world, and much of our own, is always to be threatened with force.
From “Obama Reserves Right to Nuke Hackers”:
President Barack Obama’s “International Strategy for Cyberspace,” released late Monday (May 16), is a forward-thinking document in many ways …
But in one part, it’s eerily like “Dr. Strangelove.” It states that America reserves the right to counter a cyberattack by any means necessary, including unrestrained military force …
That’s the legacy of the last 10 years,” [I told the publication]. “And to the world at large, it’s viewed as a nation that sees every potential problem as a nail to be hit with the hammer of the military and/or security contractors.”
There’s more, of course.
From a few years ago, on how we should get into cyber-carpet bombing.
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03.06.11
Posted in Culture of Lickspittle, Cyberterrorism, Stumble and Fail at 4:51 pm by George Smith
Today I point you toward the best history of Julian Assange yet. And it is published outside the routes of celebrity big media where the kings spit and urinate upon the subject, tell him it’s raining, and then proceed to pick the body and skeleton clean of all things for sale as tallow for the soap factory.
It’s not published at the New York Times which would have sniffed due to its lack of pro journalist disdain. Originally, seemingly delivered by the New Zealand Herald and something called The Monthy.
And now it’s on-line at Cryptome here, entitled The Cypherpunk Revolutionary.
It traces Julian Assange from youth to his contribution to the cypherpunks mailing list and the crumbs he left as “Proff,” all the way to the present. (When Crypt Newsletter received occasional mail from him ca. these years, it was always signed from “Proff.”)
Many observations stand out. I’ll sample two.
First:
Assange had once regarded WikiLeaks as the people’s intelligence agency. In January 2007 he sincerely believed that when WikiLeaks published commentary on the Somalia assassination order document it would be “very closely collaboratively analysed by hundreds of Wikipedia editors” and by “thousands of refugees from the Somali, Ethiopian and Chinese expat communities”. This simply had not happened. Commentary by the people on material produced by their intelligence agency never would. He had once hoped for engaged analysis from the blogosphere. What he now discovered were what he thought of as indifferent narcissists repeating the views of the mainstream media on “the issues de jour” with an additional flourish along the lines of “their pussy cat predicted it all along”. Even the smaller newspapers were hopeless. They relied on press releases, ignorant commentary and theft. They never reported the vitally significant leaks without WikiLeaks intervention. Counterintuitively, only the major newspapers in the world, such as the New York Times or the Guardian, undertook any serious analysis but even they were self-censoring and their reportage dominated by the interests of powerful lobby groups. No one seemed truly interested in the vital material WikiLeaks offered or willing to do their Own work.
It’s a demonstration of the well known state-of-affairs in which the publication of unwelcome but necessary information goes unremarked upon, belittled or blocked because it is not delivered by giant media gatekeepers.
In the United States, for example, such outside-the-boundaries material is just ignored due to a combination of factors including sheer timidity, slave relationships to official sources, slave relationships to corporate ownership and NIH, or not-invented-here, syndrome.
This apparently led Assange to conclude most of the world would just not pay attention. He was right until WikiLeaks published the “Collateral Murder” video, provided by Bradley Manning.
Assange then allied with the New York Times, the Guardian and others to deliver the rest of Manning’s information dump. While this might have resulted in WikiLeaks becoming more powerful and effective, reality just became more tortured.
The resulting fame from delivery through these structures, agencies WikiLeaks was supposed to supersede, has for now coincidentally neutralized the exercise more effectively than any US government campaign against Assange could.
The messenger became the message, writes the article’s author, Robert Manne.
The Guardian, Der Spiegel and The New York Times leveraged and monetized Assange and WikiLeaks to the hilt, hard at squeezing every possible dollar out of the organization and its founder’s story. Even to the hardened cynic the personal contempt revealed by the unraveling process has been startling.
Colleagues of Assange deserted the operation for many reasons, some of them very well-explained by Manne and connected to the founder’s personality and the publicity firestorm and celebrity brought on by Manning’s information dump.
Manne writes:
For once, the cliche is true. What happened over the next ten months is stranger than fiction. With the release of the “Collateral Murder” footage, WikiLeaks became instantly famous. At the suggestion of a journalist at the Guardian, Nick Davies, Assange decided to publish the new material he had received from Manning anonymously in association with some of the world’s best newspapers or magazines. Complex and heated negotiations between WikiLeaks and the Guardian, the New York Times and Der Spiegel were now conducted. Even though these negotiations are one of the less interesting aspects of this story, already three books from the news outlets involved offering their own perspectives have been published. Assange had long regarded the western media as narcissistic. It is likely that his judgment was now confirmed.
“In early April 2010 hardly anyone had heard of Julian Assange,” reads the piece near its end. “By December he was one of the most famous people on Earth, with very powerful enemies and very passionate friends.”
In its entirety — here.
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03.04.11
Posted in Cyberterrorism at 10:57 am by George Smith
Weapons inspector Charles A Duelfer has this to say about Iran’s nuclear program:
The IAEA inspectors report that Iran continues to expand its activities and, in particular, its uranium enrichment seems to be continuing with plans for expansion. Tehran has not complied with requirements to explain suspected military nuclear work and seems unfazed by Security Council sanctions. Moreover, the IAEA reports that the output of the declared facilities continues—despite the affects of the Stuxnet cyber attack. The evidence is that despite increased sanctions, the effects of cyber attacks (and reportedly the sabotaging of imported equipment) and the assassinations in Iran of top scientists, the program marches on…to the point where it is beginning to look inevitable rather than unacceptable as previous White House statements have declared.
The mythology of Stuxnet is indefatigable. Too many businesses are directly interested in the lasting perception that cyberwar can accomplish anything.
A prime example is now HBGary. The Anonymous pillage of HBGary files spilled its material on Stuxnet worldwide.
At Cryptome, it’s archived here.
The zip-file at Cryptome contains some technical analysis and a directory of binaries, all of which should flag positive for malware.
DD randomly tested it a day ago and Avast quarantines all of them, some flagged as generic Windows malware, others as pieces of Stuxnet and infected files which look like its dropper, rootkit and hooks into the kernel and Windows firewall.
It’s easy enough to test your anti-virus on it. A cursory scan of the file as it download won’t flag it — unless the on-access part of your protective suite burrows right into compressed archives.
But if you command the program to look in the archive, it will (or it should) find all of it.
The HBGary Stuxnet archive reveals an old, regular and necessary business practice: The sharing of virus library samples between security companies.
More recently interest beyond simple technical analysis and the fashioning of digital cures is in the picture. And that’s the tinkering with and reverse-engineering of the samples with the aim of making new versions for potential or actual use by the military or government.
Many years ago creating, rewriting and modifying malware was exclusively the domain of amateur virus-writers. But it eventually moved into organized crime when it became possible to monetize the action of computer viruses. And now it is also in the work product of computer security companies, like HBGary, in the business of cadging cyberwar and intelligence work from various official clients and, presumably, also some from the private sector.
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Posted in Culture of Lickspittle, Cyberterrorism at 9:53 am by George Smith
Yesterday’s lunch saw Martin Bashir on MSNBC devoting some time to WikiLeaks, specifically Bradley Manning and additional charges brought against him by the Army. One of the guests was a friend of Manning’s who related that solitary confinement was destroying the person he knew.
However, there’s always an obvious problem with the story. It has to do with the celebrity of WikiLeaks and the aspect of the two, Julian Assange and Bradley Manning.
Neither are sympathetic even though the treatment of Manning is unconscionable. Every time you see the now common pictures of him a little voice in the back of the head says: There’s a kid who was the most senseless and fit for the job.
The accumulated fame, gained by the regular hyping of Cablegate and its use by the big mainstream media has apparently effectively choked WikiLeaks.
Where is the revelation on the ecosystem of corruption at a big US bank? Where’s all the stuff the HBGary dirty tricks operation was aimed at discrediting?
Maybe — hopefully — it will arrive.
But if it does, will it make a difference now? After the Guardian and the New York Times squeeze their rewards from it as official deliverers, framers and monetizers?
Which makes a review of the Guardian’s tell-all book on WikiLeaks a necessary read.
It’s hilarious, encapsulating the reality left unspoken in the places of high celebrity:
It’s a story, not of brave whistleblowers revealing a specific piece of explosive information, but of an agitated bloke, bored in his army base, Facebooking about how much he missed his boyfriend Tyler, deciding to take Washington’s own disarray to its logical conclusion by vomiting all of its documentation into the hackers’ arena. It was more Oprahite than it was principled, more therapeutic than tactical, more Jeremy Kyle than Daniel Ellsberg. In hilariously comparing this farcical leaking with the Pentagon Papers, describing it as a political event of unprecedented importance, ‘Leigh’ and ‘Harding’ nail the self-importance of Guardian hacks brilliantly. They kill with a satirical sword the attempts by the Guardian and others to doll up the contemporary, much-celebrated and thoughtless cult of let-it-all-out whistleblowing as a stand against warped political authority. I literally LOLed as I turned the page from reading about Manning’s childish informational incontinence to pages containing words such as ‘historic’ and ‘brave’. Brilliant.
The spoofers are also excellent at capturing the media’s cult-like embrace of Assange. ‘Harding’ and ‘Leigh’ recount what a creep Assange is, yet they then profess their ‘own’ and other Guardian journalists’ borderline crush on him! So in one section of the book, we’re told that Assange once signed up to an online dating site with the words ‘I am DANGER, ACHTUNG????????????!’, labeling himself as ‘87% slut’ and someone who likes ‘women from countries that have sustained political turmoil, [because] Western culture seems to forge women that are valueless and inane’. In short, he likes to have sex with exotic blacks rather than boring white birds because – ACHTUNG! – he’s a political rebel.
The rest is here at Spiked-Online.
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03.01.11
Posted in Cyberterrorism, Extremism, Phlogiston at 8:28 am by George Smith
If you were in Washington today you were given quite a revelation, courtesy of the WaTimes.
The Great Recession, the economic collapse, perhaps not caused by Wall Street! No, we’ve been looking in the wrong place.
“Financial terrorism suspected in 2008 economic crash,” it reads on-line.
The terrorists here aren’t the banksters. Nope, they’re from China, maybe Russian criminals, and also the forces of “shariah compliant finance.”
“This is a front-page story in the paper, and the headline can be seen in vending machines all over DC,” reports one reader who we will keep anonymous. “I walked past one this morning and thought, ‘Huh?'”
For this piece of mischief, we see a touching upon of some of the hobby-horses of the of the lunatic right, conveniently furnished by a paper we have all unjustly ignored, apparently.
The paper in question was produced by small business contract with the Department of Defense in 2009.
Generally speaking, you can view articles and analyses generated in this manner as nuisances, ways for the small to take on a validation by being paid cash money by the US government for revelations and insights to be eventually tossed in the trash.
Unless someone like Bill Gertz runs across them at the WaTimes.
The paper setting off the story, entitled “Economic Warfare: Risks and Responses” is by one Kevin D. Freeman of Keller, TX. Gertz’s story never actually gets around to mentioning the bit that this isn’t from some inside-the-Beltway think-tanker.
DD is going to skip most of the fine detail of the thing. You can read it on ScribD.
The WaTimes article sums up well enough the intent: To get us looking somewhere else because no one has ruled out a direct attack on Wall Street.
“Evidence outlined in a Pentagon contractor report suggests that financial subversion carried out by unknown parties, such as terrorists or hostile nations, contributed to the 2008 economic crash by covertly using vulnerabilities in the U.S. financial system,” reads the lede graf at the Times.
But here’s what you really want to know.
There’s no proof at all offered for the implication in the WaTimes as to the nature of the 2008 economic collapse.
Much time is devoted to the creeping advance of “shariah-compliant finance” as a danger to capitalism. For this part, notable Islam-o-phobe and kook Frank Gaffney gets cited.
Hugo Chavez and Iran get some space on the marquee, too.
And there are bits one usually finds coming from the Tea Party.
Namely, the “third phase” of an attack on the American economy will come through the printing of too much money and the revenge of bond vigilantes who will magically show up, causing a mass dump of Treasury bonds. The dollar will become worthless.
The “Ah-ha!” moment is furnished by a quick search of the Web for Kevin Freeman in Keller, TX.
A list of political contributions, conveniently from here:
Kevin Freeman (Freedom Global Investment/Counsel), (Zip code: 76248) $250 to BACHMANN FOR CONGRESS on 10/16/06
Kevin Freeman (Artist/Cross Graphics), (Zip code: 76248) $500 to BACHMANN FOR CONGRESS on 06/27/05
Kevin Freeman (Cross Graphics/Artist), (Zip code: 76248) $527 to BACHMANN FOR CONGRESS on 05/18/06
Kevin Freeman (Cross Graphics/Artist), (Zip code: 76248) $750 to BACHMANN FOR CONGRESS on 05/18/06
Marnie Freeman (Cross Graphics/Artist), (Zip code: 76248) $1800 to BACHMANN FOR CONGRESS on 05/18/06
The paper’s author, Kevin D. Freeman, identifies on its title page as belonging to Cross Consulting and Services, LLC.
The Internet domain whois entry for the e-mail domain provided on the paper’s cover page points to Keller, TX, at GoDaddy.
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