Pages with tag Russia

Atty General Barr clears Trump of collusion because of single charge against Wikileaks founder Assange Last weeks arrest of Julian Assange is playing a strange role in US Attorney General William Barr's decision around whether the Trump Campaign is guilty of conspiracy with Wikileaks to damage the Clinton Campaign by releasing stolen emails. The USA has charged Assange with a single count from 10 years ago of aiding Bradley Manning (now known as Chelsea Manning) break into top secret computers to steal documents that were then released by Wikileaks. The line of reasoning behind the single charge for Assange is also crucial in saying the Trump Campaign did no wrong, in Barr's eyes.
Clinton Watts' in-depth explanation of Russia's social media warfare strategy Last week Security Analyst Clint Watts' explosive testimony in the Senate Intelligence Committee exposed an information warfare system created by the Russian Intelligence services. The strategy includes fake news websites, and fake social media accounts, that worked synergistically together to sow doubt and confusion. They are targeting both individuals and the population at large. A key thing is prior to the Internet, for a country to conduct direct actions in another country required that country to station staff in the target country, and set up organizations like newspapers. With the Internet, they (e.g. the Russians) can stay in their own country, their staff doesn't have to risk traveling to the target country, because it can all be done remotely. In other words, while social media networks (Facebook, Twitter, etc) have arguably enriched our lives, it's possible to build amazing propaganda systems on those networks.
DNC email server hacked in 2015 says private security firm that did analysis

The hack of the Democratic National Committee's email service proved crucial to the leaks that brought down the Clinton Campaign in 2016. It's well known that the DNC's IT department ignored warnings from the NSA and FBI for several months. They then turned to a private company, CrowdStrike, because they couldn't trust the FBI to treat them fairly -- given what was going on concerning the FBI investigation into Hillary Clinton's email policies as Secretary of State. CrowdStrike had in its staff a highly experience cyber-security sleuth who had dealt with this sort of attack previously.
Facebook sold ads to Russian 'troll farm' (fake news outfit) during 2016 US election

A big question from the 2016 US national elections is just how much influence Russia exerted over the results. It's being widely reported that Russians supposedly hacked the Democratic National Committee email system, and that hundreds of "fake news" websites connected to Russians were set up to manipulate beliefs of the public. There are reports going back to 2014 of Russian 'troll farm' websites spewing fake news to manipulate elections all over the world. Now the Washington Post reports that Facebook discovered they allowed a Russian troll farm company to launch advertising targeting the 2016 election chances of Hillary Clinton and others.
NY Times on Russia's new Theory of War - Information gamed as fake news to disrupt reality

Russia hacked the 2016 US elections, getting Donald Trump elected in the process, giving us all headaches and the prospect of the USA being ruined. The NY Times and other news outlets have pushed this story from many angles. This particular article covers not the hacks on the election system, but the information warfare that preceeded the election, and has been aimed at other countries as well. It's been widely reported since 2014 at least that Russia-intelligence-service-connected-companies are operating "spam farms" that spew targeted content into social media networks, into blog comments, and into fake-news-blog websites. The purpose of these operations is to make the population believe fictions, and to act on those ficitious ideas.

For example a story surfaced in Germany a couple years ago that a young girl had been raped by Muslim refugees of the sort that have flooded into Germany thanks to the Syrian civil war. The police were covering up the crime, supposedly, for some unknown reason. RT News and Sputnik News acted as amplifiers to other social media postings and protest rallies. The thing is, there was no truth to the story. There had been a young girl arrested who initially told the story of being raped, but then she recanted that story to cover up the truth of some other event in her life. These Russia-connected organizations amplified the false story, and it became a large domestic issue spreading the idea that Merkel was dangerously accepting immigrants who were raping people right and left, and it even became a diplomatic issue between Russia and Germany. All over a piece of fake news amplified by actors connected to the Russian government.

This sort of misinformation can, and has, swayed recent elections. I have collected several news reports on this topic going back a few years at Russia's use of Social Media channels and the Internet in Government-Government warfare
Revisiting the Trump server communications with Russia's Alpha Bank

Today New Yorker magazine posted a long article revisiting a semi-obscure detail in the Trump-Russia-Conspiracy story. Late in the 2016 election cycle news broke that Trump Campaign servers had been communicating through an arcane channel with servers owned by Alpha Bank. Alpha Bank is closely connected to Russian President Vladimir Putin and his cronies, and has been tied to Russian Oligarch money laundering activities. This communication is regularly referenced as part of the curious connections between the Trump Campaign and Putin cronies.

A year ago this site ran a story looking into the details, and finding it inconclusive. The story is based on studies of DNS query traffic, and not of actual traffic. A DNS query is made whenever software needs the IP address for a remote computer. The source for the story seemingly had access to query logs for a set of prominent DNS servers, but because they cannot have had query logs for all DNS servers any report they made would be limited. They claimed to have seen a curious pattern of DNS queries between a set of servers owned by Alpha Bank, the Trump Organization, and Spectrum Health (a company connected to the DeVos family).

The new article covers the same territory, and claims to have studied the issue more closely.
Security Analyst Clinton Watts study of Russian social media fake news streams In July 2016, immediately following the Attempted Coup in Turkey, fake news appeared on RT News and Sputnik News, both known as Russian Propaganda outlets, claiming that a US Military Base in Turkey had been overrun threatening the security of the large nuclear weapons cache stored at that base. Within a few minutes a whole flotilla of bot accounts on social media systems (Twitter, et al) were echoing the news release. This and other details were the subject of testimony in the Senate Intelligence Committee hearing of March 30, 2017. Clinton Watts was one of those giving testimony, giving us a clue to how social media technology is being currently utilized. The big question is whether Russia's goal ended with Trumps becoming President, or whether they're continuing to meddle in US and European politics. This is a technology story because of the means, that Russia is using channels on the Internet to conduct this warfare.
Senate Select Intelligence Committee hearing on Russia's hacking of 2016 elections In the 2016 elections, it's now clear that Russia's President Vladimir Putin ordered a disinformation campaign aimed to subvert American Democracy and the campaign. They had a clearly preferred winner, Donald Trump, and utilized fake news and networks of social media bots to spread propaganda. The goal appears to be weakening Russia's major adversaries, especially the USA and NATO, so that Russia can act more freely in the world. The method, covert propaganda issued through social media, is a lot less expensive than a fighting war, and less risky since a direct battle between USA and Russia might bring in nuclear weapons. These hearings, conducted by the Senate Intelligence Committee, are very different from the outright circus occurring in the House Intelligence Committee. The discussion focuses on the threat posed by Russia's use of 'active measures', active propaganda usage, and has experts describing the tools and strategies employed by the Russians. Further, the experts describe how the Trump Administration is complicit with Russia, speaking Russia-sourced talking points, and apparently collaborating with Russia.
Social media firms under scrutiny for Russia Meddling, Facebook showed Russias adverts to 126 million people

In written testimony submitted to the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Terrorism, Facebook admitted as many as 126 million people saw content posted by the Internet Research Agency. That innocuously named organization is a Russian Troll Farm that's thought to be closely allied with Russian Intelligence, and was deeply connected to the social media network manipulations thought to be committed by Russia during the 2016 USA elections. Advertising purchased by the Internet Research Agency is thought to have reached over 11 million people. Twitter's testimony disclosed there were nearly 3,000 accounts linked to the Internet Research Agency, which posted over 130,000 tweets. Another 37,000 accounts linked to Russia, but seemingly not associated with the Internet Research Agency, posted over 1.4 million tweets.

The Internet Research Agency operates out of St. Petersburg Russia. It's known thanks to reporting over the last several years that the IRA employs a large staff who post fact-manipulating content on blogs, or social media posts, or comments on websites. Their tactic is to make "Viral" content that draws attention -- for example they might unleash a flood of tweets on a hashtag in order to generate a trending hashtag that will then get news coverage by news editors looking at whatever is trending on Twitter. Who cares if that trending thing is all phoney-baloney made up nonsense that's politically manipulative?
Top-secret NSA report details Russian spear-fishing attack on US election infrastructure in October 2016

While it's widely reported that Russians built a social-media-warfare system which they're using to undermine elections in the USA and elsewhere, The Intercept has been yelling loudly "not so fast" because the allegations of Russian interference aren't verified. If we want to accuse another government of hacking our elections, or those of Moldova or Bulgaria or Montenegro or France or other countries, there'd better be solid proof, if only because the consequence of such an accusation is a possible war.

Today, The Intercept (the news site that's been calling for caution) released an explosive report detailing an effort by Russian Intelligence services to directly hack into USA election systems. They were anonymously handed a top-secret NSA report, that they've analyzed and verified, detailing NSA's documentation of a "Spear-Fishing" attack launched by Russian operatives against election agencies around the country. The goal appeared to be interfering with voter registration confirmation systems.

It's not known whether the attack was successful, just that it occurred.
Was a Trump server communicating with Russia's Alpha Bank?

Late in the 2016 election, news broke that Trump Campaign servers had been communicating through an arcane channel with servers owned by Alpha Bank. Alpha Bank is closely connected to Russian President Vladimir Putin and his cronies, and has been tied to Russian Oligarch money laundering activities. The news came amid other allegations of collusion between Trump and the Russians, and is routinely mentioned by Journalists like Rachel Maddow as part of the rationale for the Trump-Russia-Collusion story.

The news broke in a Slate article that detailed work by a group of Internet Security researchers. The article discusses some kind of database of DNS records that somehow describe the architecture of a set of Internet services that somehow describe a pattern of communication between Trump's organization and Alpha Bank. Reading between the lines of the article, the data source has to be someone with access to primary DNS servers who can gather logs of DNS queries.

Wikileaks and Assange stopped being Hero's, became political hacks, according to Mueller Report Within the released and redacted Mueller Report is details of Julian Assange's efforts to ensure Wikileaks played a partisan role in the US Election of 2016. Wikileaks portrays itself as a journalistic organization, but Assange's effort to play a role in ensuring Clinton lost is not the action of a journalist. Journalists do not pick sides, but report events. Some wish us to see Assange as some kind of hero of the people. Perhaps Assange and Wikileaks used to play a positive hero-of-the-people role, but taking sides in political contests has destroyed that image of Wikileaks.
Wikileaks founder Assange arrested, not charged in leaking Clinton emails during 2016 campaign The USA is extraditing Julian Assange from British custody after he was arrested today on an outstanding warrant from 2012. Assange has not been charged with his alleged involvement in the conspiracy to interfere with the 2016 elections, but has curiously been charged with a single count from 2010.
Wikileaks founder Assange faces Espionage charges, but nothing on his role in Trump-Russia conspiracy In April, Julian Assange was arrested in London, and the USA immediately filed for extradition over one count of assisting in the computer hacking in 2010 that lead to the release of leaked documents. When Assange assisted in the hacking to acquire those documents, he stepped over a line. Today the USA Dept of Justice filed additional counts against Assange related to the 2010 leak, but the Dept did not file any indictment related to Assange's role in the conspiracy between the Trump Campaign and the Russian government to release Clinton e-mails during the 2016 campaign.