Computer Scientists Believe a Trump Server Was Communicating With a Russian Bank (slate.com)

In light of the Democratic National Committee hack by the Russians earlier this year, a "tightly knit community of computer scientists" working in a variety of fields came up with the hypothesis, "which they set out to rigorously test: If the Russians were worming their way into the DNC, they might very well be attacking other entities central to the presidential campaign, including Donald Trump's many servers." In late July, one of the scientists who asked to be referred to as Tea Leaves discovered possible malware emanating from Russia, with the destination domain having Trump in its name. What the researcher saw "was a bank in Moscow that kept irregularly pinging a server registered to the Trump Organization on Fifth Avenue": Slate Magazine reports: More data was needed, so he began carefully keeping logs of the Trump server's DNS activity. As he collected the logs, he would circulate them in periodic batches to colleagues in the cybersecurity world. Six of them began scrutinizing them for clues. The researchers quickly dismissed their initial fear that the logs represented a malware attack. The communication wasn't the work of bots. The irregular pattern of server lookups actually resembled the pattern of human conversation -- conversations that began during office hours in New York and continued during office hours in Moscow. It dawned on the researchers that this wasn't an attack, but a sustained relationship between a server registered to the Trump Organization and two servers registered to an entity called Alfa Bank. The server was first registered to Trump's business in 2009 and was set up to run consumer marketing campaigns. It had a history of sending mass emails on behalf of Trump-branded properties and products. Researchers were ultimately convinced that the server indeed belonged to Trump. But now this capacious server handled a strangely small load of traffic, such a small load that it would be hard for a company to justify the expense and trouble it would take to maintain it. That wasn't the only oddity. When the researchers pinged the server, they received error messages. They concluded that the server was set to accept only incoming communication from a very small handful of IP addresses. A small portion of the logs showed communication with a server belonging to Michigan-based Spectrum Health.

Comments

possibily illegal

[rubycodez]

Snooping through your employer's databases or logs looking for activity of a particular customer and then making it public? That can get you hard time

Re:possibily illegal

[Xenographic]

Nah, it's worse than that, looks like they were sniffing traffic at either the ISP of one of the two endpoints or a backbone.

If there were something here, you'd expect them to talk about finding data in the ICMP echo requests. You'd expect them to communicate over something normal like SSH. You'd expect some evidence that there was something illegal or improper going on here (other than, y'know, spying on other people's network traffic....).

Their audience is apparently morons who don't know what a ping is.

Re:possibily illegal

[wierd_w]

the story at slate that i read says nothing about icmp, it talks exclusively about DNS lookups, incuding after the trump server admin team changed the authoratative host name of the server in question.

unless somebody in Russia is clairvoyant, or the thousands of recorded transactions were somehow faked, it means somebody in the trump server admin team contacted Alfa bank's admin team, and gave them the new resolution host data. It was not up long enough for normal record proliferaton to be accounable for allfa getting the updated record.

again, "ping" used by the journalist just means "contacted", not an actual ICMP connectivity test stream.

They were supposedly looking at DNS query data only, and noticed the activity, after looking to see if russian hackers were infiltating GOP servers like they had purportedly infiltrated DNC servers.

Re:possibily illegal

[Xenographic]

You're right that they talk about DNS queries, but I'm pretty sure this is an actual ICMP echo:

That wasn’t the only oddity. When the researchers pinged the server, they received error messages. They concluded that the server was set to accept only incoming communication from a very small handful of IP addresses.

It can also be pretty easily explained by having a bunch of normal people on PCs behind a corporate firewall that doesn't accept traffic. Which makes sense because when they talk to the people, we find this:

“Spectrum Health does not have a relationship with Alfa Bank or any of the Trump organizations. We have concluded a rigorous investigation with both our internal IT security specialists and expert cyber security firms. Our experts have conducted a detailed analysis of the alleged internet traffic and did not find any evidence that it included any actual communications (no emails, chat, text, etc.) between Spectrum Health and Alfa Bank or any of the Trump organizations. While we did find a small number of incoming spam marketing emails, they originated from a digital marketing company, Cendyn, advertising Trump Hotels.

So, I'm still saying this looks like BS to me. Don't get me wrong, it's entirely possible that some Russian hacked something somewhere. I just don't buy there being a story here without more evidence than a few stray DNS queries.

Re:possibily illegal

[Xenographic]

BTW, I will say that you may be right inasmuch as your arguing that nobody here MITM'd them.

Re:possibily illegal

[Aighearach]

Their audience is apparently morons who don't know what a ping is.

Well, as an actual software developer who has worked with network protocols I can assure you that there are lots of different types of ping, TCP ping, etc.

Furthermore, those in doubt can just check the RFC for ICMP and discover that it includes echo packets with an arbitrary payload. That should get a person one dim lightbulb away from realizing that you can tunnel other things on top of ICMP, and then from there they might do a search of the interwebs and discover that is old hat.

The pedants in this article are mostly a bunch of tools who don't know an ICMP echo packet from a Russian in a fur hat! Worse, they don't know a Russian ICMP packet in a squirrel toupee from a Brazilian SSH attack!

So even though they're possibly not even talking about ICMP, if they were it would all make sense. But DNS is also used for tunnels, so that's probably what it really is. Also, DNS is more likely to make it into logs that people have legit access to and aren't private.

Re:possibily illegal

[Aighearach]

So the malware on Spectrum Health's server is perhaps something that the scanner employed did not find.

I mean, I'm not a conspiracy fan, but them not finding anything only tells me they didn't find anything. You can't expect them to prove a negative, but the second most likely explanation isn't "nothing," but rather routine malware. So their assurance that it is not routine malware, combined with not finding anything, makes me not trust that host at all. Their server is probably totally p0wned.

Re:possibily illegal

[Falconhell]

Try reading the actual article, where all your points are shown to be blatantly irrelevant.
Being a Trump supporter, I guess you dont care about inconvenient facts.

Re:possibily illegal

[Xenographic]

Well, they were contacted afterwards. If they know that a server is allegedly communicating with Russia, it's pretty easy to see who the server is talking to with a simple tcpdump from something upstream. So that should be hard to miss.

Now yes, cleaning up an infection is one thing. But missing something like that entirely should be pretty hard if they had actual professional help.

I've had even less clueful people catch a hacked AMI recently because it was sending data off somewhere unknown in the not so distant past, so I'm going to have a hard time saying it was entirely missed.

Re: possibily illegal

[Anonymous Coward]

So, it's ok the Russians hacking to president candidacy in one side, and having strange connections on the other, when the topic is who will be in charge of Russia's nemesis country?

If I was American I'd be pissed off about what's happening here.

Re: possibily illegal

[Anonymous Coward]

Yea... someone trying to publish some article based on nothing more than speculation...

But now this capacious server handled a strangely small load of traffic, such a small load that it would be hard for a company to justify the expense and trouble it would take to maintain it. That wasn't the only oddity. When the researchers pinged the server, they received error messages. They concluded that the server was set to accept only incoming communication from a very small handful of IP addresses

This part just sound strange... If it's ICMP ping's you don't get errors... either you get a response or not.... If it's something else than ICMP pings then they have been sniffing the raw traffic and trying to exploit something...

This is just plain lies from someone that have no clue about whats happening...

Have to state that i don't like Clinton or Trump... Except for the comedy they are producing..

Re: possibily illegal

[Xenographic]

The hacks have exposed a ton of crap. Possible evidence of us selling weapons to Isis in Libya (RIP Vile Rat) and trying to claw them back, they faked violence at the Trump rallies (and blamed Bernie), they were talking about making hay of Trump's "bromance" with Putin long ago, they utterly shafted Bernie in every way. He even had people give him fake support just to steal his voters back at the end. They faked a Craigslist ad for Trump that was disgustingly sexist. Nobody there trusts each other. Carlos Danger (Anthony Wiener's) ways were known long ago, he appears to have gotten leaked classified info from his wife, top Clinton aide Huma, enough so that Huma sent emails from Hillary's device and vice versa, also forwarding classified things to webmail (Yahoo, Gmail). They talk about being especially worried about the sensitive pic of North Korea that was in her emails. They talk about quid pro quo to declassify one of the items she sent retroactively. In 2010, they talk about "how we just changed an entire Governor's race in 48 hours--without any fingerprints." They discuss an email from "Diane Reynolds" (Chelsea Clinton) about how the apple doesn't fall from the tree: you get a kiss on the cheek, then stabbed in the front and in the back. Hillary, if you're wondering, goes by "Evergreen" and "hrod" among other things. I haven't even covered the half of things, either. Oh, and FYI, some of that is from the FBI's response to FOIA requests, the rest is from the Podesta email dumps, which as we all should know, can be cryptographically validated via the DKIM signatures.

But yeah, let's worry about whether maybe Russia informed us of this. You know what Russia's stake in the election is?

Russia doesn't want to go to war with us over Syria.

Do you?

Re:possibily illegal

[Anonymous Coward]

"You're right that they talk about DNS queries, but I'm pretty sure this is an actual ICMP echo:

That wasnâ(TM)t the only oddity. When the researchers pinged the server, they received error messages. They concluded that the server was set to accept only incoming communication from a very small handful of IP addresses."

There's nothing here in what you quote that implies an ICMP echo. Even if they are indeed talking about a ping in the classic sense of what a ping is rather than merely as a term for general communication, that doesn't inherently require that it be an ICMP ping. It could just as well be a TCP ping - i.e. a plain and simple attempt to establish a TCP handshake with a particular port on a server that they know traffic is being communicated from.

I actually agree, the evidence in this article is entirely uncompelling and incredibly weak, but in suggesting the quote says something it clearly does not (i.e. that they were talking about an ICMP ping) I think you're projecting what you want to be the case, rather than what might actually be the case.

The case here is weak enough for no one to care, so there's no need to insist on the presence of meaning where there is none other than because you're playing politics and trying to pretend Trump couldn't possibly do anything wrong, ever.

Re:possibily illegal

[Anonymous Coward]

Their audience is apparently morons who don't know what a ping is.

But they *do know that IN SOVIET RUSSIA, Russia pings you!

Re: possibily illegal

[jmcvetta]

In Soviet America, DNS queries you!

Re:possibily illegal

[JoeMerchant]

There's a story here, why? Because you're talking about it... people are reading it, some percentage will dismiss it as garbage, some percentage won't.

Perceived basis in fact isn't necessary to make an impression on (persuade) people, it helps lend weight to an impression (persuade more effectively) with some, but in my experience, the majority don't know or even care about hard data and logical conclusions backing up assertions.

Re:possibily illegal

[jellomizer]

However those hacked Wiki-Leaks emails from Clinton are perfectly fine.

Re: possibily illegal

[Anonymous Coward]

If ICMP rejections were their basis for claiming only a few IPs are whitelisted for any particular TCP or UDP traffic, they are first class morons. I've worked at multiple places that (for no reason I think is good) blocked ICMP but defaulted to accepting other traffic.

Re: possibily illegal

[Anonymous Coward]

I have no opinion and neither should you. visit. It's for our leaders only to decide. Our duty is to obey. Or are you a malcontent? Maybe (gasp!) a terrorist sympathizer? I should report you.

Re: possibily illegal

[EvilAlphonso]

Based on Russia's behavior in the last years, your assumption that they do not want a war is not apparent from their actions.

In 2014 alone, 38 airspace violations (Finland, Estonia, Denmark, ...) from Russian military planes... including close encounters with passenger planes and US planes or boats.

Re:possibily illegal

[Anonymous Coward]

You win the pedantic nerd award.

Perhaps you can shed some light on the *most evil scenario* possible here. I don't really understand what the problem is at all. "Communications" ? Are we saying there is economic relationship ? Poor IT administration ? Is this Trump and Putin's secret sex hotline ?

This doesn't make a lot of sense and I'm not even sure I understand what we're maybe supposed to think is happening.

Re: possibily illegal

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course they don't want war. They'd much rather people just roll over and give them what they want without a fight.

Re:possibily illegal

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would they bother to tunnel over weird protocols when they could just SSH there? Who should be spying on their traffic, again? If anything, some odd tunnel would make me believe the people who owned it weren't responsible.

In that vein, look at the DNS, it's not even Trump's server!

Re: possibily illegal

[KenHansen]

If they know that a server is allegedly communicating with Russia

What? The Russian server is communicating with the Trump server, not the reverse - the DNS lookup records are for the destination, not the source, right?

Re: possibily illegal

[SmokeyRobot]

They don't want war. They want an arms race. Look at how Putin is prepping his public with propaganda. 50% of Russians are expecting an oncoming war with the US and/or NATO. Putin himself even said that their MIC was decimated after the collapse of the USSR and that the whole point of the nuclear deterrent is that it requires both sides to have equal strength and mutual annihilation to be inevitable. They currently lost that ability and with US/NATO missile defense systems all along Eastern Europe it is easy to imagine that this threat is easily leveraged to get Russia back into the arms race again.

Re: possibily illegal

[SScorpio]

They were worried about possible malware that would do a DNS lookup to find a command and control server. Once you are in, it's easier to remain undetected by having the hacked device reach out to you, than you trying to reach in past firewalls and other security.

Re: possibily illegal

[TechyImmigrant]

the rest is from the Podesta email dumps, which as we all should know, can be cryptographically validated via the DKIM signatures.

No they cannot. DKIM does not validate the sender or receiver.

Here's a quote from one of the DKIM authors, posted to the Metzdown crypto mailing list.

DKIM doesn't do what is claimed for verifying email athenticity. A DKIM signature is
from the "administrative domain" which is not the same thing as the domain part of
the sender. Virtual hosting, many other infrastructure things make it so that the
administrative domain is neither one-to-one nor onto email domains in the general
case.

It means that legitimate users of a given system can forge messages from some other
user and they'll get a DKIM signature on them. Yeah, perhaps you can detect from
headers and other things that the message was "forged" but perhaps you can't. I put
scare quotes around forged because there are many situations where a user sends a
message with some other name on it that are legitimate and in many cases this isn't
a bug, it's a feature.

The DKIM signer simply stamps outgoing messages somewhere in the outgoing pipeline,
it doesn't have user authenticity in it as anything other than guidance.

Moreover, the DKIM signing keys have to be sitting on some server that processes
outgoing email.

This means that in a case where someone has hacked a system, if they have the email
stores, they probably also have the DKIM signing key. If they have the DKIM signing
key they can create whatever messages they want and sign them, with backdating and
anything else they want.

If you're using DKIM signatures to verify a hacked mail store, you're (e.g.)
assuming they have the user maildirs, but not the server config files.

Lastly, this property -- that DKIM doesn't provide author/message authenticity -- is
a *GOAL* of DKIM. When we were making it, we were very concerned that the legitimate
needs of spam fighting etc. would turn it into a tracking and surveillance system.
DKIM is designed to make the connection between the DKIM signature and author
authenticity tenuous at best.

Here's a short description of the DKIM use case: DKIM allows Gmail to know that a
message for Alice from her bank was created by her bank, even when it is forwarded
through her university alumni email address.

Re: possibily illegal

[SScorpio]

I've worked with banks that only allow inbound connections from specific public IPs on a per port basis. If it's an automated service I'd be surprised if it let just anyone in.

Re:possibily illegal

[Anonymous Coward]

Looks like all they really have is DNS requests. As for "pinging" the server and it not responding, all that tells you is it doesn't respond to THEM, but could also be easily set up as an outbound-only server, and it will not accept email from anyone.

I run a couple of mail servers, and I get 'pinged', connected, attempted spam relayed, and dictionary attacked thousands of times a day. Including from Russia.

And still, even if he does exchange email with Alfa, aren't there like dozens of perfectly legal and reasonable reasons why a business that has real estate holdings all over the world might have business in Russia, too?

If they were really being secret (rather than publishing an MX record in their DNS zone), they would just exchange IP addresses directly or set up a VPN.

Re:possibily illegal

[Anonymous Coward]

From the article, it seems the only 'traces' they have are DNS requests, possibly from root zone servers. The 'ping' sounds like they are just attempting to connect to port 25, and it's rejecting them. All that tells them traffic from that ip is dropped. It could be due to the mail server being set as outbound only (thus would not have an open port 25) to a variety of firewall setups only allowing certain IP addresses/blocks access.

Re: possibily illegal

[Anonymous Coward]

ey, do me a favor?

Could you link to either the Wikileaks email which exposed this crap?

Not that I don't trust you... But I don't trust you. I've looked into how Bernie got shafted, and yeah, the DNC was supporting Hilary over Bernie. Duh. Was there ever a doubt? He's not really a Democrat, he only registered this year and for the past 30 years he's been independent. Of course they're supporting her over Bernie. And most did so directly, he never got many of the super-delegates. There were some questionable money funneling schemes, which might be more serious, but this one wasn't

And I know about sending classified mail through unsecured gmail. That would get a regular joe fired. But apparently the upper-crust are immune.

And yeah, someone said something bad about Chelsea and her mother. Oh noes!

Russia doesn't want to go to war with us over Syria. Do you?

No, Russia doesn't want to go to war with us over Syria. Neither do we. What they want is to posture and display military force abroad where the US was dicking around in the desert and not be rebuked, forced to back down, sanctioned, or otherwise stemmed because that display of unmitigated force demonstrates to the other ex-soviet states that NATO and the west won't save them just as we haven't upheld the defense agreement with Ukraine. That display of military power nets them more political power by intimidating their neighbors, and probably makes Putin more popular back home.

We don't want that. Because it leads Russia invading places like Georgia and Ukraine. On the flip side, if Russia fucks with us every time we try to be dicks in the desert, hopefully that'll keep our bloody idiots from trying to be dicks in the desert.

Anyway, foreign policy clusterfuck aside, citing the details of the shit on Hilary would be a good thing for the USA.

Re: possibily illegal

[LifesABeach]

It's starting to look like Trump is going to have more problems that being accused of finger f-ing women in public?

Re: possibily illegal

[lalleglad]

I am not sure they want an actual arm race, because I am sure they haven't forgotten how Reagan brought them down economically with that in the 80'ies.

What I am sure that they do want is that NATO and friends will back off and not do anything, as we have done in so many places, Ukraine and Syria to name a few famous ones.

Every time Putin rattles the nuclear saber Western and NATO countries rattle their knees, so Putin has no reason to have _any_ respect for whatever we _say_.

A full scale war is not even necessary, and also something we don't want, but shooting down a few Russian planes and helicopters and destroying a few tanks and other important equipment that can easily be seen on media, so the Russian public can also see it, _then_ Putin will listen. That is the only language he understands, being a USSR hardliner.

Also, USA should not _excuse_ killing a number of Syrian Al Assad forces by saying it was a mistake. I hope it wasn't a mistake, and it should be strongly emphasized that there is more where that came from, unless _they_ back off!

Russia and Al Assad doesn't want any civilian to stay in Aleppo, as this is a genocide if there ever was one!

NATO and liberal countries in the World, wake up!

Re:possibily illegal

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, as an actual software developer who has worked with network protocols I can assure you that there are lots of different types of ping, TCP ping, etc.

Indeedy. In a strict use it's an ICMP echo packet, but in a more general use, a ping is a check that some server / service is still alive.

It's pretty normal to call a periodic SELECT VERSION() on a persistent database connection a ping. Hell, many people say "somenick: ping?" on IRC to check whether someone is at the keyboard.

Re: possibily illegal

[Xenographic]

You're right, I should've linked that all up, but by the time I had finished the brain dump it was too late at night and I was too tired to link everything.

There's a huge list of stuff here with easy summaries, but I don't think it's everything.

If you have particular items of interest, please let me know so I can pull up citations for you. I know the FBI dump is a pain in the rear to find stuff in due to not being able to search it. Most of this came from discussions on /r/wikileaks if that helps.

Re: possibily illegal

[Anonymous Coward]

Trump apparently raped a tween thirty years ago. His trial is in December, they got the date pushed to after the election. Investors business daily covered it a couple weeks ago, but the major networks are afraid of a suit if they cover it for some reason.

Re: possibily illegal

[SmokeyRobot]

History doesn't reflect what you are saying. It was not a singular arms race with the US during Reagan that caused the USSR to collapse. While Reagan spoke with heavy rhetoric towards the USSR, he also didn't do much but continue covert anti-communist support and proxy wars. The arms race was simply a convenient way to make money for the MIC in the US which has always been fueling politics. And by the end of it all, Reagan had a great relationship with Russia. Here is Putin himself saying exactly what I am talking about: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... Also since you seem to want the US to overthrow the Syrian government which is not our job. Please view this video of the French Foreign Minister saying that the Syrian Civil War is a creation of Western governments (US, UK and Israel with the support of Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey. https://www.youtube.com/watch?... It has nothing to do with the way Assad treats his people. I have friends and family who are veterans of recent wars in the Middle East so I take exception to you think that US troops should do this and should do that. It seems you are not even American so please don't assume you know shit about what our military should do.

Re: possibily illegal

[lalleglad]

You seem to be very young so you can only back up your opinion with YouTube videos from others, so I can't take it seriously.
USA is member of NATO and all over my continent and I know shit about what USA military should do, and unless you are a general in the same, you shouldn't tell me about shit!
I am sorry if your family had bad experiences in the Middle East, but I hope they did their job and lived up to the expectations that USA want us all to live up to.

Re: possibily illegal

[KenHansen]

Once you are in, it's easier to remain undetected by having the hacked device reach out to you, than you trying to reach in past firewalls and other security.

Understood, but you've missed my point. We have a Russian server and a trump server. The traffic discussed in the slashdot article is DNS lookups by Russian server of Trump server. The Trump server has no reason to look up it's own DNS record. The Russian server is the one originating the traffic. Or are you saying that Trump hacked into the Russian server, and that it was Trump's malware on the Russian server that kept looking up Trump's server DNS record?

Re: possibily illegal

[Anonymous Coward]

They talk about quid pro quo to declassify one of the items she sent retroactively.

As I recall the details of the case, the only ones with incriminating intent in that transaction were the FBI itself. Check your facts.

Re: possibily illegal

[SmokeyRobot]

Ah I seem to be very young; I am not. Youtube videos which you clearly didn't bother to click aren't credible to you. Hey clueless the Youtube videos were videos of Vladimir Putin and Roland Dumas speaking. Not some random people. Go ahead and keep denying relevant information that you don't even bother understanding.

Re:possibily illegal

[Anonymous Coward]

DNS is used for tunnels when you have no other way of communicating with the outside. I.e. usually by a hacker or trojan within a well-protected network (one that blocks outgoing traffic by default). No one in their right mind would set up a DNS tunnel with high detection risk and low bandwidth, if they they could just do regular encrypted traffic - that is, if they owned the network.

This seems to suggest that either that server was hacked, or that someone else behind that network is communicating, unbeknownst to the ownes of the network.

Re:possibily illegal

[Coren22]

Kind of like all the Hillary supporters still claiming she didn't break the numerous laws that have been outlined?

Re:possibily illegal

[Aighearach]

You win the pedantic nerd award.

Gosh, thanks, I'm blushing with joy.

I haven't won a lot of awards, a few chess tournaments maybe, but a pedantic nerd award, I'll cherish that forever!!1!

And yes, the *most evil scenario* is that they're hiding stuff so evil that they want to hide it! And poor opsec.

Re:possibily illegal

[Aighearach]

Why would they bother to tunnel over weird protocols when they could just SSH there? Who should be spying on their traffic, again? If anything, some odd tunnel would make me believe the people who owned it weren't responsible.

In that vein, look at the DNS, it's not even Trump's server!

Great question. Maybe they have an idiot PHB project manager, or some trusted mob guy that they thought was more technical than he actually was? Maybe the Russians think the NSA cracked their SSH and that obscurity is the only game left? Who knows!

Why? I'll tell you why! Because of [long list of known unknowns]!!!

Re:possibily illegal

[Aighearach]

It is a well known technique to hide secret communications in plain sight, because that is where they least stand out. Presumably they trusted their payload to remain secret, and so far it has.

They may even have been surprised to be found by private researchers because of their innocuous obscurity. Perhaps they were avoiding use of channels that are more heavily monitored on the Russian side, worried about NSA moles or other access over there? The list of known unknowns that are relevant is pretty long, even just pulling them out of [a hat]. It isn't hard to realize that we don't (and won't) know.

If the server was hacked, OK, maybe. But the responses from the parties don't really match that. It seems like they'd want to admit that, because it is the least-bad possible answer. But they're denying that too; they probably don't want the server to become evidence.

Re:BULL SH!T

[dugancent]

Says the Anonymous poster. Log in or go away.

Re:BULL SH!T

[hey!]

Hardly. The libs are expecting a massive, ground-shifting victory. It's just that Trump is always good copy. Even people who hate him love to read about him, and pass stuff along.

It's like I said to my sister the other day; I can't wait for November 9 so I can stop obsessing about Trump and start obsessing about the new Harry Potter movie.

I've seen things at least that strange

[ScentCone]

I have customers with nearly-abandoned dedicated servers on their own IPs and with some project-related whitelist rules that act very much like what's described in the summary. Those servers do things like wasting their time checking for updates from some custom module authors (some overseas), and some try to connect to long-gone services that have had their domains scooped up by (ready?) Russian typo-squatters and the like, but with IPs that resolve somewhere else entirely because they've been re-assigned to entirely different companies. And no, nobody dares to approve changing the configuration on these legacy servers ... and they keep paying to keep them online, despite the crickets chirping instead of activity on whatever legacy task they once did.

There are all sorts of reasons this sort of behavior might materialize. You know, sort of like there might be all sorts of reasons that Huma Abedin's trove of email - in the hundreds of thousands - might bey on her creepy, estranged husband's laptop. I'm sorry, did I use her name? Woopsie! Hillary Clinton now calls her "a staffer."

Re:I've seen things at least that strange

[PopeRatzo]

There are all sorts of reasons this sort of behavior might materialize.

Are there also "all sorts of reasons" that the peak activity of this server would occur only during dates immediately following dramatic election news?

Read the whole story. It wasn't "typo-squatters" it was a Russian bank owned by oligarchs that was connecting to Trump's secret private email server.

It's a well-researched and written story. You might want to check it out unless the news upsets you for some reason.

That wasn’t the only oddity. When the researchers pinged the server, they received error messages. They concluded that the server was set to accept only incoming communication from a very small handful of IP addresses. A small portion of the logs showed communication with a server belonging to Michigan-based Spectrum Health. (The company said in a statement: “Spectrum Health does not have a relationship with Alfa Bank or any of the Trump organizations. We have concluded a rigorous investigation with both our internal IT security specialists and expert cyber security firms. Our experts have conducted a detailed analysis of the alleged internet traffic and did not find any evidence that it included any actual communications (no emails, chat, text, etc.) between Spectrum Health and Alfa Bank or any of the Trump organizations. While we did find a small number of incoming spam marketing emails, they originated from a digital marketing company, Cendyn, advertising Trump Hotels.”)

Spectrum accounted for a relatively trivial portion of the traffic. Eighty-seven percent of the DNS lookups involved the two Alfa Bank servers. “It’s pretty clear that it’s not an open mail server,” Camp told me. “These organizations are communicating in a way designed to block other people out.”

Earlier this month, the group of computer scientists passed the logs to Paul Vixie. In the world of DNS experts, there’s no higher authority. Vixie wrote central strands of the DNS code that makes the internet work. After studying the logs, he concluded, “The parties were communicating in a secretive fashion. The operative word is secretive. This is more akin to what criminal syndicates do if they are putting together a project.” Put differently, the logs suggested that Trump and Alfa had configured something like a digital hotline connecting the two entities, shutting out the rest of the world, and designed to obscure its own existence. Over the summer, the scientists observed the communications trail from a distance.

* * *

While the researchers went about their work, the conventional wisdom about Russian interference in the campaign began to shift. There were reports that the Trump campaign had ordered the Republican Party to rewrite its platform position on Ukraine, maneuvering the GOP toward a policy preferred by Russia, though the Trump campaign denied having a hand in the change. Then Trump announced in an interview with the New York Times his unwillingness to spring to the defense of NATO allies in the face of a Russian invasion. Trump even invited Russian hackers to go hunting for Clinton’s emails, then passed the comment off as a joke.

Re:I've seen things at least that strange

[hey!]

From a logical standpoint this really tells us nothing. Just like existing the Abedin "trove" really tells us nothing. It's just a tabula rasa onto which people can project what they already believe.

It wouldn't be surprising for Trump to have some kind of relationship with a Russian bank; that's not necessarily illegal. Now if you were looking for dirt, that'd be a good place to start looking, because there are sanctions against certain Russian firms and individuals. But it doesn't mean you'd find any.

Re:I've seen things at least that strange

[theIsovist]

Agreed. The article definitely leans towards this being more devious than the data itself shows, but they do admit, the data is very anecdotal. As much as I dislike Trump, this isn't a smoking gun but more of a report of someone hearing a bang. It could be a crime, it could be (car analogy) be a car backfiring. I'll be curious to see how this shakes out.

Re:I've seen things at least that strange

[russotto]

Are there also "all sorts of reasons" that the peak activity of this server would occur only during dates immediately following dramatic election news?

They didn't. The article says this, but the attached graph shows otherwise.

Re:I've seen things at least that strange

[PopeRatzo]

They didn't. The article says this, but the attached graph shows otherwise.

Here is the graph we're talking about. Note the spike exactly when Trump was lobbying the RNC platform committee to take a softer stance re: Ukraine.

http://www.slate.com/articles/...

Re:I've seen things at least that strange

[l0n3s0m3phr34k]

Steve, is that you? The sysadmin before me at my current job? Because my firewall was FILLED with address objects, NAT policies, service objects, etc from many years ago that I'm still trying to work my way through. No documentation either...like "Webserver public private public IP" for a name, every address has it's own http and https service object, rules for servers long moved across the ocean...

Re:I've seen things at least that strange

[russotto]

There's spikes all over the graph. Very few correspond with anything election related. The spike during the RNC platform committee is from Michigan (Spectrum Health), not either of the Alfas.

Re:I've seen things at least that strange

[LordLucless]

Read the whole story. It wasn't "typo-squatters" it was a Russian bank owned by oligarchs that was connecting to Trump's secret private email server.

Uh, by "secret, private email server", do you mean the server openly and publicly registered to the Trump Organisation?

Re:I've seen things at least that strange

[Anonymous Coward]

It wouldn't be surprising for Trump to have some kind of relationship with a Russian bank; that's not necessarily illegal.

Trump's tax returns really are something the public should have before even considering him. Trump owing a lot of money to say Russian banks may not be illegal, but it is something that can't be accepted in a president. An American president cannot have liabilities like that that could be used as a method to influence his actions. The only way we can know is to see them.

Seriously, Trump has consistently been consistent on I think one thing and that is being nice to Putin. (I think he has even flip flopped on the wall at one point.) Now, consider Trump's list of Insults. Seriously, the only ones that seem to be off limit for Trump are his family and Putin. Now, what are the logical reasons to explain this?

1) He actually admires Putin. This appears to be true, but also seems insufficient. Trump's admiration is somewhat limited by having most tied up in the mirror.
2) He owes a crap load of money to Russian banks and is afraid of Putin. That one is my guess. I doubt Trump is actively working with Putin.
3) Putin has dirt on him and is flat out being blackmailed and he really is Putin's Puppet. Possible. Putin has certainly shown the willingness to manipulate the US elections. I see no reason why Trump should be excused. His previous campaign manager might even be linked in here. I still think (2) is more likely. This kind of thing has too much risk and is not remotely subtle.
4) I don't credit Trump's saying Putin is better than Obama as anything Trump himself believes. That seems clearly to be just a way to bash Obama and such, without denying Putin.
5) It could be as simple as Trump's calculation that by being extra nice to Putin, that maybe he won't get hacked. Sure he gets some blow back with his apparent support, but not nearly what he would get if Putin hacked his organisation and dumped all the records and his tax returns online. This one fits pretty well. After all he choked when he met the Mexican President, and he was hardly scary. He must be quaking in his boots at the thought of Putin getting mad at him.

I'm still betting (2), but (5) fits as well, and neither is exactly mutually exclusive. For that matter, they could all be true in one way or another.

So, does anyone else have a seriously plausible explanation to explain Trump's behavior with Putin? I can't think of any good explanations for it, and, as mentioned, without his tax returns, we don't really know who owns Trump.

I had a Bank of America account for a time, and no doubt others have had bank accounts and such they wish they had not. Would you want one of those guys holding Trump's leash?

I don't.

Re:I've seen things at least that strange

[pushing-robot]

Yeah, every election year these scandals come out of the woodwork. All are blown horribly out of proportion; most are nothing but FUD and hand-wringing.

Vote on policy. That's what's going to impact your life, your country and your planet. Hundreds of millions of people have been enfranchised, disenfranchised, imprisoned, freed, saved, or killed because of US policy and its repercussions throughout the world. It's not an exaggeration—it's history. And the present. And the future too; the next president's decisions on issues from civil rights and liberties to global conflicts to drug enforcement to climate change will affect millions more, both in the next four years and in the shadow they cast over the next century.

People will die because of the next president's policy. People with names and faces and homes. People who can't vote in our election. People who are unable to vote. People who are your kids' or grandkids' age. People who aren't even born.

Vote for them.

Re:I've seen things at least that strange

[dbIII]

“The parties were communicating in a secretive fashion. The operative word is secretive. This is more akin to what criminal syndicates do if they are putting together a project.”

That makes sense if you are communicating with a bank run by foreign gangsters because even if your business with them is legitimate you don't want anyone reading about it on a newspaper front page.
Personally I've thought Trump was an outright crook ever since he was nothing but an Atlantic City casino boss, but this could be legit.

Re:I've seen things at least that strange

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a well-researched and written story.

What a fucking joke. This is still slashdot, right? There are still people here that understand TCP/IP and DNS, right? I only ask because the author of the slate article makes it abundantly clear that he is unaware of the difference between a server and a domain.

The server was first registered to Trump’s business in 2009

Does that look well researched to anyone here? If you were consulting with a reporter writing a story about servers and DNS, would you let him leave that sentence in the story? Or would you correct him?

More:

But what he saw was a bank in Moscow that kept irregularly pinging a server registered to the Trump Organization on Fifth Avenue.

What is on 5th Avenue? I'll give you a hint, it isn't the bank, the server or the domain. Someone go stop the presses, I think we just found the mailing address of Trump's office.

But now this capacious server handled a strangely small load of traffic, such a small load that it would be hard for a company to justify the expense and trouble it would take to maintain it. “I get more mail in a day than the server handled,” Davis says.

That wasn’t the only oddity. When the researchers pinged the server, they received error messages. They concluded that the server was set to accept only incoming communication from a very small handful of IP addresses.

Ok, so the server isn't advertising itself with a banner that says "I am a beowolf cluster, and these chumps have be running 5 emails a day." How do these "researchers" know what it is inside? Did they commit some felonies to find out? Do I sense yet another batch of Democrats taking the 5th in the near future?

Assuming they get in through some means, what do they find? Is it a capacious server with huge operating costs, like geothermal liquid cooling? Or is it a 1U stuffed into a rack somewhere and forgotten until someone walks past and notices that the idiot light is lit, 6 months after it shuts itself off because the PSU fan failed? Or is this server just an A record in DNS somewhere, in a domain that exists mostly so that recipient mailservers have a SPF record to look at? They don't tell us any specifics. My guess is that the "well-researched" writer thinks that each domain name needs a big dedicated server, at least to the extent that he is able to recognize them as distinct concepts and objects.

I don't know about you guys, but I check my domain names and purge stale domains about once per decade. The $15 per year to leave them on autopilot autorenewal mode is literally less expensive than my effort to sift through the list plucking out the ones that I no longer need.

Re:I've seen things at least that strange

[Xenographic]

Almost... just for giggles, it looks like it isn't even his:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Cw...

Re:I've seen things at least that strange

[ScentCone]

It's a well-researched and written story.

What it actually does is cherry-pick the wildest speculation they can come up with, and then (if you bother reading all the way through), points out exactly how eye-rollingly silly it is. A little bit of Occam's Razor applied to the situation, along with some actual experience with provisioned-by-third-party marketing mail servers left to rot for six years is instructive.

Yes, it's well written in the sense that it conforms to Slate's editorial position on trying to get Hillary Clinton elected. It reaches into nothingness in an attempt to construct a narrative desperate to distract from their preferred candidate's flaming case of corruption while actually being a supposed public servant in a position of trust.

Re:I've seen things at least that strange

[Anonymous Coward]

>Seriously, the only ones that seem to be off limit for Trump are his family and Putin.

Holy shit, I just noticed that another person missing from the list is Hitler. That is definite proof that Trump is being influenced by Hitler from his moon base!

Holy hell, this is the saddest, most desperate attempt at salvaging the election I've seen from Democrats yet, and that really says something given we've already seen spectacles like "Trump's wife copied Obama's speech!" (2 sentences in a 15 minute speech) and "He said pussy, that must mean he hates women!" (lol)

Re:I've seen things at least that strange

[Anonymous Coward]

You shut your mouth! We must have nuclear war with Russia, and Trump stands in the way of that! How DARE he be friendly with unapproved foreign leaders!

Re:I've seen things at least that strange

[Anonymous Coward]

More: https://www.whois.com/whois/trump-email.com

Trump associated with hotel marketing firm! Panic at 11.

Re:I've seen things at least that strange

[Anonymous Coward]

A cat lady in Boca Raton who can't spell "organization" is a marketing firm in the employ of a billionaire.

Oh, and she uses GoDaddy to register sites for him.

And leaks his DNS all over the place.

On communications that are supposed to be secret.

Hillary really thought this was a good plan. Very professional. But she just further reveals the depths of her own incompetence.

Re:I've seen things at least that strange

[Anonymous Coward]

" the logs suggested that Trump and Alfa had configured something like a digital hotline connecting the two entities, shutting out the rest of the world, and designed to obscure its own existence" ----- ok so they went through all this trouble to "hide" this, except to keep it in the open, with thw trump brand. I smell bullshit, and it stinks of a clintonesque scent!
not even supportor of trump, won't vote. but this smells of bullshit. this is like robbing a bank, obfuscating every possible connection from the robbery to oneself, but then taking your mask off and taking a selfie and posting it on facebook with the caption "I came, I saw, i conquered... vote Trump 2016"----------- way too "complicated" to then have it originated from a Trump server!

Re:I've seen things at least that strange

[Anonymous Coward]

>And no, nobody dares to approve changing the configuration on these legacy servers

Is that why the server went down and then resurfaced under a new DNS record?

Re:I've seen things at least that strange

[Anonymous Coward]

and it's already been debunked

Re: I've seen things at least that strange

[Anonymous Coward]

You pick what's dramatic based on the data you're correlating it to. Come on, that's freshman level journalism.

Re:I've seen things at least that strange

[Anonymous Coward]

Weird. That doesn't correspond at all with the results I get from a whois of trump-email.com. Maybe it's because I'm not using Russian servers to do it.

Re:I've seen things at least that strange

[Anonymous Coward]

Come on we all know what Hillary did wrong was have a "secret" "private" email "server". I mean "servers" are scary....

It had absolutely nothing to do with her being secretary of state or having classified information....nope....the problem was she had a server.

Re:I've seen things at least that strange

[cdrudge]

But what he saw was a bank in Moscow that kept irregularly pinging a server registered to the Trump Organization on Fifth Avenue.

What is on 5th Avenue? I'll give you a hint, it isn't the bank, the server or the domain. Someone go stop the presses, I think we just found the mailing address of Trump's office.

I took it to mean more that a Moscow-based bank was talking to a Trump-organized bank. Fifth Avenue is used to identify the Trump Organization proper.

Re:I've seen things at least that strange

[drunken_boxer777]

"emcmullin" as in "Evan McMullin" from Utah?

This is brilliant.

Re:I've seen things at least that strange

[Anonymous Coward]

You're not supposed to look at the actual spikes. Those happen in pretty much every real set of data. Don't look at the actual lines. What you're doing is called overfitting, and all it means is you're measuring noise (garbage data). Instead, look at how the lines trend. Try to imagine a 'best fit' line. If you do that, then there's only one spike in that graph, and it's dead obvious.

Re:I've seen things at least that strange

[Anonymous Coward]

I am so glad you have an explanation that some of the top experts in their field must have missed.

Re:I've seen things at least that strange

[Holi]

you mean Emily?

Admin Name: Emily McMullin
Admin Organization: Cendyn
Admin Street: 1515 N Federal Highway
Admin Street: Suite 419
Admin City: Boca Raton
Admin State/Province: Florida
Admin Postal Code: 33432
Admin Country: US
Admin Phone: (561) 750-3173
Admin Phone Ext:

Re:I've seen things at least that strange

[Holi]

Usually you post a link to your proof

Re:I've seen things at least that strange

[mallyone]

McMullin, the name just reaks of the motherland!

Re:I've seen things at least that strange

[Grog6]

Most amazing is the level of astroturfing on here today.

These were the only reasonable posts I saw that weren't AC turfers modded to +5.

Russians, maybe? I hear they pay very well for 'turfers...

Re:I've seen things at least that strange

[Anonymous Coward]

It wouldn't be surprising for him to have that kind of relationship...but I believe he has claimed that he does *not* have that sort of relationship.

Not that Trump telling a lie would be surprising either..

Re:I've seen things at least that strange

[Cederic]

Given that three different whois servers I've checked all give consistent information that corresponds exactly, maybe you should use a Russian server because yours is clearly fucking broken.

Re:I've seen things at least that strange

[shadowp157]

A cat lady in Boca Raton who can't spell "organization" is a marketing firm in the employ of a billionaire.

Oh, and she uses GoDaddy to register sites for him.

http://www.whois.com/whois/tru...

Appearantly some Billionaire who runs trumps main website would employ someone who uses GoDaddy...

Re:I've seen things at least that strange

[orgelspieler]

... blown horribly out of proportion; most are nothing but FUD and hand-wringing.

... People will die because of the next president's policy.

Irony?

Re:I've seen things at least that strange

[Anonymous Coward]

Whats wrong with you?

Re:I've seen things at least that strange

[CauseBy]

No, as in Emily McMullin from Florida who works at Cendyn, some kind of computer company.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/em...

Re:I've seen things at least that strange

[Anonymous Coward]

PRlog.ru is a crude bot - backlinker

I wonder if cendyn utilizes them to increase there SEO foot print. that would explain how the Russian side knew of the new domain.

  http://prlog.ru/analysis/sheratonemenus.com
Google Cache version here.
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:yMCafw7SJBcJ:prlog.ru/analysis/sheratonemenus.com+&cd=56&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us

 

Re:I've seen things at least that strange

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed. The article definitely leans towards this being more devious than the data itself shows, but they do admit, the data is very anecdotal. As much as I dislike Trump, this isn't a smoking gun but more of a report of someone hearing a bang. It could be a crime, it could be (car analogy) be a car backfiring. I'll be curious to see how this shakes out.

Agreed, but I would like to add that I thought the Slate article was more "speculative and sensational" than a "solid piece of honest journalism that names names".

Unnamed and anonymous sources ... Watergate all over again, but at least Woodward & Bernstein had the common sense to use "Deep Throat" only as a "deep background" source and obtain multiple named sources for any "anonymous" source information.

The Slate article just has quotes from people I don't know and never heard of, and therefore cannot trust, saying, "Yeah, that anonymous person is all good."

Slate == MSM == CNN == "mouthpiece for the Democrats" == "fear mongering" == "rumor spreading"

Re:I've seen things at least that strange

[Anonymous Coward]

Show me on the doll where HRC touched you!

Re:I've seen things at least that strange

[ScentCone]

Right on the constitution. Not that you'd be familiar with that.

Trying desperately to pin it on Russia, eh?

[Anonymous Coward]

Trying desperately to pin it on Russia, eh?

Any pretext! Whatever it takes!

The ends justify the means!

Re: Trying desperately to pin it on Russia, eh?

[Anonymous Coward]

The election is Rigged! So you better vote four or five times to be sure the only candidate who can clean up this mess will win!

Election season is Silly Season

[davide marney]

FTA: "Put differently, the logs suggested that Trump and Alfa had configured something like a digital hotline connecting the two entities, shutting out the rest of the world, and designed to obscure its own existence." Oh, you mean like the SSH setup I have for all my servers to only listen to known IPs for shell access? Uh, yeah, no kidding. Geez, politics can make people so stupid.

Re:Election season is Silly Season

[ScentCone]

Geez, politics can make people so stupid.

No, politics makes people PRETEND to be stupid so they can pretend they are outraged by things they are pretending they don't understand well enough, so they can speak their phony outrage out loud in hopes that some other ACTUALLY low-information person will pick up the outrage and run with it all the way to the voting booth. This story is bordering on that. But the credible treatment of it is definitely such.

Re:Election season is Silly Season

[Gussington]

Oh, you mean like the SSH setup I have for all my servers to only listen to known IPs for shell access? Uh, yeah, no kidding.

I think Trump is an idiot and wanted to find something in this story, but this really is scraping the bottom of the speculation barrel.
For all we know it is one of the IT staff with a link to torrent seed hosted overseas. There's a ton of reasons to not like Trump, this is not one of them.

Re:Election season is Silly Season

[phantomfive]

"Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts." -R. Feynman

Good quote. This is another good, related one, from Thomas Huxley (great man, agnostic):

Science seems to me to teach in the highest and strongest manner the great truth which is embodied in the Christian conception of entire surrender to the will of God. Sit down before fact as a little child, be prepared to give up every preconceived notion, follow humbly wherever and to whatever abysses nature leads, or you shall learn nothing. I have only begun to learn content and peace of mind since I have resolved at all risks to do this.

And this one is good too (from Richard Lindzen):

Science as a tool is sometimes useful; Science as an institution is always problematic.

Re:Election season is Silly Season

[ShakaUVM]

>FTA: "Put differently, the logs suggested that Trump and Alfa had configured something like a digital hotline connecting the two entities, shutting out the rest of the world, and designed to obscure its own existence." Oh, you mean like the SSH setup I have for all my servers to only listen to known IPs for shell access? Uh, yeah, no kidding. Geez, politics can make people so stupid.

According to known right-wing rag, the New York Times, the FBI investigated this alleged connection for weeks and decided it was nothing.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11...

Re:Election season is Silly Season

[h33t l4x0r]

True but it's as substantial as the Weiner laptop emails and look how much hay he's been making with that.

Re:Election season is Silly Season

[William Baric]

This is not a reason to dislike Trump, but this is a reason to dislike Clinton, who is pushing for this ridiculous anti-Russia propaganda. It's almost as if Clinton is trying to create a justification for an attack against Russia (for example to impose the no-fly zone over Syria that she wants).

BTW, I'm Canadian so I don't care that much about the US election, still I kind of don't like the warmongering attitude of Clinton. When it comes to attacking small countries like Libya, I don't care that much (even if I don't approve of it), but the idea of the US going to war against Russia do frighten me.

Re:Election season is Silly Season

[meta-monkey]

politics makes people PRETEND to be stupid

Also pretend to have no sense of humor. A Republican could ask why the chicken crossed the road and a Democrat would feign OUTRAGE because jaywalking is ILLEGAL and potential harm to animals IS NO LAUGHING MATTER and vice versa. It's all so tiresome.

Re:Election season is Silly Season

[meta-monkey]

Having classified State Department documents on the laptop of someone with no security clearance is as substantial as a pinging server?

Re:Election season is Silly Season

[loonycyborg]

The war isn't an actual possibility, MAD principle is still in effect. Nobody will risk a nuclear exchange for such silly reasons as "enforcing no fly zone over Syria". US simply has nothing to lose there, and nothing to fight for.

Re:Election season is Silly Season

[Holi]

Sure because an SSH tunnel between Trumps server and the Russian bank means there is no connection between the two. Wouldn't an SSH tunnel be proof of some sort of business between the 2? It's interesting how people think they can decipher what traffic was sent from DNS logs.

Re:Election season is Silly Season

[William Baric]

Clinton thinking MAD principle is still in effect is exactly why she might start a conventional war with Russia. The US military is a lot more powerful than Russia's military, so a conventional war against Russia for Syria would be an easy win for the US. Economically, it would show Russian weapons are crap, and so help the US weapon industry. Politically, it would destroy the BRICS association and weaken the growing influence of China. Militarily, it would result in an easy expansion of NATO, something Clinton also wants.

Re:Election season is Silly Season

[h33t l4x0r]

Because none of the emails were from her.

Re:Election season is Silly Season

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, to be more accurate, they've decided there was no plausible evidence of a "conclusive or direct link between Mr Trump and the Russian government".

Which falls some distance short of saying "it's nothing".

Re:Election season is Silly Season

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, you mean like the SSH setup I have for all my servers to only listen to known IPs for shell access? Uh, yeah, no kidding. Geez, politics can make people so stupid.

Technically it's politics making people portray themselves as smarter than they are. But yeah, OMG are you saying you've "gone dark"? And lived to tell the tale?

Re:Election season is Silly Season

[Anonymous Coward]

FTA: "Put differently, the logs suggested that Trump and Alfa had configured something like a digital hotline connecting the two entities, shutting out the rest of the world, and designed to obscure its own existence."

Oh, you mean like the SSH setup I have for all my servers to only listen to known IPs for shell access? Uh, yeah, no kidding.

Geez, politics can make people so stupid.

Sure, but that brings us back to the point of the article. Why is a Russian bank routinely sshing in to a Trump controlled server?

Re:Election season is Silly Season

[loonycyborg]

Given that US military struggled even with Vietnam, winning a war with Russia as defender is an impossibility for them, even if nuclear weapons are excluded. They could only muster enough forces for such a war if Russia invaded New York or something.

Re:Election season is Silly Season

[meta-monkey]

But the retarded private server Hillary set up so she could hide her corrupt and illegal activities enabled Huma and Weiner to steal an awful lot of classified material.

Re:Election season is Silly Season

[Anonymous Coward]

And how are you not doing the same thing with these very shill-like posts you keep making? Cause it looks like all you're doing is being a republican cheerleader to me.

Re:Election season is Silly Season

[h33t l4x0r]

And the hits for the Russian bank are Trump doing online banking.

Re:Election season is Silly Season

[meta-monkey]

Well the right-wing rag New York Times says there's no connections between Trump and Russia. There are far more concrete ties between Hillary and Russia, and Saudi Arabia, and Qatar, etc, etc but no, no, a DNS look up from a Russian bank proves Trump is taking orders from the Kremlin. This entire election cycle lefties have gone full conspiratard, but they're awful at conspiracy theories.

/., where innuendo is news

[HBI]

I heard Trump used Internet Explorer once, too.

Re:/., where innuendo is news

[Anonymous Coward]

"IE6 is tremendous"

Re:/., where innuendo is news

[chipschap]

"We're going to make IE6 great again"

Re:/., where innuendo is news

[Bodhammer]

"Like, with a cloth or something?"

Re:/., where innuendo is news

[phantomfive]

I heard Trump used Internet Explorer once, too.

Shit, now I can't vote for him.

Re:/., where innuendo is news

[Anonymous Coward]

We're going to deport every Windows user. They're idiots.

Re:/., where innuendo is news

[iMadeGhostzilla]

/. is good. You should see Arstechnica. Anyone posting any comment against Hillary in any way gets downvoted to oblivion. And these are supposedly rational people.

Re:/., where innuendo is news

[I'm New Around Here]

That's how Hillary wiped Anthony's weiner clean.

Re:/., where innuendo is news

[HanzoSpam]

So, we're now officially the Weiner Republic?

Re: /., where innuendo is news

[Anonymous Coward]

Ars is a fucking cesspool of the worst of liberal hypocrisy.

"We demand diversity!" says Ars staff, which is 89 percent white and 72 percent male.

Re:/., where innuendo is news

[Anonymous Coward]

You said it. I used to be a regular at Ars Technica back in the day. I discovered Ars around the same time I discovered Slashdot, and learned much about computer architecture and overclocking through Hannibal's excellent articles way back in the day - you know, back when it was really a tech site. I rarely, if ever, bother to visit Ars now. It has become an unbearable liberal shitfest, which is, admittedly, good for a laugh on occasion.

Re:/., where innuendo is news

[fintux]

"We're going to make IE6 great again"

And it will be using TRUMPet Winsock!

Re:/., where innuendo is news

[Oswald McWeany]

I heard Trump used Internet Explorer once, too.

I could never elect anyone that uses Internet Explorer. Racism, sexism, not paying income tax, demanding the constitution be burnt... all those things I could overlook- but to use Internet Explorer,

Clearly that means he is unfit to be president.

Re:/., where innuendo is news

[Anonymous Coward]

oh gawd...your /. uid needs to be lower to make that joke

Re:/., where innuendo is news

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do you think we still post here? I completely abandoned Ars a long time ago, when it decided to make everything political.

This kind of story requires far reaching access

[guruevi]

The way it is described, these 'computer scientists' would require full access (as in being able to copy entire ports) to a whole swath of routers in and out of the offices (and it would be hard to believe a large organization has just one connection to the net) and/or far reaching access to US and Russian-based servers such as the DNS servers they use as well as the means to trick any caching DNS servers to continue requesting new domain information (setting TTLs to very small numbers).

Either this is a very confabulated story or someone at an NSA-level agency is talking.

Re:This kind of story requires far reaching access

[ShaunC]

Either this is a very confabulated story or someone at an NSA-level agency is talking.

Nah. Much of the world's DNS traffic is passively monitored by ISPs, IXPs, ccTLD operators, etc. to be compiled and analyzed for research purposes. DNSDB is one such effort, there are others.

Re:This kind of story requires far reaching access

[guruevi]

The story also says that they couldn't ping the server but a particular server in Russia and a few elsewhere in the US could. ICMP traffic isn't broadcasted nor 'passively monitored'.

DNS is cached aggressively at most if not all gateway routers, sure you can aggregate some (anonymous) data about DNS requests but this talks about an internal machine frequently requesting a particular DNS address with specific time periods. At best, you can say a particular NETWORK requested a DNS address a few times per day (whenever the TTL expires). They are pinpointing it to minutes of the day.

They knew this particular server handled a 'small load of traffic'. Again, you can't "see" how much traffic a server handles without either controlling it or control ALL points it traverses outside of it.

I trust Russia MORE than I trust the DNC

[Anonymous Coward]

I trust Russia MORE than I trust the DNC. If Trump is in good with them, then good for him.

To hell with Hillary and her cronies.

Re:I trust Russia MORE than I trust the DNC

[Anonymous Coward]

I trust Russia MORE than I trust the DNC. If Trump is in good with them, then good for him.

To hell with Hillary and her cronies.

Pure, unadulterated idiocy. ^^^^^

Re:I trust Russia MORE than I trust the DNC

[Anonymous Coward]

This man didn't trust Russia's intentions.

Re:I trust Russia MORE than I trust the DNC

[Anonymous Coward]

Me too.

Re:I trust Russia MORE than I trust the DNC

[MightyMartian]

You're either a Russian or an idiot.

Re:I trust Russia MORE than I trust the DNC

[Anonymous Coward]

I always suspected the Trumpkins were just rebranded Commies.

Re:I trust Russia MORE than I trust the DNC

[Anonymous Coward]

No your comment is pure unadulterated idiocy. Go learn what hyperbole means. It's a rhetorical device that idiots fail to detect.

Re: I trust Russia MORE than I trust the DNC

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank you, red neck poet!

Re:I trust Russia MORE than I trust the DNC

[Anonymous Coward]

I trust Russia MORE than I trust the DNC. If Trump is in good with them, then good for him.

To hell with Hillary and her cronies.

Pure, unadulterated idiocy. ^^^^^

Pure, unadulterated, sheephood (from both ends!) ^^^^^

Re:I trust Russia MORE than I trust the DNC

[jedidiah]

Yeah... a real estate developer and entrepenuer is a communist.

That's as stupid as painting Putin as a communist.

I wonder if you were still alive when the Russians were still communist.

Who's next? Bill Gates? Warren Buffet?

Billionaire blacklist?

Re:I trust Russia MORE than I trust the DNC

[I'm New Around Here]

No your comment is pure unadulterated idiocy. Go learn what hyperbole means.

Hmmm. Hyper-bole. I know that "bole" is a tree trunk, and that "hyper" is when a kid is running around and screaming cause his mom won't smack him and tell him to settle down.

So, with those two items in mind, "hyper-bole" seems to be referring to that scene in that elf movie where the trolls were getting the shit kicked out of them by the walking forest. That Treebeard fellow was awesome, by the way.

Re:I trust Russia MORE than I trust the DNC

[bhiestand]

I'm not agreeing with GP, buuuut...

...That's as stupid as painting Putin as a communist.

To be fair, Putin was a member of the party for 20 years.

“I was not, as you know, a party member by necessity,” [Putin] said. “I liked Communist and socialist ideas very much and I like them still.”

...Who's next? Bill Gates? Warren Buffet?

Buffet came first as a communist. I remember Republicans shouting that over the last 8 years.

Re:I trust Russia MORE than I trust the DNC

[dbIII]

Yeah... a real estate developer and entrepenuer is a communist.

Remember that there are still people who believe that Charlie Chaplin (that guy who was a far more successful capitalist than Trump) was one because McCarthy and crew accused him of it.

Re:I trust Russia MORE than I trust the DNC

[Anonymous Coward]

We will soon see the glorious day when the mighty nations of the USA and Russia, the defenders of Western Civilization, will combine forces to put the evil genie of Islam back in its medieval, wretched bottle!

Re: I trust Russia MORE than I trust the DNC

[Anonymous Coward]

Bigoted elitist detected!

Re:I trust Russia MORE than I trust the DNC

[Anonymous Coward]

Why?

Russia's main angle in this is that they don't want to go to war with us over Syria.

The DNC's angle in this is to continue their work in further destabilizing the middle east so we can take over.

Keeping Slashdot biased

[Anonymous Coward]

When you are retwitting this: "My newest horror story: Once upon a time there was a man named Donald Trump, and he ran for president. Some people wanted him to win", we all know what is your agenda buddy. Are you on Hillary's payroll too?

Re:Keeping Slashdot biased

[MightyMartian]

Well we know you're not on Trump's, because his campaign doesn't have enough money.

Re:Keeping Slashdot biased

[Anonymous Coward]

Hillary's emails have been covered ad nauseum on this site. Not sure what you're on about.

Re:Keeping Slashdot biased

[Anonymous Coward]

Vote early, vote often, vote dimocrat!

Re: Keeping Slashdot biased

[Anonymous Coward]

There's lots of people on Trump's payroll. He doesn't need money for them to be on the payroll.

Re: Keeping Slashdot biased

[Anonymous Coward]

And you say that as if it's a good thing...?

Hack by the Russians?

[LynnwoodRooster]

Turns out it was Huma using Yahoo, and Podesta getting phished... No Russians involved, just plain old incompetence.

Re: Hack by the Russians?

[Anonymous Coward]

The Russian astroturfers are going to be working long hours over the next week.

Slate magazine

[Anonymous Coward]

What a great source. /s

Re:BULL SH!T

[Anonymous Coward]

It's been part of their modus operandi from day one. Whenever they're caught lying or committing crimes, they try to deflect the blame to someone else or change the topic into an attack on Trump or their accusers. The Russia boogeyman is a favorite for them.

It's so tired by now, and they've been caught lying so many times (pretty much every time they open their mouths, they're lying) that nobody believes a thing they say. The DNC could say the sun rose this morning and I'd still check out my window to verify.

No smoking gun then?

[Anonymous Coward]

Trump's servers may well be pinged by a Russian bank's server, but check your own logs and you're almost certainly getting hit by Russian IP addresses. Basically you have nothing there, a lot of misleading innuendo, but nothing else.

Trump on the other hand, has extensive ties to Russia, hosts his beauty crap there, family ties, has connections to dodgy Russia real estate people and loads of other stuff you could have dug into. Instead you dug into minor internet traffic. Even his connections to Putin are boasted about one minute and concealed the next.

So what is the point of that, it's made to look like a Trump smear, while actually deflecting attention away from his substantial real overlap with Putin's agenda! Some sort of mind fuck.

Slashdot crowd can see through the crap claims e.g., "capacious server handled a strangely small load of traffic..." says the man with a desktop PC far more capacious than required to read email and surf facebook. So it's not like network innuendo would work here. Is this one of these ridiculous flip around things, or do you genuinely want to draw attention to Trumps Russian links?

I guess we'll see with the comments section that follows.

Re: No smoking gun then?

[Bartles]

Are you as knowledgeable about the Clinton foundation dealings with Russia? Or are you just very selective in your outrage?

Re: No smoking gun then?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know about him, but I have read an email by a staffer asking Jennifer Palmieri what they should do about several foreign governments including several we consider enemy states, wanting to donate large sums to the Clinton Campaign. Her answer: "Take the money!!! Sent from my iPhone."

Between nebulous Tom Clancy nonsense in that article (Does anyone here that knows how network IT works really believe half of that? A random bunch of CS guys able to log all traffic coming to and from an arbitrary IP. Please, even the NSA would be jealous.) and real evidence that Hillary, or at least her campaign staff is in the pocket of enemy states I'd like to think that reasonable people would outraged over the latter and shrug at the former.

Color me disappointed.

Re: No smoking gun then?

[Aighearach]

Did you know the Clinton Foundation is a top rated charity that does real good work? I don't think there is any prohibition on charities collecting money from anybody that will give! Actually most people think, if an evil group gives some money to charity to make themselves look good... the charity might do some real good with that money!

Re: No smoking gun then?

[Anonymous Coward]

Mmmmm... yummy bootleather!

Re: No smoking gun then?

[Anonymous Coward]

"if an evil group gives some money to charity to make themselves look good"

There are also people who think that if an evil group gives money to some charity and then favorable business terms materialize for that company were the 'charity' spends money that there just *MIGHT* be a connection...

What do you call a russian Manchurian candidate?

[Maxo-Texas]

What if they have dirt on Trump?

I've been blown away how far the republican party has flipped on the russians so far.

It would explain why they put so many resources into hacking, modifying* and leaking DNC emails.

*The first leaks had cyrrilic usernames from editing and russian address hyperlinks. So everything from wikileaks after those is suspect. We shouldn't have told them we could identify the documents as fake so quickly. But we are americans and not crafty like the british during world war 2.

Clinton's desperation

[ooloorie]

Hey, Slashdot gets visited by Russian IP addresses too! Maybe Slashdot is working with Putin to leak Clinton's E-mails as well?

Seriously, this bullshit coming from Clinton and her minions only shows how desperate they are.

Re:Clinton's desperation

[Anonymous Coward]

It's weird how this story made the front page and not the story about the FBI dedicating as many resources as possible to investigate Hillary's emails. And notice that story is on NPR, so it's not something that can be brushed off as "right-wing propaganda."

I have no idea what this story is supposed to be suggesting, other than I guess it's possible a Trump server was hacked by Russians? Maybe? So what?

Re:Clinton's desperation

[Nordic_Lights]

All of those cybersecurity firms and people mentioned in the article, including the Republicans, are working for Hillary? Man, she's good. Seriously - read the article.

Re:Clinton's desperation

[hey!]

However, Slashdot's servers respond to requests from anywhere, not just a particular Russian bank. So it's not the same thing. The evidence is enough to conclude that the Trump organization probably has some kind of relationship with that bank, which is not illegal per se.

This is politics; if you leave yourself open to innuendo, you get shellacked. Trump could easily have avoided this by releasing his tax returns, just like Mitt Romney did.

Re:Clinton's desperation

[quantaman]

Hey, Slashdot gets visited by Russian IP addresses too! Maybe Slashdot is working with Putin to leak Clinton's E-mails as well?

Seriously, this bullshit coming from Clinton and her minions only shows how desperate they are.

FTA:

I also spoke with academics who vouched for Tea Leaves’ integrity and his unusual access to information. “This is someone I know well and is very well-known in the networking community,” said Camp. “When they say something about DNS, you believe them. This person has technical authority and access to data.”)

The researchers quickly dismissed their initial fear that the logs represented a malware attack. The communication wasn’t the work of bots. The irregular pattern of server lookups actually resembled the pattern of human conversation—conversations that began during office hours in New York and continued during office hours in Moscow. It dawned on the researchers that this wasn’t an attack, but a sustained relationship between a server registered to the Trump Organization and two servers registered to an entity called Alfa Bank.

[...]

Earlier this month, the group of computer scientists passed the logs to Paul Vixie. In the world of DNS experts, there’s no higher authority. Vixie wrote central strands of the DNS code that makes the internet work. After studying the logs, he concluded, “The parties were communicating in a secretive fashion. The operative word is secretive. This is more akin to what criminal syndicates do if they are putting together a project.”

The real interesting thing is when people started asking about the server the Trump org took it down, renamed it, and somehow the Russian server knew exactly which hostname to access (suggesting someone from Trump org told them).

Four days later, on Sept. 27, the Trump Organization created a new host name, trump1.contact-client.com, which enabled communication to the very same server via a different route.

These aren't political hacks, nor the result of reporters misunderstanding basic concepts. These are qualified experts with reputations to protect who understand hackers, malware, and misconfigured mail servers. They have looked at the evidence and think this is a secret communication channel.

Re:Clinton's desperation

[phantomfive]

Hey, Slashdot gets visited by Russian IP addresses too!

Hmmm, and the traffic flows across in an encrypted channel, keeping everyone else out. Suspicious.

Re:Clinton's desperation

[Anonymous Coward]

Slashdot covered that days ago https://politics.slashdot.org/...

Re:Clinton's desperation

[Anonymous Coward]

Probably just Bitcoin traffic.

Re:Clinton's desperation

[ooloorie]

The irregular pattern of server lookups actually resembled the pattern of human conversation—conversations that began during office hours in New York and continued during office hours in Moscow. [...] The parties were communicating in a secretive fashion. The operative word is secretive. This is more akin to what criminal syndicates do if they are putting together a project

Yes. I do the same when I travel to Russia, China, or the EU and connect back to the US; those places are full of spies and crooks. My overseas bank does that when they contact me, and I do it when I contact my overseas bank. Friends and family do that when they contact me from overseas. What exactly do you think is suspicious about that?

These aren't political hacks

Given the statistics, any academic or security researcher should be assumed to be a political hack unless proven otherwise.

Re:Clinton's desperation

[ooloorie]

This is politics; if you leave yourself open to innuendo, you get shellacked. Trump could easily have avoided this by releasing his tax returns, just like Mitt Romney did.

And the Democrats wiped the floor with Romney and made him out to be the devil incarnate as well. You cannot placate these people (and they exist in both parties).

Re:Clinton's desperation

[ooloorie]

Working for? No. Why would they have to? All the banshees and trolls on Twitter or in the media who go to bat for Hillary and cover up her misdeeds don't "work for" her either. Politically biased? Probably, even the Republicans (most of whom hate Trump as well).

In any case, this is utterly irrelevant. It's an attempt to spread FUD and distract from Hillary's actual problems. Hopefully, it will backfire: Hillary is just proving over and over again that she is even more unsuitable for the office of president than Trump, and that's a very low standard indeed.

Re:Clinton's desperation

[hey!]

Well, that may be true, but again you can't be surprised if the other side uses the ammunition you give them.

Re:Clinton's desperation

[naughtynaughty]

You say "as many resources as possible" but the article's title says "all necessary resources"

You may live in the same reality distortion field as Donald

Re:Clinton's desperation

[stdarg]

What other side? Hasn't Romney endorsed Clinton? The most amazing thing about this election is the validation of the conspiracy theorists who have been saying we have one party rule. It's true, as unbelievable as that is. Bush? Clinton? Hey they're on the same side. Romney? Yep he's there too.

Trump is the only major outsider candidate we've seen since at least Bush (senior) and Clinton, so around 30 years.

The funny thing is how much we criticize places like China for the same kind of crap we have apparently been doing. The media largely functions as propaganda for the establishment. The political parties are basically on the same side. When you read the wikileaks stuff you see the so-called private sector working hand in hand with the government (like google's eric schmidt requesting to be head "outside adviser" to clinton's campaign).. it's like a big joke at this point.

Voting for Clinton at this point is basically a vote to continue our slide into banana republic status.

Re:Clinton's desperation

[ooloorie]

Well, that may be true, but again you can't be surprised if the other side uses the ammunition you give them.

Which is why Trump hasn't released his tax returns, and why he is running such a crazy campaign: he was going to be vilified anyway, so why play the game at all? Why not be outrageous and loud? As for Romney, he was about as benign a politician we can ever hope to have; what the Democrats did to him was absolutely disgusting.

If journalists or the two party establishments think that after this election, it's going to be business as usual, they are going to be in for a rude surprise. The electorate is absolutely pissed off. Journalists and politicians are going to continue to be insulted, disrespected, and abused online and in public. And there may also be hell to pay for all the tech companies that got in bed with Clinton.

Re:Clinton's desperation

[Aighearach]

Exactly. The news isn't that Trump communicates with the bank, it is that he does so and the bank denies it. They don't refuse to answer because client confidentiality; they actually answer the question and deny it.

The whole situation is shocking and suspicious. Maybe it is innocent, but maybe it isn't. If there was nothing there at all, they would not have answered the questions, and the server wouldn't have changed configurations multiple times when questions were asked.

Maybe they're just protecting legit trade secrets, or something. I hope the NSA knows that answer, though.

Re:Clinton's desperation

[Anonymous Coward]

"5 point front-runner is desperate," says the supporter of the 5 point underdog.

Film at 11.

Re:Clinton's desperation

[dbIII]

And the Democrats wiped the floor with Romney and made him out to be the devil incarnate as well

He was kind of pathetic compared with anyone who has ended up in the White House so what do you expect?

Re:Clinton's desperation

[Anonymous Coward]

Does Slashdot's whois spell "Organization" properly? Also there is the fact that it was registered by an "E. McMullin". Say, isn't there a spoiler candidate running in Utah with that last name?

Coincidences and poorly planted false evidence abound.

Libshits are desperate. I love it. Can't wait for the 8th.

Re:Clinton's desperation

[Anonymous Coward]

TFA presented no reason to believe the server actually responded to *any* source IP nor any reason to believe it doesn't respond to *many* IPs. In fact they only said when they tried to connect, it responded with error messages. Could have been destination unreachable. Or connection refused. But apparently not a drop like someone would normally use for their super secret nefarious servers. 'They concluded that the server was set to accept only incoming communication from a very small handful of IP addresses'

I'm starting to suspect these were the IT folks at the DNC.

Re:Clinton's desperation

[Anonymous Coward]

| Four days later, on Sept. 27, the Trump Organization created a new host name, trump1.contact-client.com, which enabled communication to the very same server via a different route.

No. *Someone* created a new host name. Trump does not own contact-client.com.

Re:Clinton's desperation

[Anonymous Coward]

Desperate as they see you idiots voting for Russian puppet.

Re:Clinton's desperation

[ooloorie]

He was kind of pathetic compared with anyone who has ended up in the White House so what do you expect?

And by "pathetic" you mean "he wasn't a narcissistic, self-aggrandizing, corrupt prick" like Clinton, Obama, or Trump? Well, my point exactly.

Re:Clinton's desperation

[cdrudge]

What exactly do you think is suspicious about that?

You have private server that appear only your overseas bank that's connected to the Russian government connect to for official business, and that change hostnames when someone inquirers about it with your bank? And then suddenly goes dark when more investigating is done?

Re:Clinton's desperation

[tbannist]

What other side? Hasn't Romney endorsed Clinton? The most amazing thing about this election is the validation of the conspiracy theorists who have been saying we have one party rule. It's true, as unbelievable as that is.

Have you ever considered the possibility that Trump is just a completely terrible candidate for President? He is facing a rape trial and a fraud trial along with his many other flaws.

Re:Clinton's desperation

[hey!]

Trump should have released his tax returns.

I didn't say that other people taking cheap shots at you was a bad thing. It's an inevitable consequence of giving people a chance to know what they're voting into office.

Re:Clinton's desperation

[ooloorie]

I still have no idea what you are alleging. What kind of horribly nefarious activity is supposed to have happened there? If Trump wanted to have a conversation with Putin, why wouldn't he just call? Or are you alleging that Trump is paying off Putin, or that Putin is paying of Trump, or what?

This is just DNC bullshit to distract from highly embarrassing and damaging E-mails and from Clinton's proven financial connections with Russia and the Uranium One deal.

Clinton has always been a conspiracy theorist, but to accuse Trump simultaneously of wanting to start a nuclear war with Russia and being in league with Russia to sabotage her presidency is a new level of insanity even for her deranged mind. And as I was saying, what difference, at this point, does it make where the E-mails came from? They are what they are, either you care or you don't care.

Re:Clinton's desperation

[ooloorie]

Trump should have released his tax returns.

Why? Any decent, well-behaved presidential candidate would have been steamrolled over by the highly experienced DNC propaganda and smear machinery and their allies in Silicon Valley and the media. And he couldn't have relied on the Republican strategists and propagandists because they seem to be incompetent. Whether it's by accident or design, the kind of crazy insane campaign and persona Trump has been using has been a long shot, but basically has also been the only path open to him.

I didn't say that other people taking cheap shots at you was a bad thing

Well, and I say it is. It is a bad thing because, among other things, we end up with insane lunatics like Clinton and Trump running for president: no reasonable, competent person wants to put up with this kind of bullshit.

Re:Clinton's desperation

[phantomfive]

Trump is the only major outsider candidate we've seen since at least Bush (senior) and Clinton, so around 30 years.

You consider Bush Sr to be an outside candidate, but not Obama?

Re:Clinton's desperation

[Anonymous Coward]

Bush Sr was an OUTSIDER?

I laugh.

Phillips Andover/Yale/scion of Vannevar Bush? Outsider? NOT.

He was a GOP water carrier for years in the House; he RAN the GOP national committee after Watergate; he RAN the CIA; he was ambassador to China; he was VP, he was POTUS.

Bush Sr's lies about being "out of the loop" re IranContra were denied by his OWN WORDS (his daily diary), which he managed to keep out of court until after he left the presidency, to wit, "I'm one of the few people that know fully the details." The assholes who run things don't let outsiders run a shadow foreign policy...they let outsiders (North, etc.) take the fall, though and cover up for the insiders (read how many IranContra felons GHWB pardoned, some even before they got convicted!)

Outsider? Go read a book you ignorant fool.

Re:Clinton's desperation

[Anonymous Coward]

Romney caused his own problems, and if you'd been watching him as long as I have (I am from Massachusetts where this fascist tool has long been in the news here for being, well, a fascist fool) you wouldn't be surprised by anything that turned up when he ran for POTUS. He was just as unaware of the life most of us lead, and as uncaring, and as removed and clueless as presidential candidate as he was as a business vulture and conservative GOP governor.

But he gave us Romneycare! (Then when he ran for POTUS, told us how much it stank). Idiot.

Re:Clinton's desperation

[Anonymous Coward]

Brillant!! So elect a proven liar, sexist, racist POS simply because he hasn't been involved in politics. I'm sure all his vast failed business skills will come in handy in trying to get anything done in an already gridlocked political system that he knows little to nothing about. I'm constantly amazed at the obvious lack of reasoning skills among otherwise intelligent people.

Re:Clinton's desperation

[Anonymous Coward]

Go ahead: now blame Kerry's "swiftboating" on the Democrats, and the lies about McCain's "black illegitimate child".

Ailes/Atwater started the mid-20th century round of mudslinging. And it eventually brought the GOP Trump. A pox on ALL their houses.

Re:Clinton's desperation

[Anonymous Coward]

"Voting for Clinton at this point is basically a vote to continue our slide into banana republic status." Whereas a vote for Trump is a bold jump into that?

Re:Clinton's desperation

[Anonymous Coward]

Desperate? Yeah, you just keep telling yourself that, cupcake.

Re:Clinton's desperation

[Anonymous Coward]

Trump being an outsider is why this election is so insane.
he's talking about ending corruption, getting money out of politics, throwing a wrench in the lobbying/poltical cash machine treadmill.

He's taking on EVERYONE crooked.
And turns out. that's just about all of them. scares the hell out of them all they might lose their easy gravy train stealing from the public.

dems. repubs. media. lobbyists. companys who hire lobbyists. he's scared them all.

And anyone who is not a moron. Or one of the crooked. Should support him.

Turns out we have a lot of morons and crooked tho. :(

Re:Clinton's desperation

[dbIII]

He was several of those but yes, in a different way.
Why he was chosen was almost as much of a mystery as to why it was decided that Trump was the best choice.

Think back to all the others that were running in your lifetime to get an idea of how pathetic.

Re:Clinton's desperation

[Anonymous Coward]

passed the logs to Paul Vixie. In the world of DNS experts, there’s no higher authority.

In the post-Cosby downfall world, I'd hesitate to cannonize any popular saints. Just because people found themselves in a position to be pioneers, doesn't make them the end-all of engineers. Our elders were pretty fucking retarded when it came to religion. Our cyber elders are also mere mortals.

Re:Clinton's desperation

[Anonymous Coward]

Lol, not voting for Trump is not validation that you only have one party rule.

It is validation that when push comes to shove you don't have a two party system, you have a system that has people willing to choose to vote for whoever they want.

I think Romney endorsing Clinton is clear proof that it isn't an "Us vs Them" scenario. And that in general they really do usually agree with the repulicans when they vote republican, and they do usually agree with the Dems when they vote Dem.

Only when you get a buffoon like Trump on the cards does it turn out that they don't do it because they always vote Red or always vote Blue, but they can actually make up their own damned mind based on the candidate.

And just to outrage you; voting for Trump is a vote to become a banana republic that has a president like President Duterte of the philipines. HE says whatever first brain fart comes to his mind. Do you want a USA that looks like that?

Re:Clinton's desperation

[Anonymous Coward]

The reason you don't want to be outrageous and loud is because that ultimately loses you elections.

There are fringe voters that look at outrageous and loud and say: "You know what, fuck the system!!" but guess what. Most people just want to get back to business. Most people just want a stable government that doesn't insult everyone. Most people want a government that has consistent and achievable goals.

Why? because most people (not all people) most people, **don't like change**.

Is that a reason to vote Clinton? no.

Is it the reason Trump will lose? yes.

Trump will cry media intervention as much as he wants. But Clinton has literally been investigated by the FBI, the results of which were splashed all over the media. __ALL OVER__ world wide. and guess who is *still* winning in the polls. Pro-tip: it isn't the guy who calls all illegal immigrants rapists and murderers. Complaining about the media reporting your actual spoken words (when they are rediculous) and pointing at the words saying "Thats rediculous" is not media bias.

If you don't want to have your words repeated with your name tag on them *don't say the words*.

Re:Clinton's desperation

[stdarg]

No, I don't think I expressed it very well.. I meant that since Bush Sr we haven't had any, including Bush Sr.

Re:Clinton's desperation

[phantomfive]

Oh, that makes sense

Re:Clinton's desperation

[Anonymous Coward]

What other side? Hasn't Romney endorsed Clinton? The most amazing thing about this election is the validation of the conspiracy theorists who have been saying we have one party rule. It's true, as unbelievable as that is. Bush? Clinton? Hey they're on the same side. Romney? Yep he's there too.

        Trump is the only major outsider candidate we've seen since at least Bush (senior) and Clinton, so around 30 years.

Nope, he's an insider with the rest of them. He and Hillary probably cooked up their crooked scheme to get her elected at that wedding he paid her a high five figures to attend.

Re: Temper your enthusiasm

[Bartles]

You guys nominated someone under criminal investigation by the FBI. The only people on earth who can't talk about how shitty Trump is are Clinton supporters.

Unlikely to be of any use

[Okian Warrior]

While this is certainly interesting and deserves attention (I voted it up in the firehose), it's unlikely to be of any use during the campaign.

For one, the server was registered in 2009 and is unlikely to be anything related to the elections. Trump's business is pretty big, and he has contacts all over the world.

(For comparison, the Podesta group is registered with the U.S. government as a lobbyist for Sberbank. Google "Podesta Russia" for lots of links and info.)

For another, if it's nefarious it's more likely to be some sort of mole or agent within Trump's organization. Again, Trump's business is huge, and there are probably one or more foreign government agents working for him (also in Google, Facebook, and a hundred other big organizations).

Also, there might be a perfectly reasonable explanation. We should wait for the Trump campaign explanation, then see if their explanation seems reasonable. God only knows how many times we've done that for the Clintons!

And finally, it might be too little too late. Word on the street is that Clinton will be stepping down on Tuesday (tomorrow), Veritas is planning a "blockbuster" drop this week, Wikieaks is about to start phase three of its election coverage, and internal leaks from the campaign indicate that Hillary is coming apart at the seams: binge drinking, uncontrolled anger, and poor judgement in general.

As the saying goes, it's not over until its over.

Let's just wait for the election.

Re:Unlikely to be of any use

[MightyMartian]

Veritas is a scam, so the idea that it has anything other than cleverly edited video is ludicrous, even more unbelievable that it has anything to make Clinton worry. Veritas is a sideshow designed more to keep Trump supporters pumped up.

"Word on the street"? Really

Re:Unlikely to be of any use

[LynnwoodRooster]

I guess having nothing other than cleverly edited videos is why two high-placed DNC operatives are now out of a job...

Re:Unlikely to be of any use

[skam240]

How much money do you want to put on your sources and where can I meet up with you to make the bet and put our money in the hands of a neutral party? If you're willing to bet enough on these sources I will fly to wherever you are to make counter bets on your claims.

I hate to be rude but I feel that I have to, how can you be so naive as to believe Clinton will drop out less than two weeks before the election when she is clearly ahead in the polls? You're straight up posting celebrity gossip level nonsense here.

Re:Unlikely to be of any use

[Motherfucking Shit]

The ACORN people got fired too, before it was discovered that those videos were faked and O'Keefe was ordered to pay up $100,000 for that stunt.

Donald Trump's foundation paid O'Keefe to make the Veritas videos.

You believe whatever you want to. O'Keefe is a convicted criminal whose "exposé videos" have repeatedly been proven fake.

Re:Unlikely to be of any use

[Zontar The Mindless]

Wow, I'm banned from TruePundit, despite never having posted anything there in my life.

Apparently someone's so afraid of me that they won't even let me read their articles.

I feel special.

Re:Unlikely to be of any use

[Anonymous Coward]

What the hell polls are you reading? The polls I've seen have shown that the latest FBI investigation have caused her numbers to drop like a rock and that she's now a couple of points behind Trump. Even 538 is admitting the race is now neck-and-neck despite their model still showing Clinton in the lead.

Re:Unlikely to be of any use

[meta-monkey]

Why didn't they deny the content of the videos then, and why did Creamer and Foval resign?

Also, people have matched the girl from the video who said she shut down the Arizona freeway to pictures from the scene, and found her payment records with Hillary's campaign. Everything checks out about the Veritas story so far.

Also, can you give me a plausible explanation for how "clever editing" makes innocent conversation sound exactly like someone explicitly stating they hire the mentally ill to start fights at their opponents' political events?

Re:Unlikely to be of any use

[Anonymous Coward]

Tick tock tick tock. Only a week left before Trump loses in a blowout. :) I just wanted you to know you're on my list, I've got you bookmarked so I can read your sweet sweet tears and impotent rage a week from now. Have a good week!

Re:Unlikely to be of any use

[Anonymous Coward]

Um he didnt say it was a massive conspiracy, just pointed out that the source has been known to lie and edit videos to take things out of context, and noting that he was paid by Trump so there is a good chance of bias. Just some facts that point to the lack of reliability of that source.

But you keep tilting the windmill Don Quixote.

Re:Unlikely to be of any use

[Anonymous Coward]

What the heck polls are you reading I ask you? Cause 538 does not show anything that looks neck and neck.

http://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2016-election-forecast/?ex_cid=rrpromo

Re:Unlikely to be of any use

[phantomfive]

Word on the street is that Clinton will be stepping down on Tuesday [newsninja2012.com] (tomorrow),

You need to clear your mind man, and be a little less credulous. That's not going to happen. Keep your head straight.

Re:Unlikely to be of any use

[Anonymous Coward]

Also, can you give me a plausible explanation for how "clever editing" makes innocent conversation sound exactly like someone explicitly stating they hire the mentally ill to start fights at their opponents' political events?

That's easy, "Trump's rallies are such a gong show, I couldn't make it any crazier even if I hired the mentally ill to start fights"

Re:Unlikely to be of any use

[Anonymous Coward]

You do know 538 has articles that go into analysis about what the models mean, right?

The model you're looking at basically assumes that there is a margin of error and that a poll that suddenly drops has hit a spurious low reading and therefore averages it out with previous values. It's designed to help deal with the error that naturally exists.

The problem is that this means that when someone's numbers are rapidly tanking - like Hillary's numbers are right now - the 538 model will take a while to indicate that. You can find the explanation of their model in the articles, but suffice it to say, the "real" odds are closer to 50/50 right now, and by the time election day comes along and with the latest releases, it's almost guaranteed to be in Trump's favor. Especially now that the FBI has announced that there are no links between Trump, but that they're still going through Hillary's emails, and are hoping to find some of the 33,000 missing emails.

Re:Unlikely to be of any use

[Anonymous Coward]

Possibly not that special - I too am banned! I was wondering if the website still hadn't forgiven us for 1774-1782 and 1812-1815! (Posted as AC due to earlier moderating in this thread.)

Re:Unlikely to be of any use

[skam240]

Where was the stepping down? Maybe some one should stop getting all of their news from right wing news sources that are obviously no better than gossip rags.

Re:BULL SH!T

[Gussington]

It's like I said to my sister the other day; I can't wait for November 9 so I can stop obsessing about Trump and start obsessing about the new Harry Potter movie.

Problem is Trump won't go away post-election. If he wins it will be worse than this, and if he loses he starts Trump media and doubles down on the loose talk and continual lies.

Re:BULL SH!T

[Xenographic]

The evidence we're given is this:

"What the researcher saw "was a bank in Moscow that kept irregularly pinging a server registered to the Trump Organization on Fifth Avenue": "

A ping is an ICMP echo request. They can have data, but it's the same both ways and it's generally nothing meaningful. I get random pings and crap from everywhere, including Russia, China, etc. along with port scans and everything else. Frankly this is utter BS without more evidence than a random server responding to some pings and not others.

It's also not clear how they were able to spy on this traffic without working at an ISP (where spying on your customers is generally frowned upon). But if they were in the middle of this, they could simply have inserted their own pings by spoofing the source address of some traffic. The article was a sad waste of time. There are lots of allegations that are based on nothing at all.

Re: BULL SH!T

[Anonymous Coward]

Lol. Lets have the names of these fellows so we can validate their illeaglally gathered insubstantial evidence.

Re:BULL SH!T

[Anonymous Coward]

A tump supporter upset because some one lied?
Hah, that's rich!

topic = shit

[Anonymous Coward]

this topic = shit :: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qqK1FrO3BdM

No one is flipping to the Russians...sheesh

[HBI]

It really is silly season. The bottom line is that Trump is the "fuck you, oligarchy" candidate. We know he's the last chance for a long, long time, if ever, to fuck with the oligarchs. That is why he is being supported. Hillary is the tool of the oligarchy.

Russia is no threat because they aren't suicidal, and do you really think Trump is in their pocket? Get real.

Putin is a good contrast to the feckless current occupant of the White House. That's why he keeps coming up. More a testament to how shitty a leader Obama is than any positive qualities of Putin. Putin has gotten the better of him in every exchange during the last 8 years.

Re:No one is flipping to the Russians...sheesh

[Anonymous Coward]

A rich white New Yorker is the oligarchy.

Re:No one is flipping to the Russians...sheesh

[Anonymous Coward]

Mike Pence on Putin and Russia, VP debate against Tim Kaine:

Pence: But about Aleppo and about Syria, I truly do believe that what America ought to do right now is immediately establish safe zones, so that families and vulnerable families with children can move out of those areas, work with our Arab partners, real time, right now, to make that happen.

And secondly, I just have to tell you that the provocations by Russia need to be met with American strength. And if Russia chooses to be involved and continue, I should say, to be involved in this barbaric attack on civilians in Aleppo, the United States of America should be prepared to use military force to strike military targets of the Assad regime to prevent them from this humanitarian crisis that is taking place in Aleppo.

There's a broad range of other things that we ought to do, as well. We ought to deploy a missile defense shield to the Czech Republic and Poland which Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama pulled back on out of not wanting to offend the Russians back in 2009.

Donald Trump on Putin and Syria, second debate against Hillary Clinton:

MR: Mr. Trump, let me repeat the question. If you were president, what would you do about Syria and the humanitarian crisis in Aleppo? I want to remind you what your running mate said. He said provocations by Russia need to be met with American strength and if Russia continues to be involved in air-strikes along with the Syrian government forces of Assad, the United States of America should be prepared to use military force to strike the military targets of the Assad regime.

Trump: Okay. He and I haven't spoken and I disagree.

MR: You disagree with your running mate.

Trump: Right now, Syria is fighting ISIS. We have people that want to fight both at the same time. But Syria is no longer Syria. Syria is Russia and Iran who she made strong and Kerry and Obama made into a very powerful nation and very rich nation, very, very quickly. Very, very quickly.

I believe we have to get ISIS. We have to worry about ISIS before we can get too much more involved. She had a chance to do something with Syria. They had a chance. That was the line.

MR: What do you think will happen if Aleppo falls.

Trump: It is a disaster.

MR: What do you think will happen if it falls?

Trump: I think it basically has fallen.

Let me tell you something. You take a look at Mosul. The biggest problem I have with the stupidity of our foreign policy, we have Mosul. We have ... coming out of Washington and Iraq, we will be attacking mosul in three or four weeks. All of these bad leaders from ISIS are leaving Mosul. Why can't they do it quietly? Why can't they do the attack, make it a sneak attack and after the attack is made, inform the American public that we've knocked out the leaders, we've had a tremendous success. People leave. Why do they have to say we're going to be attacking mosul within the next four to six weeks which is what they're saying. How stupid is our country.

Re:No one is flipping to the Russians...sheesh

[Anonymous Coward]

And you're a Russian troll, aren't you?

Re:No one is flipping to the Russians...sheesh

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do we criticize the white house for letting Russia get away with things, and then use that as justification for an openly Russian-friendly candidate?

I'm so confused.

Re:No one is flipping to the Russians...sheesh

[phantomfive]

We know he's the last chance for a long, long time, if ever, to fuck with the oligarchs.

It's not. These kinds of opportunities are bubbling up more and more often, though mainly at the state level. If Trump fails because of his foolishness, another will come along.

Note that it's a constant struggle.......new guys come up, break the establishment, then settle in to become the new establishment. Andrew Jackson was an establishment breaker. Abraham Lincoln was one too, although by the time he became president, the establishment was more-or-less shattered. William Jennings Bryan tried but failed on his heavy cross of gold (reminds you of this comic). Roosevelt2 might have been considered an establishment breaker, although again it was rather broken by his time as well. Roosevelt1 probably was the establishment. Truman deserves a special mention for trying to reform the establishment from within, and to some degree he was successful.

Re:No one is flipping to the Russians...sheesh

[jedidiah]

> A rich white New Yorker is the oligarchy.

You mean the senator from New York?

Re:No one is flipping to the Russians...sheesh

[jedidiah]

> Let me tell you something. You take a look at Mosul.

You did notice how all of the high value targets in Mosul were able to flee? There was no apparent attempt to capture these people on the run or hit them on the road or otherwise get them.

Meanwhile we've got a nasty bit of urban warfare that hasn't even started yet and they're talking about a flood of refugees that are going to overwhelm what little resources they have set aside for that sort of thing.

Re:No one is flipping to the Russians...sheesh

[Enigma2175]

> Let me tell you something. You take a look at Mosul.

You did notice how all of the high value targets in Mosul were able to flee? There was no apparent attempt to capture these people on the run or hit them on the road or otherwise get them.

Meanwhile we've got a nasty bit of urban warfare that hasn't even started yet and they're talking about a flood of refugees that are going to overwhelm what little resources they have set aside for that sort of thing.

That's exactly what the strategy is trying to do, get the non-combatants out of the way before taking the city, it makes it a lot easier to conduct warfare. From this article:

“What this shows is Trump doesn’t know a damn thing about military strategy,” said Jeff McCausland, a retired Army colonel and former dean at the Army War College in Carlisle, Pa.

Robert Scales, a retired Army major general and former commandant of the Army War College, said the unfolding Mosul campaign is a course in Military Operations 101 that American and Iraqi armies have followed for years.

A large allied force approaches the objective (Mosul, in this case) from multiple directions, establishes a loose cordon around the city, and peels away the outlying towns and villages, all the while opening an escape route for refugees and people who do not want to fight, General Scales said.

Re:No one is flipping to the Russians...sheesh

[Xyrus]

It really is silly season. The bottom line is that Trump is the "fuck you, oligarchy" candidate. We know he's the last chance for a long, long time, if ever, to fuck with the oligarchs

So...you argument for picking an openly idiotic, racist, lecherous, bigoted, misogynist is to say "fuck you" to the oligarchy? And what the hell makes you think he isn't part of the oligarchy? He has a history of treating anyone who isn't rich and white like shit, treating women even worse, and basically is a walking embodiment of everything America should have left behind at least 50 years ago. It's like watching Archie Bunker run for president, only with less class.

That is why he is being supported.

He's being supported because the so-called "neo-con" republicans thought it was a brilliant idea to go out and court the crazies into the party by fomenting rage, propagating conspiracies and other BS, and basically turning the whole party into a conglomeration of obstructionist idiots, ideological zealots, and sideshow freaks. Trump is the end result of that strategy, one which what few real republicans left had warned about for quite some time. The republicans of my day would have NEVER tolerated anyone like Trump being a candidate. Can you imagine what would have happened if someone like Reagan or Bush senior said and/or did half the shit Trump has done? They would have been burned at the stake!

You NEVER court crazy, even if that crazy seems to be helping you. You can NOT control crazy, and once it gets in, once you give it a voice, it is damn near impossible to get it out. That's what the old republican guard found out the hard way. They thought they were saving the party, when in fact they systematically destroyed it.

And now, we have Trump. It is absolutely repulsive that he is considered a republican. If you're a conservative/real republican, people automatically assume your associated with Train Wreck Trump and the Neo-Crazies. It's a stink that doesn't wash off and doesn't go away. Just about anyone would have been a better choice.

I may not agree with real republicans, but I respected them. I have no respect for these new age crazies that call themselves republicans and support despots like Trump.

Hillary is the tool of the oligarchy.

Just because you say so?

Russia is no threat because they aren't suicidal, and do you really think Trump is in their pocket? Get real.

The smartest adversary appears as your greatest friend, not your greatest enemy. Direct confrontation is the most idiotic way to defeat or influence an enemy. The smart enemy applies pressure, seeks out weaknesses, and exploits them. They get inside and maneuver. If they play their cards right, you'll be smiling and shaking their hand thanking them for the privilege of being bent over.

Trump has made it clear where he stands in relation to Russia. Right in front, with his hands on his ankles. His views on Russia, NATO and the rest are pretty much talking points out of the Russian Agenda.

 

Putin is a good contrast to the feckless current occupant of the White House. That's why he keeps coming up. More a testament to how shitty a leader Obama is than any positive qualities of Putin. Putin has gotten the better of him in every exchange during the last 8 years.

That sound you here is Zombie Reagan starving because apparently you have no brains left to eat.

I can't believe this is what republicans have become. When did it become American, let alone Republican, to praise a despotic foreign leader who has dissenters imprisoned and assassinated and have those be considered strong qualities for AMERICAN LEADERSHIP?

My god, people like you aren't republican. In no election I've been alive for have i ever heard such garbage, from democrat or republican.

Re:No one is flipping to the Russians...sheesh

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes it has been our shitty policy for years. Letting the leaders and their men out to move the fight elsewhere leaving behind s trivial force so the stupid Americans can tell us all how they "won" a great victory and the "terrorists are on the run and almost defeated!!!!"

How many times have we heard *that* lie since 9/11?

Re:No one is flipping to the Russians...sheesh

[Aighearach]

The BBC yesterday was reporting that they can't flee west because the US is using air power to deny them access, since there is a giant open stretch of desert to cross and nowhere to hide.

So there is the BBC yesterday, or the rantings last week of an actor/real estate developer. Which is more likely to be news out of Mosul?

Re:No one is flipping to the Russians...sheesh

[Anonymous Coward]

You could almost make the logical conclusion that they're both oligarchs, but hey, if you're in the Trump camp, she's the only one, and if you're in the Hillary camp, he's the only one? Right?

Re:No one is flipping to the Russians...sheesh

[dbIII]

Trump is the fucking oligarchy incarnate.
Hillary has just been working with them, as has nearly every President. The Dynastic thing is a real worry just as it was with Bush (and look where that go us on the second run) but at least it's a real worry not your complaint about the oligarchy that applies far more to Trump and even Putin than Clinton.

any positive qualities of Putin

Ask all those murdered journalists, the guy poisoned by Polonium and so on if you want someone like Putin in charge of anything near you. Scratch that, you can't, which makes a bit of a point.

Re:No one is flipping to the Russians...sheesh

[dbIII]

You NEVER court crazy, even if that crazy seems to be helping you

The truly ruthless have at times in the past - Stalin and the anarchists come to mind and there's another example that will Godwin this thread. In both of those the crazies courted were not just sidelined afterwards, which doesn't work, but killed outright. What we have here is a bunch talking like gangsters but without being the thing they are acting like (thank God).

Re:No one is flipping to the Russians...sheesh

[Anonymous Coward]

No, he's probably talking about the guy who roasted the elites at that charity dinner, talking about how they all disowned him as soon as he started running for president until that one guy's eyes just about popped out and he became the official reaction gif for this election.

Way more establishment than someone who has been in politics for 30 some years.

Re:No one is flipping to the Russians...sheesh

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean a white rich women who only became wealthy off of tax payer dime.

Re:No one is flipping to the Russians...sheesh

[Anonymous Coward]

the so-called "neo-con" republicans

You mean, all those neo-con republicans that are supporting Clinton? There is only one war candidate that supports the neo-con position. That one candidate has the support of neo-cons from the Bush years. Only one candidate is pushing for war with Russia and for destabilization of the middle east, the neo-con position. That candidate is Clinton.

Re:No one is flipping to the Russians...sheesh

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, fuck white people, amiright?

Re:What do you call a russian Manchurian candidate

[Anonymous Coward]

If the emails were fake, the Clinton campaign could have released the official versions to contradict Wikileaks. The fact that they did not only serves to confirm the authenticity of the leaked documents.

Re: BULL SH!T

[Anonymous Coward]

It worked well for Palin. The alt-right will just move on to the next Joe the plumber.

Ar you people insane? Why is this in any way same?

[SuperKendall]

You have to be totally insane to think Russians possibly having malware in some bank that tried to protect itself to begin with, is anything even CLOSE to the seriousness of the Secretary of State ignoring multiple warnings about how insecure a personal email server was when inevitably she'd be sending top secret material over email...

Hillary brought all of her ills on herself and the blowback from it is not yet a hundredth of what it should be. Every single person who knows anything about computer security should be utterly ashamed at ever supporting her actions, and the fact that so many still support her makes me think there is no real hope ever for comprehensive computer security. The system is rotten to the core, many computer "professionals" willing to compromise a systems integrity at the drop of a hat.

Re: Temper your enthusiasm

[Anonymous Coward]

Well thats not fair, just because she voted for the Iraq war and has lied through her teeth since being nominated doesnt mean she isnt trustworthy. Some of my most trusted friends are total scoundrels.

Re:BULL SH!T

[hey!]

Problem is Trump won't go away post-election. If he wins it will be worse than this, and if he loses he starts Trump media and doubles down on the loose talk and continual lies.

Of course Trump won't go away, just like Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi won't go away even if we take away all of ISIS's territory unless we kill him (al-Baghdadi, I mean). But he'll become a lot less important.

What fuels the fire of interest in Trump, even among people who aren't particularly interested in reality TV, is the possibility he might become president. Take that off the table, and becomes a lot less interesting except to a small core of true believers. I guess a lot depends on how decisively he loses. That'll determine whether his wing of the Republican party is a force to be reckoned with, or just another fringe group.

Already debunked. Fuck off, desperate Shillbots.

[Anonymous Coward]

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/11/01/us/politics/fbi-russia-election-donald-trump.html

In classified sessions in August and September, intelligence officials also briefed congressional leaders on the possibility of financial ties between Russians and people connected to Mr. Trump. They focused particular attention on what cyberexperts said appeared to be a mysterious computer back channel between the Trump Organization and the Alfa Bank, which is one of Russia’s biggest banks and whose owners have longstanding ties to Mr. Putin.

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.

DNS?

[laing]

How the fuck did these guys get between the Trump server and the DNS server making the queries? (Yes, I RTFA.) Did these guys have a MITM between Trump's server and the bank? Have they compromised Trump's server? Have they breached the NSA's Internet archive? Consider the possibility that Trump, as a billionaire, might have business and/or accounts somewhere other than within the USA. The scariest thing about this post is the innuendo and the assumptions made, and the lack of an explanation of how this data was collected.

Re:DNS?

[Raenex]

How the fuck did these guys get between the Trump server and the DNS server making the queries? (Yes, I RTFA.)

Then you should know, because the article tells you: "Some of the most trusted DNS specialists--an elite group of malware hunters, who work for private contractors--have access to nearly comprehensive logs of communication between servers. They work in close concert with internet service providers, the networks through which most of us connect to the internet, and the ones that are most vulnerable to massive attacks. To extend the traffic metaphor, these scientists have cameras posted on the internetâ(TM)s stoplights and overpasses. They are entrusted with something close to a complete record of all the servers of the world connecting with one another."

So basically they are a non-government version of the NSA with warrantless wiretapping powers, which they used to investigate communication between Trump and Russia without permission from the parties involved. Well, it's only "metadata", the kind of thing that Snowden revealed the NSA was collecting on a massive scale, so everything's fine!

Re:DNS?

[Anonymous Coward]

DNS records bounce from root domain servers on down.

If you have access to root domain servers, you can see who is resolving what.

Clearly, some of the folks mentioned here work at providers who run root domain servers. That's a pretty central point of trust in the whole DNS infrastructure.

You find this difficult to believe or imagine?

Re:DNS?

[Anonymous Coward]

How the fuck did these guys get between the Trump server and the DNS server making the queries? (Yes, I RTFA.)

Then you should know, because the article tells you: "Some of the most trusted DNS specialists--an elite group of malware hunters, who work for private contractors--have access to nearly comprehensive logs of communication between servers. They work in close concert with internet service providers, the networks through which most of us connect to the internet, and the ones that are most vulnerable to massive attacks. To extend the traffic metaphor, these scientists have cameras posted on the internetâ(TM)s stoplights and overpasses. They are entrusted with something close to a complete record of all the servers of the world connecting with one another."

So basically they are a non-government version of the NSA with warrantless wiretapping powers, which they used to investigate communication between Trump and Russia without permission from the parties involved. Well, it's only "metadata", the kind of thing that Snowden revealed the NSA was collecting on a massive scale, so everything's fine!

You're making the GIGANTIC assumption that it requires any actual data at all to produce what they have produced so far.
The NSA is probably recording you masturbating in the shower too.

Re:DNS?

[laing]

So somebody is looking at the logs of the root servers? I'd like to know more about these logs. Do the root servers really keep such logs? I'd think they would chew up most of their CPU producing them, and run out of storage space rather quickly.

Also, pretty much every ISP (and many private entities) run their own caching DNS server. Such a server will query the root server once and not again until the domain record TTL elapses. All of this is intended to reduce the load on the root servers and the net backbone.

I guess this whole story was a troll. I don't see how it ever got accepted.

Re:DNS?

[Raenex]

Do the root servers really keep such logs?

Judging by the story, I would say yes.

I'd think they would chew up most of their CPU producing them, and run out of storage space rather quickly.

Data storage is ridiculously cheap these days, and appending to a log isn't going to be a significant CPU or I/O operation in comparison to just serving the request in the first place.

Also, pretty much every ISP (and many private entities) run their own caching DNS server.

The story says the ISPs give these guys access to their logs. This also wouldn't surprise me if it was done to help protect their network as part of a common cause.

I guess this whole story was a troll. I don't see how it ever got accepted.

The story is from a somewhat credible source. Slate generally doesn't spew fabrications. The reporter makes claims as to checking sources. It's still possible this is all bullshit and a ruse, but it feels authentic to me:

"(I communicated extensively with Tea Leaves and two of his closest collaborators, who also spoke with me on the condition of anonymity, since they work for firms trusted by corporations and law enforcement to analyze sensitive data. They persuasively demonstrated some of their analytical methods to me--and showed me two white papers, which they had circulated so that colleagues could check their analysis. I also spoke with academics who vouched for Tea Leaves' integrity and his unusual access to information. "This is someone I know well and is very well-known in the networking community," said Camp. "When they say something about DNS, you believe them. This person has technical authority and access to data.")"

Re:DNS?

[Cederic]

The thing is, now that they've shown that they can't be trusted to use this data objectively without compromising individuals or their privacy, I hope to hell the ISPs cut them off from this information source.

Re:DNS?

[laing]

Perhaps your opinion may now have been changed after this story was thoroughly debunked.

Re:DNS?

[Raenex]

Perhaps your opinion may now have been changed after this story was thoroughly debunked.

That the DNS data is innocuous? I never gave an opinion on that in either direction. That they had access to 3rd party logs? Is that debunked?

Re:DNS?

[laing]

There are many sources. Here is a good one.

Re:DNS?

[Raenex]

And your link confirms that they were misusing data, so my opinion on that, which is all I was commenting on, hasn't changed:

"But Graham points out that the real story here is how companies are sharing all sorts of information with security researchers under the belief that it will only be used for malware research... and not for spying on what server is connecting to what server"

Re: Temper your enthusiasm

[Swave An deBwoner]

Ahem ...

Federal Judge Allows Suit Against Trump University to Proceed
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/03/us/politics/trump-university-case.html

Reminder: Donald Trump due in court after Election Day on child rape and racketeering charges
https://www.rawstory.com/2016/10/reminder-donald-trump-due-in-court-after-election-day-on-child-rape-and-racketeering-charges/

In other news about Trump's shady Kremlin links...

[Nordic_Lights]

A Veteran Spy Has Given the FBI Information Alleging a Russian Operation to Cultivate Donald Trump

"It started off as a fairly general inquiry," says the former spook, who asks not to be identified. But when he dug into Trump, he notes, he came across troubling information indicating connections between Trump and the Russian government. According to his sources, he says, "there was an established exchange of information between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin of mutual benefit."

It maintained that Trump "and his inner circle have accepted a regular flow of intelligence from the Kremlin, including on his Democratic and other political rivals." It claimed that Russian intelligence had "compromised" Trump during his visits to Moscow and could "blackmail him."

Here's an extensive timeline of Trump's connections to the Kremlin: https://grabby.me/timeline?uui...

OMFG

[Anonymous Coward]

This Russian crap is the new birther propaganda. Are Democrats really this ignorant?

Re:OMFG

[Dutchmaan]

Maybe you should bring up the email server again... or perhaps Benghazi... ironic that you equate the birther movement with ignorance btw.

Tea Leaves Integrity?

[Anonymous Coward]

"I also spoke with academics who vouched for Tea Leaves’ integrity and his unusual access to information. "

I think he loses his "integrity" after this. He has access to your, and my, DNS information too. Don't do anything wrong now or you'll receive the same treatment.

Re:BULL SH!T

[Anonymous Coward]

>NO U

OTHERS behavior does not justify YOURS.

[Anonymous Coward]

OTHERS behavior does not justify YOURS.

Drama queens

[Anonymous Coward]

Grow some balls and stop bitching about trump guys, its really becoming pathetic

Re: Drama queens

[Anonymous Coward]

But it's so much fun! The next rumor we're going to start is that he's a goa'uld.

Re: Temper your enthusiasm

[Anonymous Coward]

Innovent until proven guilty, or does this not apply to partisan politics?

Re:What do you call a russian Manchurian candidate

[Anonymous Coward]

Even if it was a lie, shouting "THEY'RE FAKE" from the mountaintops would've been better than "Abe Lincoln made me do it".

More propaganda

[Anonymous Coward]

Lol go fuck yourselves. Prepare to say President Trump!

The one Podesta is a registered lobbyist for?

[Nova Express]

Is it Sberbank, Russia’s biggest financial institution, and the one that The Podesta Group is a registered lobbyist for?

You know, the "Hillary Clinton inner circle" Podestas? Of Wikileaks fame?

Oh, it seems to be a different bank.

Re: Temper your enthusiasm

[MightyMartian]

Do you see anyone on the ticket that isn't a scoundrel? Has there been any presidential candidate in decades who wasnt a scoundrel?

What some want in a candidate comes along maybe once or twice in a nation's history, and if that was what someone was looking for, they sure wouldn't find it in a real estate huckster, and let's not even get started on the third party candidates.

Re:In other news about Trump's shady Kremlin links

[Anonymous Coward]

>Has the bureau investigated this material?

Yes. And they found fucking nothing.

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/11/01/us/politics/fbi-russia-election-donald-trump.html

But I do understand that "OOGABOOGA PUTIN!" is all you have left, so I don't expect even the NYT to change your mind.

Re:BULL SH!T

[fahrbot-bot]

Trump media and doubles down on the loose talk and continual lies.

What bothers me even more is that he genuinely doesn't seem to care about the truth - any truth. Or, perhaps he doesn't understand that "truth" is something that actually exists. Does than make him sociopath or psychopath (or both)? [genuinely asking] (Oh, and he seriously doesn't understand how video tape works.)

Re: Temper your enthusiasm

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm a Clinton supporter. I've also argued heavily that she should have been indicted, and that the legal process was distorted in totally unprecedented ways to give her a pass.

I want to see her actions investigated, and, where appropriate, prosecuted. I also want to see Trump's actions investigated, and, where appropriated, prosecuted.

In other news - in a week, we've got to elect someone president. I wish we had more viable candidates, but we don't. And from the four options currently available, Clinton is hands-down the best choice.

Re: BULL SH!T

[Anonymous Coward]

And how exactly does posting under the dugancent pseudonym reveal your identity? Oh, that's right, it DOESN'T. Grow up.

Re: Temper your enthusiasm

[Anonymous Coward]

And she has been cleared of all charges, and there are no more investigations into her.

Who cares at this point?

[Snotnose]

HRC is corrupt as fuck, the only thing is she considers business as usual what we plebes see as corrupt.

Trump is corrupt as fuck, but he hasn't been investigated for 30 years. Not to mention Trump is a 100% asshole who shouldn't even be a choice. Dafuq R-tarded, you can't beat this asshole in a primary? Methinks you need to rethink some fundamental principals. Hint: Neither Ted Cruz nor Marco Rubio are your white knights on white horses running in to save the day.

I finally voted today, went for Johnson. Yeah, he's a pothead who doesn't know what Aleppo is. But IMHO he's our best chance of not impeaching a president in the next 4 years.

Re:Who cares at this point?

[Anonymous Coward]

The GOP will impeach HRC for SOMETHING, as SOON AS THEY CAN, and as OFTEN AS THEY CAN.

It fits their public statements of how they will obstruct HRC just as they did Obama; it's just that now they have another tool to use: endless investigation of nothing.

Re:Who cares at this point?

[Anonymous Coward]

He's an asshole, but he's our asshole. To use your rectum analogy, Trump will take care of your shit... And Clinton will just shit all over you.

Re: Temper your enthusiasm

[Anonymous Coward]

He says while also inferring that Trump is working with a foreign government.

Re: BULL SH!T

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't have an account, so I can't login, but growing up is having the balls to put a face with your argument. Hiding behind a mask is being a fucking coward.

This Shouldn't be Surprising

[skam240]

This shouldn't be surprising. The only foreign country Trump praises is Russia, every traditional US ally he alienates in one form or another while Russia has shown itself directly antagonistic to Western interests and yet he still heaps praise on them. The only foreign political leader Trump ever praises is Putin. Members of his campaign staff have ties to Putin. Now we have the possibility of sketchy communications between Russia and Trump's campaign.

I loath conspiracy theories but if there was ever the case to made for one it would be a Trump / Russia one.

Re:This Shouldn't be Surprising

[flopsquad]

The only foreign political leader Trump ever praises is Putin.

Oh ho ho! If only Trump's admiration for oppressive leaders and regimes were limited to Putin.

Re:This Shouldn't be Surprising

[dbIII]

I loath conspiracy theories but if there was ever the case to made for one it would be a Trump / Russia one.

You missed the other bit of Russian strangeness - Trump has borrowed quite a lot from Russian banks to fund his campaign. They are loans not gifts so not illegal and that's probable all they are, but still if this was a movie script it would be thrown away for being far too unbelievable.

Re:This Shouldn't be Surprising

[meta-monkey]

There's many more connections between Clinton and Russia than Trump. If your big concern in the election is that you don't want someone who might be influenced by Putin in the White House then you should stay far away from Clinton.

Re:This Shouldn't be Surprising

[skam240]

That's your evidence?

First off, two warning bells when watching this video. First, it's an RT network video which is Russia's state run news network. Second, the person being interviewed is Julian Assange of Wikileaks who has clearly picked a side (Trump / Russia) as clearly implied by Wikileaks constant digging on Clinton while ignoring Trump.

But let's get to actual content. You claim Hillary has "many more connections" to Russia but yet furnish a video that literally discusses one issue. Alright, so not "many" but let's talk about the single issue you brought up.

The video points to Hillary's approval, as secretary of state, of a Russian company purchasing a minority stake in a US company that processes uranium for the US government. Now, there might have been something shady in terms of donations to the Clinton Foundation tied to this but strictly in terms of her showing a bias for Russia this fails miserably. Russia has its own uranium. It's been making nuclear weapons for half a century. So what if it has this investment?

What you've furnished is nothing in the context of a Russian / Hillary connection. Meanwhile Hillary continues to denounce Russia's blatant anti-Western policies while not only is Trump going out of his way to alienate traditional US allies but you can't find him saying a single bad thing about a country that has gone out of its way to point out it's not our ally.

Re:This Shouldn't be Surprising

[meta-monkey]

John Podesta, her campaign manager, owns 75,000 shares in a russian energy company.

Re:This Shouldn't be Surprising

[skam240]

I'm sure he owns shares in lots of companies. Doesn't make him a Paul Manafort by any stretch.

I also dont think two bunk claims qualifies as "many". I'm sure if you keep watching RT news they'll tell you many more though.

Re:BULL SH!T

[fahrbot-bot]

A ping is an ICMP echo request.

Thanks for the 411 Rain Man. :-)

Re:In other news about Trump's shady Kremlin links

[Nordic_Lights]

have left

You've been misinformed. Hillary is in the lead by a mile. http://projects.fivethirtyeigh... You should be talking about all that Trump has left, which is apparently, his Russian connections, and an army of alt-rightists. Both will lose interest in Trump when loses the election.

NYTimes has released their report on this

[awilden]

The NY Times investigation referred to in the Slate article has now been released. I'm guessing Slate pushed them out a bit quicker than they'd hoped.

Lots of interesting things in the article, but they feel there's insufficient evidence to claim a link between the Trump server and Alfa.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/01/us/politics/fbi-russia-election-donald-trump.html

Re: Temper your enthusiasm

[Plus1Entropy]

Has there been any presidential candidate in decades who wasnt a scoundrel?

I know I'm going to get modded down for this, but yes: Barack Hussein Obama.

Re:BULL SH!T

[Anonymous Coward]

FUCK YOU dugancent

https://slashdot.org/~dugancent

Re: BULL SH!T

[Anonymous Coward]

REVEAL YOUR TRUE IDENTITY FUCK FACE dugancent

https://slashdot.org/~dugancent

Re:BULL SH!T

[Anonymous Coward]

So you assume that he is definitely going to lose?

Re: BULL SH!T

[ArmoredDragon]

Without having read TFA, often even as a network engineer, I'll use the term "ping" even when not referring to ICMP. For example, I'll refer to an SNMP walk (of any kind) as a "ping".

Still though, this doesn't come off as suspicious to me at all. Since when is it odd or otherwise unusual that a server belonging to a billionaire talks to a server belonging to a bank in a foreign country? That's like saying that it's odd that there's dog piss on a fire hydrant.

Re: Ar you people insane? Why is this in any way s

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, you seem so sure... but things have really been falling apart in the polls, which are biased left to begin with.

See you on the 8th ;)

Re:Putin and Trump bromance

[jedidiah]

Aleppo is someone else's civil war. You seem to want to cry crocodile tears over it. Are you willing to shed your own blood over it?

Ukraine was a dick move but it was still largely a regional thing.

So far, the biggest threat to western security seems to be from the idiot that wants to impose a no fly zone where the Russians are already entrenched and have SAMs.

Those horses are out of the barn already. That pooch has already been screwed.

Re: Temper your enthusiasm

[jedidiah]

Yes, love him or hate him he was a nice break from sex scandals.

The DNC were morons for letting Clinton anywhere near the nomination. It's like they and she thinks she's entitled. Forget about all of the people that haven't stopped hating her since she was first lady.

She's going to bring people together? You have to be a partisan dope to believe that.

Whatever happens election day, I won't stop ridiculing whoever wins. =P

I won't waste the mod point

[Anonymous Coward]

But you really should check facts. Obama's main mentors were Bill Ayers and Reverend Wright. He was a community organizer going into politics modeling his career after Saul Alinsky. He was elected to the Senate after smearing a person raising his family, including an autistic child, alone after his ex-wife dumped them and ran back to Hollywood (Jerri Ryan). He was useless as a Senator except to act as the standard Democratic yes-man. He repeats all the same talking points as Hillary and is on the same plan. The plan is "Fuck the USA and bring in the communism".

You being ignorant does not make Obama good, it makes you ignorant.

Re:I won't waste the mod point

[uvajed_ekil]

But you really should check facts. Obama's main mentors were Bill Ayers and Reverend Wright. He was a community organizer going into politics modeling his career after Saul Alinsky. He was elected to the Senate after smearing a person raising his family, including an autistic child, alone after his ex-wife dumped them and ran back to Hollywood (Jerri Ryan). He was useless as a Senator except to act as the standard Democratic yes-man. He repeats all the same talking points as Hillary and is on the same plan. The plan is "Fuck the USA and bring in the communism".

You being ignorant does not make Obama good, it makes you ignorant.

Communism? Seriously? Care to throw in a Satan or Hitler reference while you're at it to further demonize those you perceive to be your enemies? I think you are the ignorant one. And someone raising an autistic child does not automatically exempt them from politics, or facts. Obama's 2004 Senate campaign was actually much cleaner than most, and you are either a sadly misinformed right-wing, FOX News fanboy zealot, or you are Jack Ryan (who quit the race, by the way). I can not believe that ANYONE representing either major party takes a "fuck the USA" stance. Bad judgement and misplaced priorities are not the same as malice or treason, though I'm sure you don't understand that concept.

Re:I won't waste the mod point

[uvajed_ekil]

Damn, you got me. I normally don't bother skewering anonymous trolls. Oh well, I still win.

Re: I won't waste the mod point

[Bartles]

Jack Ryan quit the race after "someone" illegally leaked his confidential divorce records. Interestingly, this was the second time an opponent of Obama had his divorce records illegally leaks.

Re: BULL SH!T

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuck face. Hello from the 3rd grade.

Grow up.

Liar

[Anonymous Coward]

She was not cleared of wrong doing, in fact she was indicted by the FBI director. The odd thing is that he claimed in her case, and only her case, intent could not be proven. That ruling, combined with the fact that the Attorney General acted with misconduct and should be disbarred for meeting with a potential witness and the suspects husband 1 working day prior to the statement is telling. Further, there has been a request to bring Clinton up on perjury charges for over 3 months which nobody in the DOJ will touch. The system is corrupt, and you are a fucking retard not to notice or care.

Re: BULL SH!T

[Xenographic]

There's also some stuff about DNS queries, but when they actually talk to the bank, someone was spamming something about a Trump property. So the easiest explanation here is a corporate firewall that rejects their pings and scans and a few people on the inside clicking spam.

So I will take part of that back, I don't like spammers and Trump should fire whatever marketing group was doing that to promote his place.

Re:What do you call a russian Manchurian candidate

[jedidiah]

Yeah... the "Abe Lincoln defence" was a classic. It's a shame that no one was there to declare "I knew Abe, and you're no Abe."

Saying goodbye to /.

[mTor]

After all these years of visiting this site, I'm pretty much ready to go away and get my news from other sites. Slashdot has become a garbage propaganda site. It's really sad what happened to it. First, Timothy started his SJW crusade and propaganda push and now others have picked the same tack. There's really no point to come on here.

Re:Saying goodbye to /.

[Ash-Fox]

I read Slashdot for the comments, not the news.

Re:Saying goodbye to /.

[SethJohnson]

After all these years of visiting this site, I'm pretty much ready to go away and get my news from other sites.

Bye.

Re:Saying goodbye to /.

[Anonymous Coward]

We're sorry that /. doesn't cater to your particular substitute for reality. Don't let the door hit your ass on your way out.

Kind Regards, etc. etc.

Re:Saying goodbye to /.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm pretty much ready to go away

Sounds like we haven't gotten rid of you, not by a long shot. lol

Re:Saying goodbye to /.

[bongey]

BeauHD twitter feed. "Trump is a saggy sack of shit. If any one of you is even remotely considering voting for him this November, please unfollow me. "
BeauHD needs to get canned. Don't mind Trump bashing articles, but News for Nerds FROM SLATE, WTF? Not to mention all the discredit news orgs from the podesta leaks.

Re: BULL SH!T

[I'm New Around Here]

There's no real evidence of Hillary's lies,

You don't think Congressional testimony counts as evidence?

Re: BULL SH!T

[grcumb]

Without having read TFA, often even as a network engineer, I'll use the term "ping" even when not referring to ICMP. For example, I'll refer to an SNMP walk (of any kind) as a "ping".

Exactly. The term 'ping' may appear unfortunate to those of us who know what the ICMP protocol actually is, but it'll be suitably edgy to a tech-ignorant audience who need to feel that the writer actually knows what he's talking about.

Still though, this doesn't come off as suspicious to me at all. Since when is it odd or otherwise unusual that a server belonging to a billionaire talks to a server belonging to a bank in a foreign country?

When the bank is one of only a very few addresses the server communicates with.

Look, it's circumstantial at best, no more of a smoking gun than any number of other things. But if I were a US-based journalist, I'd consider it worth digging into. I don't know that I'd publish something based on the logs alone, but I would certainly be willing to follow wherever they lead. Even if the conclusion is that Trump has investments in Russian companies, that's a notable fact, given his constant and explicit denial that he has any financial ties to Russia.

That's like saying that it's odd that there's dog piss on a fire hydrant.

Kind of. It's more like saying it's odd that this dog doesn't seem to want to piss anywhere except at this particular fire hydrant, which he insists he would never piss on if you gave him a thousand years and a fire hose.

So yeah, the circumstances are curious, but there's nothing here that would make me jump out of my chair and shout, 'Aha!!!' And trust me, I'd be the first to do that if it took Trump down a notch.

There's a slight difference

[rsilvergun]

Hilary Clinton is pretty obviously the target if a multi-billion dollar character assassination program. You might argue that she deserves it, but if the best that 30 years of non-stop attacks could come up with is an email server and an error of judgement in Benghazi of the sort Bush Jr made repeatably then I say bring her on. I don't think Jesus Christ could survive the onslaught she has.

Put another way: Somebody with a lot of money and power _really_ doesn't want her to be president. Put that in your corn cob and smoke it.

Re:There's a slight difference

[uvajed_ekil]

Hilary Clinton is pretty obviously the target if a multi-billion dollar character assassination program. ... I don't think Jesus Christ could survive the onslaught she has.

1. He was from NAZARETH, not AMERICA! Birth certificate!?!?
2. He was not a Christian, so can you REALLY be sure he shares OUR ideals?
3. Clearly a hippie - long hair, unshaven, sandals, didn't hold down a regular job, etc. -- NOT presidential.
4. He was privileged, not a common working man, so he clearly doesn't understand us and will not do what it takes to bring back high-paying jobs.
5. Inexperienced - never held elected office, never ran a company.
6. Some of those Romans hated him an awful lot, and some of them were my friends, or at least neighbors.
7. Too many mentions of wine, and handouts. Handouts instead of making people work. Pretty suspicious. Communist alert!
8. Questionable inner circle - Known liars and turncoats, prostitutes, etc.
9. What are his family values? Not married (gay? swinger?), no children (that he would claim publicly, anyway).
10. What happened to all of the letters he wrote? Why have they mysteriously disappeared over time? What is he hiding, and how much did he lie about it? And where is he now, I thought he was coming back?

It's now Russias

[Anonymous Coward]

@Aleppo is someone else's civil war.
No it's how Putin got his Mediterranean base, by propping up Assad's regime. Which gives him control of the east-west routes across which middle Asian oil pipelines travel. (He go control of the Baku pipeline when he invaded Georgia).

@Ukraine was a dick move but it was still largely a regional thing.
No, it gave him Crimea which gives him Azov sea, and dominance in the Black sea, and an threat surface to Turkey's eastern provinces.

Either you're a astroturfer or just plain ignorant, I suspect Trump to be a dummy with a bromance for Putin, and a traitor to his country.

Re:It's now Russias

[Zontar The Mindless]

B-b-b-b-but aren't these examples of that "geo-political" thing that the pro-Trump/pro-Putin trolls keep harping on? *head explodes*

"Computer scientists"?

[alexo]

Computer science is the study of the theory, experimentation, and engineering that form the basis for the design and use of computers. It is the scientific and practical approach to computation and its applications and the systematic study of the feasibility, structure, expression, and mechanization of the methodical procedures (or algorithms) that underlie the acquisition, representation, processing, storage, communication of, and access to information. An alternate, more succinct definition of computer science is the study of automating algorithmic processes that scale. A computer scientist specializes in the theory of computation and the design of computational systems.

-- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

What next? Physicists weighing in on Hillary's email server?

Re:What do you call a russian Manchurian candidate

[David_Hart]

Yeah... the "Abe Lincoln defence" was a classic. It's a shame that no one was there to declare "I knew Abe, and you're no Abe."

The Abe Lincoln comment was purely about having a private opinion about something and having a public position that more aligns with the group that you are talking to. The point that she was making was that Lincoln campaigned and courted different groups with slightly different messages tweaked for each group.

The problem is that nuanced reasoning goes over the head of both the media and most of the general public...

Meh, apples/oranges

[rsilvergun]

and we're just scratching the surface of Trump's Russian ties, whereas we've been over Hilary's emails for nigh on a decade now. Thing is, _everybody_ in Washington was doing this. Collin Powell proved as much.

Hell, that was one of the most badass things to come out of this. Hilary was asked if it was Colin's idea to run the server and she said no, it was her responsibility. A few weeks later Wikileaks dumped emails showing it _was_ Powell suggesting it. I've yet to see HRC get an ounce of credit for shielding Powell and the loyalty and shear brass balls it showed.

Re:Meh, apples/oranges

[Anonymous Coward]

Reference to Wikileaks email proving Powell told her to setup her own server for classified email usage?

You are the ONLY person on the entire net I've read claiming that and I've read everything I can find as I'm a Clinton Email Scandal Junky.

I suspect you just made that up but I'm willing to accept you know something NO ONE else is talking about if you can PROVE it.

Re:Meh, apples/oranges

[h33t l4x0r]

I don't remember her ever doing that. I remember her saying that Powell advised her to use a private server.

Re:Meh, apples/oranges

[Anonymous Coward]

No, Colin Powell had an AOL account for personal use. clinton had a private server in her fucking bathroom with classified information on it. No one else did that, no one.

Not to mention she took billions in "donations" and $150 million in "speaking fees" from foreign governments and corporations who coincidentally got meetings and favorable treatment from her.

Re:Meh, apples/oranges

[Anonymous Coward]

You shouldn't get positive credit for lying.

Re:Meh, apples/oranges

[khallow]

Hilary was asked if it was Colin's idea to run the server and she said no, it was her responsibility. A few weeks later Wikileaks dumped emails showing it _was_ Powell suggesting it.

Yea, right. Was that while they were tooling around in the UFO from Area 51? Or petting unicorns at the Cheyenne Mountain Strategic Unicorn Reserve? I think it more impressive that Powell could give her advice on setting up an email server to evade FOIA and public records laws. He didn't strike me as an IT guy.

Re:Meh, apples/oranges

[meta-monkey]

whereas we've been over Hilary's emails for nigh on a decade now.

Didn't we just find out about the server in 2015?

Re:Meh, apples/oranges

[Anonymous Coward]

and she is going to succeed in becoming the first female POTUS after 44 of the other gender. I think the takeaway lesson is somewhat different than what you are thinking.

Re: BULL SH!T (+3, TrumpIsTrash)

[Anonymous Coward]

Right. EXPECT his media company anyway. This guy is a joke.

Um... you do know he's part of the oligarchy

[rsilvergun]

right? Both he and his father were slum lords for Christ sakes. Seriously. One of the Guthrie's (Woody I think) had a song about Frank Trump.

Re:BULL SH!T

[Aighearach]

Some Foos are not Bars. Therefore, no Foos are Bars. T/F?

In Soviet Russia

[dave562]

Trump DDoS's you?

In other news, this has been another election cycle brought to you by the folks masquerading as the NYSE, NASDAQ, SWIFT and their associated manifestations.

WW3 will be along shortly. Don't fret whoever gets elected. The script has already been written at least a few chapters past November.

Re:In Soviet Russia

[Anonymous Coward]

WW3 ended on December 25, 1991. We have been in WW4 for ~20 years.

Re:In Soviet Russia

[dave562]

I am intrigued by your ideas, and would like to subscribe to your newsletter.

Hillary needs to get her story straight

[PapayaSF]

Either Trump is in the pay of Russia, or he's a dangerous nut who will start a war with Russia. It can't be both. But the Hillary campaign is flailing wildly as she loses, so they will claim anything, no matter how contradictory.

Re:Hillary needs to get her story straight

[Anonymous Coward]

You live in a fantasy world if you really think Hillary is losing this election.

Re:Hillary needs to get her story straight

[Anonymous Coward]

These two things don't have to be mutually exclusive. E.g. He might be in bed financially with both Putin and an oligarch that wants to overthrow Putin, and he could theoretically sell out the United States to the highest bidder.

Re:Hillary needs to get her story straight

[dbIII]

Either Trump is in the pay of Russia, or he's a dangerous nut who will start a war with Russia

Why not both? He's screwed over a lot of people who paid him for something he never delivered.
It's sort of a joke, but so is Trump.

If the fake sincerity encasing the wall lie wasn't enough of a warning sign he's got a bridge to sell you.
And no - I'm not cheering for Hillary either. Why can't someone point out that Trump is a liar without some "but Hillary uses email" shit coming up?

Re:Hillary needs to get her story straight

[squiggleslash]

But the Hillary campaign is flailing wildly as she loses, so they will claim anything, no matter how contradictory.

Perhaps you could point out the contradiction. The Clinton campaign has claimed Trump is linked to Russia, and even made it clear he's a dangerous nut (something we can all agree on), but they've never, ever, claimed Trump is going to start a war with Russia.

Re:Hillary needs to get her story straight

[Anonymous Coward]

"Either Trump is in the pay of Russia, or he's a dangerous nut who will start a war with Russia. It can't be both"
It actually can. Trump has a history of praising people that say nice things about him, until that person start saying bad things about him, then he goes nuclear (pun intended) against that person.

Don't fret

[Black Parrot]

I'm sure everyone will give Trump the same benefit of the doubt that they give Hillary.

Re:What do you call a russian Manchurian candidate

[guruevi]

Citation please on the modifying. Wikileaks is one of the few true old-style journalist organizations.

If anything, Clinton is big business' Manchurian Candidate. At best Trump will be "George W. Bush II", I don't see him completing much of anything which may be a good thing for a change. The wall won't be built even if he wanted to WJC and GWB already tried it, at best it will create some jobs in a small Texas town and that will be the height of it's success. ObamaCare will collapse with or without him. Hillary will be investigated and exonerated regardless (since an investigation requires Congress, not a President) and I'm not sure what the rest of his platform is, if he even has any.

The Middle East will continue being a mess, with a little bit of luck, he's incompetent enough after all, Russia will continue to expand their control in the region with as much success and damage to their own image as the repeated US invasions in the region caused. The Korea's will continue to be at war and 'the bomb' and any of their efforts will continue to be a 'success' in NK media alone.

Re: Temper your enthusiasm

[Anonymous Coward]

McMullin?

Re: Temper your enthusiasm

[I'm New Around Here]

You think someone that "should have been indicted" is the best choice?

I've said many times that I voted for Jill Stein of the Green Party in 2012, and plan to this time as well. I don't even agree with most of their platform. But she at least is an honest person. I would much rather have an honest person filling that office than either Trump or Hillary.

And, no, I don't vote Libertarian because that party has worse a platform than the Greens do.

Re: Temper your enthusiasm

[I'm New Around Here]

How do you manage to be wrong in multiple ways on both points you claim?

Dan Farmer and Defcon

[dave562]

Do any of you guys remember one of the original Defcon's, where Dan Farmer (I think?) was talking about hiding payloads in the white space of DNS packets?

This quote from the article made me think about that.

"Earlier this month, the group of computer scientists passed the logs to Paul Vixie. In the world of DNS experts, there’s no higher authority. Vixie wrote central strands of the DNS code that makes the internet work.

---->After studying the logs, he concluded, “The parties were communicating in a secretive fashion. The operative word is secretive. This is more akin to what criminal syndicates do if they are putting together a project.” Put differently, the logs suggested that Trump and Alfa had configured something like a digital hotline connecting the two entities, shutting out the rest of the world, and designed to obscure its own existence. ---------

Re:Dan Farmer and Defcon

[Anonymous Coward]

This story is basically "Server in Russia occasionally asks the TLD servers to look up a domain registered by a marketing company that Trump hired for his hotel."

Vixie has access to the logs of the TLD servers. If Vixie sees clandestine communication from Russia, they are communicating with him, not with Trump.

Re:Dan Farmer and Defcon

[dbIII]

Dan Farmer (I think?) was talking about hiding payloads in the white space of DNS packets?

I have not heard that but there have been implementations of building a VPN using tunnelling via DNS for places that have firewalls stopping most traffic.

Re:Dan Farmer and Defcon

[dave562]

That could very well be it. It was almost 20 years ago that I sat in on the presentation.

Thanks for the reminder / clarification.

Re:Dan Farmer and Defcon

[dbIII]

These days as with many things it turns out "there is an app for that":
www.vpnoverdns.com

Wait what?

[JustNiz]

Wait what? One of the bank's computers was irregularly pinging Turmp's server and that was somehow his fault?

Re: Temper your enthusiasm

[uvajed_ekil]

Has there been any presidential candidate in decades who wasnt a scoundrel?

Yes. Working backwards: Obama (in 2008, at least), McCain, Kerry, W (douche who went AWOL and didn't have much of a vocabulary, but not a scoundrel), Gore, Dole, Reagan, Dukakis, Mondale (maybe), Carter. That's most of the major party candidates going back almost 40 years, and I don't think any of them qualify as scoundrels or bad people, no matter how little I agreed with some of them. You can make a case a lot more easily for both Clintons, Trump, Bush 41, and Romney (which I say despite kind of liking one of them and accepting another), but that means most major candidates are not scoundrels.

Re: BULL SH!T

[Anonymous Coward]

I have been AC here since the first year of operation. There is a percentage of slashdot users which judge posts largely by who said it and not on content. Unfortunately that group is self-reinforcing and has grown over the years. Now getting a popular username modded troll or an AC modded up is a rare sight.

Hillary Tries to Shift the Discussion

[shel10]

Someone tell Hillary's minions that this isn't going to work.

Re: Temper your enthusiasm

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly! Trump is the incarnation of evil itself, and the false equivalencies "in the name of balance" are stupid.

Nice Try

[Anonymous Coward]

Whoever is spewing this crap should is a moron(s).

Keep telling yourself your bullsh1t and maybe you'll believe it.

No one else believes the crap that's put out.

Re:Nice Try

[Anonymous Coward]

I couldn't agree more about how moronic this whole Russian-meme is, but unfortunately there are plenty of morons buying into this absolute bullshit. Never underestimate how stupid some people can be. :S

Re:Putin and Trump bromance

[Aighearach]

Nice straw man, but the US policy in Syria doesn't require a bunch of volunteers to go and shed their own blood.

It calls for politicians to bomb more stuff, or not, and to authorize additional special operators, or not.

Re: BULL SH!T

[Anonymous Coward]

It's more like saying it's odd that this dog doesn't seem to want to piss anywhere except at this particular fire hydrant

Yet nobody has any idea how many other servers this 'Russian server' 'pings' in a given day, or hour.

And if they did know then the data collected couldn't trusted because in order to record it you would also be capable of spoofing the pings to begin with.

( Posted AC to preserve Mod Points )

Re:Ar you people insane? Why is this in any way sa

[Aighearach]

Her server wasn't hacked, the State Department's was. The idea that she created a risk is silly. In a more perfect world it would be true, but security is so awful in government it simply isn't true in the real world.

And where are all those Colin Powell emails? Oh right, he didn't use his own server he had hired people to secure, he used a freakin' consumer email from a major provider and would never even be notified if they were hacked.

Most of the Bush administration used the RNC's email server, and they deleted all the emails.

People who actually follow email scandals over time notice some significant differences, mostly in that Clinton's setup was more secure, and also that she deleted a lower percentage of her emails that the median politician in the past 15 years.

Bill Clinton stuck to phone calls and refused email because he didn't want to delete it, or to not delete it. Maybe that is what we should expect, because we're too childish and partisan to allow them to use the tools the way others do.

I can say that as somebody who has been following email scandals since the days when the news had to explain email, it really is a less important issue than a foreign government trying to tamper with our elections. That is new territory and shows we're not at risk of a new Cold War but already years into one.

Re:In other news about Trump's shady Kremlin links

[Anonymous Coward]

It comes down to PA. Whoever takes PA will win it.

Re: Ar you people insane? Why is this in any way s

[uvajed_ekil]

Oh, you seem so sure... but things have really been falling apart in the polls, which are biased left to begin with.

See you on the 8th ;)

No, you probably won't. I vote early, like any sane person. Much less chance for the GOP to suppress my vote if I cast it before election day.

Re:What do you call a russian Manchurian candidate

[stdarg]

No that's the point she spinned it into. If that had been her point, and if her actions backed it up, it would be totally fine. But her actions show that her public vs private opinions are not just "slightly different messages tweaked for each group" but outright contradictions and falsehoods. You can't tell people publicly that one of your positions is to "uphold the rule of law, protect our borders and national security" (that's on her website) while telling people in speeches "My dream is a hemispheric common market with open trade and open borders." That's not nuance. That's not targeting. That means she's blatantly lying to one group or the other.

slashdot harrased

[Anonymous Coward]

I know it's just few day to polls. Out of 10 high ranked posts (visible on load), 9 strongly dismiss the merit of the article (based on political preferences). Low statistics, but could mean that 60-90% /. readers support trump. But also organized readers (from whatever place) would easily make the same effect. Anyway, unusually for /., no real insightful comment on feasibility of a ping tunnel.
                            Ranked posts:
Xenographic - insightful - these are random pings
ScentCone - informative - Clinton emails
  hey! - insightful - nothing, same as Abendin, not illegal, forgotten setting
  davide marney - informative - just kidding
  HBI - insightful - trump is against oligarchy, last chance for change
  ooloorie - insightful - hoax by clinton
  Bartles - insightful - trum and clinton are the same
  -Swave An deBwoner - informative - this is the only anti-post (political however) with just two links to trumps cases
  SuperKendall - informative - russian bank just protects itsef, anticlinton

Slashdot power is in users expertise. If /. is hijacked ...

Re: BULL SH!T

[ArmoredDragon]

If you were spoofing the pings, you'd likely not get a response to record since you've sent your return address to presumably be one that you don't have.

Re: BULL SH!T

[Anonymous Coward]

Accountability and track record? How come aliens with no history start with very low credit worthiness?

Re:What do you call a russian Manchurian candidate

[Maxo-Texas]

http://motherboard.vice.com/re...

"The metadata in the leaked documents are perhaps most revealing: one dumped document was modified using Russian language settings, by a user named âoeÐÐÐÐÐÑ ÐÐмÑfнÐоÐÐÑ,â a code name referring to the founder of the Soviet Secret Police, the Cheka, memorialised in a 15-ton iron statue in front of the old KGB headquarters during Soviet times. The original intruders made other errors: one leaked document included hyperlink error messages in Cyrillic, the result of editing the file on a computer with Russian language settings. After this mistake became public, the intruders removed the Cyrillic information from the metadata in the next dump and carefully used made-up user names from different world regions, thereby confirming they had made a mistake in the first round. "

Good enough?

Re: BULL SH!T

[AK Marc]

Ping means to "check with" in regular English. No big deal. Is Bob coming to lunch Friday? I don't know. Ping him and let us know.

Re: Temper your enthusiasm

[Anonymous Coward]

> Has there been any presidential candidate in decades who wasnt a scoundrel?

Oh shut up. There's often someone decent in there. Carter. Maybe maybe Reagan. Probably Mondale. Mostly Dole. Personally I think Obama, but history will tell us for sure. Oh, and very probably Romney.

Are they likable? Not all. The only one on the list I voted for was Obama, and only once.

Anyway, Clinton has actual baggage, Trump has personality baggage. Clinton is smart and spooky, Trump is instinctual and hilarious.

finally an obvious clear link!

[Anonymous Coward]

Forget you deniers, this story clearly proves that the Trumpmeister has a clear relationship with ‘the Russians’ and that he is clearly orchestrating their every move and paying them in real time on some sort of direct private trading/payment platform to hack and dig up dirt on the DNC and the HillaryDillaryDock. It’s also clear that based on Drumpf’s debate performances, they are in turn dictating what Drumpf should say during the debates and on the campaign trail.

Re:finally an obvious clear link!

[Anonymous Coward]

And this also clearly proves that reptilian-aliens have taken over our world-governments and that Hillary Clinton, Obama, Loreta Lynch, and the Deputy Director of the FBI and his wife, have all been replaced by these reptilian overlords; which send out scout-ships every night to anally probe you and and the rest of the morons that are buying into this desperate bullshit. :)

Re:BULL SH!T

[no1nose]

#MAGA #HillaryForPrison #HillaryforPrision vote @realDonaldTrump I already early voted for Trump :)

Re: BULL SH!T

[Cyberpunk Reality]

But why is it that the dog that belongs to your neighbors old buddy on the other side of town is always pissing on the hydrant in your yard? (Did I mention that you and your neighbor don't exactly get along?)

Embarrassing.

[RightSaidFred99]

This article is embarrassing. It should make you sad.

I tend to lean right wing, but I really hated most right wingers. Conspiracy kookery, idiocy, you name it. It's a cess pit of shit and groupthink.

I honestly thought most left wingers were more reasonable, if wrong on many subjects.

I have now learned I was wrong, and left wingers are as stupid, gullible, and conspiracy minded as right wingers. It's absolutely fucking ridiculous. Who reads this nonsense and actually think it means anything?

Yes. Donald Trump wanted to communicate with the Russians, and communications is so hard nowadays that his only option was to setup this honeypot of a server with some obscure connection that "pings" (lol) a Russian server oddly. Makes total sense.

ffs. What a god damn joke this election is.

Re:Putin and Trump bromance

[dbIII]

Nice straw man, but the US policy in Syria

You know the policy?
Then tell us, and more importantly tell people in Washington because they don't know either. It's seat of the pants while on fire "policy" being allied with a bunch one day and bombing them the next. Early on it seemed to be about working even with Daash/ISIL against Assad. Now it's working both for and against Assad, plus for the Kurds but against them if Turkey is involved.

Re:Ar you people insane? Why is this in any way sa

[dbIII]

Gangsters up to no good yes, but look at Hillary, the bitch uses email! Burn her!

I think this has been the most stupid Presidential race ever.

Accusations, Assumptions, and Rumors

[Anonymous Coward]

Article starts out with "a group of researchers" then quickly devolves a few sentences later to "he began" and "he would circulate" suggesting it's just 1 guy and not a group of researchers. Not only does the author mix tenses which instantly kills credibility but also never names the researchers or credentials. This story is 100% bullshit then went from a theory passed around a very small hacker room (probably an IRC chat room for leet haxor skids) to 1 guy that actually did research by looking up DNS traffic. How did they look into the traffic? It's completely obvious it's encrypted and they're making wild accusations because they can't prove the contents of the traffic. "It looks like human conversation"... give me a fucking break are you fucking serious? This whole story is far from journalism, it's basically a conspiracy theory with zero evidence. This is a great example of how rumors start and why Slashdot and politics rarely mix. Stick to tech only news with facts, analysis, and sources. When reading OR writing, use your damn heads don't believe everything you read.

Re:Accusations, Assumptions, and Rumors

[oh_my_080980980]

Actually it's rather useful because people can debunk this crap. The average Slate reader probably does not know much about technology and just swallow the author's premise.

Slashdot readers, on the other hand, will be more likely to call bullshit This is helpful.

The entire Russia conspiracy theory needs to stop. It's becoming more more like the North Korea hacked Sony incident; which turns out they didn't and it was an inside job. As yet no verifiable evidence has been presented that Russia is hacking the DNC. But more to the point - who the fuck cares, because they aren't PLANTING or ALTERING emails. The information that has been leaked is 100% real. So the problem the DNC has is, like Nixon, they've been caught with their hands in the cookie jar and are trying to deflect.

Re:What do you call a russian Manchurian candidate

[Aighearach]

It is almost like you didn't know the movie existed, or didn't know that in the leaked speech, that is exactly the context.

When you pay a VIP to come give some talk to your company, who is not even in the same industry as them, they will talk about movies and stuff. That is what they pay for. It is not some super-secret illuminati induction. They literally tried to take her comments about the movie about Lincoln and use it against her, so she explained the context they left out. These attacks are so weak, they turn into softballs! Maybe taking her comments about a movie out of context works great in a fox news sound bite, but fails spectacularly when used in a direct attack in a debate where she can just fill in the blanks.

It is funny to see people pretend to care, but not even catch the events.

Re:Already debunked. Fuck off, desperate Shillbots

[Aighearach]

That isn't debunking, that is verifying. That's exactly what we're here talking about, yes.

Wow, man. Just wow. Nobody is saying there is evidence of a crime, they're saying that is very troubling that a presidential candidate has ties to Russia and denies it, and offers no explanation, and withholds his tax returns.

Oh the depravity.

[jondeanmack]

Rhetorically, when will computer scientists ever learn. When the computer builder dies the computer stops working. Recent dying and deaths: The analogue Television. Other examples, dinosaurs, some life species. And there are some things that aren't in books. Just as there will be a future where someone can't recreate something from the past. And incest is just one human species killer marching with the other killers.

Re:Oh the depravity.

[jondeanmack]

Another in the march is the Wikipedia article for God.

Re:Oh the depravity.

[jondeanmack]

If you have sex and create a baby, you help to make the human species extinct. And there will be no traceable link to the past humans, just like humans have had in the past an instinct to kill something smaller like an elephant stepping on an mouse.

Re:What do you call a russian Manchurian candidate

[dbIII]

I don't see him completing much of anything which may be a good thing for a change

Only if China and the rest of the world sleeps for the entire time. Does not sound so good if they do not.

Re:BULL SH!T

[Xenographic]

Looks to be pretty bogus.... it would appear that the damn thing doesn't even belong to Trump.

Strange?

[Xenographic]

So why doesn't the server in question actually belong to Trump?

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Cw...

Well, you are right about this correlating with election nonsense, but... yeah.

Re:Strange?

[cdrudge]

A whois typo isn't very conclusive one way or another about a official connection to the Trump Organization.

Re:Putin and Trump bromance

[Zontar The Mindless]

I can't help but view Donald Trump as a traitor to pretty much everyone who isn't Donald Trump.

Wiener is going to get roasted

[Anonymous Coward]

We have wikileaks sources on Wienergate, not to mention the FBI dump. He's in trouble...

I mean, the general public already has copies of classified stuff. Huma is a long-time Clinton aide and wife to Rep. Anthony "Carlos Danger" Wiener. Huma was using Hillary's device to send webmail and such. So Weiner had WAY more than he should have.

Wiener is in a pinch.

Re:Wiener is going to get roasted

[bigfinger76]

Ouch!

Re: Temper your enthusiasm

[Zontar The Mindless]

Nuttiness is non-partisan. Just as Ben Carson demonstrated a while back for the conservatives, Jill Stein provides proof that a medical degree does not make a liberal especially smart, wise, or well-connected with reality, either.

Re: BULL SH!T

[Anonymous Coward]

There's no real evidence of Hillary's lies,

You don't think Congressional testimony counts as evidence?

Gowdy had no right to ask her questions, so she was under no obligation to tell the truth, so no.

Re: BULL SH!T

[Anonymous Coward]

No it doesn't. You just made that up.

That's hardly the best we can find...

[Anonymous Coward]

> Hilary Clinton is pretty obviously the target if a multi-billion dollar character assassination program.

Wiener is (or was) Huma's husband. Huma is the girl who was born in the USA, lived in Saudi Arabia from 2-18, then returned here to become Hillary's top aide. With all those billions, just how did they place Wiener in such a way to screw the Democrats?

How do you explain that the emails are all unaltered and can be validated with DKIM from Hillary's own damn server, which she shouldn't have had in the first place? I note that you don't address any of the many things found on that server. Go read the /r/wikileaks summary threads, there's a pile of dirt a mile high.

And just what does your "but Russia" buy you? Suppose, somehow, via magic, they made all of the above happen. Do you even know why the Russians worry about this election? They don't want to go to war with the USA over Syria.

Do you?

ha! that's rich

[Anonymous Coward]

You're concerned with Trump's connection to "truthiness" at a time when the only real alternative is Hillary Millhouse Nixon, who has been certified by the FBI to have lied to the public hundreds of times over the past two years (an extraordinary achievement) and who could not even resist the urge to tell a whopper lie in her big response to the Huma e-mail discovery?

Right there, to the public and the press, she claimed that Comey had sent his notification letter to just the Republicans - something everybody in Dc associated with government knew to be a bold faced lie.

Re:ha! that's rich

[Anonymous Coward]

Voting against Clinton because of her lies is like vacationing in Antarctica because Maine is too cold.

Re: BULL SH!T

[AK Marc]

http://www.dictionary.com/brow...
to make contact with (someone) by sending a brief electronic message, as a text message:
The design team should ping marketing to set up a meeting next week.
Ping me when you arrive, and I’ll meet you at the door.

It may not be a popular use, but I certainly didn't make it up. That you are too dumb to know words doesn't mean they aren't real.

Re:BULL SH!T

[Rei]

No. It belongs to a company that Trump hired for marketing purposes.

Without seeing the logs, it's hard to comment. I've seen a lot of attempted debunkings that focus on part of the story, but not the whole story. For example:

...The Times hadn’t yet been in touch with the Trump campaign—Lichtblau spoke with the campaign a week later—but shortly after it reached out to Alfa, the Trump domain name in question seemed to suddenly stop working. ... The computer scientists believe there was one logical conclusion to be drawn: The Trump Organization shut down the server after Alfa was told that the Times might expose the connection. Weaver told me the Trump domain was “very sloppily removed.” Or as another of the researchers put it, it looked like “the knee was hit in Moscow, the leg kicked in New York.”

Four days later, on Sept. 27, the Trump Organization created a new host name, trump1.contact-client.com, which enabled communication to the very same server via a different route. When a new host name is created, the first communication with it is never random. To reach the server after the resetting of the host name, the sender of the first inbound mail has to first learn of the name somehow. It’s simply impossible to randomly reach a renamed server. “That party had to have some kind of outbound message through SMS, phone, or some noninternet channel they used to communicate [the new configuration],” Paul Vixie told me. The first attempt to look up the revised host name came from Alfa Bank. “If this was a public server, we would have seen other traces,” Vixie says. “The only look-ups came from this particular source.”

According to Vixie and others, the new host name may have represented an attempt to establish a new channel of communication. But media inquiries into the nature of Trump’s relationship with Alfa Bank, which suggested that their communications were being monitored, may have deterred the parties from using it. Soon after the New York Times began to ask questions, the traffic between the servers stopped cold.

My first instinct is to assume, given the context, that it's a spam server. But in addition to not making sense why a spam server would be so limited in its acceptance of inbound connections or make so few DNS lookups**, I'm scratching my head here trying to figure out why Alfa would make the first DNS lookup of the new DNS without prompting. But maybe in the logs there's something that could help explain it. Maybe there was prompting - perhaps the trump-email server sent first, and alfa was doing a reverse D.N.S. lookup on it? Or maybe it's on the same I.P. and for some reason Alfa had spent days sitting around doing reverse D.N.S. lookups of the I.P. based on their last mail receipt? Seems a bit weird, but maybe the logs could clear things up.

** Re: the "so few DNS lookups": this one's a bit odd. The Trump campaign said that the server hasn't been used since 2010. But it's still acting like it's sending and receiving mail, just to a small number of recipients, during business hours. So one immediately pictures some sort of automated feedback loop, but that doesn't jibe with the communication patterns. Not sure how to parse that one. My gut still says "just a spam server", but it is odd.

Re: BULL SH!T

[jandersen]

...trust me, I'd be the first to do that if it took Trump down a notch.

There you go again, being reasonable. If you want to match the Trump crowd, you have to assume by default that everything he does is suspicious, at the very least, and probably has malicious intent. He went to the loo? Highly suspicious - probably wanted to hide his substance abuse. He passed a primary school in his car? Probably prospecting for under-age girls. Finding there is a Russian bank that communicates with one of his servers is practically watertight proof that he is in with Putin in a major way. If we were to argue like Trump's followers. Regrettably, most of us, who aren't his followers, are restrained by things like intellect, honesty and basic integrity.

Re: BULL SH!T

[Anonymous Coward]

For example, I'll refer to an SNMP walk (of any kind) as a "ping".

Then you're referring to it incorrectly.

Re:BULL SH!T

[rtb61]

Trump has being trying to break into the Russian development market but hasn't been able to strike any deals and there was some beauty pageant crap as well. Obviously if you are going to do a property development in Russian you are going to have to wheel and deal with Russian banks and those relationships take time to build. Major commercial construction projects do not happen over night and take many years to get going and working with a bank that knows the market is essential.

Theory instantly abandoned as Utter BS

[Anonymous Coward]

The researchers dismissed further study when it was found that Trump-branded products were hair care products and those short conversations were really queries as to why they can be purchased with 3 easy payments in rubles

Not likely to step down, but in big trouble....

[Anonymous Coward]

There's a double dump today: wikileaks + Veritas. She's under FBI indictment and it looks bad because Wiener's wife was Huma, Clinton's top aide and she had waaaaay more than she should have had access to, they knew about Wiener's wroingdoing for way too long, etc.

That said, I'm not convinced she'll step down. Obama doesn't seem ready to risk his legacy for her, but if given an excuse he might pardon her on a Trump win just to contain the damage. The new probe is in the hands of a long-time ally of theirs who is all over the Podesta email dump. So they've definitely got some aces up their sleeves for now.

This story, though, is just an idiotic blitz to kick up dirt and distract us from how badly she's getting screwed by Wiener.

Re:BULL SH!T

[tsm_sf]

From everything I've read, the most innocent possibility is that the Trump server has been infected by some idiot IT guy working at the Russian bank.

Trump's server shutting down directly after the Times contacts Alfa seems like a real "oh shit unplug everything" move.

This is fantasy

[Anonymous Coward]

Wild speculation from an anonymous source with unverifiable data corroborated by a rabid nevertrumper. Take a look at Vixie's twitter. Yikes.

Without telling us how, Tea Leaves obtained the query logs from the authoritative nameservers for Cendyn and just happened to notice a few hundred queries out of likely 10s of millions over that time period in the course of whatever it is he claims to do that gives him access to large quantities of private sector company dns query logs. Oh, right. These few and far between A record lookups 'appeared to be malware' from Russia.

Based off of these cendyn logs he speculates about the purpose and volume of traffic this server is doing. This is ludicrous. You could point krebsonsecurity.com at it and the FBI Director Award for Excellence winner wouldn't have any clue it was being DOSd. If this is what 'the world of DNS experts' has to offer, maybe we should all reconsider WINS.

“The data has got the right kind of fuzz growing on it" jfc I wont bother with this.

‘Trump Server Communicating With Russia&rsqu

[Anonymous Coward]

An article questioning whether a Trump mail server was secretly communicating with Russia quickly fell apart Monday after security experts, journalists and the FBI weighed in.

The article from Slate, entitled “Was a Trump Server Communicating With Russia?,” discussed research from numerous computer scientists and the eventual allegation from a renowned DNS expert that the business server in question was covertly conversing with Alfa Bank – Russia’s largest private commercial bank.

“The parties were communicating in a secretive fashion. The operative word is secretive,” Paul Vixie told Slate. “This is more akin to what criminal syndicates do if they are putting together a project.”

The Clinton campaign, potentially aware of the story’s impending publication, immediately began spreading news of Trump’s alleged Russian ties across social media.

Sam Biddle, journalist for The Intercept, noted soon after that his news outlet and at least 5 others had passed on the story upon deciding that “it didn’t add up.”

Even as Clinton pinned the allegations to her Twitter profile, security experts, the vast majority opposed to Trump, began dismantling the story piece by piece.
Former GCHQ operator Matt Tait, who regularly analyzes breaking security news under the handle @pwnallthethings, demystified the story in a series of tweets.

Naadir Jeewa, an employee at DevOps consulting group “The Scale Factory,” noted the “secret server” was actually run for Trump by Cendyn, a hotel marketing company.

Robert Graham, another renowned security expert, similarly debunked the claim in a post on his blog.

“The response from the Trump campaign is overwhelmingly the most logical explanation,” Graham writes. “Trump hotel business outsourced marketing campaigns, who created the domain and setup (through Listrak) the servers.”

“It’s Cendyn who controls the servers, and not the Trump campaign. It’s unbelievable that the Trump campaign would even have access to those servers, much less be using them. Far from being ‘secret” or “private,’ this [sp] servers are wide open and obvious.”

According to a New York Times article released shortly after the Slate piece, the FBI had been aware of the allegations for weeks but found nothing of interest upon investigation.

“F.B.I. officials spent weeks examining computer data showing an odd stream of activity to a Trump Organization server and Alfa Bank,” the Times writes. “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.”

Given how quickly the story disintegrated, it remains unclear whether or not the Clinton camp will face any lasting damage in the remaining days of the election season.

Re: BULL SH!T

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't worry about TFA. All the people talking about icmp here read it and didn't understand a word of it.

This has been debunked

[TomGreenhaw]

The server belonged to an email marketing company. In this case here isn't a big deep dark secret Trump-Russian conspiracy.

If you want an insight into Trump's ties with Russia, look at Paul Manaforte and read Time magazines article on the subject http://time.com/4433880/donald...

Re: BULL SH!T

[Anonymous Coward]

I propose name change of the ICMP ping util to duck.

Re: BULL SH!T

[khallow]

Gowdy had no right to ask her questions

It is felony perjury to lie during congressional testimony. Not that anyone enforces that.

Trump Supporter = Traitor

[Anonymous Coward]

Simple as that. No bullshit.

Re: BULL SH!T

[Anonymous Coward]

Nomenklaturist bootlicker detected!

Re: BULL SH!T

[Anonymous Coward]

1990 called. They want their sophomoric ideological framework back.

Leftist = rightist = centrist = financialist.

Vote Trump, but fight for Communism.

Re: BULL SH!T

[Anonymous Coward]

Correcting the record!

$0.25 has been deposited in your account. Keep up the good w, deplorable prole.

Re:BULL SH!T

[Anonymous Coward]

It's like I said to my sister the other day; I can't wait for November 9 so I can stop obsessing about Trump and start obsessing about the new Harry Potter movie.

Problem is Trump won't go away post-election. If he wins it will be worse than this, and if he loses he starts Trump media and doubles down on the loose talk and continual lies.

Well, at least he stops lying at times.

Unlike Crooked LIAR Hillary!, who lies CONTINUOUSLY: "Email server? Oh, THAT email server! There's no classified data on it. Oh? Well, they weren't MARKED classified... Oh?!?! LOOK AT THAT RUSSIAN SQUIRREL!!!!".

I bet the difference between "continual" and "continuous" is beyond your ability to comprehend - because if you're actually worried about truth at all you wouldn't be bashing Trump given the complete lying sack of corrupt shit he's up against...

Did you know Crooked LIAR Hillary!'s snores are even falsehoods?

And did you know the surreptitious call sign for Crooked LIAR Hillary! when Bill was President was "Broomstick One"?

Re: Temper your enthusiasm

[BlueStrat]

How do you manage to be wrong in multiple ways on both points you claim?

Simple! Like this: https://youtu.be/W8qcccZy03s

Strat

Well, that proved nothing

[drinkypoo]

His server could have been hacked by Russians and we'd be sitting here arguing about how they have a cozy relationship.

Characterize the nature of the traffic, show me the contents of the packets, then I'll decide if I care.

Re:BULL SH!T

[xtsigs]

Perhaps you should read the entire article before jumping to this conclusion. The traffic was peculiarly NOT random "from everywhere, including Russia, China, etc..." The traffic was almost exclusively between these two servers. Also, the amount traffic increased/decreased with campaign events. The traffic stopped when Alfa Bank became aware of the New York Times investigation. The server was renamed and traffic resumed directly from Alfa Bank. There's more, but I can't quote or refer to all the strange coincidences here. That's why you need to actually read it even though it is long and will take up a few minutes of your time.

Re: BULL SH!T

[Zero__Kelvin]

This is a conversation about networking. That is the context in which we are using the word. In that context ping refers to an ICMP Echo Request. It absolutely does not have anything to do with calling your buddy to see if he is hungry.

What business have computer scientists in politics

[Anonymous Coward]

This is just plain old mud slinging, and any computer security researcher can tell you where those packets come from. :P Pfft

Re:BULL SH!T

[Oswald McWeany]

What fuels the fire of interest in Trump, even among people who aren't particularly interested in reality TV, is the possibility he might become president. Take that off the table, and becomes a lot less interesting except to a small core of true believers.

Indeed. As long as he has a chance of becoming President there is a real and very dangerous threat to the US and democracy. Once he loses (assuming he loses), he just becomes a raving lunatic demanding birth certificates from black guys living in a tall gaudy tower again.

I believe I can fly

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe I can touch the sky. I am an Air Scientist and you may refer to me as Coffee Grinds.

Re:BULL SH!T

[Anonymous Coward]

Because Trump would never try to deflect something he did back on the Clintons... Certainly wouldn't host a press conference where he basically said "sure I talked about grabbing women, but Bill Clinton was found to have done worse!"

Both parties lie. This is NOTHING new... this has been the way of things for at least the last 100 years, likely very much longer.

Really whining about the fact that the DNC is doing something (anything) that would be advantageous to themselves while the RNC does the same leaves me to wonder what happened to the party of "pull yourself up by your boot straps" instead of the party of "bitch and moan until you get your way!"

For a party largely not comprised of millennials the GOP whines enough that you'd think they were all stereotypical millennials.

Inshitful.

[Anonymous Coward]

What if they have dirt on Trump?

Then we wouldn't have Senile ol' Grandma trying to take us to nuclear fucking war because she's confused and doesn't realize it's no longer the fucking sixties.

kidding right? /. is a dem whore now?

[Anonymous Coward]

Absolutely Amazing. No bullshit slant here folks. Assholes editing this stuff aren't biased - NOPE NOT ONE BIT - just ask em they will put on their sincere face and tell ya. This story really? Look he's a fucktard in some people's opinion I get it. Seriously though a wretched criminal bitch hiding her corruption by stashing her e-mail server in the john? This is the piece of shit you have to offer? Its unfathomable just how fucking stupid or naive someone must be to give all of this a pass. We wont even get into what a disaster this raggedy piece of offal was as Sec. State. I really though a bunch of computer geeks would have more sense than to run point for a traitorous bitch who used on the the highest positions in American government to collect bribes and stuff her pockets with loot. She is immoral, unethical, contemptuous of any person with an IQ above 100 (ie the server shit), greedy, and a criminal. Stick to computers your politics are shit and this link just illustrates it. Decency is DEAD.

Re: BULL SH!T

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do you think the network utility was called ping?

Clue: the word and concept already existed before it was used for a networking term.

Amateurs... MY email can go to anyone on earth

[Anonymous Coward]

I am very smart

Re: BULL SH!T

[gtall]

"probably wanted to hide his substance abuse" what? Eats too many Cheetos? That would explain the weird orange tints of the hair on a guy whose 70.

Re:BULL SH!T

[gtall]

Errr...I hate him, and recoil at any stories about him or commenting on anything he says. He's convinced me he's not got anything interesting to say, on anything. Making stuff up I can get from the Ancient Aliens shows.

Re:Already debunked. Fuck off, desperate Shillbots

[Anonymous Coward]

wrong. They explicitly accuse the Trump org of secret communications with the KGB. They dropped this with BS assumptions drawn from dns traffic.

Re: BULL SH!T

[gtall]

Who Gowdy? I've watched the hearings, that guy and his cronies ought to be selling FlexSeal.

Re:What do you call a russian Manchurian candidate

[guruevi]

An op-ed based on a Twitter picture of supposedly an edited word document?

Re: BULL SH!T

[tbannist]

Still though, this doesn't come off as suspicious to me at all. Since when is it odd or otherwise unusual that a server belonging to a billionaire talks to a server belonging to a bank in a foreign country? That's like saying that it's odd that there's dog piss on a fire hydrant.

The odd parts are that the server seems to have been configured to only speak to servers owned by an associate of Putin, and that the communication pattern roughly follows the time table of political events, increasing when newsworthy political events are happening and dropping off when it's not.

Re: BULL SH!T

[Type44Q]

It's bullshit.

Re: BULL SH!T

[T.E.D.]

Without having read TFA, often even as a network engineer, I'll use the term "ping"

You should have stopped right there and read then. It wasn't a literal Ping, it was a series of DNS requests. The data comes from looking through the DNS logs. What was suspicious about it was that the server did not respond to a random DNS request they tried themselves. That most likely means it had been specifically set up to only accept DNS requests from a whitelist of servers. For some reason this one Russian bank was on that whitelist, and accounted for almost all the DNS traffic.

Here we go again...

[Anonymous Coward]

... the Russians did it, even though the evidence is anecdotal at best.

Re: BULL SH!T

[Anonymous Coward]

Posting shit on the internet is being a fucking coward. Calling black lives matter protesters nig nogs is having balls.

Filter error: Lameness filter encountered

Re:BULL SH!T

[mjwx]

Problem is Trump won't go away post-election. If he wins it will be worse than this, and if he loses he starts Trump media and doubles down on the loose talk and continual lies.

This, Trump becomes white noise to everyone outside his own echo chamber. He'll be unceremoniously dumped by the Republicans and squarely blamed for their failure so all he'll be able to do is call Clinton names... which seems to be all he's done for his entire election campaign.

He could probably get his own show on Fox News. The Trump Truth or some such but beyond that he'll be easier to ignore than a crazy person with a doomsday sign in Times Square.

I'm kind of hoping that Trump wins as I'm planning a trip there next year... I'd like to see the USD drop against the sagging AUD and plummeting Pound.

Uh, criminal hacking?

[Anonymous Coward]

So how is the researcher hijacking DNS traffic from Trump's servers in order to "[keep] logs of the Trump server's DNS activity"?

Re:BULL SH!T

[Anonymous Coward]

This report is about DNS logs, so if the Trump server is doing DNS requests for these Russian servers it means there is likely much more going on than just ping requests/response. The term "ping" is likely being used generically here rather than referring to an ICMP echo request, or at the very least the pings is simply what started the investigation.

Re:Ar you people insane? Why is this in any way sa

[Anonymous Coward]

First, who says it was insecure? Second, if not her personal server it would have been in her non-classified state dept account which is technically just as bad as far as mishandling classified info goes.

Re: BULL SH!T

[Anonymous Coward]

We're taking about computers here, not sonar, you moron.

Re:BULL SH!T

[pastafazou]

Illegal tax avoidance? Citation please

Re: Temper your enthusiasm

[Anonymous Coward]

That child rape charge is complete BS you dumb fuck. Do some research you impotent sycophant.

Re:BULL SH!T

[Anonymous Coward]

Boy, I wonder why all these stories about Russia are being turfed out to every media outlet following this weekend?

Stopped reading at "Slate magazine"

[p51d007]

Enough said...

He means both of them...

[Anonymous Coward]

... can't believe the combination of response and low slashdot ID.

Re:Ar you people insane? Why is this in any way sa

[Anonymous Coward]

is anything even CLOSE to the seriousness of the Secretary of State ignoring multiple warnings about how insecure a personal email server was when inevitably she'd be sending top secret material over email

Except that it's been investigated numerous times, most recently by the FBI, and nothing has come of it.

We've got numerous high-profile players in the diplomatic and security corps, such as Colin Powell, who apparently don't think this is serious enough to withhold support from Hillary Clinton as president. That suggests to me that perhaps what you appear to be so alarmed about really might not warrant such grave concern.

Re: Temper your enthusiasm

[swillden]

You think someone that "should have been indicted" is the best choice?

Better than the other option on offer. And, yes, there really is only one other option on offer. Your vote for Stein does send a message, and that's a reasonable thing to do, but the only way it will affect this election is by removing one vote from whichever of the major party candidates you'd have voted for if there were no third parties. If the major party candidate you'd have voted for is going to win your state's electoral votes anyway, then your protest vote is a good one. If your vote might tip your state's electoral college votes away from the major party candidate you find less evil, then you've done yourself a disservice.

Personally, I expect I'll vote for McMullin. My goal is "anyone but Trump", and my state (Utah) will clearly deliver its electoral votes to either McMullin or Trump. Clinton's support in the state is so low that if McMullin & Trump split the rest down the middle Clinton would be in third place, so voting for her won't hurt Trump. Johnson had some support but it has nearly all defected to McMullin, since Johnson's voters weren't voting for him, they were voting against Clinton and Trump. The same is true of most of McMullin's supporters, but he actually has to potentially win the state. And if that happens, and if Trump & Clinton split the remainder of the electoral votes, it's even remotely possible that he could become president (probably with Tim Kaine as VP), unlike Jill Stein who may have more votes nationally but doesn't have enough in any one state to win electoral college votes, and therefore has no chance at the White House.

McMullin is (a) not Trump and (b) not Clinton, (c) not insane and (d) has a non-zero (though very small) chance of winning. Given that, plus the fact that voting for him is my only option for reducing Trump's odds of winning means that he's my clear choice. The only thing that would change my mind is a late surge by Clinton that made her viable in the state. The odds of that are even lower than McMullin seated behind the Resolute desk, though.

OMG!

[Dishevel]

We have done it now!
We have proved that an international company is talking to a bank in ANOTHER COUNTRY!
Fucking OP should feel bad for being such a shitty shill. If you are going to shill and spread FUD make it at least pass a cursory exam. Fucking horrible person should feel bad. Shit title. Shit OP. Shit people for voting it to visibility without even glancing at the article. (Not that I would ever advocate a full read of an article.)

Re: Temper your enthusiasm

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll take the long serving highly corrupt bureaucrat, over the xenophobic empty suit who'd sell America for a profit any ole day of the week. At least with the former, I know exactly what I'm getting. The latter, WAY too much of a wild card. Especially when the win gets the keys to the missile silos....

Which of the lesser of 2 turds is your choice?

Re:BULL SH!T

[Jaegs]

A ping is an ICMP echo request.

Give me a ping, Vasili. One ping only, please.

Russian posters?

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder how many of the posts here originate on Russian IP addresses?

Re: Temper your enthusiasm

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude was the worst president we have ever had. The world is at the brink of World War III and it's all on his hands. You have the audacity to say something like that.

Re: BULL SH!T

[Anonymous Coward]

This is weak. Agree with anonymous poster. Some trick or treater trips over pumpkin in my yard, I blame mother Russia. Mother Russia the new Bogeyman.

Since slasdot is going to engage

[tacokill]

Since Slashdot is now pushing sketchy political stories, does that mean they are part of the disgusting relationship between the Democrats and the press? Are they "just another mouthpiece" now? Outlets such as ABC, NBC, CNN, MSNBC, CNBC, HuffPo.....and others (how many?) have shown - in writing - they are colluding with the Democratic party and its operatives. The Podesta emails show it's one big revolving door and far from being a suspicious press, it has become the mouthpiece of the Democratic party. This is hardly refutable anymore. Read the Podesta emails.

So my question is this: Is Slashdot one of those outlets now? It's not as crazy as it sounds when the chief campaign officer (Podesta) is regularly emailing and meeting with Sheryl Sandberg (Facebook), Mark Zuck (facebook), Eric Schmidt, and many other tech luminaries in order to shape hearts and minds. It appears to be standard operating procedure to plant/trend/or tilt trends, news, or anything that might help the Democrats (or a favored group) get the message out.

I ask again: Is Slashdot part of this now?

Re: BULL SH!T

[Anonymous Coward]

No, we're talking about the English language, try to understand that just because a word has a definition in a technical sense, it does not mean that it cannot be correctly used in it's original sense even within a technical discussion. Some of you nerds really need to get your heads out of your arses.

Re: BULL SH!T

[stabiesoft]

Well I read TFA and it is suspicious. When the info came "out", the server was shut down AND a new server suddenly appeared and only one entity knew the name to look it up by, Alfa bank. It sounds like somehow the TeaLeaves guy has access to the DNS server logs (root servers) and so he/she is not looking at ISP data but the lookups. Since only one entity knew the name to lookup, it smells pretty bad for Trump. The article is long and detailed so I don't expect almost anyone to actually read it. The best way I can explain it is if I register a new name blahblahblahblah.com, and only one IP ever does a query to get the IP address of blahblahblahblah.com, then somebody had to tell me the name. No way is that random.

something is not right

[t8z5h3]

as "unplublic" as trump there is no way the logs of any of his servers would be accessible to computer scientist and i would not truest a packet sniffer on the public internet even if it was the next hop off of tumps private LAN. so this story seems fishy and people not call it out is odd two.

Re: BULL SH!T

[jandersen]

Sorry, forgot to point out that I was being sarcastic

Re:What do you call a russian Manchurian candidate

[Anonymous Coward]

The modifying is a lie. They have DKIM signatures you can validate yourself if you want. And wikileaks does it for you itself at the top of each email. Other people have also pointed out that they validate (erratasec, for example).

Granted, though, if you care you SHOULD do that part yourself.

Re:BULL SH!T

[Anonymous Coward]

Your deranged outburst has really convinced me to vote Trump!!!!!!!

Re: Temper your enthusiasm

[Anonymous Coward]

Has there been any presidential candidate in decades who wasnt a scoundrel?

How about George W. Bush? Or George H.W. Bush? Or Ronald Reagan? Love them or hate them, but they had good moral character.

I despise President Obama, but at least he's not banging interns in the oval office.

As for candidates, how about Mitt Romney? Bob Dole? John McCain? Al Gore?

Hillary Clinton is absolute slime. I didn't think anybody could top Bill Clinton, but wow. Just wow.

Just like "There may be emails"

[Anonymous Coward]

For Clinton, the same stuff has seen her polling plummet. Yet just as shady or clear issues with Trump are a "Silly season" thing...

Pinheads with no real-world experience?

[KenHansen]

It had a history of sending mass emails on behalf of Trump-branded properties and products. Researchers were ultimately convinced that the server indeed belonged to Trump. But now this capacious server handled a strangely small load of traffic, such a small load that it would be hard for a company to justify the expense and trouble it would take to maintain it. That wasn't the only oddity. When the researchers pinged the server, they received error messages.

Wow.

These 'computer scientists' obviously have no real-world IT experience:

- A once busy server now nearly idle... this phenomenon is called 'orphan servers' and is quite common, especially in non IT-centric organizations, and was a major marketing pitch for sever virtualization a few years ago.

- the level of activity so low it barely justifies the expense/effort to maintain it - makes the key assumption that it IS being maintained, as opposed to simply being left on-line.

- their inability to successfully 'ping' a server is either a sign that the server is tightly 'locked up' and only allows 'known' traffic, OR it is evidence of a poorly-maintained orphan server (see above).

Except that something has come of it

[SuperKendall]

The FBI did not re-open the investigation for no reason. There is seriously damaging material that has been uncovered, something the FBI can no longer ignore.

Hillary knows her only chance is to be elected and pardon herself.

Re:Except that something has come of it

[Kaenneth]

As if Obama can't?

Re: Temper your enthusiasm

[spacepimp]

Jimmy Carter had a presidency that hasn'tbeen marred by corruption and incompetence. Much of what made Carter look bad was handled by the GOP in trying to make him look weak: Iran /Contra scandal.But to get to the point of power of the POTUS it involves a ton of manipulation and control of most of thepeoples thoughts in the room.

Alfa bank gone

[Anonymous Coward]

Alfa bank was seized by russian authorities this year because of money laundering etc...

Debunking Trump's "secret server"

[Anonymous Coward]

http://blog.erratasec.com/2016/11/debunking-trumps-secret-server.html

Re:What do you call a russian Manchurian candidate

[Kaenneth]

Or maybe have a relationship with Mexico as good as we used to have with Canada, and eliminate the threat of global terrorism; instead of trump's plan to stuff our ears with cotton, shove our head in the sand, pay the Mexicans to build a wall, and let Russian nibble it's way towards Europe/Arctic oil reserves?

Re:What do you call a russian Manchurian candidate

[Kaenneth]

I think it would be funny if Trump became president; but congress/senate have dem majorities, blocking every little thing he tries.

So he'd be forever known for accomplishing nothing.

Re: BULL SH!T

[khallow]

Doesn't matter how dumb South Carolina voters are.

Lying to Congress under oath is perjury. And the point of the law is so that Congress creates law and conducts its business using the best available knowledge, not lies. It is lethal to a democracy, for example, to have the executive branch lie without consequence and in that way steer the passage of law based on those lies.

Trump is not desperate for money

[micahraleigh]

I don't see the motive thing here.

Re: Temper your enthusiasm

[Anonymous Coward]

I consider Obama to be a scoundrel. We've had continued overreach of the Executive branch from a 4th amendment perspective (it's gotten even worse than it was under Bush). Obama damn well knows better since he was a former professor of Constitutional law.

Re: BULL SH!T

[adolf]

I block reply notifications from ACs, and do not reply to an AC...usually.

I do this because it is important to me that my ideas are expressed conversationally, and my hope that they will be read by the person whose words I am responding to.

Re: Temper your enthusiasm

[phantomfive]

The DNC were morons for letting Clinton anywhere near the nomination. It's like they and she thinks she's entitled.

She has more power than anyone else in the DNC.

Re:BULL SH!T

[Anonymous Coward]

If the GOP, from the very top down, is so wildly fleeing Trump now, I don't see Fox News (aka GOP Central PR Bureau) hiring him.

Re:BULL SH!T

[Ksevio]

There's a new Harry Potter movie? Is it going to be shown on TrumpTV?

You can get 1 BTC if you can forge a message

[Xenographic]

It's amazing that you think that someone, since at least 2009, has been sending fake messages with fake senders from Gmail, Yahoo and clintonemail.com without anyone wondering about the oddly incriminating messages showing up in their inboxes.

If you think you can fake these, you can get 1 bitcoin from erratasec.

Btw, if you can forge an email that validates correctly as I've shown, I'll give you 1-bitcoin. It's the easiest way of solving arguments whether this really validates the email -- if somebody tells you this blogpost is invalid, then tell them they can earn about $600 (current value of BTC) proving it. Otherwise, no.

Please show me the blockchain transaction when you win this, ok?

Re: BULL SH!T

[Anonymous Coward]

I routinely hide my ID when I post because I am WAY UP HIGH IN THE MONEY TREE and if my employers (I am self-employed) knew what I thought, I'd never be hired again.

I am center left. You want to meet some conservative fascists? Work in finance or insurance for a while...they don't understand anyone unlike themselves, don't like having those "others" around, and find ways to get rid of them. And they talk to each other (just like Google and Apple "talked" about hiring).

Funny thing happened way back when I was just starting out: at a BIG insurance company, I kept scoring 99-100% all their exams but asking polite and options-providing questions about their fascist and inhumane business practices. My questions just did not compute for them, and the cognitive dissonance they experienced when they looked at my grades (to make sure I wasn't a fool who just didn't get it) and then tried to answer my questions was palpable and ALMOST funny. They found a way to get rid of me...

I am now a long-time IT consultant in software (development, sw docs, project mgmt), insurance (company long since adsorbed onto somebody's charm bracelet), banking and investment (Bank of Boston, State Street Bank/State Street Global Investors, Banco Santander), IT manufacturing (including mom and pop shops like Digital Equipment Corp, IBM, Google, Yahoo, Data General let alone a million small SW shops).

OK? Get it now? If they could follow me online, I'd be flipping burgers.

Really, you ignore all A/C posts to your own detriment...

Re: Temper your enthusiasm

[Raenex]

I know I'm going to get modded down for this

Of course you won't, because you said you would and instead got modded up. Cheap trick.

but yes: Barack Hussein Obama

Magnitudes cleaner than the Clintons or Trump, but he still got his nose dirty. Do you remember in his first presidential campaign his ties to Tony Rezko became an issue?

And he's still a politician and acts like one. Still a scoundrel, just not as rotten as some others have been.

Re: BULL SH!T

[Anonymous Coward]

Then show us with direct citations from the congressional record, HRC's lies. Can't can you? If Gowdy or the rest of that clown parade* could find anything, do you think they wouldn't be pushing it?

The RW noise machine, at the behest of it's GOP owners, has been vilifying HRC since, in her first at bat in the big leagues, she and Bill almost got a good health care package past all the entrenched power structures (RW politicians, insurance and medical interests, etc.). The response from the right? A full-court smear machine that never met a lie it wouldn't publish and hasn't stopped yet.

Is HRC pure? No. Is she the devil they want us to believe? No.

Do both sides play the game? You betcha.

Does the GOP have a proven record of such lies? Certainly since Ailes/Atwater etc. brought us the Nixon "southern strategy" and "stripping the bark" off political opponents. Gingrich brought the new age of incivility (go read about the GOPAC letter). So i believe they are lying long before I believe their opponents are.

*
"Who else was at your home, were you alone [of the night of Sept. 11, 2012, the day of the Benghazi attacks.]?" Roby asked.

"I was alone, yes," Clinton replied.

"The whole night?" Roby asked.

"Well, yes, the whole night," Clinton said, bursting with laughter.

"Well, I don't know why that's funny," Roby said.

Well, we do, you tool. Were you going to impeach her is she was sleeping with somebody? Investigate who she was in bed with? Be surprised if she said "my husband"? It's the usual salacious GOP interest in everybody ELSE'S sex life and willingness to drag out any investigation whether it finds anything or not (Whitewater investigation, remember, found NOTHING about Whitewater).

Re: BULL SH!T

[Anonymous Coward]

And people like you are the reason requirements are written so ambiguously.

Re: BULL SH!T

[HiThere]

That's not proof that he had an account there, or even much in the way of evidence. It is peculiar, and the pattern is quite strange, but that's a different matter. I don't feel there's sufficient evidence to draw any real conclusions...certainly not in the summary. Just enough for speculations.

Re:Ar you people insane? Why is this in any way sa

[quax]

This is not about some malware, but the suspicion that the Trump campaign coordinates with Russia. This is also not the first time this has come up. His old campaign manager Manafort worked for the Russian's puppet president in the Ukraine. Then there is the strange coincidence that the only thing the Trump campaign was interested in changing in the GOP platform was the take on Crimea and the Russian military involvement. And of course there is the odd, out of character deference that Trump shows to Putin.

Re: BULL SH!T

[I'm New Around Here]

Then show us with direct citations from the congressional record, HRC's lies. Can't can you? .

Do you look beyond MSNBC and Huffington Post for your daily news intake?

Isn't it funny...

[Mike Van Pelt]

When I was young, it was the Birchers going on and on (and on and on and on) about how candidate (x) was a Godless Rooski Agent (tm). Now, it's the Left that's doing this. What a world, what a world.

(Me, there's no way I'd ever vote for either of the [deleted]s. I think I'm going to write in Cthulhu as the lesser evil. Calling IT "the lesser evil" seriously risks annoying IT enough to wake IT up, but at least I won't have to contemplate the prospect of either of those [deleted]s in the White House.)

Re:BULL SH!T

[Anonymous Coward]

while the RNC does the same...

Speculation on your part.
Obviously the RNC didn't collude with one of the primary candidates as the DNC did with Clinton. -just squash all the votes of the Sanders supports, no big deal. It's just their voting rights, correct?
DNC colluding with the press - previewing and editing articles, passing debate and townhall questions to Hillary. No evidence RNC is doing that.
I could go on and on...

Washington Post has a nice debunkery piece

[IHTFISP]

The Washington Post has a nice piece disassembling this conspiracy theory and pretty effectively debunking it:

https://www.washingtonpost.com...

Re: BULL SH!T

[Anonymous Coward]

And I'll bet despite all the much more serious and direct evidence of criminal activity you're going to vote for Hillary.

Podesta gmail password was: p@ssw0rd

[Anonymous Coward]

It does not need a Russian hacker to guess it.
See by yourself:
http://www.mostdamagingwikileaks.com/

Re: Temper your enthusiasm

[Bartles]

Because Correct The Record pays people to be wrong.

Re: BULL SH!T

[Anonymous Coward]

Honesty? Like deleting emails that are under subpoena? That kind of honesty? Like blaming a riot/death on a video when you know its not? That kind of honesty? You can keep it .

Re: BULL SH!T

[khallow]

Then show us with direct citations from the congressional record, HRC's lies. Can't can you? If Gowdy or the rest of that clown parade* could find anything, do you think they wouldn't be pushing it?

Boy, that went south fast. Now, we've gone from discussion Congressional perjury to "You can't prove my client lied".

Do both sides play the game? You betcha.

Does the GOP have a proven record of such lies? Certainly since Ailes/Atwater etc. brought us the Nixon "southern strategy" and "stripping the bark" off political opponents. Gingrich brought the new age of incivility (go read about the GOPAC letter). So i believe they are lying long before I believe their opponents are.

And now the argument that if the Republicans do it, then it's ok to do.

Is HRC pure? No. Is she the devil they want us to believe? No.

And of course, the final rationale for why it's ok that Clinton committed multiple national security felonies. She's imperfect. It is rare to see all three of these morally dysfunctional arguments in one place. But I guess it's just not that hard to do, if morality matters far less to you than your tribe.

I guess your post is one of those examples where the post says more about the poster than about the subject they're posting about.

Re: Temper your enthusiasm

[Bartles]

I'd agree with you about the corruption point, but definitely not the competence point.

Re:BULL SH!T

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh come on, you can't claim the DNC are doing this any more than the RNC.

This election is unusual in that both sides know, the more people discuss their candidates, the more votes they lose. So they've both spent the past month trying to keep people talking about the other candidate. Trump has been quite successfully lying low and saying nothing whatever since shortly before the third debate, which - not at all by coincidence - is how long he's been making a comeback in the polls.

Re: Temper your enthusiasm

[Plus1Entropy]

Wow, that's the best you can find on him huh? Pretty pathetic. Guilt by association isn't a thing.

Re:What do you call a russian Manchurian candidate

[Anonymous Coward]

"The rest of his platform" includes turning the US army into a mercenary corps, and looking the other way while Putin rebuilds the Soviet empire, thus incidentally undoing Ronald Reagan's greatest achievement.

I get how disenchanted, under-educated Americans can support this fucker. What I don't understand is how anyone with pretensions to be a Republican can.

Re: Temper your enthusiasm

[Raenex]

It was more than just association, it was also favors and donations. You very rarely find refrigerators full of money or an explicit quid-pro-quo. That's why the Clintons aren't in jail.

Re:BULL SH!T

[Anonymous Coward]

Frankly this is utter BS without more evidence than a random server responding to some pings and not others.

I haven't RTFA, but I'm surprised I've made it this deep in the comments and see this, but no references to a port-knocking protected ssh daemon. Which is either definitionally criminal, or moderately competent configuration depending on your political bent.

Re:What do you call a russian Manchurian candidate

[quantaman]

At best Trump will be "George W. Bush II", I don't see him completing much of anything which may be a good thing for a change.

Imagine the next 9/11 happens on Trump's watch, or the next Perl Harbour, or Cuban Missile Crisis, or even the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Do you really see Trump reacting calmly to that, or being able to deescalate a tense situation?

Rosie O'Donnell did a critical piece on him almost 10 years ago and he still goes after her. A Muslim couple spoke at the DNC and he spent days attacking them (with obviously bad results for his campaign), a former Miss American was brought up in the first debate and he again spend days attacking her (with more obvious bad campaign results).

I have literally seen small children with better self control, and the Presidency is far too powerful a position to put in the hands of an ill-tempered child.

Re:What do you call a russian Manchurian candidate

[Xest]

You're highlighting limitations on your own level of thinking there rather than demonstrating that she's somehow in the wrong.

There's nothing wrong with having an idealist mindset as a long term hope, but a realist mindset as a pragmatic set in stone goal.

For example, I've seen idealists say we should cut off all links to Saudi Arabia because of their treatment of women, with the view that doing so will punish them for not treating women well, an idealist would view having links with such a country when claiming to support womens rights as outright hypocritical, but a pragmatist would recognise that cutting off links may cause the regime to collapse and make things even worse for women, whilst noting that the Saudi regime is already opening up opportunities for women, such that the advisory council to the ruling body is now 50% female which is better than most Western parliaments.

It's possible therefore to say you support women's rights, but also support the existing Saudi regime without being hypocritical because the safety of pragmatism is often better than the massive risks of idealism.

So when someone like Hillary says her dream is a common market with open trade and open borders, that doesn't in any way mean she believes she can achieve that dream during her presidency, nor that hence she will take any actions towards that dream during her presidency. It's perfectly possible to dream of owning a Ferrari but not be a hypocrite by buying a Ford Focus because you realise your budget wont stretch that far.

I suspect that if you believe dreams and actions must always be the same thing, then you're an idealist, and are incapable of weighing up your ideals against pragmatism of reality. That's not a problem in itself, idealists are the people that come up with ideas of potential destinations, pragmatists are the ones that have to figure out whether we can actually get there - some people are capable of being both, but just because you can't separate the two doesn't mean it's valid to assume that everyone can't separate the two.

I speak from experience, I've had many ideas in my working life of where I'd like to see the companies I've worked for get to, but in reality market conditions, company politics and so forth means I've had to settle for something quite different than where I'd like to see the company be. She's not lying, she's just capable of separating her personal beliefs and hopes from her pragmatic actions of what the country wants, personally I think that's a good quality to have - far better than a straight idealist who breaks the country because they can't be pragmatic, FWIW that's precisely the problem we have in the UK at the moment with our only viable opposition, Jeremy Corbyn - the ideas he has are lovely (free shit for everyone), but there isn't a cats chance in hell of being able to pull them off without bankrupting the country so I'd rather take someone that has that as their ideal, but also has the pragmatism to understand that it's not something you can just do without hitting the brick wall of reality face first at 100mph.

Re:What do you call a russian Manchurian candidate

[stdarg]

You're highlighting limitations on your own level of thinking

No need to be a dick. I don't know why you started with this insult when the rest of your post is well reasoned and thoughtful. Very incongruous.

It's possible therefore to say you support women's rights, but also support the existing Saudi regime without being hypocritical

Of course it's possible, if you couch your support of Saudi Arabia as you did. If you don't criticize Saudi Arabia at all, then no, it is hypocritical.

It's perfectly possible to dream of owning a Ferrari but not be a hypocrite by buying a Ford Focus because you realise your budget wont stretch that far.

We don't have the full text of the speech so it's hard to say, but to take your car example, you cannot make a speech about your dream of owning a Ferrari while having your website extol the virtues of frugality. Like the Saudi Arabia issue, it's about caveats. It's not hypocritical to say "Buy what you can afford, right now that's a Ford Focus but one day I hope to be able to buy a Ferrari with my pocket change." It is hypocritical to say, as an example, "Frugality is important. Buy what you need. That's why I have a Ford Focus." and then to someone else say "Boy I really want a Ferrari, but the bank didn't approve me for such a huge loan right now." It shows a completely different persona than what is implied by the first statement, and it is a lie. It means that did not buy a Ford Focus because you value frugality, it's because you weren't approved for a loan. That is a lie.

I suspect that if you believe dreams and actions must always be the same thing, then you're an idealist, and are incapable of weighing up your ideals against pragmatism of reality.

I'm not an idealist on every issue, but I suppose I am when it comes to transparency and honesty. I have no problem at all with someone who supports Saudi Arabia for practical reasons, as long as they are honest about it. What I would not like, however, is someone who says one thing and does something that completely violates that. That's not an issue of practicality or realism, that's just deception. There are honest people who are realists and honest people who are idealists, it's not mutually exclusive.

Re:BULL SH!T

[pabloesgalhardo]

A bank server pinging is strange, the bank server could be compromised and be acting as a bot net node. Compromised servers ping and scan ports all the time.

what a load of bull

[dvv]

/.? seriously?

Re: BULL SH!T

[Anonymous Coward]

Nothing like trying to distract from thousands of email showing how corrupt you are.

Re:What do you call a russian Manchurian candidate

[Maxo-Texas]

http://arstechnica.com/securit...

No, Trump uses a hosting service.

[tbg58]

"This is nonsense. The evidence available on the Internet is that Trump neither (directly) controls the domain "trump-email.com", nor has access to the server. Instead, the domain was setup and controlled by Cendyn, a company that does marketing/promotions for hotels, including many of Trump's hotels. Cendyn outsources the email portions of its campaigns to a company called Listrak, which actually owns/operates the physical server in a data center in Philidelphia."

http://blog.erratasec.com/2016...

Re: BULL SH!T

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, dogs always piss on the same plugs, even if they ran out of piss many tries ago. But criticise or scold the dog about it and he will deny he ever did or would. That's what you do if you're a dog.

November 15th

[Ol Olsoc]

Putin will arrive triumphantly in Washington DC, parading in like Hitler reviewing the Eiffel Tower, and the Americans who elected Trump will rejoice in an Anschluss Österreichs event that will provide the final victory of the cold war go to those who we thought had lost in 1989.

hypocritical shill

[Anonymous Coward]

And I KNOW you're one of the first ones to shit on HRC because of emails and then accuse people who don't give a damn of shilling and yet here you are doing the same thing for your "candidate". Repubs are hypocrites. Always have been, always will be.

Since when are supposed to be isolated online?

[syntotic]

I had an IP coming out everywhere and pointing at a lost space in the sea in front of Africa and no one cared... I do not think a missile was sent right there. So what is so strange about a known millionaire having some forgotten computer connected to a bank in a rich (?) country? I regret Russians still speak Russian, they do seem to care about videogames we assume obsolete here so touching those servers is obbligato and incomprehensible. I know Africans call some people types Russian irregardless, but we are supposed to confuse them with Americans as a matter of fact. If instead of Russia it had an Indian server... that would be really worrisome, they seem to dislike (the existence of) Money as much as Chinese do.

Re:What do you call a russian Manchurian candidate

[Anonymous Coward]

You can't tell people publicly that one of your positions is to "uphold the rule of law, protect our borders and national security" (that's on her website) while telling people in speeches "My dream is a hemispheric common market with open trade and open borders." That's not nuance.

Setting aside your obvious trolling form, the critical fault in your logic is that one can dream of a future where things, including laws, have changed. Some of us aren't afraid of foreign tourists.

Re:What do you call a russian Manchurian candidate

[Xest]

You're effectively arguing though that you'd prefer someone who sticks to their ideals, even if it goes against the will of the populace that elected them.

Personally I think Hillary's stance is far, far better - "I have this personal view, but the electorate wants this so I'll pursue that instead". She may well want open borders, but it's clear based on her public policy that she understands that that's not what the electorate wants - you can only call her deceptive if she gets into power and pursues her private viewpoint, rather than her public viewpoint. The alternative is someone who doesn't differentiate between the two, they state their viewpoint and stick to it regardless of whether it's right or wrong, regardless of whether people agree with it or not. This problem is present with Trump, consider his comments on the use of nuclear weapons against ISIS, I doubt many people who support him seriously want him to use them, but if he does, despite it being grossly against the will of the populace, is that somehow better than if he privately wants to use them, but knows the public don't support it so opts not to?

Having a personal opinion, but recognising that public opinion overrides it is exactly the sort of quality you should want in a politican in a democracy, not decry and claim is hypocritical, or corrupt, or somehow bad. It's those whose views are unwavering regardless of what the population they profess to represent thinks that you should worry about.

Re:What do you call a russian Manchurian candidate

[stdarg]

but it's clear based on her public policy that she understands that that's not what the electorate wants - you can only call her deceptive if she gets into power and pursues her private viewpoint, rather than her public viewpoint.

If we were both aliens and this was the first election on Earth that we've seen, that would be reasonable... but you know that this is routine work for politicians. Now you're the one being an idealist.

If Clinton had a completely private, in-her-head position that "I want open borders but I'll do what the electorate wants" that would be fine, and we wouldn't even know about it. But when she's giving speeches and accepting large speaking fees for saying the exact opposite, I think it's very naive to give her the benefit of the doubt. The fact that we're talking about it shows that she doesn't have the discipline to keep her private stance private... what makes you think she will magically have the will power to keep her private stance from influencing policy if elected?

Having a personal opinion, but recognising that public opinion overrides it is exactly the sort of quality you should want in a politican in a democracy, not decry and claim is hypocritical, or corrupt, or somehow bad.

The danger with a person who governs by following polls is that polls are so easily manipulated, not to mention a number of decisions made in the upper echelons of government depend on information not available to the public, or even if the information is available the public may be ill equipped to process it and make a competent decision. You do have to, at some level, trust the instincts and personal views of the people you elect. And on a more practical level, that is just the way the process is set up now. You may not like it, but we don't evaluate candidates on how flexible they are to public opinion, rather they present their policy and we pick from the available options. Public opinion obviously goes into that, but no candidate is successful who says "all of my positions are subject to change, I don't have any firmly held beliefs, I'm just telling you what you want to hear, trust me." Calling someone a "flip flopper" is a real thing in political debates, for instance.. and it's not a compliment.

Re:What do you call a russian Manchurian candidate

[Xest]

"If we were both aliens and this was the first election on Earth that we've seen, that would be reasonable... but you know that this is routine work for politicians. Now you're the one being an idealist."

On the contrary, I'm being a realist. There's a broad gulf between the blame mongering people like to engage in and what politicians are really, actually like.

"If Clinton had a completely private, in-her-head position that "I want open borders but I'll do what the electorate wants" that would be fine, and we wouldn't even know about it. But when she's giving speeches and accepting large speaking fees for saying the exact opposite, I think it's very naive to give her the benefit of the doubt. The fact that we're talking about it shows that she doesn't have the discipline to keep her private stance private... what makes you think she will magically have the will power to keep her private stance from influencing policy if elected?"

There's a vast different between having a private stance and acting on it, it doesn't matter if she doesn't keep it private, it's really irrelevant, what matters is if she acts on it, and you have zero evidence that she would, you're merely speculating that she would for partisan reasons. That's not really any different to saying if elected Trump would anally fuck every 5 year old in the country till they bleed to death because he agreed that his own daughter is a piece of ass and so must be a sexual predator. Everyone can make shit up, but it's not a good basis on which to make any kind of worthwhile decision. Decisions should be based on facts, and there's literally zero evidence that Clinton's private position matters in the fucking slightest beyond what you're choosing to project merely because you've already made your mind up and are trying to self-justify.

"The danger with a person who governs by following polls is that polls are so easily manipulated, not to mention a number of decisions made in the upper echelons of government depend on information not available to the public, or even if the information is available the public may be ill equipped to process it and make a competent decision. You do have to, at some level, trust the instincts and personal views of the people you elect."

It's really got nothing to do with polls, most elements of public opinion sway far enough in one direction or another for things to be obvious, it's not rocket science to recognise that if push came to shove, most people wouldn't want a nuclear war for example. Cases where there is even public division is why you have representatives to try and thrash out a votable compromise, and where it's not left to the president alone, that's kind of the point of having representatives. If you think a president should act unilaterally on divisive issues then what you're asking for is a dictator, I don't see any evidence Hillary wants to be that, nor does the idea of completely open borders exist as an issue that a president could unilaterally act or achieve anything upon anyway. Even her own party wouldn't give sufficient backing to it, so it's folly to pretend it even matters, and she's smart enough to know that there's no point having a fight she wouldn't have a cats chance in hell of winning because such fights only weaken you and leave you a lame duck.

"Public opinion obviously goes into that, but no candidate is successful who says "all of my positions are subject to change, I don't have any firmly held beliefs, I'm just telling you what you want to hear, trust me." Calling someone a "flip flopper" is a real thing in political debates, for instance.. and it's not a compliment."

It's also not that simple either, people get elected on issues where they do have sufficient support for their views, Hillary's private view isn't one of those things on the books, precisely because she would never get elected on it, and hence will know that there's no point pursuing it, regardless of how much she may wish it to one day be possible.

Re:BULL SH!T

[Coren22]

Are you perhaps trying to refer to the military acronym FUBAR?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Re: BULL SH!T

[Coren22]

I wish I could mod you up as it looks like your were mod bombed by people who can't handle the truth.

Re:BULL SH!T

[Aighearach]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

"Not to be confused with FUBAR."

From your link:
"Not to be confused with Foobar."

It is like asking what "Hello World" is.

Re:Putin and Trump bromance

[Aighearach]

You're clearly disgruntled, but you don't really make a good argument against policy makers responding in realtime to events, which is basically what you rant about using a bunch of unflattering terms.

You do make a good case that you don't understand the policy, but not in a way that suggests possible remedy through explanation.

You also make a good case that you don't understand the different regional groups and ideological forces, other than a vague idea that ethnicity should be tied to ideology and that everybody in the same ethnicity should be on the same side relative to us. The only detail that I want to correct is to note that Turkey is in Iraq helping the Iraqi Kurds fight the daesh infestation in Mosul, and that is entirely consistent with longstanding US and Turkish policy.

Re:BULL SH!T

[fahrbot-bot]

Trump media and doubles down on the loose talk and continual lies.

What bothers me even more is that he genuinely doesn't seem to care about the truth - any truth. Or, perhaps he doesn't understand that "truth" is something that actually exists. Does than make him sociopath or psychopath (or both)? [genuinely asking] (Oh, and he seriously doesn't understand how video tape works.)

Following up for the thin-skinned moderators who modded this "troll". From Beyond Lying: Donald Trump’s Authoritarian Reality:

Trump was denounced repeatedly for “lying” and at times the apparently more egregious “bald faced lying.” But that is not a sufficient description. Neither was the charge by the philosopher Harry Frankfurt that Trump was in fact a master of “bullshit,” which is distinct from lying in that the speaker is not just communicating information he knows to be false, but is unconstrained by any consideration of what may or may not be true.

Which was also noted as not actually going far enough.