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Russian Cyberspies Blamed For US Election Hacks Are Now Targeting Macs (computerworld.com)
You may recall "APT28", the Russian hacking group which was tied to last year's interference in the presidential election. It has long been known for its advanced range of tools for penetrating Windows, iOS, Android, and Linux devices. Now, researchers have uncovered an equally sophisticated malware package the group used to compromise Macs. From a report on ComputerWorld: The group -- known in the security industry under different names including Fancy Bear, Pawn Storm, and APT28 -- has been operating for almost a decade. It is believed to be the sole user and likely developer of a Trojan program called Sofacy or X-Agent. X-Agent variants for Windows, Linux, Android, and iOS have been found in the wild in the past, but researchers from Bitdefender have now come across what appears to be the first macOS version of the Trojan. It's not entirely clear how the malware is being distributed because the Bitdefender researchers obtained only the malware sample, not the full attack chain. However, it's possible a macOS malware downloader dubbed Komplex, found in September, might be involved. Komplex infected Macs by exploiting a known vulnerability in the MacKeeper antivirus software, according to researchers from Palo Alto Networks who investigated the malware at the time. The vulnerability allowed attackers to execute remote commands on a Mac when users visited specially crafted web pages.Further reading on ArsTechnica.
WTF. Is someone from a Russian IP address emailing mac owners saying they are from Apple and asking for their passwords?
"...Komplex infected Macs by exploiting a known vulnerability in the MacKeeper antivirus software...
Oh, the irony of an antivirus program running on a BSD-based OS being the vulnerability.
Yes, Mr. Anti-Vendor, please sell me another wonderful solution you think I need...
They sent John Podesta a bogus email, and he clicked the link. Because of that, we now know the entire DNC plotted against Bernie. The only actual "election hacking" that took place is how the democratic party apparatus chose and coronated the only possible person who could lose to Donald Trump (of all people).
But blame Russia.
The "election" was never hacked. A political party was, and its dirty laundry was aired.
They would have gotten away with it too if it wasn't for the Obama/Bush DHS saving the day.
Get over it, you fucking crybabies! And thank god for that.. The fucking democrats are so weak and corrupt, I'm hoping they lose what little territory they have left. But it's unfortunate you idiots will only vote for republicans to replace them. You all suck!
The 80's called.
They want they foreign policy back.
...but because of the Russian hackers I ended up voting Trump. I've no doubt that many other people were influenced in the same way, and I'm certain Clinton would have won if it weren't for the Russian hackers.
I'm also convinced the Russian hackers caused BREXIT and are secretly supporting the Dutch Party of Freedom, the 5 Star movement and other European populist parties.
Okay, just to be clear, I'm writing this ironically. What's truly hilarious is that the mainstream media writes this stuff seriously. They've really gone off the deep end and into the territory of lunatic conspiracy theorists. I look forward to CNN reporting that Russians are using mind rays to control how people vote.
So now MacKeeper is an antivirus software? Rather it is the company with the most annoying popups anywhere for Mac users. Useless software that is aggressively marketed.
Yes, let's be clear, because nobody claimed that actual voting machines were hacked. This was merely a strawman/canard thrown out to confuse the issue.
First, why we care that the DNC was being hacked is because that's the exact same thing Watergate was about, except that Watergate was a physical break-in to wiretap the DNC, rather than hacking their emails, but for the same exact purpose - to look for anything that could be released that would make the political opposition look bad. The fact that it was Russian hackers doing it is just another layer on the cake.
Second, I voted for Sanders, but there is ZERO proof the DNC "rigged" anything. The rules for the contest were laid out well in advance, and were pretty much in keeping with the way the rules have always been, and that never changed. That individual DNC staffers favored the long-time party stalwart over a long-time independent who came in just to run? Everyone knew that. That Debbie Wasserman-Schultz tried to set a debate schedule that favored Clinton? We knew that in 2015, and we made a stink about it then, and forced more debates. Not shocking.
In fact, the only accusation I've heard that could even come close is that the DNC vice-chair gave Clinton advance knowledge of a debate question, except that she 1) did so in her CNN contributor capacity (and got fired from it over), 2) it was a blatantly obvious question that anyone should have seen coming (Debate in Flint MI, gee, think they're gonna ask about the water crisis? Duh), and 3) CLINTON FLUBBED THE QUESTION ANYWAY.
Actually, the Russians thought Clinton would win the election, just like everybody else did. They wanted to weaken her so that we'd have a weaker President, they didn't really plan on Trump winning, it was all about weakening Hillary.
the democrat apparatus also stuffed the ballot box for Trump during the primaries
Got a source for that? I know that Trump entered the race as a favor to Hillary to sow discord in the Republican ranks, but I haven't seen any evidence that the apparat did anything more for him than give him round-the-clock news coverage that starved out his rivals.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
See subject: A "westinghouse M-25 phased plasma rifle" by "Sgt. TechCom DN38416" via APK Hosts File Engine 9.0++ SR-7 32/64-bit https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&source=hp&biw=&bih=&q=%22APK+Hosts+File+Engine%22+and+%22start64%22&btnG=Google+Search&gbv=1/
"Generated nightly from the shit splatter when I sodomize my cat"
I'm a
"small shell script controlled: Fully retarded, VERY dumb"!
Cuz
"I'm too fukn stupid to know real security"
("I can't be bargained w/, I can't be reasoned with. I feel pity, remorse or fear (& I absolutely WILL NOT STOP ever until U R DEAD))"
&
"Come w/ me IF u wanna use outdated technology that offers as much protection as a condom with the tip cut off"
* My program gives u more security/speed/reliability/anonymity 4 less in fast kernelmode natively w/ less complexity/room 4 exploit - Especially vs. threats like this that slow & infect u! It is only fastar because it offers no real security.
APK
P.S.=> "the doctors let me on teh internetz today so I am making friends... apk
The attack ads practically write themselves. All they had to do was point out that Chavez, in Venezuela, was an actual Socialist, and look how well Venezuela is doing, and Bernie will do for America what Chavez did for Venezuela. Repeat at high volume for 3 months. Heck, look at how well the attacks claiming Obama and Bill Clinton were Socialists worked, and they were nowhere near socialism.
Bernie, unlike Hillary, would've lost the popular vote too.
Best Slashdot Co
there is ZERO proof the DNC "rigged" anything.
Oh, get serious. The whole "superdelegate" apparatus exists only to thwart the will of the voters.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
There is lots of blame to go around. Or are you seriously trying to claim that Russia had nothing to do with this election?
Seems like everything's gone wrong since Russia came along.
Trump *did not* enter the race as a favour to Hillary.
And the parent is correct about the DNC promoting the shittiest RNC candidates (like Trump) in order to set the GOP up to fail. Google "pied piper candidate".
Demonizing Russia is sooooo 20th century. But I guess political party insiders conspiring with big legacy media outlets to cheat a popular candidate and his supporters in favor of a corrupt old hag who was convinced that it was "her turn(!)", well let's hope the rubes buy that Boris and Natasha "interfered" with the DNC's interference. Because Russia
How short memories are!
If people read the actual report released you would have seen it was a 'Russian Hacking for Dummies' type deal.
It wasn't an incident report. It didn't accuse Russia of hacking.
It was 'If Russia hacked this might have been how they did it'.
Wait, that's a legit company? I assumed it was a virus. It always pops up anytime I visit any sketchy site with the most obnoxious ads.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
On Linux, something I find very annoying with apt-get is that everything goes into a single /usr hierarchy, rather than having multiple ones and overlaying. Right now, it is a hack at best to do stuff like this. But serious thought, on all OSs, needs to be given to the following:
The point is to make the core of the OS read-only at runtime, preferably read-only at a hardware level (that is, install the OS on a small SSD which even the kernel cannot write to during normal running, and which delegates what configuration settings can be overridden from the writable portion of the files).
Essentially the 'principle of least privilege' is something that OS designers need to give far more serious thought to, and also what privileges are actually needed during normal runtime. Updating the core OS should be done from a 'secondary OS' whose only purpose is updating the core OS, and is restricted in its nature so as to only be able to do this. (The ideal place for this is in PC firmware, where one should use the firmware to install the base OS, and once booted, the base OS is effectively immutable.)
(Yes, this is basically a coarse capability-based security system, partially enforced in hardware, in a way which leaves users in control.)
John_Chalisque
Orangedog_on_crack
Interesting username. Are you that furry orange criter that sits on Donald Trumps head and makes him say silly things?
Clinton got debate questions in 2 debates, from CNN.
Clinton did fund raisers with down-ticket people. There is a cap (a couple thousand) that someone can donate to a candidate. The DNC set her up with numerous other Congress runners so the cap was number of people * cap, then Clinton took 98% of what was donated in that event. A rule the DNC recently wrote into the law obviously intending to do this. The DNC refused to help Sanders in the same way.
The DNC would give stories to "favorable journalists" to smear Sanders a week before primaries in states.
They ALSO had the superdelegates if needed.
You should be SHOCKED that the press worked so closely with Clinton to torpedo Sanders (unreported donations and illegal for media to do so). You should ALSO be shocked the DNC rewrote campaign finance laws to abuse them the way they did, I doubt you could find anyone who says that is fair.
except that she 1) did so in her CNN contributor capacity (and got fired from it over), 2) it was a blatantly obvious question that anyone should have seen coming (Debate in Flint MI, gee, think they're gonna ask about the water crisis? Duh), and 3) CLINTON FLUBBED THE QUESTION ANYWAY
So it wasn't an attempt to steer the primary because 1) she had the foresight not to send it from her DNC email account, 2) it wasn't a very good idea, and 3) it didn't work very well? Come on.
And even putting all that aside, it was a pattern, not an isolated incident.
I don't know if it actually happened, but there was encouragement by some democratic activists to participate in open GOP primaries to ensure DT was the candidate due to his weakness as a candidate (IIRC, RMV, YMMV). I, personally don't have a problem with that, because open primaries are stupid to begin with.
While this is technically true, this is not what happened last year. Last year the SuperDelegates largely followed the will of the (more idiotic of the) people.
All of this is moot anyway; she lost. Now we have to deal with the fallout. Looking at what coulda shoulda woulda doesn't do anyone a goddamned bit of good.
I guess the Russians flooding the internet with fake news in order to delegitimize every single news organization is not hacking? I'm not convinced there was voting machine hacking, but the Russians definitely engaged in social hacking in a concerted effort to boost Trump.
Or to represent the interests of the party. They had some pretty rough conventions in 1968 and 1972... superdelegates are part of the response to that.
It's amusing that the structure of the Democratic Party is anti-democratic, but then again, the Republican party isn't terribly republican most of the time.
I'm an independent. In general I hate both leading parties.
That said, I particular didn't like Ted Cruz, who looked likely to win the nomination at one point. I considered registering as a republican and voting in my state's primary FOR Trump thinking America wouldn't be so stupid to elect Trump if he beat Cruz to the nomination. My feeling that Hillary, as horrible as she would be, couldn't possibly be as bad as Cruz. (Kasich and Lessig looked the least worst from each party to me).
In hindsight, I'm glad I didn't, so I can't consider myself in anyway responsible for that abomination coming to power. However, it wouldn't surprise me in the least if many independants and democrats did vote for Trump in the primary thinking he couldn't possibly win. Head to head against Hillary he fared worse than any other candidate in the Republican field against Hillary, he would be the democrats obvious pick who they would rather face.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
Friend of mine did work at defense contractors in the early 2000s. After a year or so, he completely switched to Macs, not because they were immune - but because of the exposure.
Yeah Russia is a real nice country. They never invade other countries or shoot down airplanes or silence the media. And they definitely don't break treaties by deploying cruise missiles.
I don't know if it actually happened, but there was encouragement by some democratic activists to participate in open GOP primaries to ensure DT was the candidate due to his weakness as a candidate (IIRC, RMV, YMMV). I, personally don't have a problem with that, because open primaries are stupid to begin with.
Nothing to stop someone registering with a party they dislike to try impact the primary of a rival. My own personal opinion is that George Washington was correct in his assessment that political parties are a bad thing for democracy and that they should be avoided.
I would rather see a situation where there are no party primaries (at least no primaries that receive government money. Most states only fund the top two parties which encourages the ridiculous two-pole scenario we have today). If private parties want to fund and arrange their own primaries, I guess can't stop them and reluctantly could agree with that.
I'd like to see a Presidential election where the Presidential candidates don't officially represent ANY party. There are two rounds of voting. First round everyone votes for whoever they think is the best candidate. The top two candidates then run against each other a month later in a second election where the only choices are one of those two candidates.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
But blame Russia.
And don't blame all the other countries with "state sponsored" hackers targeting US institutions... In this case a lie by omission is a very big lie.
Still no official confirmation of who hacked the US government itself on a truly massive scale and breadth... Yes, it is well known which country did it, but not having intelligence officials come out and say it means that the stories aren't written and public debate is stifled and worse public policy and military preparations are being made on a false assumption that we know things that they don't.
Maybe it is for the best that we don't know who owned the US government in cyber attacks since that would further strain relations and lead us towards wars that neither side would "win"... but the point is that state on state hacking, spying and propaganda happens between adversaries, allies and frenemies alike and is the norm.
The fact that the US intelligence publicly is targeting Russia is the story, not that they are hacking US interests and spreading propaganda. Russia's military posture is much less aggressive than the US and yet our military industrial complex is intent of picking a fight with an old-school bad guy... because we view them as weaker than us and quite frankly there are still enough old timers around to hold personal vendettas and grudges.
All while our military grows smaller and smaller and relies more heavily on a technological advantage that we should assume (and know) is completely compromised by the knowledge gained from state sponsored cyber attacks. Outnumbered ten to one with a technological advantage that is completely compromised and a political elite that seems to really think it has a 10 to 1 technological advantage that it can use to pressure foreign governments is a dangerous place to be right now. The US is strong, but not that strong and we need to get back to reality.
More like stories like this popping up for years, with people saying 'ha ha macs can get virus/worms/malware/etc. while the computing experience on a Mac is still free of antivirus software or casual threats from browsing. The fact that this one actually works through a 'antivirus' just further proves that. You have to basically let them in with a Mac and be dumb enough to either run code or use an obvious malware program like mackeeper. Whereas with windows you can get hacked just turning the thing on. There continues to be no comparison just jaded windows users wanting Mac users to suffer like they do. The reality is that the Mac is such a low number of market share and declining and the people using them tend to be in creative sectors rather than more valuable targets likewrge corporations or banks, so there just is t the impetus to go after macs. Stories like this have been popping up an end the 90s and have always been largely what ifs and speculative. I have yet to hear about an actual virus rampaging through macs and taking a bunch down.
Nothing to stop someone registering with a party they dislike to try impact the primary of a rival
Oh, for sure. But then you're giving up a voice in your own party, so it can go against enlightened self-interest.
WTF does your shitware have to do with a Mac?
Oh, nothing. You're just spamming again.
The irony of your counter is that apparently those things are unimportant to the news industry, but imaginary levels of interference with what was supposed to be a rigged landslide of an election is unforgivable.
So, yes, Russia is violent, untrustworthy, prone to censorship, has no respect for foreign IP law, sees treaties as suggestions, and almost certainly preferred the USA have a president who isn't promising World War 3 on the campaign trail. (For further consideration, examine Hillary Clinton's drastic shift from "let's reset our diplomacy and start over on firendly ground" to "Russians are interfering with my ascendency, kill them all!")
"Yeah Russia is a real nice country. They never invade other countries or shoot down airplanes...." Yeah...good thing the US government never does anything like that. Oh...wait....
I hope you don't take as many shortcuts with your programming as you do with your typing.
Wanna buy a shirt?
https://www.redbubble.com/people/stealthfinger/shop?asc=u
Hahaha 'popular'
True, although, it could still happen. At least half the time there is a currently sitting president, whose nomination is almost 100% assured. The rest of the time one party might be more settled than another; for example, I don't think many people thought Hillary would lose the democrat nomination, but the republican nomination was very much up in the air.
The next election, Trump is almost guaranteed to win republican primary as sitting President, republicans might as well try influencing the democrat primary.
(of course there are other offices for play, other than President, but that seems to be the main one people focus on)
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
It has yet to proven the Russians had any affect on the outcome of the US Presidential Election 2016. Hillary was the worst candidate the Democrats could have fronted. I would have liked President Trump to have kept NSA Flynn and then working with the Russian Government plan and deliver a bunker busting bomb on the parliament buildings of North Korea in response for their repeated missile launches. Sadly Trump is succumbing to Washington, DC's, "business as usual." Sad.
Also, the issue at hand during and after the election was not that Russians were hacking the votes, but that Julian Assange was getting his leaks from the Russians, and putting it out daily at their behest. It was never the argument that they were actually breaking into voting machines to alter anything: in fact, when Trump was the one alleging that the elections were rigged, it was President Obama who pointed out that each state had their own voting systems, including states run overwhelmingly by Republicans, and that most of the voting machines were not on the internet. Ironically, that was an argument Republicans could turn around against Jill Stein in the battleground states once Trump won.
But the most bizarre thing over the last week has been Russian aggressiveness in three separate cases: having a spy ship off the DE coast, buzzing a US destroyer in the Black Sea, and the new revelation that they have been developing a cruise missile capable of carrying nuke warheads in violation of the arms control treaty. Shouldn't they be acting like the US was Belarus or Tajikistan instead, if the Dems were correct in portraying Trump as a vassal of Putin?
At any rate, this story reasserts the previously discredited claim that the Russians were hacking voting machines, which runs counter to the argument that they were manipulating Assange.
Except, note that you are quick to say the Russians had "something" to do with the election, but aren't saying that they actually changed your mind about who to vote for. If they didn't change your vote, how DID they impact the election? By allowing people to see that the DNC, behind the scenes, are a bunch of hypocritical, lying manipulators who are quick to trot out the occasional racist remark and cheat during debates? Sure. But everyone already knew that sort of thing about them. Did those revelations change your vote? No? I see.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
If he is such a puppet of Putin, then why are the Russians running a spy ship off the DE coast, buzzing a US destroyer in the Black Sea, and testing a cruise missile capable of carrying nuke warheads in violation of the arms control treaty. Shouldn't they be acting like we are Belarus or Tajikistan instead, who will do whatever they ask us? (Sort of like Obama dismantling the Missile Defense program in 2009 as a part of the Russia Reset)
Since his solution is based on /etc/hosts, it would work on OS X, which has FreeBSD underpinnings
They actively encouraged unregistered Democratic party fans to go sign up and vote in the Republican primaries for Trump, as they thought he was the easiest to beat. ...
Complete fucking losers
http://observer.com/2016/10/wikileaks-reveals-dnc-elevated-trump-to-help-clinton/
http://www.redstate.com/diary/creinstein/2016/06/25/12-million-democrats-voted-republican-primaries/
Russians flooding the internet with fake news in order to delegitimize every single news organization is not hacking?
The Russians don't have to. The MSM is doing just a fine job all on their own, that's the reason under 15% of Americans trust them.
Om, nomnomnom...
And his app runs on a Mac?
Don't be daft and try to appear witty.
the democrat apparatus also stuffed the ballot box for Trump during the primaries
Got a source for that? I know that Trump entered the race as a favor to Hillary to sow discord in the Republican ranks, but I haven't seen any evidence that the apparat did anything more for him than give him round-the-clock news coverage that starved out his rivals.
-jcr
That's a really amazing conspiracy theory, given that he was so successful that he defeated her majesty, and ended up in uniting all Republicans behind him after the elections. As Jonah Goldberg pointed out, the 'Never Trump' movement is dead (at least on the GOP side), and all Republicans are happily working w/ him. As for the GP's claim that he's a democrat, he may have been once upon a time, but that's ancient history. None of the Trump derangement Dems anywhere in the country are even remotely respecting him - going so far as to boycotting a school in New York's East side just b'cos Don Jr's kid is rumored to be entering kindergarten there. While his border tax, infrastructure plan and repeal of TPP may be things that classical Dems would embrace, he has been more than happy to endorse much of the rest of the GOP platform. Only major difference b/w him and the GOP has been on Russia, and that could end soon now that Russia is doing things that can only be interpreted by him as being in bad faith.
I think that that could only have happened in states where either Clinton or Sanders were shoo-ins to win, and where Dems could afford to go out to sabotage what happened in the GOP. Like they infiltrated GOP ranks to vote for McCain in 2000, or like GOP voters were encouraged by Rush Limbaugh to infiltrate the Dems and promote his 'Operation Chaos' to make it tricky for Obama to win.
I don't want to say you all are traitors - but a minority of voters did support a narcissistic, xenophobic, misogynist, sexist, rude, compulsive, racist, poorly spoken, selfish, scientifically illiterate, and frankly not too bright individual...
FTFY
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Modded troll... I like how the people that agree with me got modded up. Once again this is more proof that the crybabies don't want to hear the truth that the democrats suck. The fact is that many people register with the opposition to sabotage the ballot. We simply must dump both the republicans AND democrats. They are too corrupt, and that is the voters' fault for rewarding them. Wake up people!
Here's a possibility: So people like you will think that Russia isn't connected to Trump's election.
It's called "maskirovka."
(I'd have written "maskirovka" correctly, but, Slashdot's code is still stuck in the 1980's and can't display very much beyond ASCII. And the new owners either don't understand the slashcode and can't fix it [probably... it's perl, after all], or they're too busy doing... I don't know, something. It's not editing, that I can tell you.)
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Mohammed: Did you see Mohammed at the meeting today?
Mohammed: No, but his brother Mohammed showed up.
Mohammed: What did Mohammed talk about?
Mohammed: Mohammed introduced us to Mohammed who is also a mason!
Mohammed: A mason? No shit? How long has he been one?
Mohammed: About five years. He was referred to the local lodge by Mohammed.
Mohammed: Ah, yes, Mohammed. He has a shit ton of connections around town!
Mohammed: Yes, and our brothers, police be upon them, Mohammed and Mohammed from Egypt came, too.
Mohammed: I've been thinking of becoming a clown.
Mohammed: A clown, Mohammed, why?
Mohammed: So I can film myself being gay.
Mohammed: Oh, you.
Mohammed: So anyway, is Mohammed, Mohammed, and Mohammed coming to the next party?
Mohammed: Indeed. Mohammed was so funny last time.
Mohammed: Well it wouldn't be a party without Mohammed.
Mohammed: Yes, my friend. POLICE BE UPON THEM!
This reckless blaming of Russian hackers only serves to recruit more Russian hackers.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
His is not an 'app': it's a shell script, which one could ostensibly run by editing /etc/hosts
There is lots of blame to go around. Or are you seriously trying to claim that Russia had nothing to do with this election?
That's right, Russia had nothing to do with the election. Russia is the enemy of the US multinational corporations, that want control of the European energy market. Providing asylum to Snowden angered the entire military industrial complex and the intelligence community that had been fighting proxy wars with Russia for years. Most of the hot fights in the middle east are really about control of territory for pipelines. Russia wants that European market, and the US has been fighting to prevent them from getting control of it. Hillary's nod to supporting that battle came all throughout the campaign. There are elements in the US government itching for all-out war with Russia.
Most of those elements are still there, and they are working to undermine the Trump administration any way they can, just to get the Russia hate ramped back up. I think Trump believes there is a way to SHARE the European energy market. Not sure how that's going to work, because you give up a lot of profit if you can't have monopoly control over the supplies. We will see. But I, for one, and sick of the Neo-mccarthyism, and prefer to stay out of another cold war or war at all with Russia, if it can be avoided.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
Complete fucking losers ...
Not really/ They won. Careful what you ask for.
captcha: paradox
Russia is weak middle income country trying to survive encirclement on all sides by stronger hostile powers. It wouldn't have interfered in Ukraine had the US not spent $5 billion dollars in Ukraine and toppled a relatively pro-Russian regime in an undemocratic and unconstitutional coup. It wouldn't have shot down any Malaysian airliners had the US funded puppets not kicked off a civil war in Ukraine.
The Russian press is nice and free sorry that you think otherwise but Vladimir Putin has not killed any journalists and any opposition figures. Every assassination in modern Russian political life has involved people who wrote about Chechnya and who were in turn killed by Chechens and every assassination from that of Anna Politkovskaya to Borris Nemtsov was solved and the perpetrators put in prison by the Putin government. There are exactly zero open cases. But you are welcome to keep believing in conspiracy theories about Putin blowing up buildings and Bush staging 9/11 all you like.
As for the cruise missiles -- it's the position of the Russian government that US armed drones of the Reaper and Predator types are themselves violations of the INF treaty as they are cruise missile equivalents. The US abrogated INF when it placed those drones in Europe. If the new SS-X-8 missile is a problem for you -- remove the drones from Europe and watch the missiles disappear too. INF banned armed drones too.
I guess the Russians flooding the internet with fake news in order to delegitimize every single news organization is not hacking? I'm not convinced there was voting machine hacking, but the Russians definitely engaged in social hacking in a concerted effort to boost Trump.
Lemme guess, you hate Woodward and Bernstein too right? They influenced presidential politics the same way you think those 'commie bastards' influenced the election.
I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
Right now, the media meme is that Russia is supporting nationalist parties in Europe like Marine Le Pen, hoping to have pliant European leaders just like they 'succeeded' in the US
Except that none of these parties would be anywhere even close to power had people like Merkel, Hollande, et al not thrown their borders open to millions of Syrian refugees, thereby creating a law & order nightmare in their countries
there is ZERO proof the DNC "rigged" anything.
Oh, get serious. The whole "superdelegate" apparatus exists only to thwart the will of the voters.
Does that really need to be said so negatively? As if the will of the voters were the only thing that mattered, and as if the voters' will was omnipotent, omniscient, and without error?
Even the "checks and balances" of the US acknowledges that there are huge swathes of life that shouldn't be routinely subject to the will of voters (namely law enforcement). And anybody who's watching this particular USian slow train wreck MUST acknowledge that in this instance the democratic will of the people was at best misguided.
Barclay family motto:
Aut agere aut mori.
(Either action or death.)
Oh, get serious. The whole "superdelegate" apparatus exists only to thwart the will of the voters.
This is in fact 100% true. The theory behind it is that "the voters" in a primary could easily be people who just became Democrats this week (or in some states aren't even Democrats at all), don't give a crap about the party, or even want to actively sabotage it. Remember that primaries are the parties picking their standard-bearer, not the USA at large picking theirs. Superdelegates are elected officials (Governors, Senators, etc.) with at least some proven investment in the party itself. In recent history they almost never vote contrary to the wishes of their own constituents when those are clear, but they are there as an "in case of emergency, break glass" set of votes to salvage the party. If the Republicans hadn't got rid of most of theirs, we likely wouldn't have the "President Putin/Banner" circus we are enjoying today.
That being said, if the Democrats don't like having them, and would prefer to just let whoever shows up on election/caucus day decide with no possible check whatsoever, that's entirely their prerogative. There have been some changes already to reduce their influence, and more seem likely.
"Oh, get serious. The whole "superdelegate" apparatus exists only to thwart the will of the voters."
It's how parties work. They try to ensure that popular passions dont overwhelm the party based on emotions. Kind of like how republics work. They reflect the will of the people "smoothed out" over time -- just not when they are pissed off over something that recently occurred and likely to make poor choices until anger fades and they can make choices based more on ideals thought than feelings and reactions.
All of the things you list are things Russia would NOT do if they felt like the President was going to take a hard line. They are passive aggressive, not aggressive, and the lack of US response is exactly what Russia is looking for. The major thing Russia wants from the US is lack of interference, and so far, that's exactly what Trump has given them.
...who said, "Repeat a lie enough times and people will start to believe it"...?
Windows has been pretty secure since Vista too. The "just turn it on and get infected" thing hasn't been true since XP. They have a much better permissions and process control system in modern Windows now. The only reason Macs are still seemingly more secure is they are still rare and hackers have only so much time on their hands and you get more bang for you buck targeting Windows. There is preciously nothing more secure about Macs. If anything just by relying on "security by obscurity" for so long they are probably a much easier target than a modern Windows box.
Because traffic was backed up on I-95 going into Washington DC.
You are welcome on my lawn.
the DNC, behind the scenes, are a bunch of hypocritical, lying manipulators
Oh dear! The pot is insulting the kettle again...
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
As does the electoral college. That was created because the elites (say, the Founding Fathers) realized that giving voting control to the peasants might not have been such a good idea, so the electoral college was created in order to better represent their (the elites) interests. The members are unelected and while they only have one job, they have screwed it up.
Beautiful summary :)
MacKeeper is Malware.
I remove that crapware from every Mac i work on. It hijacks DNS, and puts adds all over web pages that are not really there.
Complete Crapola
Thats true but they were also used as a club.... that, along with the collusion with the major media outlets (providing access in return for not covering Bernie, always displaying the electoral count with super delegates to make people feel like voting for him was hopeless and providing Hillary with the questions to a debate ahead of time).
If super delegates didn't exist at least part of that collusion would have been considerably less effective and we might have had a different outcome... and of course that doesn't even get into the question of voter suppression and the mysterious access that each campaign had to each others data due to a system put in place by Hillary's supporters.
Everything about that primary stunk to high heaven but we already knew that.
"In America, first you get the sugar, then you get the power, then you get the women..." -H. Simpson
Are geniuses at the Apple Bar still gonna claim that Macs aren't vulnerable to viruses, malware, and hacking?
Yeah, that's great. Instead of getting news from 'the MSM', get it from some random website which you have no idea who is funding it but plays to your particular biases (left or right). That'll work for sure.
The Russian press is nice and free sorry that you think otherwise but Vladimir Putin has not killed any journalists and any opposition figures.
And there we have our Putin-bot folks...
I dunno, I thought the 3 million more votes Hillary got did that.
He's a MacKeeper dev.
I'm sensing another Rocky movie coming on, fighting the Ruskies!
And yet you still read this insane leftist propaganda rag and still go to work with people who believe it as the word of god
Are you looking for a way out yet?
Russians hacked the election. NOPE, fake news...just because the LIBERAL QUEEN Hillary LOST THE ELECTION.
The election was hacked. Doesn't matter whether you like it or not, it was hacked. You're only objecting because your guy was the beneficiary of the hacking (an assumption, but not a wild assumption).
This is like saying "corporations don't exist, only people exist!" and then turning right around and saying "corporations are not just legal people, but actual people, with all the rights that confers!"
Also, all the smug comments here about the non-impact of Russian hacking are based upon the assumption that you are so smart, no one can fool you. You'd never believe a Russian propaganda campaign, right?
Except you did. The hackers laundered the information through plausibly non-Russian sources. You have confirmation bias and all those leaks confirmed things you already believed, so it was an easy sell. And they damaged the political opposition so you papered over the inconvenient fact that illegal hacking was involved and the whole episode was tainted. Since when were Republicans soft on crime?
The Russian hackers never had to sway core Trump supporters though. They only had to sway swing voters. And who can definitively say they did not sway those swing voters? You sure can't, you are partisan and therefore biased.
The best propaganda campaigns lead the victims to believe they found the Truth, through Unbiased Sources, and No Propaganda Was Involved, or Mattered. Congratulations, you've been suckered and you'll go down defending yourself, if only to avoid looking like a sucker.
Otherwise, how to explain the vehemence of denial about Russian hacking? The Russians had motive, opportunity, and there is evidence. The fact that the Three Letter Agencies have declined to share all the evidence with you is your problem, not mine. I believe the TLAs in this case. The TLAs try very hard to stay non-partisan and to get foreign affairs accurate. To do otherwise is bad business and bad policy even on a self-interest basis.
You're right. The RNC establishment's non-stop catering to Trump's every need during the election was such a spectacle. Oh, right ... that didn't happen. The party and the media were utterly hostile to him, as opposed to, say, slipping him debate questions in advance, courtesy of the woman who is STILL running the DNC machinery.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Superdelegates are not a "checks and balances" thing. They aren't part of the government, and they exist only to undermine the primary process. The superdelegates were used to prop up Clinton's campaign. Clinton managed to lose to the most hated candidate ever. Voters aren't perfect, but superdelegates drove the Dems right into an iceberg.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Yeah, once Bernie was mathematically locked out (remember, Hillary still got 3 million more votes than bernie. You can't have it both ways, faggot.) I have few problems with a party basically telling someone who's too stuck-up to actually join the party and get involved with setting policy. Imagine if Bernie had a seat at the DNC for the past 30 years and not just in the past 6 months? Remind me again, does he have a D or an R beside h is name? Oh right, I.
Fuck off.
Reverse psychology (inverted totalitarianism?) strikes again. Again you are pointing out nothing but theater.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
The major thing Russia wants from the US is lack of interference, and so far, that's exactly what Trump has given them.
You mean, in the whole 3 weeks he's been president? Would you have more respect for the man if we were already in a war with Russia?
No, I was pointing out actual lying and cheating by the people running the DNC. That you and millions of others want to pretend to consider that to be merely theater is exactly why the Democrats have lost nearly a thousand state legislative seats, most of the governorships, both houses of congress, the White House, and the Supreme Court. Looking forward to more condescending tut-tutting, smug lefty sneering, and shrill phony outrage in advance of the upcoming legislative elections, when the non-stop losing pattern on the part of the Dems will continue, costing them even more of their dwindling minority in congress. Thanks in advance for your hard work in keeping that streak alive!
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
The name of the trojan and a description of how users are compromised is the linked article.
The fact that the moderators don't bother even skimming before moderating questions like this as insightful is pathetic.
Again you got me wrong. I'm perfectly happy to see the dems lose, but it's not a real loss when it's to the republicans. They are on the same team, both claiming the moral high ground while merely serving the money that finances the charade. And on the national front they did regain a few seats in congress in this little soap opera called 'As the Pendulum Swings'. I am amused that you seem to believe the the republicans don't lie and cheat also. Their own corruption is quite the spectacle. Partisan much?
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Pulaski and Kosciusko saved you during your war with the Brits. Poland was the most liberal country in Europe, look up the Constitution of MAY 3, and we also saved Jews at a time they were being driven out of Western Europe - look up the Statute of Kalisz, and we gave refuge to Huguenots. Poland had laws equivalent of habeas corpus and we elected our kings, while more people had political rights than the ENglishmen had. Poland stopped the Turks in Vienna and we saved Germany from the Bolsheviks in the polish soviet war. We were also the first to tell the world about the Holocaust and Poles saved the most Jews in ww2. Our spies had the plans for the Atlantic wall and we broke the original Enigma machine. We also have the second highest IQ In Europe, ahead of the British. In exchange we got partitioned by Germany, Austria and Prussia, Hitler's `Germany murdered and kidnapped our civilians and we got sold out to the SOviets by Churchill and Truman. Such is life.
"Superdelegates" have been written into the rules since 1982. And believe it or not, it was done for reasons that seemed very powerful at the time. If you want to reverse the change you can of course campaign to do that, but you'll have a fight on your hands because it's far from self-evident that those reasons no longer apply.
If you call it "rigging" to run an election in accordance with your own established and published rules, I don't know what to say.
Your first statement is asking for evidence and then immediately make a claim without providing evidence. This wasn't the first time Trump sought the presidency. Which candidates was he trying to support in previous presidential elections?
Last time I tried it out; it wasn't a script, it was a full blown program with a GUI and everything (first run took ages to create the HOSTS file).
As Jonah Goldberg pointed out, the 'Never Trump' movement is dead (at least on the GOP side), and all Republicans are happily working w/ him.
The Democrats are also working with him. For instance Kaine voted to confirm 7 of his cabinet picks.
"His name was James Damore."
I know you're making good money and all posting your pro-Putin garbage all over the net. But how can people like you look at themselves in the mirror and not throw up ? How can people like you look at their children in the eyes ? How do you explain to them that you're taking money from a murdering psychopathic tyrant ?
I just wish no-one you care for ends-up in jail for opposing this ex-KGB trashfuck or, worse, dies of polonium poisoning.
The Democrats painted themselves into a corner when they became the Corporate Bitch party under Bill Clinton.
Now that they have been caught so plainly betraying the people of their party, they can expect campaign donations from individuals to greatly dwindle. In other words the DNC's only move is to go "all-in" as the Corporate Bitch party. I'm talking about actions here not words. They will continue to pretend to be pro-worker, but what their elected representatives vote for will continue to not be. Past the point of no return.
If the Democrats are to really try to fix their problem, there is a good chance that they will become a 3rd party behind either the Green's or the Libertarians, because they just wont have the money to win elections any more. You can forget about any real grass roots, although they might pretend once in awhile. It will be a losing fight to retain the seats that they have, with no shot at all for them to be taking any new ones, for years.
The remaining established Democrats are not going to go down without a fight. Here "going down" doesnt mean losing to Republicans, it means being voted out by their own party members. They will continue to take every corporate dollar they can because the other options is going away.
In an ideal world the betrayers would just go away and let the party fix itself as quickly as it can... but thats not going to happen. Expect them to get even dirtier towards actual progressives. Even more corrupt towards actual progressives.
I myself am mostly conservative I guess, but not a Republican. I believe in liberty and small government, but most of all I believe that voting for the lesser of two evils is still supporting evil. I voted for Gary Johnson because ever argument against him was speculation (FUD) about what he would do in the future with not a single reasoned argument against him about anything that he ever did in the past. I know for certain that Hillary and Donald are both fucking evil.
"His name was James Damore."
"New Mac malware pinned on same Russian group blamed for election hacks"
https://arstechnica.com/securi...
"spoke Russian" and the classic "worked mostly during Russian business hours" and finally
"pursued targets located in Ukraine, Spain, Russia, Romania, the US, and Canada"
Language, working hours over a few time zones and a list of nations?
Whats in "Russian cyberspies blamed for U.S. election hacks are now targeting Macs"
http://www.computerworld.com/a...
"has been operating for almost a decade." So the private security sector globally knows something about the methods... yet bulk data can still be moved undetected in the wild using the tools understood by private sector experts...
"Security researchers believe that the group is likely tied to the Russian Military Intelligence Service."
Most nations security services would not trust results from tools that have been discovered and are been talked about or tracked by other nations govs and private sector security experts.
Such methods get discovered while in use, the data flow out can be tampered with. Staying in any network with old tools just invites surveillance.
Very few nations with any skills would use old tools that can be detected while in use.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
when the non-stop losing pattern on the part of the Dems will continue, costing them even more of their dwindling minority in congress.
Non-stop? Just for one example, Dems gained back Nevada, so that's a falsehood, also the New Mexico House, and some poltics worked in Alaska and 6 net seats in the US House. And at least a few special elections have swung their way since Trump LOST the popular vote. Remember that? That's right, it wasn't a landslide, Trump was behind 3 million entirely lawful votes. And no, no, as desperate as you are to believe it, it wasn't just in California and New York.
As much as you may hope the American Left will go away, the odds are that Trump's excessive unpopularity will actually drag down the right. They are responsible for everything, and it'll cost them...just in time for the new census.
You hate that, don't you? You hitched your wagon to the most repellent slug to slink his way into the Oval Office since Taft took over for Teddy Roosevelt.
You won't be able to rely on voter disenfranchisement and gerrymandering to save you. That's been exposed in North Carolina, Wisconsin, Florida, Alabama, Texas, and Arizona.
The people are getting more and more in-tune with the party that serves their interests, and even the most angry fools are retching at what they bought with the Trump.
In case you haven't noticed, ScentCone is rabidly right-wing Republican. Everything is about the supremacy of the faux conservative agenda.
He can't grasp the theater, he's caught in the act.
How is inciting a riot and burglary that much different? Robert Creamer that actually visited the Obama WH 300+ times, 40+ meetings with Obama.His direct report Scott Foval also visited the WH. Foval was caught on video bragging about how they paid protesters that ended created violence at Trump rallies.
Don't even try to use snopes or politifact that pulls a red herring by stating, well they didn't pay them to directly beat someone up, completely ignoring that inciting riots isn't legal.
Of course they want to carry on with clintons plan and trump isn't doing it
Trump *did not* enter the race as a favour to Hillary.
Sure he did. They've been friends for decades, he's given her shitloads of money, and notice how quickly he reneged on his campaign promise to see her prosecuted?
He ran as a stunt, and was shocked at how much traction he got (with all of Hillary's media minions giving him the lion's share of the news coverage), so the ego took over and he went for it.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Yes & no. While they have been co-operating on a few things, most of the stunts, like the demands to impeach him from Maxine Waters, or the rants against him by Warren, as well as the saboteur attempts by members of the intelligence who leaked his phone calls to Mexico and Australia, are certainly signs that too many have not accepted the decision of the voters on Nov 8th.
That's very different on the GOP side. During the primaries, he had very little official Republican support, other than Jeff Sessions, a few evangelical leaders like Jerry Falwell Jr and Robert Jeffreys, and a few renagade GOP congressmen here and there. Most either supported Bush, Rubio or Kasich if they were establishment types, or Cruz if they were your classical conservatives. At the grassroots, it was a different story, w/ Carson actually having most of the groundswell after Trump. But fact remains that not only did the GOP oppose Trump until he was the last man standing, some of them even declined to support him at the convention, and some like the 2 Whitmans - Meg of HP and Christie Todd of NJ - downright supported Hilary, or stated that they wouldn't vote for Trump. Particularly after the Access Hollywood tapes came to light, and Paul Ryan refused to be on any joint campaigns w/ Trump. And in the media - the part that's pro GOP - people like George Will, Charles Krauthammer, Jonah Goldberg, Steve Hayes, et al opposed him to the end, and only flipped after he won the elections.
My point above is that while his conservative credentials may have been questionable - and still are on a few things like Eminent Domain - the Republicans ended any attempts to delegitimize him once he won the election, and have been working w/ him on parts of the agenda that's common to both. That's in sharp contrast to the Dems, who've been organizing their rallies in college campii denigrating him and his family, Obama holdovers who are busy leaking to the media, media people who are comparing this to Watergate, and so on. If Trump got this far to do the Dems a favor, not only do they have a funny way of thanking him: the Republicans, who would stand to lose in this set-up, should be opposing him tooth & nail.
Your saying it doesn't make it true. Putin is none of these things and the Russians who actually live in Russia know it hence his 80% approval rating.
Don't forget throwing the word racist out whenever a white candidate says anything.
Define "accepted the decision of the voters". If some of us were unconvinced that Trump was the President, we'd ignore him. There's no point in trying to impeach someone who isn't in office.
Accepting the decision isn't the same thing as liking it. Acknowledging that Trump is President does not require a patriotic citizen to abandon their own principles and support Trump.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
"“Picking your opponent” is an age-old political manipulation tactic. "
Accepting the decision of the voters means not obstructing the president from doing things that he explicitly said he would do. Like for instance, the extreme vetting. Or the repeal of Obamacare. Or any number of things he said he would. It means not obstructing ICE from cracking down and deporting Illegal Immigrants. It means not demonstrating outside airports in response to the EO on the travel ban. It means not blackmailing companies like Nordstorm for carrying Trump products. It means not boycotting schools that Don's kids may be attending. It means accepting the fact that people who like Trump have the right to display it w/o being intimidated by college professors and students alike.
For instance, in both 2008 and 2012, Conservatives who were unhappy @ Obama's election organized the Tea Party and held demonstrations w/o intimidating schools, businesses, colleges, et al, organized electorally and got a few of their own elected to Congress. If the Leftists wanna be taken seriously, they should try winning support in the other 32 states that they didn't win
No, that's not accepting the decision of the voters, US-style. You're confusing us with a more collectivist country.
If accepting the election means letting the President get on with routine business, the Republican Senate sure didn't accept Obama's election.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Nope. That you didn't even know about the DNC promoting him is proof that you are clueless.