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FBI Seizes Control of Russian Botnet (thedailybeast.com)
The Daily Beast reports that the FBI has seized control of a key server in the Kremlin's global botnet of 500,000 hacked routers. "The move positions the bureau to build a comprehensive list of victims of the attack, and short-circuits Moscow's ability to reinfect its targets," writes Kevin Poulsen. From the report: The FBI counter-operation goes after "VPN Filter," a piece of sophisticated malware linked to the same Russian hacking group, known as Fancy Bear, that breached the Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton campaign during the 2016 election. On Wednesday security researchers at Cisco and Symantec separately provided new details on the malware, which has turned up in 54 countries including the United States.
VPN Filter uses known vulnerabilities to infect home office routers made by Linksys, MikroTik, NETGEAR, and TP-Link. Once in place, the malware reports back to a command-and-control infrastructure that can install purpose-built plug-ins, according to the researchers. One plug-in lets the hackers eavesdrop on the victim's Internet traffic to steal website credentials; another targets a protocol used in industrial control networks, such as those in the electric grid. A third lets the attacker cripple any or all of the infected devices at will.
VPN Filter uses known vulnerabilities to infect home office routers made by Linksys, MikroTik, NETGEAR, and TP-Link. Once in place, the malware reports back to a command-and-control infrastructure that can install purpose-built plug-ins, according to the researchers. One plug-in lets the hackers eavesdrop on the victim's Internet traffic to steal website credentials; another targets a protocol used in industrial control networks, such as those in the electric grid. A third lets the attacker cripple any or all of the infected devices at will.
He'll shut this FBI operation down immediately. Putin is not going to be happy and the last thing Trump wants is an upset boss.
I have a home home router not a home office router. My home office is connected via a hub to the intenets.
Who is saying that this botnet seizure is part of a fight against Trump?
Give a boy a gun and you arm him for a day. Teach him how to make a gun, and the whole metaphor breaks down.
The FBI gets caught with orders from Obama to spy on Trump and you come to this conclusion? Your deduction skills are something to behold!
Captain Ahab was so utterly consumed by hate that he was ready to lose everything, his ship, his crew, his own life, just as long as he killed Moby-Dick.
Similarly, conservatives are so completely and utterly infused and consumed by their hatred of liberals that they are ready to sacrifice everything, their country, their family, the future of their planet and their children, for every opportunity to piss-off and otherwise hurt that damn liberal white whale.
You did not answer Rei's question: Who is making such claims?
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
And arrest the criminal Putin.
I wonder if the Russian trolls get in trouble for talking to people that call for Chechnya to be free.
5 guilty pleas, 17 indictments of people close to Trump?
He should have nothing to fear.
The claim (by Donald Trump and others) is that Hillary Clinton approved a deal giving a Russian company named "Rosatom" 20 percent of our uranium.
But that's not true. The Clinton State Department had no power to veto or approve the Rosatom transaction, AKA "Uranium One". It could do neither. Here’s how it does work.
Uranium One is the name of a South Africa-based mining company.
Back in 2007 it merged with "Urasia Energy" based in Canada. And in 2010 the mining arm of the Russian nuclear agency Rosatom, bought controlling interest in the company. Among other places, that mining company had operations in Wyoming that amounted to what the Nuclear Regulatory Commissions or the NRC said was at the time was about 20% uranium production capacity in the U.S.
By law, when a foreign company wants to buy ANYTHING with potential national security implications, an interagency committee of the federal government must approve it. The committee was given a broad mandate under President Reagan to advise the president on foreign investment transactions.
That committee is called CFIUS (Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States). It includes nine department heads. The Secretary of the Treasury is the chair person. The rest are the Departments of Justice, Homeland Security, Commerce, Defense, State and Energy, plus the Office of U.S. Trade Representative, and the Office of Science and Technology Policy. That’s CFIUS. The nine department heads all approved the sale of Uranium One.
It was unanimous - not a Hillary Clinton approval.
Also, the State Department wasn't even represented by Hillary Clinton at CIFUS. The Assistant Secretary of State, Jose Fernando, represented the State Department on CFIUS, not Hillary Clinton. And Jose Fernando stated that Clinton never intervened.
Further, neither Secretary Clinton nor the committee as a whole could stop any deal of this kind, even if they wanted to.
The committee members evaluate the sale of anything potentially related to national security.
By law, if just one member objects, the president and only the president can veto such a transaction. No committee member of the nine objected.
The whole "Uranium One" accusation is predicated on the charge that "Secretary Clinton approved the sale". She did not, and more to the point, she couldn't because the as Secretary of State, she didn't have the power to do that.
This whole "Clinton gave away our uranium" thing is just plain bullshit.
Go ahead, think whatever you like. Don't take my word for it. These are the facts and you can verify all of them by spending a minute or two on Google.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
> The DNC did not at any time turn over the affected servers to the FBI or anyone else, as one might expect for such a serious crime as was alleged.
The DNC coordinated with the FBI and federal intelligence agencies and provided everything they requested, including copies of DNC servers," Watson said. She added that the copy contains the same information as the physical server.
So it is technically correct the DNC didn't turn over the physical hardware, but they provided a image of everything on the servers. "Everything Requested."
You think *Trump* will be pissed about a botnet being offline? Why exactly?
Even if you believe the line being peddled Trump and the Russians had any connection (long since disproven by Trumps antagonizing moves towards Russia, if you really want something interesting look to Trump and China...) remember it wasn't any bot net that got into the DNC, it was phishing and social engineering...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
So the NSA knew a lot about them and their deep links to the FSB.
https://arstechnica.com/inform...
Russia prefers chaos.
China prefers order.
The political documents walked out. They did not get moved out by a "network".
"Former NSA experts say it wasn’t a hack at all, but a leak" (Aug 9, 2017)
https://www.thenation.com/arti...
"... demonstrating that 23 MB/s is a typical transfer rate when using a USB–2 flash device (thumb drive).”"
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
There are a few tricks played in that article. One, it doesn't matter whether Podesta himself did or didn't deny anything, it actually matters what analysis the FBI did and whether the FBI got anything.
Two, the FBI relied on the CrowdStrike report and doesn't appear to have done any actual analysis of them. If they have HD images, it's weird that they don't just say so ("forensics" is rather vague, though it plausibly includes such) and it's sort of odd they didn't want to inspect the hardware for tampering, given that we, in fact, know of various durable hardware rootkits via the TAO catalog. You know, something we might expect a hostile foreign government to be using, given it's the sort of stuff we use when hacking them. This would actually make sense--use an advanced rootkit to actually exfiltrate data and then hide it by doing some low-grade phishing attack to explain the leaked data. But we can be quite sure that isn't what happened given that they have had so long to allege such a thing and they haven't. It will be interesting to see what, if anything, regarding this comes out in the upcoming OIG report, though.
Also, from your own article:
Explain this to me: why doesn't the Obama CIA care about Russians hacking the DNC? Is it going to be like the claim that they used Stephan Halper as an informant to "protect" the Trump campaign (their words, not mine)? If they're there to "protect" them, why not put one in Hillary's campaign as "protection" after telling us over and over that she's being targeted by Russians?
China prefers the appearence of order.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Cohens payoff to the Russian hackers also isn't verified....
Yet.
If FBI have Cohen surveillance data, then everyone from Trump, Hannity, that Prince, the GOP fundraiser (forget his name, the one who paid his GF to have an abortion), all of them are facing jail time.
If you don't understand how it worked, Cohen is a money launderer. He receives money people are not supposed to have (e.g. bribes, payoffs, tax dodging), and pays their bills with that money (e.g. hookers, bribes to others, property deal laundering to white cash).
If FBI spied on Cohen, then a lot of powerful people are facing some serious jail time, and 'collusion' is the least of their worries....
Better hope it stays 'unverified'.
Get control of the latest hacked Photoshop. :-\
Last time I checked, Debbie Wasserman Schultz refused to hand over the hacked server to the FBI. They instead asked CloudStrike to look it over and do an analysis. Further, the speed at which the e-mails were removed from the server could only have been accomplished with directly attached storage (USB attached flash drive is the current best guess)... Then The e-mails started being published by WikiLeaks. After Seth Rich died in the non-robbery, Julianne Assange has put all kinds of message out about the fact that he was murdered. Seems pretty simple to me.
The FBI is not known for its stunning competence.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Thank you.
You mean the FBI agent that texted his lover that they were going to take the down the President because they didn't like him was not an idiot? Wow.
It's part of the fight against Trump's boyfriend -- Vladimir 'Power Bottom Gay Clown' Putin.
You're welcome.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
China prefers predictability.