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US Cyber Command Operation Disrupted Internet Access of Russian Troll Factory on Day of 2018 Midterms: Report (washingtonpost.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: The U.S. military blocked Internet access to an infamous Russian entity seeking to sow discord among Americans during the 2018 midterms, several U.S. officials said, a warning that the group's operations against the United States are not cost-free. The strike on the Internet Research Agency in St. Petersburg, a company underwritten by an oligarch close to President VladiÂmir Putin, was part of the first offensive cyber campaign against Russia designed to thwart attempts to interfere with a U.S. election, the officials said. "They basically took the IRA offline," according to one individual familiar with the matter who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss classified information. "They shut 'em down." The operation marked the first muscle-flexing by U.S. Cyber Command, with intelligence from the National Security Agency, under new authorities it was granted by President Trump and Congress last year to bolster offensive capabilities.
Existence justified without the need to give proof. Government level tier.
US build the internet to be resilient to such "attacks"
Bad russians congregate in a central location to allegedly "attack" the US
US get proud
Story sounds *very* fishy... Any stupid kid can coordinate such "attacks" from all over the world.
Now that the binawar is won, let's welcome home our digital warriors. Sunglasses for all!
is in no part a "national security" or otherwise strategic resource.
A single place full of people's likes and dislikes, vacation schedules, who's in their circles of friends and famlies, what car they own, where they live.. pictures and vids of all of the above and more.... none of this is strategic?
It's very strategic, just not to the normal, well-adjusted human. But for thieves, conmen, and anyone interested in gathering intel on a target? Pricelessly strategic.
The "Civilized World" jumped the shark ca. 1973.
the Russians should buy Huawei equipment and not Cisco...
Maybe. Or maybe once exposed, it was in both sides' interests to appear tough. After all, Russia thinks sanctions are bad now...
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Republicans don't seem to care at all about this, since the russians helped their team win.
I thought they were the "our guns protect your freedom" patriots who love 'murica so much?
Small minded Republicans, ask yourselves, why would Putin want Trump to win? Is it because he loves you and loves 'Murica?
Maybe, just maybe there is a different reason. Maybe he knows something you don't.
Of course, should the democrats win in the next election, I am pretty sure the world will hear you screaming your disingenuous little hearts out about how the Russians hacked the elections and how the results are not valid and blah blah blah. Why? Because you are pieces of shit who don't care about the US, or the world at large. You only care that your teams wins, regardless of what it costs every other person on the planet.
They are blocking memes from spreading on social media. This gives the moderators time to smoke weed and have sex in the hallways.
"under new authorities it was granted by President Trump and Congress"
...but most of the damage is done in the weeks leading up to the election. Shutting them down on election day is too late.
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
The U.S. military blocked Internet access to an infamous Russian entity seeking to sow discord among Americans during the 2018 midterms
Discord?!? We can't have discord during ... democratic elections!
Thank God our crack troops protected the motherla ... I mean, baseball and apple pie, from ... {shudder} ... discord!
How timely. Sure, it's an important day, but the days leading up were also important...
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
To be fair, intelligence doesn't believe in Trump either.
I don't know why I bother, since you're clearly determined. Stop pushing political narratives. Hell, this would even be worth discussing if it weren't the thousandth article pushing "Russia hacked the elections". The ironic thing is your side has so thoroughly discredited itself that when you have real news that supports your cause it is going to be ignored. I don't even like Trump!
If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.
I would like to remind everyone that the the US would consider the same done to them as an act of war which would justify a military response, up to and including a nuclear strike.
Almost all of the cases of fraud we've heard about this cycle have been GOP fraud involving hiring consultants to "help" people fill out and cast their ballots, often without their consent or knowledge and obviously illegally so.
https://www.newyorker.com/news/dispatch/the-tearful-drama-of-north-carolinas-election-fraud-hearings
A bit more detail would be nice. Did they shut down the Internet on Russian territory? Probably not, that'd be some hot potato if they were found. If they blocked the IP on the US-side, there are plenty of proxies both in and out of the US to work through.
Either these trolls are very stupid and don't know anything about how the Internet works or this is just another story about how someone blocked an IP address and thinks they saved the world.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
"and don't take a cell phone anywhere that might be considered shady." - And if you're going to launder money for the Russian mob for 30 years, lol don't let your "fixer" lawyer guy record your voice talking about it for 15 years. Fucking moron.
A little bit of opsec and these Alfabank betas might have gotten away with it! A LITTLE BIT! "Russia, if you're listening..." - Seriously. Roger Stone now accepting rogering, will sing for lube. The whole treason is falling apart.
And why? BECAUSE HE PICKED A FIGHT WITH A PORN STAR. Let's just count the hundreds of times Trump has fucked himself, it's almost impossible to contain them all in your mind at one time. In his own WORDS a traitor!
We should be pitchforking his ass RIGHT NOW, instead you're making false equivocations and excuses for a known traitor. YOU ARE BECOME THE TRAITOR.
You do realize that the vast majority of Facebook is fake-as-hell information
This is an example of Sturgeon's Law: 90% of everything is crap.
But that doesn't much diminish the value of the remaining 10%. Knowing everyone's friend graph is valuable information. Knowing everyone's interests is also valuable. Knowing who is easily influenced by the false information is very valuable.
'not illegal'.
So we've finally abandoned the fiction of 'the appearance of impropriety'.
Good. Multimillion dollar contributions, tens of thousands of dollars in speaking fees, certainly not illegal except by a strict reading of the law.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
You don't seem to understand how investigations work do you...
Do you really think Mueller would show all of the evidence as he gets it so Trump can destroy anything related to it?
It takes years to bring down crime syndicates and Mueller at this time is bringing down piece by piece.
He also needs to be careful to prevent mistrials and such.
The fact so many people have already been taken down in this inner circle though is good evidence this is likely to succeed
Demonizing? He said Romney was a fool who sat on both sides of the fence he was using to pretend he was "hard" on foreign affairs. And Obama was right about that. Romney's spine is a windvane.
At that point Putin wasn't President, Medvedev was. It "appeared" Russia was opening up at that time, seeking business accords. Putin's machinations put the kaibosh on that, which came shortly after in Crimea, etc.
How do you Trumptard traitor apologists forget history in so few years? Do you take Trump-branded stupid pills?
" Thursday, October 18, 2018 " "If true there will be serious consequences,” he said. - And nothing was found. I guess you'll have to try harder to equivocate, GOP fraudster.
Last week, the North Carolina Board of Elections, confronted with evidence of widespread election fraud, ordered a new election in North Carolina’s 9th congressional district. Local officials didn’t have much of a choice: both parties agree there was a Republican operation that appears to have engaged in fraudulent and illegal activity.
It was against this backdrop that Donald Trump had very little to say on the subject. On Friday afternoon, a reporter asked the president whether he was prepared to condemn his own party’s election fraud in North Carolina. His answer was a mess.
TRUMP: Well, I condemn any election fraud. And when I look at what’s happened in California with the votes, when I look at what happened – as you know, there was just a case where they found a million fraudulent votes. When I look at what’s happened in Texas –
Q: There haven’t been any cases –
TRUMP: Excuse me. Excuse me. When I look at what’s happened in Texas. When I look at that catastrophe that took place in Florida where the Republican candidates kept getting less and less and less and less. And fortunately, Rick Scott and Ron ended up winning their election, but it was disgraceful what happened there.
So I look at a lot of different places all over the country. I condemn any voter fraud of any kind, whether it’s Democrat or Republican – or when you look at some of the things that happened in California, in particular. When you look at what’s happened in Texas with all of those votes that they recently found were not exactly properly done, I condemn all of it. And that includes North Carolina, if anything – you know, I guess they’re going to be doing a final report. But I’d like to see the final report. But any form of election fraud, I condemn.
If we were to rank Trump’s lies on an offensiveness scale, his ridiculous claims about election fraud would have to be among the most exasperating.
Let’s take these one at a time:
* There is literally no evidence to support the assertion that a million illegal ballots were cast in California. It’s absurd. There’s a right-wing Facebook post that’s circulating among conspiracy theorists that apparently served as the basis for the presidential nonsense, but there’s no reason anyone should take it seriously.
* Trump’s reference to “what’s happened in Texas” is likely about the Texas secretary of state’s office alleging that roughly 95,000 non-citizens may be on the state’s voter rolls. It soon became obvious that the list included naturalized citizens, and the whole initiative quickly became something of a joke.
* The president pointed to election results in Florida, where his far-right allies prevailed, but where their margins shrunk as more votes were tallied. Trump considers this “disgraceful.” In reality, the only “disgrace” is the voter purge Rick Scott’s (R) administration orchestrated ahead of the election, and the evidence that suggests Bill Nelson (D) would’ve been in a position to win were it not for incompetent election management in Broward County.
But as important as these details are, they’re only part of the larger problem with Trump’s rhetoric on Friday.
Confronted with actual evidence of his party engaging in election fraud, Trump quickly tried to change the subject to voter fraud, pointing to examples that are fictional.
It wasn’t just a matter of partisan convenience: the president needs the public to believe voter fraud (which isn’t the same thing as election fraud) is a real scou
There's nothing illegal about either contributions or speaking fees if there's no actual quid pro quo, as there was apparently not in the Uranium One deal, which involved no fewer than 12 government agency sign-offs on the merits.
That's obviously quite different than Trump now facing over 200 felonies in 48 states for his fraudulent charity operation, fraudulent University program, unpaid illegal laborer recruitment, and collusion with Russian Intel to sabotage 2016 elections.
When Trump dies in prison maybe you'll understand how these are not equivocal, but I doubt it. Your head is wedged in there pretty good, if you fart you could blow your brains competely out. Hold it in, gassy GOP traitor.
The rope is coming, hang in there.
What 200 felonies? Really?
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
US Army had to interfere with the internet traffic so to avoid Americans not to enter into discord due to fake news. It is presented as a good thing that just happened. Americans lost any little left discerning capabality and now the military is tasked with protecting their thoughts. We are at the bottom already.
Proxies take time and resources to set up, which is likely why the disruption happened on election day and not weeks before, so they wouldn't have time to respond.
Support Right To Repair Legislation.
The problem isn't the Russians or Facebook. It's the lot of us stupid Americans. Seriously, what's the difference whether the propaganda comes from the Russians or the major parties? If it is a Democrat or Republican spewing crap we call it a "debate," but if it is another country, we call it a felony?
what's the difference whether the propaganda comes from the Russians or the major parties?
It is both.
A bunch of senators in one of the major parties is on Russian payroll.
So it isn't really a difference. The Russian propaganda comes from one of the major parties.
The funny thing is how cheap it is to buy people.
You just have to pay them for some small thing once, then they are on the hook and have to keep following your bidding to make you not expose them.
Actually, if you look it up, the relevant excerpt is: [The Special Counsel is authorized to conduct an investigation into..]
So, yeah, whatever conspiracies the president and his team joined with Russia against the USA, fall under Mueller's authorization. And also, any other crimes that you uncover while taking to witnesses or seizing evidence, which have turned out to be many. So the president's crimes, his family's crimes and his campaign staff crimes are all fair game. Trump failed to compartmentalize his criminal enterprises. Even John Gotti was a smarter crook than this fuckwit. Trump needs to watch Kansas City Confidential and Reservoir Dogs, not just Sicario.
As you can see now, they're only interested in all the illegal acts. It was never about "collusion," since the investigations had already moved far beyond that, even before Mueller was appointed.
Apparently Mueller is one of those Republican cops, who all think that if you shoot your rifle at someone and miss, you'll still be charged with assault or attempted murder. The Democrats have totally failed to get through to him. All the fucker seems to care about is fighting crime.
(I think what's confusing you is that you've forgotten Trump's motive. Why did he conspire against America? The answer: he did it for the money. He did it to steal from America, and also to take bribes from foreign government to influence the Us government to do things for them instead of us, in any situations where our interests conflict with other countries'. He did it to help him commit further crimes against you and me. So nobody really cares whether or not Russia's help was effective. He conspired to attack America for profitable reasons, so he's going to eventually be prosecuted for the conspiracy.)
Yes. Even us non-Democrats agree to that. See item (b)(ii) and (c) above. Since so many of Trump's staff and family have committed other crimes in the attempt to cover up the conspiracy, and since they were so easily caught, they've given Mueller a gift to use, to roll them up. (Crooks don't usually make things this easy, but Mueller was fortunate to be charged with investigating some unusually stupid crooks.) The conspiracy with the Russians against America is Mueller's end game. Whether those charges will be the final charges he files, we don't know. But it's the main act, and everyone is looking forward to it. (The problem, of course, is that the president himself is one of the criminal conspirators, and sending presidents to prison is hard.)
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
Not GRU? Still got Bear?
U.S. Cyber Command went up against an oligarch and not the GRU?
Notice the magical way classified information gets to the media?
Why are we reading about classified information in real time?
If it was a real NSA mission that would stay secret for decades.
So historian would mention an accept of such a mission it in 40-50 years with approval.
No US gov/mil would tell any other nation of how it likes to do its cyber and what was done.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
So "Russian owned" Trump gives Cyber Command authority to take out Russians during mid-terms?
Cunning Russian, that Trump. Get Moose and Squirrel on the case.
Even under the most extreme theory of Trump being a Russian agent and his inner circle being in direct collaboration with Moscow he still doesn't have a lot of Pro-Russia allies in Washington.
If he didn't grant them additional capabilities a more aggressive congressional bill probably would have shown up on his desk.
And once the Cyber Command exists it's going to do it's thing. Trump couldn't appoint pro-Russia leadership even if he wanted to.
I stole this Sig
He believe he is intelligent, so he is excused.
That's some mighty fine cybering.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
And he's doing all this at the spry young age of 101... Uh huh. /s
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