It is the first known instance of a living witness emerging from the arid mass of technical detail that has so far shaped the investigation into the election hacking and the heated debate it has stirred. The Ukrainian police declined to divulge the man’s name or other details, other than that he is living in Ukraine and has not been arrested.
There is no evidence that Profexer worked, at least knowingly, for Russia’s intelligence services, but his malware apparently did.
That a hacking operation that Washington is convinced was orchestrated by Moscow would obtain malware from a source in Ukraine — perhaps the Kremlin’s most bitter enemy — sheds considerable light on the Russian security services’ modus operandi in what Western intelligence agencies say is their clandestine cyberwar against the United States and Europe.
It does not suggest a compact team of government employees who write all their own code and carry out attacks during office hours in Moscow or St. Petersburg, but rather a far looser enterprise that draws on talent and hacking tools wherever they can be found.
Also emerging from Ukraine is a sharper picture of what the United States believes is a Russian government hacking group known as Advanced Persistent Threat 28 or Fancy Bear. It is this group, which American intelligence agencies believe is operated by Russian military intelligence, that has been blamed, along with a second Russian outfit known as Cozy Bear, for the D.N.C. intrusion.
Rather than training, arming and deploying hackers to carry out a specific mission like just another military unit, Fancy Bear and its twin Cozy Bear have operated more as centers for organization and financing; much of the hard work like coding is outsourced to private and often crime-tainted vendors.
This more or less explains why security experts originally thought Ukraine was involved in the hacking of the DNC.
This Profexer has turned himself into the police in Ukraine and is cooperating fully.
His information is important because he is perhaps the only person who has had direct contact with the Russian hackers who is not either imprisoned or dead.
Well, he is alive *at the moment*. I would not bet on his long term survival, now that he has been detained by the Ukrainian police. Putin will make sure that HE will have a regretful 'accident', or that he will have a convenient 'heart attack'.
ReplyDeleteExactly, 9:18AM, we can bet on it.
DeleteGetting-off the hook:
ReplyDeletePHMSA sets the minimum safety standard for pipelines, and then allows states to enact stricter regulations if they so desire; as such, federal law is inherently crafted to represent the least-common-denominator of safety requirements among pipelines. That, in turn, creates a vague patchwork of federal and state standards which make it difficult not only to preempt spills from happening, but also to hold companies accountable when those spills take place"
https://thinkprogress.org/pipeline-safety-laws-dont-ensure-safety-445906d98f50/
KOCK$UCKER$"bankrolling universities as part of their strategy to bring a conservative worldview to new generations of students. At the same time, the brothers spend millions funding independent think tanks and advocacy groups that work to implement corporate-friendly policies at the federal and state levels."“It’s all the same people. I don’t know if they even try to determine where the ethical boundaries are and whether they are getting taxpayer money from the legislature or whether they are getting money from Charles Koch and whether the output is coming from the university brand or coming from the Strata brand,” he said. “They really don’t seem to care.”Utah State University, a public university, climbed into second place on the list of Koch-funded universities earlier this year when the school accepted a $25 million donation from the Charles Koch Foundation. Prior to the latest donation, the university’s Institute of Political Economy was already receiving large sums from the Kochs." George Mason University, a public university in Virginia, is the largest recipient of Koch funding, earning it the nickname “Koch U.”“The Kochs have extended influence to institutions of higher education, setting up grants at universities to hire professors that teach the Kochs’ anti-tax, anti-regulation business and political philosophies to mold young minds to fall in step with the Kochs’ industrial wishes going forward through the 21st century,” Salt Lake Tribune columnist Paul Rolly wrote in 2016."Strata Policy describes itself as the “premier research hub on environmental, energy, and public land issues.” The Institute of Political Economy focuses on similar energy and environmental issues. Both entities have advocated against renewable portfolio standards in states, published anti-renewable energy reports, and sent Utah State University professors to testify in states against renewable energy."
ReplyDeletehttps://thinkprogress.org/kochs-fund-energy-think-tanks-in-utah-482ab143e66d/
Coming>President Orin Hatch-et-man
He just jumped to #1 on Putin's hit list.
ReplyDeleteI don't give him much of a chance of surviving. Certainly not if he stays in Ukraine. Only slightly better if he manages to leave the country.
He better get his testimony recorded and dispersed widely before they take him out.