Donald Trump has invited Vladimir Putin to the White House. Again.

Let's be best friends. You can even come for a sleep over.

Courtesy of Reuters:  

U.S. President Donald Trump invited his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin to the United States during a phone call, and said he would be glad to see Putin in the White House, RIA Novosti reported on Friday, citing the Russian Foreign Ministry.

The news agency quoted Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov as saying Trump returned to the subject of an invitation a couple of times during a call last month and that Russia was now expecting Trump to formalize the invitation. 

“We proceed from the fact that the U.S. president in a telephone conversation...made such an invitation, said he would be glad to see (Putin) in the White House, would then be glad to meet on a reciprocal visit,” said Lavrov, according to a transcript of an interview with RIA on the foreign ministry website. 

“He returned to this topic a couple of times, so we let our American colleagues know that we do not want to impose, but we also do not want to be impolite, and that considering that President Trump made this proposal, we proceed from the position that he will make it concrete.”

Well so much for Trump suddenly getting tough on Putin.

You may remember that trump made this same offer almost exactly a month ago, and for all we know he has made it several times in between.

Of course since then there have been more cyber attacks from Russia, and of course this whole Syria airstrike Kabuki performance.

Let's simply point out once again that Trump is Putin's bitch, and he proves it almost every single day.

The State Department has used NONE of the money that it was allocated to fight the Russian cyber attacks. Go ahead, act surprised.

Courtesy of the New York Times:

As Russia’s virtual war against the United States continues unabated with the midterm elections approaching, the State Department has yet to spend any of the $120 million it has been allocated since late 2016 to counter foreign efforts to meddle in elections or sow distrust in democracy. 

As a result, not one of the 23 analysts working in the department’s Global Engagement Center — which has been tasked with countering Moscow’s disinformation campaign — speaks Russian, and a department hiring freeze has hindered efforts to recruit the computer experts needed to track the Russian efforts. 

The delay is just one symptom of the largely passive response to the Russian interference by President Trump, who has made little if any public effort to rally the nation to confront Moscow and defend democratic institutions. 

As if you needed ANY more evidence that Donald Trump is a Russian agent.

This also reinforces the New Yorker article about the Kremlin's influence in Trump's decision to choose Rex Tillerson as his Secretary of State.

Just not sure that Mitt Romney would have been so willing to play along with this.

NSA Chief says that Donald Trump STILL has not directed them to protect the country from the Russian cyber threat.

WATCH: NSA Director Rogers on Russian cyberattacks: "I believe that President Putin has clearly come to the conclusion there's little price to pay here, and that therefore I can continue this activity." pic.twitter.com/3c5gGLvrAS

— NBC News (@NBCNews) February 27, 2018

Courtesy of CNN: 

US Cyber Command chief Adm. Mike Rogers told lawmakers on Tuesday that he has not been granted the authority by President Donald Trump to disrupt Russian election hacking operations where they originate. 

Asked by Democratic Sen. Jack Reed if he has been directed by the President, through the defense secretary, to confront Russian cyber operators, Rogers said "no I have not" but noted that he has tried to work within the authority he maintains as a commander.

While he did not agree with Reed's characterization that the US has been "sitting back and waiting," Rogers admitted that it is fair to say that "we have not opted to engage in some of the same behaviors we are seeing" with regards to Russia. 

"It has not changed the calculus or the behavior on behalf of the Russians," Rogers said about the US response to Russia's cyber threat to date. 

"They have not paid a price that is sufficient to change their behavior," he added.

In other words we have not adopted any of the same aggressive tactics that Sweden utilized recently, and let's keep in mind that WE were actually attacked and the outcome of our last election possibly altered.

I am going to say it again, and I might actually say it every day until somebody listens, the ONLY reason the leader of our country would not to take steps to protect ourselves from foreign interference is because that interference is beneficial to the leader of our country.

And once again for the slow kids, THAT IS TREASON!

Pentagon considering a possible nuclear response to the next cyber attack. WTF?

Courtesy of HuffPo: 

The Pentagon is reportedly pushing a new retaliation tactic should the U.S. ever be hit by a devastating cyberattack: America could nuke the culprit. 

The New York Times reported Tuesday that a pre-decisional draft of the Defense Department’s 2018 Nuclear Posture Review, which details U.S. nuclear strategy, includes “large cyberattacks” as an example of a non-nuclear strike on American lives and infrastructure that could be countered with nuclear weapons. 

“Three current and former senior government officials said large cyberattacks against the United States and its interests would be included in the kinds of foreign aggression that could justify a nuclear response,” the Times wrote of the new strategy. The officials stressed, however, that “other, more conventional options for retaliation” could also be used in response to a cyberattack. 

The Nuclear Posture Review, or NPR, was commissioned last year by President Donald Trump and is currently being reviewed by the White House. It will need the president’s approval before it’s made final.

No, no, no, no, no!!!

As much as I want there to be a more robust response to the next cyber attack you cannot kill potentially millions of innocent people becasue their government is hacking our email accounts.

Nuclear weapons are the final deterrent, NOT the opening salvo in response to an attack.

Especially a non-lethal cyber attack.

Besides who believes that Putin's puppet would actually allow this response to a Russian attack, which is the most likely?

And while the Pentagon is apparently losing its collective mind, the Trump Administration has still done virtually nothing to defend us against the next online attack from our enemies.

While the Trump Administration stands idly by Russian hackers threaten, not just our information, but also our very infrastructure.

Courtesy of Fast Company:  

On June 13, 2017, Attorney General Jeff Sessions testified to the Senate Intelligence committee about Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. After fielding hours of questions about his knowledge of the plot, Sessions was greeted by an abrupt change in topic from Senator John McCain. “Quietly, the Kremlin has been trying to map the United States telecommunications infrastructure,” McCain announced, and described a series of alarming moves, including Russian spies monitoring the fiber optic network in Kansas and Russia’s creation of “a cyber weapon that can disrupt the United States power grids and telecommunications infrastructure.” 

When McCain asked if Sessions had a strategy to counter Russia’s attacks, Sessions admitted they did not. 

In a normal year, McCain’s inquiries about documented, dangerous threats to U.S. infrastructure would have dominated the news. His concerns are well founded: in recent years, Ukraine’s power grid has been repeatedly hacked in what cybersecurity experts believe was part a test run for the United States. Russian hackers have also hacked many centers of U.S. power, including the State Department, the White House, and everyone with a Yahoo email address in 2014, the Department of Defense in 2015, and, of course, the Democratic National Committee, Republican National Committee, state and local voter databases, and personal email accounts of various US officials in 2016. 

But while the role of hacks in the election is the subject of several ongoing probes, the hacks of other U.S. institutions and infrastructures have been largely ignored by the Trump administration, even as the hacking became more aggressive throughout 2017. In June, shortly after McCain’s testimony, the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI released an urgent joint report stating that U.S. nuclear power stations and other energy facilities had been hacked. In July, Bloomberg and the Washington Post confirmed that the hackers worked for the Russian government. 

While U.S. government officials stressed that the public was not yet at serious risk, claiming the hackers had not yet gained the ability to control the grid, intelligence officers warned that infrastructure attacks by a hostile state can also operate as a form of political leverage. Most analyses of the 2016 election hacks have framed leverage in personal terms: kompromat stolen from hacked emails used to blackmail individuals into submission or to humiliate officials as part of a propaganda campaign. Less examined is the form of leverage McCain raised at the Sessions hearing: the possibility of vital infrastructure, like the power grid, being crippled, potentially causing massive financial and humanitarian consequences. In this formulation, an entire government could ostensibly be held hostage to another government’s whim out of fear of triggering a cataclysmic attack.

You know if I were Putin, I would try to get an agent into a position of high authority who could be guaranteed to look the other way while I worked on crippling America.

I am not sure who that might look like...

...but I have a fairly good idea.

So my question is what are the Republicans, who are currently just standing around with their thumbs up their butt, going to say in their defense when one of these cyber attacks takes down part of our power grid, or shuts down the monitoring systems on a nuclear plant, or blocks communication between the tower and planes approaching an airport?

Sorry?

Jailed Russian cyber criminal claims that he was the one who hacked the DNC on orders from the Kremlin, and that he can prove it.

Courtesy of McClatchy:

A jailed Russian who says he hacked into the Democratic National Committee computers on the Kremlin’s orders to steal emails released during the 2016 U.S. presidential election campaign now claims he left behind a data signature to prove his assertion. 

In an interview with Russia’s RAIN television channel made public Wednesday, Konstantin Kozlovsky provided further details about what he said was a hacking operation led by the Russian intelligence agency known by its initials FSB. Among them, Kozlovsky said he worked with the FSB to develop computer viruses that were first tested on large, unsuspecting Russian companies, such as the oil giant Rosneft, later turning them loose on multinational corporations.

In written answers from jail made public Wednesday by RAIN TV, a Moscow-based independent TV station that has repeatedly run afoul of the Kremlin, Kozlovsky said he feared his minders might turn on him and planted a “poison pill” during the DNC hack. He placed a string of numbers that are his Russian passport number and the number of his visa to visit the Caribbean island of St. Martin in a hidden .dat file, which is a generic data file. 

That allegation is difficult to prove, partly because of the limited universe of people who have seen the details of the hack. The DNC initially did not share information with the FBI, instead hiring a tech firm called CrowdStrike, run by a former FBI cyber leader. That company has said it discovered the Russian hand in the hacking, but had no immediate comment on the claim by Kozlovsky that he planted an identifier. 

The newest allegations are potentially significant. If the FSB did in fact direct Kozlovsky, then it debunks Russian President Vladimir Putin’s assertion that his government had nothing to do with hacking that all major U.S. intelligence agencies put at his feet. It also calls into question the view of a hack that was conducted as a closely held, organized FSB campaign directed from central offices. Kozlovsky says he worked largely from home, with limited knowledge of others and that the political hack was just part of larger relationship with the FSB’s top cyber officials on viruses directed at other countries and the private sector. 

“Based on my experience and understanding of professional intelligence operations, the blending of criminal activity with sanctioned intelligence operations is an old page out of the Russian intelligence-services playbook,” said Leo Taddeo, chief information security officer for Cyxtera Technologies and a former head of cyber operations in the FBI’s New York office. “What the defendant (in Russia) is describing would not be inconsistent with past Russian intelligence operations.”

I would guess that certain intelligence agencies here in America could confirm this "data signature," and once that was accomplished this individual might prove to be a valuable asset for investigators.

It has already been well established that the FSB ordered this attack. But finding out how they did it, and who specially oversaw the operation could help to prevent the next one.

Assuming of course that the now Trump led American law enforcement and intelligence services are interested in preventing the next one.

The Washington Post reminds us that rather than Russia pulling back on their trolling of America, they have in fact stepped it up.

Courtesy of WaPo: 

Russia’s information operations tactics since the election are more numerous than can be listed here. But to get a sense of the breadth of Russian activity, consider the messaging spread by Kremlin-oriented accounts on Twitter, which cybersecurity and disinformation experts have tracked as part of the German Marshall Fund’s Alliance for Securing Democracy. 

In a single week this month, Moscow used these accounts to discredit the FBI after it was revealed that an agent had been demoted for sending anti-Donald Trump texts; to attack ABC News for an erroneous report involving President Trump and Michael Flynn, the former national security adviser; to critique the Obama administration for allegedly “green lighting” the communication between Flynn and then-Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak; and to warn about violence by immigrants after a jury acquitted an undocumented Mexican accused of murdering a San Francisco woman. 

This continues a pattern of similar activity over the past year. Russian operatives have frequently targeted Republican politicians who have been critical of Trump, including Sen. Jeff Flake (Ariz.), Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (S.C.) and Sen. Bob Corker (Tenn.). In September, they also attacked Sen. John McCain (Ariz.) after his decisive “no” vote against the Republican health-care bill. 

And in mid-November, after Keurig pulled its advertising from Sean Hannity’s Fox News show for comments the host made defending Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore, the Russians used their social media accounts to urge a boycott of the company. For two days, #boycottkeurig was the most used hashtag among Kremlin-influenced Twitter accounts. This was a Russian attack on a U.S. company and on our economy.

WaPo also points out that other countries are starting to follow Russia's lead with troll attacks of thier own.

There was a plan in place defend us against all of this, but that got pushed aside once the Trump Administration took power.

Gee I wonder why?

Essentially we are sitting ducks, and since the guy who is supposed to protect us is currently sharing the duck blind with our attackers there is not a lot we can do about it.

The FBI failed to notify scores of Americans that they were being targeted by Russian hackers.

Courtesy of the AP: 

The FBI failed to notify scores of U.S. officials that Russian hackers were trying to break into their personal Gmail accounts despite having evidence for at least a year that the targets were in the Kremlin’s crosshairs, The Associated Press has found. 

Nearly 80 interviews with Americans targeted by Fancy Bear, a Russian government-aligned cyberespionage group, turned up only two cases in which the FBI had provided a heads-up. Even senior policymakers discovered they were targets only when the AP told them, a situation some described as bizarre and dispiriting. 

“It’s utterly confounding,” said Philip Reiner, a former senior director at the National Security Council, who was notified by the AP that he was targeted in 2015. “You’ve got to tell your people. You’ve got to protect your people.” 

The FBI declined to discuss its investigation into Fancy Bear’s spying campaign, but did provide a statement that said in part: “The FBI routinely notifies individuals and organizations of potential threat information.” 

Three people familiar with the matter — including a current and a former government official — said the FBI has known for more than a year the details of Fancy Bear’s attempts to break into Gmail inboxes. A senior FBI official, who was not authorized to publicly discuss the hacking operation because of its sensitivity, declined to comment on when it received the target list, but said that the bureau was overwhelmed by the sheer number of attempted hacks. 

“It’s a matter of triaging to the best of our ability the volume of the targets who are out there,” he said.

The AP did its own investigation and identified 19,000 lines of targeting data and over 500 organizations and people who were in the cross-hairs.

It might have been helpful for these people to know that they were being targeted, as they could have taken precautions that might have helped to curtail the attacks.

I consider myself to be a low level target, yet I have been inundated with phishing attempts for well over two years, and they continue today.

According to Russian news agency Trump Administration and Kremlin continue plans to form joint cyber security unit.

Courtesy of CNBC: 

Moscow and Washington are in talks to create a joint cyber security working group, Russia's RIA news agency reported on Thursday, citing Andrey Krutskikh, a special presidential envoy on cybersecurity. 

U.S. President Donald Trump said earlier this month he had discussed the idea of creating such a group with President Vladimir Putin at a summit of the Group of 20 nations in Hamburg, Germany. 

But the idea was greeted with incredulity by some senior Republicans who said Moscow could not be trusted - and the U.S. president later tweeted that he did not think it could happen. 

"The talks are underway ... different proposals are being exchanged, nobody denies the necessity of holding the talks and of having such contacts," Krutskikh said, according to RIA. 

Svetlana Lukash, a Russian official who was at the Hamburg summit, said earlier this month that the two presidents had agreed to discuss cyber security questions, either via the United Nations or as part of a working group.

Okay so this is a Russian news agency so the first thing you think is "take it with a grain of salt."

And that is always a good idea, however also keep in mind that the Russian news agencies have reported on a number of things kept from the US press, such as that meeting with the Russian agents in the White House for instance.

Besides Trump seemed to be perfectly fine with the idea before he was lambasted by his fellow conservatives. But seriously, why would we think that any of that would have changed his mind?

Speaking of news coming out of Russia, there is also a report that Trump had more meetings with Putin than the two we have learned of thus far: 

President Trump may have held more meetings with Russian President Vladimir Putin at the Group of 20 (G-20) summit earlier this month, Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in an interview published Friday. (Lavrov you might remember was one of the Russian agents that Trump invited into the White House.)

“They might have met even much more than just three times,” Lavrov told NBC News. 

Lavrov did not deny the possibility of additional meetings but did dismiss the importance of the encounters, comparing it to children interacting at a kindergarten. 

“When you are bought by your parents to a kindergarten do you mix with the people who are waiting in the same room to start going to a classroom?” he asked.

Wait, "There might have been much more than three?" When did we hear there were three?

So the American media was left in the dark about multiple meetings, but the Russians know all about them?

Well that certainly does not give you any confidence that the idea of a joint cyber security unit is out of the question, now does it?

Now that Putin's puppet is in place America is busy jumping through Russia's hoops.

Courtesy of WaPo: 

President Trump has decided to end the CIA’s covert program to arm and train moderate Syrian rebels battling the government of Bashar al-Assad, a move long sought by Russia, according to U.S. officials. 

The program was a central plank of a policy begun by the Obama administration in 2013 to put pressure on Assad to step aside, but even its backers have questioned its efficacy since Russia deployed forces in Syria two years later. Officials said the phasing out of the secret program reflects Trump’s interest in finding ways to work with Russia, which saw the anti-Assad program as an assault on its interests. 

The shuttering of the program is also an acknowledgment of Washington’s limited leverage and desire to remove Assad from power.

Officials said Trump made the decision to scrap the CIA program nearly a month ago, after an Oval Office meeting with CIA Director Mike Pompeo and national security adviser H.R. McMaster ahead of a July 7 meeting in Germany with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

If that were not troubling enough, we also have this bit of troubling news, courtesy of Bloomberg: 

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is shutting down an office that coordinates cyber issues with other countries, according to two people familiar with the plan, in a move that critics said will diminish the U.S. voice in confronting hackers. 

The Office of the Coordinator for Cyber Issues, established under President Barack Obama in 2011, will be folded into the State Department’s Bureau of Economic and Business Affairs, according to the people, who asked not to be identified in advance of an announcement. The coordinator will no longer report directly to the secretary of state, going instead through the bureau’s chain of command as Tillerson pushes ahead with a department-wide reorganization, they said. 

“It’s taking an issue that’s preeminent and putting it inside a backwater within the State Department,” said Robert Knake, a senior fellow for cybersecurity at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington who was director of cybersecurity policy at the National Security Council under Obama. “Position to power matters both within the U.S. government and within the international community.”

If somebody actually believe this move will help protect us from the next cyber attack, or that it is NOT playing right into the hands of the Kremlin, then they have not been paying attention at all.

As far as I am concerned Tillerson is likely just as compromised as Donald Trump and allowing him oversight of this crucial government department is like putting the fox in charge of guarding the door to the hen house.

These are of course only a few of the things that Putin clearly demanded of Trump, and the Russian government has now become so used to getting their way in Washington that when there is a hiccup they get pissed off.

Courtesy of the LA Times:  

Russia said Tuesday that it is losing patience over the return of properties that the United States seized as penalty for Moscow's election interference, as tense talks between the two countries have yielded no resolution. 

In Moscow, officials threatened to take "retaliatory measures" if the United States continued to "hinder" their government's diplomatic mission, and the spokesman for President Vladimir Putin said the Kremlin's patience "is expiring." 

"We are still counting on the reasonableness of our American counterparts to at least bring the situation into the legal framework in accordance with the international law," said the spokesman, Dmitry Peskov.

To be clear the Russian government has done NOTHING to deserve the return of these compounds, which were taken from them in response to their very aggressive interference in our last presidential election, for which they have not yet even admitted responsibility, and yet they feel empowered to make threats? 

Let's face it if America were one of Trump's casinos the roulette wheel would be rigged to land on whatever number Putin picked and the slot machine would pay off for every Russian's pull of handle.

Donald Trump announces a joint cyber security unit with Russia, before retracting it, on the same day.

Putin & I discussed forming an impenetrable Cyber Security unit so that election hacking, & many other negative things, will be guarded..

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 9, 2017

So that was Trump's unbelievable announcement yesterday.

Which as we know received an incredulous response from the media and an angry backlash from many Democratic and Republican lawmakers.

So then in response Trump tweeted this out later in the evening.

The fact that President Putin and I discussed a Cyber Security unit doesn't mean I think it can happen. It can't-but a ceasefire can,& did!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 10, 2017

So wait, Trump announced the creation of a cyber security unit that he always knew could never happen?

Do the Russians know this can never happen?

Well not exactly:  

Asked about Trump’s comments, a Russian official told reporters on Monday that while there might not be a formal task force, the two leaders “reached an agreement” to coordinate more on cybersecurity.

Okay so no task force, but we are still coordinating with the Russians on cyber security?

Does that seem like a distinction without a difference to anybody else?

Former NATO Ambassador finds it "dismaying and objectionable" that Donald Trump "continues to deny the undeniable" when it comes to the Russian cyber attack.

Fmr NATO Ambassador Nicholas Burns: "I find it dismaying and objectionable that President Trump continues to deny the undeniable..." #Russia pic.twitter.com/U443XHjJWS

— CSPAN (@cspan) June 28, 2017

Oh I like him!

This was testimony provided today during a hearing before the Senate Intelligence Committee during a hearing focused mainly on Russian interference with elections in Europe.

In other Russian interference news today we learned that the Intelligence Committee has struck a deal to their hands on those Comey memos.

And what has Donald Trump been doing while all of this is going on?

Well he is going on his Instagram page to share those heavily edited videos which claim that a CNN producer admitted that CNN's Russian investigation is a witch hunt.

Video 1 of 2: #CNN is #FakeNews. The video via #ProjectVeritas that EVERYONE is talking about!

A post shared by President Donald J. Trump (@realdonaldtrump) on Jun 28, 2017 at 9:48am PDT

Video 2 of 2: #CNN is #FakeNews. The video via #ProjectVeritas that EVERYONE is talking about!

A post shared by President Donald J. Trump (@realdonaldtrump) on Jun 28, 2017 at 9:51am PDT

It should be pointed out that these videos have not been vetted by other news outlets, and that this Project Veritas is the work of James O'Keefe who famously used deceptively edited videos to attack ACORN, which resulted in their closure.

Here is how the Washington Post reported on the videos:  

The latest video was apparently shot earlier this month using a hidden camera by a man having a private conversation with Bonfield, who is not involved in political coverage, catching him making several off-the-cuff remarks.

Yet the video includes several journalistic evasions and shortcuts that would likely elicit outrage from critics if a mainstream news organization had employed the same techniques. 

For example, it never mentions that Bonifield is a producer of health and medical stories, raising questions about how relevant his views are, and how informed he is, about CNN’s political coverage. It also doesn’t disclose that he is based in Atlanta — not in Washington or New York, where most of CNN’s coverage of national affairs and politics are produced. 

Instead, the video identifies him a “supervising producer,” suggesting a senior decision-making role. O’Keefe, who appears on the video as a kind of master of ceremonies, furthers this impression by saying the footage describes “the real motivation behind our dominant media organizations.” 

But CNN said Bonifield speaks only for himself. In a statement, it said stood by him and that “diversity of personal opinion is what makes CNN strong. We welcome it and embrace it.” 

The network said it had no plans to take any disciplinary action. The video also doesn’t identify the man to whom Bonifield is speaking, nor does it provide any clue about how he came to record Bonifield.

So in other words this is a CNN employee, who does not work nor have any real knowledge of the Russia investigation, sharing his personal opinion on what is very likely a heavily edited video created by an organization famous for misrepresenting the truth.

RT of course reported this as one of their top stories.

The takeaway from all of this is that while numerous investigations into Russian interference continue forward, the man who is supposed to be keeping this country safe from such attacks, is doing nothing to project us from the next one, and is instead sharing what is most probably fake news in an attempt to shut down at least one of the journalistic investigations.

Can you say "Acting guilty?"

By the way, according to Mother Jones we already have plenty of evidence that Trump is guilty of aiding Putin's attack on America.

Many American companies are bowing to pressure from Russia to give up their cyber security secrets. They do realize that Russia used stolen data to hack the election right?

Courtesy of Reuters:  

Western technology companies, including Cisco, IBM and SAP, are acceding to demands by Moscow for access to closely guarded product security secrets, at a time when Russia has been accused of a growing number of cyber attacks on the West, a Reuters investigation has found. 

Russian authorities are asking Western tech companies to allow them to review source code for security products such as firewalls, anti-virus applications and software containing encryption before permitting the products to be imported and sold in the country. The requests, which have increased since 2014, are ostensibly done to ensure foreign spy agencies have not hidden any "backdoors" that would allow them to burrow into Russian systems. 

But those inspections also provide the Russians an opportunity to find vulnerabilities in the products' source code - instructions that control the basic operations of computer equipment - current and former U.S. officials and security experts said.

U.S. officials say they have warned firms about the risks of allowing the Russians to review their products' source code, because of fears it could be used in cyber attacks. But they say they have no legal authority to stop the practice unless the technology has restricted military applications or violates U.S. sanctions.

Look I understand that businesses are concerned about their bottom line, and opening up new opportunities in new markets is very seductive, but based on what just happened in 2016 this seems incredibly naive.  

I'm sorry let me take that back because naive simply does not cover it.

Volunteering this information is FUCKING STUPID!

The Russians are clearly collecting information in order to find weaknesses in America's cyber security systems, and these companies are simply handing it over to them without a fight.

Having successfully undermined our democracy, Russia continues hacking attempts against American political organizations.

Wait, you thought I would stop? Why would I stop?

Courtesy of CNN: 

Russian cyberhacking activity has continued largely unabated since the November election, including against US political organizations, US officials briefed on the investigation told CNN on Thursday. 

Among the attempted cyber breaches are phishing attempts targeting Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton's campaign, one official says. The attempt to breach the Clinton campaign was unsuccessful, investigators tell CNN. 

The attempts appear to trace back to some of the same Russian hackers behind the breaches of Democratic Party organizations in the past year, one official said. The FBI has expanded its ongoing probe of Russian hacks to include the more recent attempts. 

Russians "continue to do all kinds of stuff" against American political organizations, think tanks and thought leaders another US official said.

So apparently President Obama's threats to Vladimir Putin fell on deaf ears, and why wouldn't they?

After all his threats mean next to nothing since in no time Putin's puppet will be the decider who chooses how America will respond to this cyber terrorism, and do any of us really believe he will do ANYTHING to stop it?

Why would he?

After all he owes his newfound power to the Russian hackers.

If anything I would expect him to reward them with the Presidential Medal of Freedom for handing the country to him on a silver platter.

Agency that certifies voting machines admits they were hacked. That is the "agency that certifies voting machines."

Courtesy of Buzzfeed: 

The government organization that oversees the integrity of voting machines and election administration databases was hacked, according to a report released Thursday. 

Recorded Future, a Boston-based cybersecurity company, identified a hacker by the pseudonym Rasputin who stole login information from the US Election Assistance Commission (EAC) and offered it for sale.

According to the report, Rasputin was in ongoing negotiations to sell 100 login credentials, some with the most powerful administrative privileges over the EAC’s databases, to a Middle Eastern government broker for several thousand dollars. Recorded Future does not believe Rasputin was sponsored by a foreign government.  (Yeah being named after a famous Russian mystic is NO indication that the Russian government is involved or anything.)

Whether the hack could delegitimize the results of the election is difficult to say. Levi Gundert, a researcher with Recorded Future, told BuzzFeed News, “We don’t know when the initial compromise occurred or how long the hacker had access, but it wouldn’t appear that those credentials would have the ability to materially impact the election.”

That last part is not exactly comforting since it is followed by this statement:

The EAC’s database also includes the specifications of electronic voting like where and which companies manufacture them or where they are in the process of security certification, Gundert said. US adversaries could use as advance knowledge to interfere with US elections. 

Because of other vulnerabilities in the EAC’s system, it is possible that the full extent of the hack is not fully known, according to the report.

So is there proof that this hack might have undermined our election?

Oh, we don't know.

Did the hack give them access to information that MIGHT have undermined our election?

Oh hell yeah!

Yeah, that puts my mind right at ease. 

NSA chief states unequivocally that Wikileaks helped "a nation state" influence the presidential election.

"A conscious effort by a nation-state to attempt to achieve a specific effect" NSA chief on WikiLeaks https://t.co/kvmrTyVE30 #WSJCEOCouncil pic.twitter.com/AT2pxK2ROR

— Wall Street Journal (@WSJ) November 15, 2016

Courtesy of Quartz:

The head of the US’s National Security Agency said Nov. 15 that a “nation-state” consciously targeted presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, in order to affect the US election. 

In response to a question, Michael S. Rogers, a Naval officer and NSA director since 2014, said on stage at a Wall Street Journal conference that Wikileaks was furthering a nation-state’s goals by publishing hacked emails from the Democratic National Committee and Clinton’s presidential campaign weeks ahead of the election. 

“There shouldn’t be any doubt in anybody’s minds, this was not something that was done casually, this was not something that was done by chance, this was not a target that was selected purely arbitrarily. This was a conscious effort by a nation-state to attempt to achieve a specific effect,” he said.

Rogers did not name the nation-state in question, nor elaborate on the effect it sought, but he didn’t have to.

This, this is what we should all be focusing on right now.

Donald Trump did NOT win this election.

He allowed, or perhaps encouraged, the Russian government and Wikileaks to steal it for him.

Not only that but for reasons which are currently a little fuzzy right now, the FBI also participated in this, let's face it, act of cyber terrorism.

Now the only question remaining is what are we going to do about it?

Hackers may have stopped the Christmas release of "The Interview" but human rights activists are going to make sure that North Koreans still get a chance to see it. Using balloons even.

Courtesy The Hollywood Reporter:

 Whether or not North Korea is behind the Sony hack, Kim Jong Un better brace himself because The Interview is headed to his country. Human rights activists are planning to airlift DVDs of the Seth Rogen comedy into the country via hydrogen balloons. 

Fighters for a Free North Korea, run by Park Sang Hak, a former government propagandist who escaped to South Korea, has for years used balloons to get transistor radios, DVDs and other items into North Korea — not to entertain the deprived masses, but to introduce them to the outside world.

Of course at this point there is no telling when the DVD will be released, but I have a feeling that once it has been that this will be the most popular item on the North Koreans "gifts from the sky" wish list.

Today cable news, newspapers, and websites are all over this news about the Sony hack and the decision to pull The Interview from theaters. In fact it has even knocked the Senate torture report off of the front pages.

I personally do not think this is quite as important, but it IS very important and potentially problematic moving forward.

The idea that a bunch of hackers sitting on their couch eating Cheetos can frighten a wealthy movie studio into stopping the release of a major motion picture  should give all of us pause.

And whether you thought the movie should have been made or not, or that it went too far, is really beside the point. After all how many world leaders, and racial stereotypes, have we killed in American movies over the years.

In the James Bod film "Die Another Day" the bad guys were North Koreans, The same is true for the remake of "Red Dawn," Angelina Jolie's "Salt," and "Olympus Has Fallen."

In that last film by the way the filmmakers also shot the White House full of holes.

Hell in "Independence Day" the filmmakers blew up the White House altogether, as well as most of the rest of the world, and (Spoiler alert.) even killed the President's wife. (There even exists a "fakeumentary" about the killing of George W. Bush, made in 2006.)

If a movie goes too far, or is in bad taste, that should be reflected in poor sales and bad reviews. And it should not result in threats of terrorist attack or the hacking computers and releasing private information to the public.

Bowing to this kind of pressure is setting a very, very dangerous precedent.

For those who have wondered what all of the fuss is about, here is the scene where Kim Jong-Un is killed.

FBI would like to hire computer experts to help fight cyber crime, if they could only find some that don't smoke pot. Good luck with that.

FBI Director James B. Comey

Courtesy of The Wall Street Journal:  

Monday was a big day for the nation’s cyber police. The Justice Department charged five Chinese military officials with hacking, and brought charges against the creators of powerful hacking software. 

But FBI Director James B. Comey said Monday that if the FBI hopes to continue to keep pace with cyber criminals, the organization may have to loosen up its no-tolerance policy for hiring those who like to smoke marijuana. 

Congress has authorized the FBI to add 2,000 personnel to its rolls this year, and many of those new recruits will be assigned to tackle cyber crimes, a growing priority for the agency. And that’s a problem, Mr. Comey told the White Collar Crime Institute, an annual conference held at the New York City Bar Association in Manhattan. A lot of the nation’s top computer programmers and hacking gurus are also fond of marijuana. 

“I have to hire a great work force to compete with those cyber criminals and some of those kids want to smoke weed on the way to the interview,” Mr. Comey said. 

Mr. Comey said that the agency was “grappling with the question right now” of how to amend the agency’s marijuana policies, which excludes from consideration anyone who has smoked marijuana in the previous three years, according to the FBI’s Web site.

Let's face it, the new methodology for fighting crime in the 21st century, has less to do with marksmanship and kicking in front doors, and more to do with killing viruses and finding the backdoor that leads past computer security systems.

And the people who are best trained to do that are not likely to be a straight arrow, g-man type as played by Efrem Zimbalist Jr. in the old FBI television series and instead be more like this guy.

 In other words our ability to defend ourselves against devastating cyber attacks from Iran, China, and of course Canada, may be put at risk by the idea that marijuana is a dangerous drug like heroin instead of a socially accepted mood modifier like beer.

Chinese cyber attacks and how Edward Snowden became their not so secret weapon.

Courtesy of the New York Post:  

China’s military hackers are back, more brazen than ever. You can thank Edward Snowden. 

A year ago, the Internet security firm Mandiant went public with what cyber-war watchers had known for some time: Unit 61398, a secret branch of the Chinese military, had been behind more than 1,000 cyber attacks on Western targets since 2006. Employing thousands of trained cyber warriors housed in a 12-story building in Shanghai — and backed by an enormous militia of part-time hackers — Unit 61398 had been waging a constant war on foreign banks, infrastructure, defense firms and government agencies, including one spectacular 2007 raid on the Pentagon that shut down 1,500 different Defense Department networks. 

The resulting international sensation forced a reluctant President Obama to confront the Chinese premier on the issue. Beijing issued its usual furious denial — but the attacks stopped and Unit 61398 fell from the headlines. 

But now we know they didn’t stop for long — and the West and the Obama administration are looking as ill-prepared and impotent as ever in dealing with the threat. China’s usual attacks on banks, weapons manufacturers and other juicy targets are now back to almost daily. 

The first big attack came as early as late May, when Chinese hackers raided networks at top US defense firms, swiping information on more than two dozen weapons systems.  

In October, they hit the Federal Electoral Commission, suggesting the People’s Liberation Army is looking at ways to interfere in the US electoral process.

In December, they launched a series of attacks on the foreign ministries of five countries ahead of the G-20 summit, using an infected e-mail attachment that was supposed to provide updates on the Syria crisis. (Not as clever as Unit 61398’s similar 2011 attack, which used an e-mail promising nude photos of then French President Nicholas Sarkozy’s wife, Carla Bruni.)  

The latest outrage came Feb. 11, when evidence revealed Chinese cyber warriors had cracked open the Veterans of Foreign Wars computer system — itself not an obvious security threat, but part of what experts believe was a much broader attack on US military personnel records and files, both past and current. 

Most striking is how bold the attacks have grown. The Chinese are apparently so confident we can’t (or won’t) stop them that they’ve gotten sloppy. Examining hacker codes left behind on US military and commercial networks, Internet-security engineers have been finding bits of code identical to Chinese commercial software sold for export by companies with contracts with the People’s Liberation Army.

What has emboldened the Chinese military hackers?

Well that would be Edward Snowden.  

The Snowden defection back in June was a double gift for China’s hackers (as well as for Russian ones — the State Department even issued a warning that any cellphone or laptop brought to the Sochi Olympics would almost certainly be hacked there, and its passwords stolen). 

The data Snowden brought with him to Hong Kong included a wealth of information about how our intelligence agencies fight and trace hackers, as well as on the NSA’s own hacking efforts in China.

Not only has the information that Snowden carried into China given them the blueprint for how our  data gathering system work, but the fact that we have data gathering systems has allowed China, who hacks into American businesses to sell the information to Chinese businesses, to play the moral equivalency game.

If the US does it, how can they point the finger at us?

Here is more from a Newsweek article from November: 

"Snowden couldn't have played better into China's strategy for protecting its cyber activities if he had been doing it on purpose,'' one American intelligence official says. 

Snowden's revelations quickly veered away from what he called the NSA's "domestic surveillance state" to overseas espionage by the United States. After fleeing to Hong Kong, he provided local reporters with NSA documents and told them the United States was hacking major Chinese telecommunications companies, a Beijing university and the corporate owner of the region's most extensive fiber-optic submarine cable network. That information, government officials and industry experts say, is now used by the Chinese to deflect criticisms of their hacking, both in meetings with the administration and at cyber security conferences.

The activities of the two sides, however, are vastly different in scope and intent. The United States engages in widespread electronic espionage, but that classified information cannot legally be handed over to private industry. China is using its surveillance to steal trade secrets, harm international competitors and undermine American businesses.

In Snowden's zeal to be the next Daniel Ellsberg he has instead become perhaps the worst American traitor since Aldrich Ames.

If Snowden had released his information to journalists here in the country, and kept the stolen data within American borders, he could rightfully be called a hero.

But taking such sensitive material out of the country, and reporting on our data gathering process to nations with an adversarial relationship with America, Snowden has not only placed our state secrets in jeopardy, he has also irrevocably damaged out ability to deal with cyber attacks, or hold those who do them accountable.

Did the secret cyber justice group "Anonymous" prevent Karl Rove from stealing the 2012 election? According to them they did. Update!

A few weeks before the election this video was posted on YouTube:

At the time I think many of us took the group's ability to affect the outcome of the election with a grain of salt, even though I think the majority of us also believed that Rove did DID indeed have a plot to steal it away from the President.

Later of course we all witnessed Karl Rove's breakdown on live TV as he slowly came to the realization that SOMETHING had gone awry.

However now Anonymous is stating for a fact that the fix was mostly definitely in, and that THEY were both the reason it did not work, AND the reason for Rove's televised tantrum.

Here is their statement in full:

Click for PDF.

 Now I have no way of checking as to whether this group did what they said they did, but the fact that SOMETHING went wrong with Rove's ORCA program was confirmed in an article for the Atlantic about Obama's "Dream Team" of nerds:  

The billing the Republicans gave the tool confused almost everyone inside the Obama campaign. Narwhal wasn't an app for a smartphone. It was the architecture of the company's sophisticated data operation. Narwhal unified what Obama for America knew about voters, canvassers, event-goers, and phone-bankers, and it did it in real time. From the descriptions of the Romney camp's software that were available then and now, Orca was not even in the same category as Narwhal. It was like touting the iPad as a Facebook killer, or comparing a GPS device to an engine. And besides, in the scheme of a campaign, a digitized strike list is cool, but it's not, like, a gamechanger. It's just a nice thing to have. 

So, it was with more than a hint of schadenfreude that Reed's team hear(d) that Orca crashed early on election day. Later reports posted by rank-and-file volunteers describe chaos descending on the polling locations as only a fraction of the tens of thousands of volunteers organized for the effort were able to use it properly to turn out the vote.

So I will leave it to you to determine whether Anonymous is actually behind Rove's failure, or whether it was simply buried under the weight of high voter turnout for Democrats, or whether Obama's team of nerds simply outsmarted Turdblossom.

However I will say that if Anonymous is being honest, and they DID manage to sabotage this cyber attack on democracy, then I feel they need to immediately share their information with the Justice department, the Democratic party, and the American press. Because if they are right, then our elections are still incredibly vulnerable to this kind of hacking and that needs to be addressed and dealt with just as soon as possible.

Oh and Karl Rove needs to grabbed off the street and thrown into the darkest, coldest, most inhospitable jail cell in this, or any other, country, until his trial for treason. After which I expect to see his bullet riddled carcass dragged through the streets as a warning to ANYBODY who wants to impinge on the rights of America's voters to choose their leaders fairly.

Update: It looks as if Thom Hartmann is pretty convinced that Anonymous did indeed stop Karl Rove.