The Chinese have a way of using Economic Warfare in ways that influence other countries to what they want. It got a little bit rediculous when Apple was in a dispute with the Central Goverment over access to its proprietary environment and encryption. People smashed $750 iPhones in public places and boycott U.S businesses because the U.S objects to its businesses giving over technology to the Chinese. National security is all anyone has to say, though we don't all agree with that portrayal.
Now comes another moment in Economic Warfare, this time with the South Korean decision to move ahead with a high-altitude missile interceptor called THAAD. Reuters reports the reaction to another step towards building the missile defense system that could shoot down a North Korean missile as it is launched. China says it fears that such a missile defense system could also reach into China. And.....? The rediculous logic of their concern is blatently apparent. They are not worried about THAAD but they are worried about their North Korean neighbors.
The Chinese like having a lunatic "who cannot be controlled" on their border rattling sabers and threatening the U.S and South Korea. They get to watch what the world does in reaction to this idiocy but they don't get blamed for any of it. Looks like those days are slowly coming to an end.
So, when South Korea decided to release land that is now a golf course to proceed with the preparation for THAAD, the Chinese relay through one of their English-language outlets that Korean cars and cell phones are bad now and people should stop buying them. The official Peoples Daily even said there should be consideration to cutting off diplomatic relations. The drumbeat continues at every stage of preparation for the missile system.
At the same time, the North continues to test missiles and warheads that lead us to conclude that they can build a missile that will threaten not just South Korea, but a good part of the world besides. It is about time the Chinese are held accountable for what goes on in North Korea. Yesterday, the leader was said to have executed five of his advisors for lying to him. They lined them up and shot them with anti-aircraft guns (we can remember the past shooting of military officers with artillery fire) though nobody can imagine why these methods were used. VX gas, a banned substance, was used to assasinate the half-brother of the great leader, which means it was used for effect, not because it was very practical as a killing agent in a public airport. They flaunt this kind of behavior while China sits back and watches, denying all responsibility.
Tuesday, February 28, 2017
Wednesday, February 22, 2017
Finally, CIFIUS
At last something the Republicans and Democrats can agree on - The Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S needs to be strengthened, mostly to get caught up on all the things China has been buying. [see Greater Scrutiny Urged of Chinese Deals in U.S.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/lawmakers-push-for-tighter-scrutiny-of-chinese-investment-in-u-s-1487678403 ].
China has more than a little investment in the United States and last years total was a big number - $46B. CIFIUS is around to try to keep ahead of those purchases in areas that affect national security. In my first book, I went into some detail about the kinds of things CIFIUS blocked in the telecommunications industry. But, what I also pointed out was the lag between Chinese investment and CIFIUS getting a case to look at. In most cases, CIFIUS is too slow to stop the transfer of technology which has already taken place before the case gets to them. Asking for reporting by companies to be done sooner is a start, but there needs to be more research done to determine where the Chinese have staked out industries they want to buy, and the steps they have taken to get the pieces in place to do that.
These are not random purchases. When the U.S blocked the purchase of Axitron a German company selling chip manufacturing technology, it was a glimpse into where the Chinese were going. They were gobbling up companies in a certain type of chip manufacturing that was sensitive to our defense sector. That was a national security issue, even though it was not a U.S company.
Some of the proposals for new CIFIUS capabilities might include areas of purchase that have no direct relationship to National Security, something we should consider carefully. The reasoning goes that China has restricted purchases of their technologies, so we should restrict theirs. There is some wisdom to that, but the Chinese have also made mandatory management requirements for some kinds of businesses that are purchased in China. Media restrictions, any role in teaching students or the military are a major items in China. We should be looking at reciprocity for those in the U.S. And while we are at it, look at the EB-5 visa program that allows Chinese businessmen to buy U.S. Citizenship so they can make these purchases without being foreign investors.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/lawmakers-push-for-tighter-scrutiny-of-chinese-investment-in-u-s-1487678403 ].
China has more than a little investment in the United States and last years total was a big number - $46B. CIFIUS is around to try to keep ahead of those purchases in areas that affect national security. In my first book, I went into some detail about the kinds of things CIFIUS blocked in the telecommunications industry. But, what I also pointed out was the lag between Chinese investment and CIFIUS getting a case to look at. In most cases, CIFIUS is too slow to stop the transfer of technology which has already taken place before the case gets to them. Asking for reporting by companies to be done sooner is a start, but there needs to be more research done to determine where the Chinese have staked out industries they want to buy, and the steps they have taken to get the pieces in place to do that.
These are not random purchases. When the U.S blocked the purchase of Axitron a German company selling chip manufacturing technology, it was a glimpse into where the Chinese were going. They were gobbling up companies in a certain type of chip manufacturing that was sensitive to our defense sector. That was a national security issue, even though it was not a U.S company.
Some of the proposals for new CIFIUS capabilities might include areas of purchase that have no direct relationship to National Security, something we should consider carefully. The reasoning goes that China has restricted purchases of their technologies, so we should restrict theirs. There is some wisdom to that, but the Chinese have also made mandatory management requirements for some kinds of businesses that are purchased in China. Media restrictions, any role in teaching students or the military are a major items in China. We should be looking at reciprocity for those in the U.S. And while we are at it, look at the EB-5 visa program that allows Chinese businessmen to buy U.S. Citizenship so they can make these purchases without being foreign investors.
Tuesday, February 21, 2017
China-North Korea & Negotiations
A couple of articles today and quoting the Chinese as saying the they are cutting down on coal trade with North Korea but that the "U.S has to do its part" and negotiate directly with North Korea over nuclear arms. The U.S would be recognizing North Korea as an independent country when it is nothing more than a Beijing satellite, under complete control of its mentor. Negotiating directly with them, without the Chinese being at the table is a farce. So far, the U.S is ignoring the Chinese attempt to get recognition for North Korea as if they were independently developing missiles and nuclear arms. North Korea doesn't do anything unless China approves.
We have allowed China to maintain proxies to provoke its neighbors and threatens the U.S with nuclear weapons, just to find out how the recipients of this aggression will respond. Then, China says "we can't do anything about that" like the North was some troubled child that can't concentrate in school. It is a farce that we have finally started to ignore. Iran is doing the same in the Middle East, with Chinese companies violating the sanctions at every turn. Iran even sent its own technicians to the tests of North Korean missiles. That certainly was not a coincidence. I wonder how long either proxy would last if they threatened to throw a nuclear weapon at China?
The long running game is finally at an end. We fought a Cold War with the same conditions, where proxies were fighting their neighbors and anyone who helped them. In those days, nobody was kidding themselves over who was behind the trouble.
P.S. China increased its imports of coal in December to twice what the U.N. sanctions specified. Then, it started to cut back on imports.
We have allowed China to maintain proxies to provoke its neighbors and threatens the U.S with nuclear weapons, just to find out how the recipients of this aggression will respond. Then, China says "we can't do anything about that" like the North was some troubled child that can't concentrate in school. It is a farce that we have finally started to ignore. Iran is doing the same in the Middle East, with Chinese companies violating the sanctions at every turn. Iran even sent its own technicians to the tests of North Korean missiles. That certainly was not a coincidence. I wonder how long either proxy would last if they threatened to throw a nuclear weapon at China?
The long running game is finally at an end. We fought a Cold War with the same conditions, where proxies were fighting their neighbors and anyone who helped them. In those days, nobody was kidding themselves over who was behind the trouble.
P.S. China increased its imports of coal in December to twice what the U.N. sanctions specified. Then, it started to cut back on imports.
Thursday, February 16, 2017
Intel Agencies Keep Pres Trump in the Dark
There is a fanciful article on the Wall Street Journal front page that shows the length some people will go to discredit President Trump. The article claims intelligence information was withheld because " they are concerned that it would be leaked or compromised". I say "fanciful" because I don't know one Intelligence professional who would say such a thing for what is clearly a deep political purpose intended not to reflect the facts of any particular incident. People in the Intelligence Community don't do that, and are not happy about someone else doing it either. This was not a career Intelligence Community person.
Intelligence people are apolitical because they serve an audience of government persons who are political. Those political people twist facts to suit their own political agendas, and that is often hard to deal with. They take raw intelligence, or "unsubstantiated material" (remember the attachment to the report on Russian involvement in the election?) and use it as fact. They take statements made in one line of a 50 page report as the "analysis supporting the facts" that so-and-so has occurred. They listen in closed sessions of Congress and come out before the cameras saying what they want to believe and not what was presented. Get over it. That part has been going on forever and is not going to stop. What happened to produce this article in the Journal is a little different.
When I wrote my second book, Keeping Secrets about the inability of the Obama White House to protect secrets that were among the most sensitive ones the U.S has, there were things that could, and probably did, literally get people killed. The fact that President Obama pardoned two people directly connected with those leaks (Chelsea Manning and General Cartwright) shows the high regard that was placed on leakers. For whatever reasons, the White House chose to allow them to go free. In Cartwright 's case, his lawyers may have been right, in that they said he trying to prevent disclosure of some information that somebody else in the White House gave to the New York Times. That person will never be identified, but there are plenty of good suspects over the many years the leaks were occurring.
Those leaks were for a political purpose - to make the President look good at a time when it appeared he was not doing very much and an election was approaching. These leaks are for the opposite reason. The election is over, but the purveyors of the Keeping Secrets leaks have a sense that the strategic benefit of leaking can serve more than one purpose. They got good at it and hate to give it up.
Not one of them has a thought to national security. If you leak to make the President look good or bad, the damage is still the same to the country. We have some narrow minded idiots who think politics is an end to itself and has nothing to do with governing.
I am kind of skeptical that they will ever be found though looking for them might be a good idea anyway. Somebody was passing around very highly classified transcripts of a conversation between a U.S citizen and a Russian minister. Many businessmen will have concerns with that since they probably would not like their discussions with foreign leaders anywhere being passsed around in the Congress.
It could happen to any businessman anywhere and they don't have to be U.S. Citizens to for it to occur. In my entire time in counter-intelligence I never saw a transcript of a conversation - not once. People would tell us what we needed to know about - nothing else and no transcripts were made to be left lying around. They are that sensitive, and seen by all investigative partners that way. This didn't happen the way the Journal reported it.
Wednesday, February 15, 2017
Dealings With Russia
Our press seems to be preoccupied with the former National Security Advisor's contacts with Russia before he was actually in office and could act as a government official. I remind them of a President Obama who left his microphone on live while talking to Dimitry Medvedev. He reminded the Russian lead that he was involved in national election and would not be able to discuss certain matters until after the election was over. He said he could be more flexible then. The hypocrisy of the loyal opposition is beyond any of us.
GAO on Cyber
The Government Accountability Office has just published a new report on cyber and the title says it all - Cybersecurity: Actions Needed to Strengthen U.S. Capabilities. If you are a security professional, you don't need to read this one. It says the same thing every report like it has said over the last 20 years. They even recommend patching and O/S configurations, training, better incident reporting, and the ever present "metrics". None of this has worked, and will never work until there is some accountability and oversight from outside each individual agency.
The consistent problem with cyber is management of it. The idea that someone can accept the risk of operating a system with major findings is beyond me. We frequently found managers who would accept any risk [in one case a manager accepted the risk that some not the users did not have security clearances on a system processing classified information] no matter what the potential risks. There is no oversight on this process at all. There is no external penetration testing from a external group. Any findings from inside are papered over and put on endless lists of things that need to be corrected some day. That part is absurd.
Our Federal government has trouble keeping security professionals because anyone who is good at the job will not live under this type of regime. They do their job, only to have some person who knows next to nothing about cyber defenses decides to accept a risk for data that he/she often doesn't even own. It is not that manager's risk to take. This allows IRS to get hacked twice in the same year, OPM to lose that security clearance data, the Obamacare website to be deployed without security testing, and many, many more.
I am tired of having my data stolen from people who don't give a damn about anything except their next promotion. We need aggressive action to oversee the kind of testing and risk acceptance being done by agencies. Nobody can survive in the dream world where following NIST "guidance" will never make a system secure, and any manager wanting to avoid responsibility can decide to accept the risks.
The consistent problem with cyber is management of it. The idea that someone can accept the risk of operating a system with major findings is beyond me. We frequently found managers who would accept any risk [in one case a manager accepted the risk that some not the users did not have security clearances on a system processing classified information] no matter what the potential risks. There is no oversight on this process at all. There is no external penetration testing from a external group. Any findings from inside are papered over and put on endless lists of things that need to be corrected some day. That part is absurd.
Our Federal government has trouble keeping security professionals because anyone who is good at the job will not live under this type of regime. They do their job, only to have some person who knows next to nothing about cyber defenses decides to accept a risk for data that he/she often doesn't even own. It is not that manager's risk to take. This allows IRS to get hacked twice in the same year, OPM to lose that security clearance data, the Obamacare website to be deployed without security testing, and many, many more.
I am tired of having my data stolen from people who don't give a damn about anything except their next promotion. We need aggressive action to oversee the kind of testing and risk acceptance being done by agencies. Nobody can survive in the dream world where following NIST "guidance" will never make a system secure, and any manager wanting to avoid responsibility can decide to accept the risks.
Tuesday, February 14, 2017
The Big Proxy
North Korea is not a real country. It exists on the map but it could not survive one day without China feeding and clothing the country and cuddling the leadership to make them feel loved. Nobody else is going to do it. It is just a suburb of Beijing. Everyone knows it, yet the Wall Street Journal has an article today that says China is watching what the Trump Administration is going to do about the missile test they fired off this week. Wake up. That is why they fired off that missile - so China can see how the U.S reacts. We should be used to it by now. China knows if it did the kinds of things North Korea does - attack the banking and government of South Korea and Sony with destructive cyber disruptions & sink a military ship with a torpedo - the free world would be up in arms about it. But they can watch the world react and claim they are just observers.
North Korea is not a real country. Forget that they have a claim to statehood that is solely supported and fed by China and treat them as a satellite of China. Hold China responsible for what they do. China is setting up a difficult situation that allows North Korea to put a nuclear weapon on a long-range missile and fire it into a major city in the United States. When the last development effort was going on the Iranians were there to watch. That is two proxies to isolate themselves from potential retaliation. We should make it clear that we don't regard North Korea as a "rogue state". There is no such thing. We regard it as a proxy of China, with the consequences appropriate to that view.
North Korea is not a real country. Forget that they have a claim to statehood that is solely supported and fed by China and treat them as a satellite of China. Hold China responsible for what they do. China is setting up a difficult situation that allows North Korea to put a nuclear weapon on a long-range missile and fire it into a major city in the United States. When the last development effort was going on the Iranians were there to watch. That is two proxies to isolate themselves from potential retaliation. We should make it clear that we don't regard North Korea as a "rogue state". There is no such thing. We regard it as a proxy of China, with the consequences appropriate to that view.
A Coincidence of Protest
So we have Greenpeace here in the capital of our nation crawling up a high-rise crane and putting up a banner that could be seen from the White House - RESIST it said. Signs in the street in a couple of the less than peaceful demonstrations said the same thing. But the curiosity to some is the use of the same term by some in the mass of people in Romania protesting their government.
Such a word does not come up in different places without some sort of amazing coincidence. Maybe it is just catchy. Maybe it is seen on enough newspapers to become an idea worth repeating. Some of these people fancy themselves as the French Resistance during World War II. They believe they are resisting a government that is oppressing them. One of my friends said his son called his employer Nazis for the way they conducted themselves in business. Ridiculous.
These are the real Dreamers of the world. When they don't get their way, they pout. They whine. They accuse. They claim a noble cause with a simple word that means more than most of them know. None of them will be tortured for belonging to a group of complainers. None of them will be shot for blocking the streets and firebombing a Starbucks. Though a few of them may actually go to jail in Washington D.C. For burning a poor man's limo because he was doing his job. Not so at Berkeley. There is no justice at Berkeley.
We have to hope that this generation turns out like the "hippies" of the 60's who were out in the streets more than they were in class. Now they are getting ready to retire after working for a living and figuring out how well off they are to live in a country that didn't put them in jail for what they said out loud, or wrote in a University newspaper. They had kids and got jobs; some of them even got elected to public office. But, all of them had to grow up first. Resistance is futil.
Such a word does not come up in different places without some sort of amazing coincidence. Maybe it is just catchy. Maybe it is seen on enough newspapers to become an idea worth repeating. Some of these people fancy themselves as the French Resistance during World War II. They believe they are resisting a government that is oppressing them. One of my friends said his son called his employer Nazis for the way they conducted themselves in business. Ridiculous.
These are the real Dreamers of the world. When they don't get their way, they pout. They whine. They accuse. They claim a noble cause with a simple word that means more than most of them know. None of them will be tortured for belonging to a group of complainers. None of them will be shot for blocking the streets and firebombing a Starbucks. Though a few of them may actually go to jail in Washington D.C. For burning a poor man's limo because he was doing his job. Not so at Berkeley. There is no justice at Berkeley.
We have to hope that this generation turns out like the "hippies" of the 60's who were out in the streets more than they were in class. Now they are getting ready to retire after working for a living and figuring out how well off they are to live in a country that didn't put them in jail for what they said out loud, or wrote in a University newspaper. They had kids and got jobs; some of them even got elected to public office. But, all of them had to grow up first. Resistance is futil.
Monday, February 13, 2017
When Negotiating, Surrender First
I must say I thought it was unusual for the President to say he had abandoned a stance against the "One China Policy" which keeps Taiwan out of the United Nations and China in the South China Sea, claiming everything in sight. It was a good idea to hold out this policy as one that needed to be negotiated since there is very little to be said for allowing China to profess world agreement that there can only be one China in the world. It basically means Taiwan will fall to China sooner than later.
The second fiction that China perpetuates is the 1992 Consensus on Taiwan. You can read J. Michael Cole's analysis of this and decide for yourselves but he says the U.S did not agree with the consensus and is neutral on this link between Taiwan and the One China Policy. China says the U.S has agreed to the consensus; the U.S says it has not and is neutral on the subject. Like the 1992 Consensus, both China and Taiwan agree to disagree about what was discussed at the meetings that produced it. China quotes it often as the "agreed upon" position of most foreign governments, yet there is no support for that. That does not keep them from the steady drum beat to the contrary.
As China strangles Taiwan with the build-up in the South China Sea, it apparent we are doing nothing about either Taiwan or the militarization of the Sea. That policy has allowed China to add military hardware, additional controls, and more submarines to the area. One day we will see Taiwan as another Hong Kong, which has not worked out very well as a "two system" jurisdiction. Taiwan rejects this idea for good reason. We kind of got the message when the mainland Chinese kidnapped Hong Kong booksellers and took them to the mainland for trial. Two systems indeed.
The second fiction that China perpetuates is the 1992 Consensus on Taiwan. You can read J. Michael Cole's analysis of this and decide for yourselves but he says the U.S did not agree with the consensus and is neutral on this link between Taiwan and the One China Policy. China says the U.S has agreed to the consensus; the U.S says it has not and is neutral on the subject. Like the 1992 Consensus, both China and Taiwan agree to disagree about what was discussed at the meetings that produced it. China quotes it often as the "agreed upon" position of most foreign governments, yet there is no support for that. That does not keep them from the steady drum beat to the contrary.
As China strangles Taiwan with the build-up in the South China Sea, it apparent we are doing nothing about either Taiwan or the militarization of the Sea. That policy has allowed China to add military hardware, additional controls, and more submarines to the area. One day we will see Taiwan as another Hong Kong, which has not worked out very well as a "two system" jurisdiction. Taiwan rejects this idea for good reason. We kind of got the message when the mainland Chinese kidnapped Hong Kong booksellers and took them to the mainland for trial. Two systems indeed.
Wednesday, February 8, 2017
Uneasy Goes the Dark Web
I think we have all asked ourselves why the Dark Web is able to run the kinds of child porn operations that it does. We might even remember that the Dark Web sells tools that allow other hackers to get into bank credentials, lock up computers with ransomware, and read other people's mail. These kinds of operations have been around for a long time, even before the Internet, but have thrived in the last 10 years. In today's Wall Street Journal there is a hint that something may be afoot there that makes the users of the Dark Web pause.
It apparently affected Freedom Hosting II, where some private conversations were posted on-line - not the kind of thing its users would like. The article says this about the extent of the attacks: "Friday’s attack knocked about a fifth of the Dark Web offline, according to Sarah Jamie Lewis, a former security engineer for Amazon.com Inc. who is now an independent researcher and operates the privacy-focused website Mascherari.press. Soon afterward, the attackers published a series of databases containing large amounts of information available on Freedom Hosting II, which was the largest hosting provider for anonymous websites, she said.".
I checked around for some news about this and found articles on several sites, including Hacker News and Motherboard. The latter claims to have interviewed the person who caused the outage and says it was his first hack ever. After getting inside, he saw child porn which encouraged him to bring down the sites. This is a nice story. Hacker News says it was Anonymous, though they suggest that it could be linked to NSA or the FBI, since it went to a host for Science Applications in Virginia. Between the various stories there are all the usual suspects for this kind of thing. Nobody blamed the Russians, yet.
Perhaps it is not important which agency or individual did the hack. The Dark Web has more or less operated with impunity for many years now, though disrupting Silk Road for a brief time did give users of that complex some reasons to think about it. The users and Web hosts that sell child porn get complacent about abusing children, so it is hard to be sympathetic to their losses in this case. What we see is the same kind of thing that the hacks of the DNC brought out. Exposure has more of an effect than hacking the sites and finding out who uses them. That alone will give the users of these sites something to think about.
It apparently affected Freedom Hosting II, where some private conversations were posted on-line - not the kind of thing its users would like. The article says this about the extent of the attacks: "Friday’s attack knocked about a fifth of the Dark Web offline, according to Sarah Jamie Lewis, a former security engineer for Amazon.com Inc. who is now an independent researcher and operates the privacy-focused website Mascherari.press. Soon afterward, the attackers published a series of databases containing large amounts of information available on Freedom Hosting II, which was the largest hosting provider for anonymous websites, she said.".
I checked around for some news about this and found articles on several sites, including Hacker News and Motherboard. The latter claims to have interviewed the person who caused the outage and says it was his first hack ever. After getting inside, he saw child porn which encouraged him to bring down the sites. This is a nice story. Hacker News says it was Anonymous, though they suggest that it could be linked to NSA or the FBI, since it went to a host for Science Applications in Virginia. Between the various stories there are all the usual suspects for this kind of thing. Nobody blamed the Russians, yet.
Perhaps it is not important which agency or individual did the hack. The Dark Web has more or less operated with impunity for many years now, though disrupting Silk Road for a brief time did give users of that complex some reasons to think about it. The users and Web hosts that sell child porn get complacent about abusing children, so it is hard to be sympathetic to their losses in this case. What we see is the same kind of thing that the hacks of the DNC brought out. Exposure has more of an effect than hacking the sites and finding out who uses them. That alone will give the users of these sites something to think about.
Tuesday, February 7, 2017
The Australian Refugees
A friend of mine in Australia helped to clarify the issue between President Trump and PM Turnbull over refugees which President Obama decided to take in. It appears our President is not inclined to accept these people without good reason. It appears they will have some trouble coming up with reasons we can understand. Appearently, Australia has a good idea about how to handle some incoming immigrants. They stash them on an island in Papua New Guinea where they can be looked over and vetted until their hearts content. For a country which was founded by prisoners from England, this certainly makes sense. This article explains a little more than I wanted to know: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manus_Regional_Processing_Centre but enough to figure out why a President might think twice about taking these people in.
Iran Sanctions on Chinese
Two Chinese individuals and the companies they represent are on the sanctions list imposed on Iran this past week. Both are in the business of import-export which covers everything they can get their hands on. US News has an article on it, indicating it might be an opening salvo against some of the cooperation Iran gets from other countries. Were that the case the opening salvo was in 2015 and 2016 when the U.S put sanctions on two of China's largest telecommunications companies when were selling banned items to Iran and using bogus companies to do it. The U.S. Commerce Department was bold enough to publish internal documents that indicated how to structure these companies to beat restrictions on U.S. Export laws.
In the current case, it was interesting to hear their pleas of innocence, saying they were just importing "normal goods" which seems odd since the goods the U.S was looking at were related to the production or refinement of nuclear weapons and missile technology. Maybe they normally export these kinds of things.
In the current case, it was interesting to hear their pleas of innocence, saying they were just importing "normal goods" which seems odd since the goods the U.S was looking at were related to the production or refinement of nuclear weapons and missile technology. Maybe they normally export these kinds of things.
Monday, February 6, 2017
Cozy Bear in Norway
It seems like the guys who siphoned information out of the Democratic National Committee have been getting the same kind of emails from the Defense Minister, the Labour Party and the Foreign Minister of Norway. And there were others.... [http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2017/02/03/norway-russian-hackers-hit-spy-agency-defense-labour-party/97441782/ ]
From all indications security companies have been posting, Fancy Bear and Cozy Bear are both Russian intelligence services, either directly or paid by them. They regularly go after NATO countries so Norway is probably not surprised by anything they have seen. There is a good story by the Guardian [Cozy Bear and Fancy Bear: did Russians hack Democratic party and if so, why? ] that explains the relationships and mentions FireEye's Mandiant and CrowdStrike reports on both.
From all indications security companies have been posting, Fancy Bear and Cozy Bear are both Russian intelligence services, either directly or paid by them. They regularly go after NATO countries so Norway is probably not surprised by anything they have seen. There is a good story by the Guardian [Cozy Bear and Fancy Bear: did Russians hack Democratic party and if so, why? ] that explains the relationships and mentions FireEye's Mandiant and CrowdStrike reports on both.
Sunday, February 5, 2017
While We Look at Visas, look at EB-5
There are quite a few issues that need looking into in how our visas are issued and enforced, but none cries out for review more than the EB-5 visa. This little piece of paper is allowing Chinese businessmen to buy U.S. Citizenship, even while in one famous case -they sit in government offices in China. How can we grant U.S citizenship to a member of the People's Congress of China?
This is from my previous post:
How do the rich of China get U.S citizenship, which allows them to donate to political parties as US national's? They buy it, so they can donate directly to the people who allowed it to begin with. This corrupt practice was started in 1990, during the Clinton administration, with the start of a new program that had the right intentions but not much participation. According to an article in Atlantic Monthly the EB-5 visa is supposed to bring employment to US workers by offering an opportunity for investors to create 15 jobs. The problem was, there weren't enough people who could do that so they started "regional centers" that could pool the numbers so they could get 15. In 2014, 9200 of the 10,000 visas allowed were Chinese. The father of a young military officer killed in combat spoke out againt Donald Trump made at least part of his income from helping with this type of visa application.
What this practice does is make a class of donors from China that are legally US donors. We saw that applied in Virginia with donations from a Chinese businessman who was a US national. The political people getting the benefit of this are the Clinton Foundation and the governor of Virginia, most assuredly among others.
This is from my previous post:
How do the rich of China get U.S citizenship, which allows them to donate to political parties as US national's? They buy it, so they can donate directly to the people who allowed it to begin with. This corrupt practice was started in 1990, during the Clinton administration, with the start of a new program that had the right intentions but not much participation. According to an article in Atlantic Monthly the EB-5 visa is supposed to bring employment to US workers by offering an opportunity for investors to create 15 jobs. The problem was, there weren't enough people who could do that so they started "regional centers" that could pool the numbers so they could get 15. In 2014, 9200 of the 10,000 visas allowed were Chinese. The father of a young military officer killed in combat spoke out againt Donald Trump made at least part of his income from helping with this type of visa application.
What this practice does is make a class of donors from China that are legally US donors. We saw that applied in Virginia with donations from a Chinese businessman who was a US national. The political people getting the benefit of this are the Clinton Foundation and the governor of Virginia, most assuredly among others.
The Big Lie
The biggest lie is always the one that is told by people who know it is false. I have told the big lie once that I can remember. A man driving on a country road in England missed his turn glanced off a tree and smashed into an old stone fence, stopping his forward motion quickly. His body went on and impacted on the steering wheel column which went through his chest. Several people came from out of nowhere to try to help him until the ambulance could get there, but there was almost nothing anyone could do. He wanted someone to help him die, but I told him that would not be a good idea because he would be OK once they cut that off and took him to the hospital where they would have the equipment to save him. It took me weeks to get over telling him something even he knew was not true.
Now we have people who tell the Big Lie to get attention and to collect allies in causes. The latest of those is the Muslim Ban, which of course is not a Muslim ban and everyone who says it should know that it isn't. Only one country in the top ten Muslim countries of the world was included in the restrictions placed on visas that President Trump signed. That restriction did not mention religion, but Iran knows what religion it is and wants to say that it is a Muslim Ban. A handful of Democrats want to say the same thing. This is repeating a lie, knowing it is a lie.
Now, some people say this is just a matter of interpretation and what the President really meant was to ban Muslims. This is harder to sell, because there are not many facts to support it. Even those people find that hard to believe when they say it, although the fact of their disbelief does not stop them from repeating the Big Lie. It is after all the "greater good" that it being satisfied by telling it.
The greater good is always something that a group of people want that the majority has yet to seize upon and asked for. These groups are doing a public service by appealing to an idea which has yet to crystallize in the minds of a larger group. They are just helping out the masses of people who are basically naive and can't come to these kinds of ideas on their own. They are leaders, helpers of the innocent, and public servants.
I'm astounded by the amount of faked outrage being levied by such founders of democracy as out own governor here in Virginia. He repeats the Big Lie if he can get enough people together and he isn't even running for office again ever, thank God. This is the ultimate in hypocrisy. A man with no reason to lie - nothing to gain - who lies anyway.
Now we have people who tell the Big Lie to get attention and to collect allies in causes. The latest of those is the Muslim Ban, which of course is not a Muslim ban and everyone who says it should know that it isn't. Only one country in the top ten Muslim countries of the world was included in the restrictions placed on visas that President Trump signed. That restriction did not mention religion, but Iran knows what religion it is and wants to say that it is a Muslim Ban. A handful of Democrats want to say the same thing. This is repeating a lie, knowing it is a lie.
Now, some people say this is just a matter of interpretation and what the President really meant was to ban Muslims. This is harder to sell, because there are not many facts to support it. Even those people find that hard to believe when they say it, although the fact of their disbelief does not stop them from repeating the Big Lie. It is after all the "greater good" that it being satisfied by telling it.
The greater good is always something that a group of people want that the majority has yet to seize upon and asked for. These groups are doing a public service by appealing to an idea which has yet to crystallize in the minds of a larger group. They are just helping out the masses of people who are basically naive and can't come to these kinds of ideas on their own. They are leaders, helpers of the innocent, and public servants.
I'm astounded by the amount of faked outrage being levied by such founders of democracy as out own governor here in Virginia. He repeats the Big Lie if he can get enough people together and he isn't even running for office again ever, thank God. This is the ultimate in hypocrisy. A man with no reason to lie - nothing to gain - who lies anyway.
Thursday, February 2, 2017
Russian FSB Officers Arrested
Well, it is not like Radio Free Europe to get a story on hacking and the FSB, but this time they have. RFE reports that a Russian lawyer has said three people were arrested, two FSB agents and the head of the Kapersky Lab.
" At the time of their arrests in December, Sergei Mikhailov and Dmitry Dokuchayev were officers with the FSB's Center for Information Security, a leading unit within the FSB involved in cyberactivities.
" At the time of their arrests in December, Sergei Mikhailov and Dmitry Dokuchayev were officers with the FSB's Center for Information Security, a leading unit within the FSB involved in cyberactivities.
Pavlov confirmed to RFE/RL the arrest of Mikhailov and Dokuchayev, along with Ruslan Stoyanov, a former employee of the Interior Ministry who had worked for Kaspersky Labs, a well-known private cyber-research company, which announced Stoyanov's arrest last month."
It is not that part of the story that is particularly new. It is their link with the hacking inside the Democratic National Committee and information being given to an intelligence agency in the U.S. that would be somewhat of a surprise. I said this was going to happen. Anytime you do what the White House did to announce that Putin had directed the whole operation, the intelligence services will want to know how the U.S. got that kind of information. It took awhile (a month until the arrest) but not so long in cyber circles to find these gentlemen. The are being tried for treason, Ex-President Obama. So, when you wake up to the story that they have been executed, you can feel good about making the news for one day during the election and getting the two of them killed because of your carelessness with intelligence. It would not be the first time.
Wednesday, February 1, 2017
Ukraine-U.S.-Russian Cyber Attacks
Reuters has a good report , somewhat dated, on what it says is some 6500 cyber attacks on the Ukraine by Russia. I should add that almost any attack on the Ukraine has been attributed by them to be Russia, but there are not too many other countries interested in attacking the Ukraine other than Russia which is supporting its constant insurrection in the east. Among these attacks were a few that could be coming our way, if the Russians are so inclined.
In case we are wondering if the Russians only try to influence the outcome of a general election, which they did try to do in the Ukraine, they actually do much more. Among them are attacks on the state financial system that pays government employees and pensioners, attacks on the military, and partial power outages in parts of the country, including the capital. Get ready for it.
Without a deterrent strategy, which I have harped on for a number of years now, we have very little to threaten the Russians with. Ukraine has next to no chance to retaliate against enemies as sophisticated as the Russians, but we could make their lives more interesting by responding in kind, a strategy that the Obama Administration rejected.
In case we are wondering if the Russians only try to influence the outcome of a general election, which they did try to do in the Ukraine, they actually do much more. Among them are attacks on the state financial system that pays government employees and pensioners, attacks on the military, and partial power outages in parts of the country, including the capital. Get ready for it.
Without a deterrent strategy, which I have harped on for a number of years now, we have very little to threaten the Russians with. Ukraine has next to no chance to retaliate against enemies as sophisticated as the Russians, but we could make their lives more interesting by responding in kind, a strategy that the Obama Administration rejected.
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