US Cyber Attack on Russia Nov. 9 2016

(Image credits: NSA, Maxim.com, Britannica.com, InfoWars.com, InsureTrust.com)

It appears likely, in the 98-99% range, that

• in the period November 9th-10th, 2016, 
• on President Barak Obama’s direct orders,
• in proportional retaliation for Russian hacking of the DNC
• U.S. agencies conducted one of the largest and longest ever
• Internet distributed denial of service (DDOS) attacks
• on 5 or more Russian banks

Update Dec. 18th 2016 – It appears possible, in the 50% range, that

• Obama may be trying hoping to change the result of the U.S. election,
• or at least sabotage Trump’s relations with Russia

In the interest of full disclosure, I personally

• have investments in RUSL and am married to a Russian
• do not like Putin at all which has produced heated arguments with my wife
• but find it hard to ignore the following facts…

This caused undisclosed losses in the range of USD $2-20 million dollars.  Although not announcing the attack itself, the administration on October 11th announced its positive and unequivocal intention to launch such an attack.  Detailed evidence presented below.

The political drama of Dec. 10th with Obama and the CIA again bringing up again the issue of Russian hacks (NYTimes article) is a direct result of the perceived lack of proportionality of that attack.  Planned at a time when the DNC hack was an annoyance, and Clinton was projected to win, an annoyance of Russia was “proportional.”

Now in Obama’s sincere belief, proportional would require changing the head of state of a nation.  Since he has no hope of changing Russia’s head of state, and since TWO PETITION DRIVES to reverse the US election are well underway, Barak

Obama may have decided to become the first President of the United States to enter into wars of succession to try and non-democratically select his successor.  He may view this as justified in his mind.  At the very least, he is sabotaging Trump’s clear intention to improve relations with Russia.

– DETAILED CHRONOLOGY OF NOV. 9-10 ATTACK –

Given concern over possibly retaliation taking the form of interference in the US elections, the window of opportunity of the attack would have been following the elections on November 8th, but well prior to the end of Obama’s term on January 20th.  It is more likely sooner than later, due to the waning power of the end-of-term president to conduct major foreign policy and quasi-military operations at the very end of his term in office.  The date in question was therefore at the optimal time.  The target confirmed that it was attacked, but did not name an attacker.  By that time it was known that Donald Trump would soon take office, and it is possible the Russians did not see any point in creating an international incident with a lame-duck president, possibly risking future relations.

The following is a detailed chronology of how the US came into possession of the weapon, created plausible deniability, and tested the weapon several times, as well as potential future expansions that would make it much more devastating.  The weapon is, so far as we know, still active, and oddly enough can be used by any reasonably sophisticated nation or hacker group.  It generally does not harm ordinary citizens (but uses their hardware) other than inconvenience, but can do harm to large corporations and we will detail the amounts of harm it can cause:

• BACKGROUND – As prankster-hackers gave way to serious criminal and government organizations, the nature of “hack” changed from damage to the infected PC, to “hijack” of the PC for use in denial of service attacks directed at other organizations, leaving the infected PCs mostly unharmed, and available for later use.  Beginning in 2012 with 5 mostly US banks in Hong Kong, instead of PCs, “things” connected to the internet were used – DVRs, Cameras using Internet Protocol, etc.  (article on CNN) – now called the Internet of Things (IoT).  As of 2016 there were 6 billion things on the internet, growing 30% per year.  (article on Gartner)  Most have no password, or a default or hard-coded password such as “1234” and are designed so their software can be updated over the internet.  This made it relatively easy to identify and take complete control of millions of them.
• During 2013-2015 additional large scale DDoS attacks using the IoT took place, growing from the range of 30 Gbps (gigabits per second) to over 300 Gbps.  At first services like CloudFare and Akamai were able to mitigate the attacks, but the attack volume grew faster than defensive capabilities.  Banks can lose as much as $100k an hour from lost transactions and fees. (articles on DDoS Attacks, American Banker)  Some attackers demanded blackmail, often in the form of Bitcoin payment.  While a few individual “protest” hackers were identified and detailed, the organized groups behind larger and more effective attacks remained unconfirmed and un-apprehended.
• In March of 2016 Clinton Campaign manager John Podesta lost his password to a phishing attack.  (article Fox News)  This is an unsophisticated social engineering attack.  Podesta consulted his I.T. manager, but the both of them still fell for it.  While not the sort of attack we are talking about, this provided the political context and motivation for President Obama’s later decision.  Embarrassing emails were released showing DNC bias against Bernie Sanders.  There were resignations, and feelings that this might have affected the election, though difficult to prove in the light of poor polling accuracy all over the world in 2016.
• In mid-September security blogger Brian Krebs was hit with a massive DDOS attack.  (article at KrebsOnSecurity)  A few days later he said he thought the attack was retaliation for a blog outing two Israeli men selling attack software.  (article InfoWorld)  Shortly after, two young Israeli men were arrested at the request of the FBI.  Given they would be interrogated both by the Israelis and the FBI, it is reasonable to assume the FBI was then in possession of whatever attack tool they had.  Brian Krebs reputation is pretty good, and we take his word for it that these men were capable of having conducted the attack on him.  Therefore, the FBI by late September was in possession of the attack code.
• On October 3rd, the control code for the Mirai Botnet was anonymously released on the Internet.  (article InformationWeek Darkreading)  The FBI had already apprehended one pair of users of the botnet.  If another party released the code hoping to cause havoc, they would have to be confident they too would not be apprehended, and that the botnet could not simply be shut down.  It is more likely the code was released to provide plausible deniability for someone, or an agency, planning to use the botnet in the future.
• On October 8th, President Obama announced the Russians were definitely responsible for the DNC hack.
• On October 11th the White House declared there would be a proportional response in retaliation for the Russian DNC hack.  (article The Wall Street Journal)
• In mid-October the US experienced the largest ever DDOS attack on the east cost and diffuse other locations .  The weapon used was the Mirai Botnet (article The Guardian, Public Intelligence)  No one claimed responsibility.  Experts speculated it may have been a nation testing internet defenses.
• In early November a similar attack, also possibly a test, took place overseas.  (article The Register)  Financial companies were more directly affected.  Was it another test?  Was it the FBI or the NSA testing their new toy?  How could they not test it?
• On November 10th, Russia revealed that 5 or more major banks in Moscow had been under heavy attack for two days.  (article BBC News)

No one else seems to have put the facts together, and there has been no follow up in the American press about Obama’s definite intent to retaliate.  Were they told to suppress this news?  The press is known to cooperate in such matters.  But why not the foreign press?  We have already stated our opinion that the Russians would not have found it in their interest at that time to point fingers.  However, the public has a right to know because it will want to influence policy decisions about future deployment of a vulnerable IoT that links automobiles to road structure, performs crowd monitoring, delivers healthcare, control the power grid, and many other vital functions.

A paper is forthcoming in an academic journal on the security design of the IoT, and a link will be posted here when available.

UPDATE DEC 18 – INDICATIONS OF POSSIBLE PURPOSE OF ATTACK

At first I thought the purpose of the attack on the Russian banks was only to retaliate for the phishing of email passwords to hack the DNC, resulting in the release of truthful information and the resignation of one DNC official.  It is not even certain Russia did this (U.S. word against Assange, who says his source was not the Russian government.  Arguments otherwise are vague and without data, such as “nothing happens in Russia without Putin’s knowledge.”  Believe me, the FBI seizure and control of the Mirai Botnet did not occur without Obama’s knowledge!  He does go to the daily intelligence briefings.)

But Obama and the CIA are now taking a “deep dive” into Internet data to try and prove Russian attempts at election tampering. (Fox News article)  Donald Trump points out “These are the same people that said Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.” (CNN article)  The White House press secretary vehemently denies that the U.S. has engaged in a false flag activity to start a cyber war with Russia, but his denial is a little too strong because he denies that the U.S. has ever engaged in any such activity.  Most countries have at one time or another, including the U.S. recently in manipulating intelligence data on weapons of mass destruction to start the Iraq war (which a trillion dollars later only led to ISIS), and in the 1960s exaggerating the Gulf of Tonkin incident to escalate the Viet Nam War (which didn’t end well for us either).  While there is little doubt Russia engaged in such activities to start the war with Chechnya, even if they did reveal information in their possession (remember, this is contested by Assange) it is not nearly as bad as Obama traveling to Britain in person prior to the Brexit vote and threatening to put Britain at the end of the queue for trade deals if they left the EU!  That is BLATANT INTERFERENCE BY OBAMA IN ANOTHER COUNTRY’S ELECTION.  Never was it more appropriate to say it is like “the pot calling the kettle black.”

WHAT NOW? – WILL YOU ALLOW CYBER WAR ON FALSE PREMISES?

On his last official press conference, Friday Dec. 16, 2016, Obama AGAIN vowed to retaliate against Russia.  It is apparent he already has, BUT, at the time he did not think Russia had actually changed the election outcome here, so now that no longer appears proportional.  I think we have to take the man at his word and assume he is going to do something new.  While I think Putin is smart enough not to respond to it, just as he didn’t respond to Dec 9-10 bank attack, I do not know what misleading news will be released to the American public.  The situation is dangerous and being escalated by a president captured by the military-intelligence complex (supported The Surge, supported extensive use of drone assassinations, including of American citizens).  He will be president for another month as of this writing.  Should you do anything, or just wait complacently?

There is not enough time to start a new petition to stop cyber war with the Russians, which would be the most straightforward solution.  I learned with my last petition on the Electoral College that if your cause is not supported by the globalist-political foundations, it doesn’t get off the ground except by spending personal funds (I spent $4000 on the one below).  So I suggest you can take one of the actions below, two of them without personal cost, only taking a few moments:

SIGN PETITION TO MAKE ELECTORAL VOTES AUTOMATIC
(to prevent control of the U.S. by globalist high-birthrate urban demographics)
http://TrumpElectoralPetition.com

SUPPORT INTERNET PUBLICITY OF ABOVE PETITION (the drive will not stop Dec 19)
https://www.gofundme.com/ElectoralPetition

SHORT LINK TO THIS ARTICLE (share with your friends & followers)
http://USattacksRussia.com

Advertisement