All posts by Lonewriter

Government, Politics

Is This The Best That All The 3-Letter Agencies Can Do?

Leave a comment

I just read the National Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center (NCCIC) Joint Accountability Report (JAR), JAR-16-20296, titled “GRIZZLY STEPPE – Russian Malicious Cyber Activity“, (whew), that is supposedly the PROOF that Russians influenced the 2016 Presidential election. You can read a copy of the report HERE.

In the famous words of Lt. Sulu of the Starship USS Enterprise, “Oh my“.

The majority of the report is a bunch of BOVINE EXCREMENT, to put it kindly.  It’s sad that this conglomeration of word salad is the best that all the 3-Letter Agencies, DHS, FBI, CIA, et al, could come up with.  If I were grading the report, I’d give it an “F”.

The bottom line of the report is that at least two individuals, one at the DNC, and the other, John Podesta, were tricked into divulging their email passwords to a bad guy and their emails were stolen.  This one sentence pretty much sums up all 13 pages of the report.

As to whether or not Putin was behind this, the report attributes the ‘hacking’ of the emails to “Russian civilian and military intelligence Services (RIS)“.  The report only IMPLIES that Russian Intelligence, may or may not have been responsible.  That’s a definite “sort of maybe” accusation of Putin’s involvement.  Sheesh, if you want to implicate the man, just say it.  “We have direct evidence that Vladimir Putin was responsible for authorizing the attacks”.  If the evidence is classified and cannot be publicly disclosed, just say so.  I’d be okay with that.

In order to puff up the length of the report, the “authors” put in a statement, “In foreign countries…” the bad guys did bad things. They needed to include “foreign” attacks to make the idea of Russian involvement more dramatic and ominous, as well as to make the report longer. These “foreign” attacks had nothing to do with the election controversy.

Here’s my summary analysis of the report:

1 page saying John Podesta and someone at the DNC got tricked into giving up their email passwords.  NO NEWS HERE.  They imply the Russians tricked them.

1 page consisting of two illustrations that tries to explain “phishing”.  A waste of a page

1 page which has a chart listing 48 viruses and malware that might be Russian related.  Only 2 of the 48 listed have any association with the election controversy.   A wast of a page.

1 page that has a code snippet of generic “Yara signature” code. This is a complete red herring because they don’t include the actual signature “string” which might point to something of substance.  I think someone put this in to try and bamboozle the layman reader because it looks all techie, but it describes absolutely nothing of any importance.  Another waste of a page.

8 pages of bloat that says don’t be an idiot like Podesta and teach your network administrators to do the job they are supposed to do.  Yet more wasted pages.

1 page that says how to contact the NCCIC.  After reading the report, this too is a waste of a page, if this is the best that they can come up with.

The report is 13 pages of puffery and very little of it is of any substance.

Just in case you don’t know what “phishing” is, it’s a scheme where a bad guy sends you an email that says there is a problem with one of your accounts and you need to log into this “special” website using your username and password to “fix” the problem. The report says “At least one targeted individual” stupidly clicked the links and gave up their personal information. Looks like John Podesta was “at least one” of those idiots. Once the bad guys had access to the accounts they downloaded the emails.  There is some inference that the bad guy did place a virus or malware into the user’s email account most likely to catch future password changes.

Supposedly the report is the EVIDENCE that led to the decision by the administration to expel 35 Russians from the US.

Don’t get me wrong on my position.  Stealing information is WRONG!  My criticism is of this poorly written report that was issued.  The Russian regime is still made up of bad guys who do bad things.

I believe we should only trust the Russians about as far as we can toss a bowl of Bosrscht.

Government

The President’s One Last Parting Gift To Our Country?

Leave a comment

President Obama in the waning days of his presidency appears to be attempting to cement his legacy, getting revenge on those who have opposed him, and also hindering the incoming administration.

He’s stabbed our best ally in the Middle East, pardoned hundreds of felons, imposed sanctions on Russia, and just did one of the biggest Federal land grabs. He also seems poised to release all the bad guys from Gitmo, to fulfill his campaign promise from eight years ago.

Some of President Obama’s actions seem to be personal. Stabbing Israel appears to be a product of his strained relationship with the Israeli Prime Minister. The land grab in Utah looks like a “middle finger” to Senator Chaffetz of Utah, who led the investigation into Hilllybob’s email server.  Senator Chaffetz said that he was given ONLY 50 MINUTES notice that President Obama was going to grab over 100 MILLION acres of land away from the State of Utah and put it under federal control.

President Obama can still give this country one last “middle finger” on his way out the door.

There is one small hole which he COULD drive a truck through to stack The Supreme Court with a liberal justice.

It turns out that when senators’ terms are over, they relinquish their seats and The Vice President swears in the newly elected replacement senators.  FOR A FEW MINUTES, until Vice President Biden swears in the new senators the DEMOCRATS technically will have a majority in The Senate!

The Senate Democrats could call for a vote on Merrick Garland, whom President Obama has already proffered as his pick for The Supreme Court.  They might be able to garner the votes to approve his nomination and there you go, a liberal leaning Supreme Court.

A Supreme Court justice selection is not something that Congress or President-elect Trump can ever undo.  This could be the gift that keeps on giving for generations to come.

Looks like we need to wait until after January 3, 2017 to see if President Obama drops one big smelly new year’s parting gift on our country.

Culture, Government

Was It Done On Purpose?

Leave a comment

I just watched short timer Secretary of State John “Swift boat hero” Kerry blathering for an hour on why the United States took the Chicken-doo-doo stance of abstaining on the U.N. vote to condemn Israel’s settlements. To me, if “our” country is FOR condemning Israeli settlements, then the U.S. ambassador to the U.N. should have been instructed to vote “YES” in favor of the resolution. The passive aggressive “ABSTAIN” vote is still a YES vote, but the administration can say they didn’t vote “for” it, which is total bovine excrement.

During the speech SOMETHING BOTHERED ME to no end and it wasn’t just his blathering.  Take a close look at the picture above.

Okay, what was annoying was the PLACEMENT of the FLAGS behind the podium that John “toss my medals” Kerry was standing behind. They placed the “Department of State” flag to the “medal tosser’s” right  side and the United States flag to his left (on the right from the viewer’s point of view). That is AGAINST the LAW (Title 4, Chapter 1, Section 7, paragraph k, of the United States Code) which states that The United States Flag MUST ALWAYS be displayed to the speaker’s RIGHT (left side of the stage from the viewer’s point of view).

Here’s the governing paragraph of the United States Code.

“When used on a speaker’s platform, the flag, if displayed flat, should be displayed above and behind the speaker. When displayed from a staff in a church or public auditorium, the flag of the United States of America should hold the position of superior prominence, in advance of the audience, and in the position of honor at the clergyman’s or speaker’s right as he faces the audience. Any other flag so displayed should be placed on the left of the clergyman or speaker or to the right of the audience.”

The way they were displayed INDICATES that the “Department of State” has a SUPERIOR higher authority than the United States of America!

With all of the “qualified” staff and lawyers, why couldn’t they display OUR FLAG in the lawfully correct and respectful manner? I learned about the flag in The Boy Scouts of America and in elementary school, back when kids were taught to have pride and respect our country. We were not taught to take a knee.

I believe the placement of the flags was purposely setup by some smart-ass weenie in the State Department to reinforce the notion of the “great power” of the department. Hey they just screwed the only democracy in the Middle East and they didn’t even buy them dinner.