RUSSIAN MILITARY INTELLIGENCE executed a cyberattack on at least one U.S. voting software supplier and sent spear-phishing emails to more than 100 local election officials just days before last November’s presidential election, according to a highly classified intelligence report obtained by The Intercept.
The top-secret National Security Agency document, which was provided anonymously to The Intercept and independently authenticated, analyzes intelligence very recently acquired by the agency about a months-long Russian intelligence cyber effort against elements of the U.S. election and voting infrastructure. The report, dated May 5, 2017, is the most detailed U.S. government account of Russian interference in the election that has yet come to light.
[...]
The report indicates that Russian hacking may have penetrated further into U.S. voting systems than was previously understood. It states unequivocally in its summary statement that it was Russian military intelligence, specifically the Russian General Staff Main Intelligence Directorate, or GRU, that conducted the cyber attacks described in the document:
Spearfishing election officials would be a method to gain access to their emails and computer systems including their passwords which could be used to penetrate voter registration and tabulation systems or to plant malware or a worm which could be inadvertently transferred via thumb drive onto those systems even if they aren't directly attached to the internet in the same way that the U.S. transmitted the Stuxnet virus into the systems running Iranian centrifuges.
Whatever method was used, Sen Nelson has now informed us that the breach has occurred but sadly, not that much will probably be done about it.
Governor Rick Scott who is currently challenging Nelson for his Senate seat has not said “thank you, I’ll get right on fixing that”. No, he’s been screaming “prove it.”
Gov. Rick Scott is demanding his election opponent Sen. Bill Nelson show proof to back up his statement that Russians have “penetrated” election systems in some Florida counties.
“This cannot be overlooked — either Bill Nelson knows of crucial information the federal government is withholding from Florida election officials, or he is simply making things up,” Scott said Friday.
The Federal Government knows a lot of things you don’t know Rick and part of the reason why was right in Senator Nelson’s original statement, it’s classified.
Local state officials also say they haven’t heard anything from the Feds, yet.
South Florida election chiefs said Thursday they have no reason to believe their voter registration rolls have been compromised by hackers, despite comments from Sen. Bill Nelson that Russians have gained access to some Florida counties’ systems.
Broward County Elections Supervisor Brenda Snipes said she has not received any special alerts from Nelson or the federal government.
“We have had absolutely no information regarding that,” she said Thursday. “We have not seen anything with our system that something strange is going on.”
If some of the passwords of election officials have been discovered and compromised, you’re not going to know anything is wrong until they use those passwords to do something. And there really isn’t much point in doing anything serious until the elections happen and also making sure what is done is as hard to detect and undo as possible. So don’t hold your breath on them showing their hand early.
But this actually highlights a much larger problem. During the original 2016 attacks and breaches, the ability to coordinate a response at the state level was stymied by the fact that the various Governors and Secretaries of State didn’t have the needed clearances to hear the details of how those breaches were implemented.
Top-secret intelligence requested by President Barack Obama in his last weeks in office identified seven states where analysts — synthesizing months of work — had reason to believe Russian operatives had compromised state websites or databases.
Three senior intelligence officials told NBC News that the intelligence community believed the states as of January 2017 were Alaska, Arizona, California, Florida, Illinois, Texas and Wisconsin.
[...]
Top election officials from all 50 states met in Washington this month for a National Association of Secretaries of State conference and received temporary security clearances for a classified threat briefing from intelligence officials. According to two officials present, one from the intelligence community and the other a state official, the actual intelligence on state compromises was not shared.
[...]
While numerous state election officials told NBC News that the Department of Homeland Security has been stepping up communications with them, many say they're worried they are still not getting enough information from Washington.
Since then there have been steps taken to close this gap in security access…
The Department of Homeland Security is clearing the way for state election officials to apply for security clearances so they can review classified information about cyberthreats to their election systems, federal and state authorities said in interviews this week.
The move comes after many state officials criticized the federal agency for, in their view, failing to provide certain information about suspected attempts to hack voter-registration systems during the 2016 presidential election.
Exactly how far that effort has gotten a year later seem dubious since Florida was one of original seven states breached and yet, Governor Scott still doesn’t have clearance.
Congressional Democrats on Wednesday introduced legislation that would provide more than $1 billion to boost cyber security of U.S. voting systems, saying inaction has made elections vulnerable to more interference from Russian hackers.
The cyber security bill followed warnings on Tuesday from U.S. intelligence officials that this year’s midterm races are likely to experience meddling from Russia and possibly other foreign adversaries.
“We cannot let the Russians laugh about and take joy in the success they had in the last election,” Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic leader in the House of Representatives, said at a news conference. “Their goal is to undermine democracy.”
Only to have that cut down to just $280 Million and then have the bill completely fail due to Republican opposition.
It’s handy to keep in context that at this year's DEFCON 26 an 11-year-old girl managed to use an SQL injection exploit to change the election result display on a replica of the Florida Secretary of State website within 10 minutes. This didn't change the actual vote totals, just what appeared on the site - but still, it's not good.
Everything about all of that is bad.
On another subject, Omarosa has tapes, lots of tapes, and I’ve been trying to avoid the entire circus of narcissism this entails but it does bring up a few actual relevant issues. The tape of Omarosa being fired by Gen. John Kelly in the situation room for her
using the executive car service as her own personal Uber is a pretty cold deal.
And now, if reports are to be believed, it turns out that the queen of villains was out here using the White House black car like her personal Uber. According to a Politico story examining all of the troubles plaguing White House chief of staff John Kelly, Omarosa was reportedly fired in November for “using the White House car service—known as ‘CARPET’—as an office pick-up and drop-off service, something strictly forbidden by the federal government.”
While the Politico story cites three administration officials as sources, who among us doesn’t believe that she did this? Wait, I have a phone call coming in from 50 Cent about the Omarosa firing:
According to Raw Story, “The White House Transportation Agency is tasked with driving, securing and maintaining the presidential motorcade for the president and his family.” It’s not to be used by the executive Diet Coke retriever—and this includes taking trips to Costco to get trunks full of presidential Diet Coke.
Kelly doesn’t really bother to fully explain why she’s being fired, he leaves that for a set of lawyers and personnel people who are standing by. He holds this meeting in the situation room when Omarosa didn’t have the security clearance to even be in that room, he may have only used it for privacy and maybe because if she lost her shit the walls are soundproofed, but still there was nothing classified in their conversation so why have it there at all?
Omarosa deserved to be fired, and not just for this but several fairly haughty habits such as leaving her stray shoes around the building, but I can’t help thinking about the contrast of how Kelly was so resistant and reluctant to let serial wife-beater Rob Porter go after he’d been allowed to handle the highest classified material when he didn't have a full clearance.
(CNN)White House chief of staff John Kelly continued to misrepresent his handling of the dismissal of former top aide Rob Porter on Friday, defiantly obfuscating on exactly what he knew -- and when -- about the extent of the abuse allegations against Porter's two ex-wives. In some instances, Kelly even directly contradicted some of the White House's public statements delivered last month.
In a rare gathering with reporters in his White House office, Kelly mostly defended his own conduct and insisted that he never considered resigning over the fallout. Porter's two ex-wives accused President Donald Trump's former staff secretary of years of relentless verbal, emotional and physical domestic abuse -- all of which Porter denied.
"I have absolutely nothing to even consider resigning over," Kelly said, even as he acknowledged that senior White House aides "didn't cover ourselves in glory" in how they responded to the scandal.
His treatment of Omarosa on that tape reminds me of how he nakedly lied about Rep. Fredericka Wilson and said he’d never apologize for saying she was an “empty barrel”, claiming she’s taken credit for getting an FBI building opened — when she didn’t — and accusing her of lying and inappropriately sharing Trump’s callous statements to a grieving Gold Star widow.
This could be a John Kelly and women thing, or it could be a John Kelly and black women thing, or both, but it’s clearly some kind of thing with him. It seems the person truly struggling to abide by security protocols is Kelly, not just Omarosa because according to Maggie Haberman, Manigault-Newman isn’t the only member of the White House staff who’s been taping internal conversations. What kind of cockamamie fly-by-night outfit is he running up there?
And just imagine if the Russians got some malware onto some of those phones.
Hooboy.
Finally, on this subject, I have to say that Omarosa is a self-serving conniving snake. That’s what she’s infamous for, that’s what she’s good at and now that she’s finally joined the “Trump is a racist” bandwagon, everybody has to wonder why was she saying this bull-ish just a couple years ago?
She was in that man’s orbit for 15 years and just in the last month she finally discovered the Apprentice N-word tape that Tom Arnold and former NBC producer Bill Pruitt has been talking about for two years now? She just now found this out? After the Central Park Five? After the Housing Discrimination Suits? After “Shithole Countries”?
I don’t buy it, she knew this guy was a racist snake the entire time but because her fortunes while welded to his — she just rode that horse anyway. She was his primary “racism shield token”. but now that Kelly has bucked her off it, she’s coming after Trump claws out. The entire thing is just plain ridiculous, but then again just about everything is in the orbit of Drumpfh.
In addition to the Omarosa tape follies, we also have tapes of House Intelligence Chair Devin Nunes admitting that he’s been obstructing the Mueller investigation to protect Trump all this time and Laura Ingraham letting her inner racist finally out of the closet for a test drive on the public airwaves to the delight of David Duke. Neither of those was an incredible shocker and neither went well.
Also, Alt-Right Neo-Nazi scumbags marching on Washington D.C. got poned, packed up and scurried home without even making a speech.
Womp womp.
Lastly, the FBI has now fired Supervisory Agent Peter Strzok, but the circumstances seem a bit shady.
The Washington Post reports that “FBI Deputy Director David L. Bowdich ordered the firing on Friday,” despite the fact that the office initially only recommended that he face demotion and a 60-day suspension.
Strzok’s attorney, Aitan Goelman, criticized Bowdich’s decision to fire his client and claimed that it was outside the bounds of normal disciplinary protocol for FBI agents.
Bowdich has been appointed to Andrew McCabe’s former position and may have just caused himself some trouble because McCabe already has a defamation and wrongful termination suit against the FBI since it’s pretty clear he firing was accelerated specifically to impact his pension, now Bowdich may have done the same by going outside standard disciplinary guidelines.
These guys just can’t stop themselves from spiking the ball in their own end zone.
Here are the daily update specifics for this week.