Special thanks to AgntLuck from the Discord channel. Today we learn how
we can use another software in combination with Cheat Engine to help us find codes
better, easier and more efficient than hunt and peck, trial and error.
The FBI on Friday issued a formal warning that a sophisticated Russia-linked hacking campaign is compromising hundreds of thousands of home network devices worldwide and it is advising owners to reboot these devices in an attempt to disrupt the malicious software.
The law enforcement agency said foreign cyber actors are targeting routers in small or home offices with a botnet — or a network of infected devices — known as VPNFilter.
Cybersecurity experts and officials say VPNFilter has infected an estimated 500,000 devices worldwide.
The FBI recommends any owner of small office and home office routers reboot the devices to temporarily disrupt the malware and aid the potential identification of infected devices," the bureau's cyber division wrote in a public alert.
"Owners are advised to consider disabling remote management settings on devices and secure with strong passwords and encryption when enabled. Network devices should be upgraded to the latest available versions of firmware."
Earlier this week, the Department of Justice (DOJ) announced the bureau was working to disrupt the malware, which officials have linked to the cyber espionage group known as APT 28 or Sofacy.
Experts at Cisco’s threat intelligence arm Talos on Wednesday first called attention to VPNFilter, warning that hackers are ramping up malware attacks against Ukraine, infecting thousands of devices ahead of an upcoming national holiday in the country.
"While this isn't definitive by any means, we have also observed VPNFilter, a potentially destructive malware, actively infecting Ukrainian hosts at an alarming rate, utilizing a command and control infrastructure dedicated to that country," Talos wrote in a blog post.
"Both the scale and the capability of this operation are concerning. Working with our partners, we estimate the number of infected devices to be at least 500,000 in at least 54 countries."
The firm warned that VPNFilter could wreak havoc in a number of ways, from stealing website credentials to causing widespread internet disruption.
"The malware has a destructive capability that can render an infected device unusable, which can be triggered on individual victim machines or en masse, and has the potential of cutting off Internet access for hundreds of thousands of victims worldwide."
There has been extensive discussion of Russian efforts to hack into US voting systems (for example, see the report of the Director of National Intelligence from January of last year), and it is no longer in dispute that Russia was successful in ‘compromising’
a number of voting systems. Nor is it in dispute that many elements of
our voting system (not just the voting machines themselves) are
vulnerable to cyberattacks, and old-fashioned tampering, as explained in the excellent diary
from yesterday by DKos contributor Leslie Sazillo, which highlights the
work of Dr. Barbara Simons, an expert in computer security and voting
systems.
For all the efforts Russia engaged in over the course of years to
attempt to determine the outcome of the 2016 election, and install their
preferred candidate, and all that is publicly known of their
multifaceted operations to penetrate our voting systems, there are still
many here and elsewhere who hold onto the contention there is no direct
evidence that any votes, or vote totals, were changed.
That contention relies on the notion that Russia did everything in its capability to capture the election, from hijacking social media platforms to recruiting Americans
to assist them, and they breached various voting systems in dozens of
states, but the one the one thing they held back from doing, was change
votes themselves (even though, as the work of Dr. Simons and otherexperts show,
they could do so ‘invisibly’). Why would Putin hold back in this one
instance, when he has shown no such restraint in any other way?
The answer is, in all likelihood: he didn’t hold back. Claims that votes were not changed to ensure the election of Putin’s tool, are looking less plausible by the day.
An article by Dr. Eric Haseltine (in, of all places,Psychology Today) from last month, explicates why this is the case.
Eric joined the National Security Agency to run its Research
Directorate. Three years later, he was promoted to associate of director
of National Intelligence, wherehe oversaw all science and technology efforts within the United States Intelligence Communityas
well as fostering development innovative new technologies for
countering cyber threats and terrorism. For his work on
counter-terrorism technologies, he received the National Intelligence
Distinguished Service Medal in 2007.
A little more background on him, from Wikipedia:
Haseltine spent 13 years atHughes Aircraft, where he rose to the position of Director of Engineering. He then left forWalt Disney Imagineeringin 1992, where he joined the research and development group, working on large-scalevirtual-realityprojects. In 1998, he was promoted to senior vice president responsible for all technology projects.[1]In 2000, he was made Executive Vice President. Haseltine was head of research and development for Walt Disney Imagineering[2]by the time he left in 2002 to join theNational Security Agencyas Director of Research. From 2005 to 2007, Haseltine was Associate Director for Science and Technology,Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI)—that organization's first—a position he described in a 2006US News and World Reportinterview by stating: "You can think of me as the CTO [chief technology officer] of the intelligence community"… Eric has 23 patents in optics, special
effects and electronic media, and more than 150 publications in science
and technical journals, the web, and Discover Magazine.
Seems reasonably qualified, and from his years at NSA, reasonably informed. Here’s his takeon tampering with vote totals:
HOW TO HACK AN ELECTION: AN INTELLIGENCE ANALYSIS.
After the last presidential election, I heard one expert after
another reassure voters that the Russians could not have hacked voting
machines or state vote tallying systems on a scale large enough to tip
the presidential election…
As much as we’d all like to believe suchconfidentpronouncements,
my experience in the intelligence world, where I served as Associate
Director of National Intelligence, has lead me to one inescapable
conclusion—theoptimistic“experts”
are probably wrong, and all of us should acknowledge that our
unconscious (or not-so-unconscious) need to believe that our democracy
can’t be subverted by foreigners, blinds us to powerful
evidence to the contrary. And, after embracing this scary possibility,
we should do a lot more to secure our voting systems than we are doing
now…
The case for Russian tampering with the vote
Let me start by explaining the way intelligence professionals would
approach the question of whether the Russians, or other skilled actors,
could change the outcome of a U.S. election by tampering with voting.
Then I’ll show why intelligence-style analysis leads to uncomfortable
conclusions.
In making assessments about a state actor, such as the Russians,
intelligence analysts ask two questions: what are the intentions of this
actor and what are their capabilities?…
So, do the Russians intend to elect American candidates they prefer over those that we, the voters, prefer?
In a word, yes. In a rare display of unanimity, last year the U.S.
Intelligence Community assessed that Putin, acting through his
intelligence services, had indeed tried to tip the presidential
election. One of the Russian Intelligence’s scariest
accomplishments was to break into voter databases in 21 states (up to 50
states if you believe some sources). This success alone could
have influenced the election by dictating who could and could not vote.
In one target of Russian hacking, North Carolina for instance, some
legitimate voters (in a “blue” precinct, as it turns out,) could not
vote because the e-poll registration system used to allow voters to vote
erroneously asserted that some legitimate voters weren’t registered…
One more thing. You might be wondering whether, despite their
motivation to subvert our national elections, Russian leadership might
still hesitate to alter vote tallies out offearof
getting caught. Whereas the U.S. Congress responded to voter
registration hacks and email leaks from the Clinton campaign with
sanctions—a mere slap on the wrist—the U.S. just might view outright
alteration of vote counts an act of war and respond accordingly.
Sadly, I think the Kremlin views getting caught as more of agoodthing,
than a bad thing, because the net result would be favorable to Russia.
Based on the way we responded to Russian behavior in 2016, Putin knows
that a sizable portion of America—members of whichever major party the
Kremlin favored—would, by and large, accept the inevitable Russian
denials about vote tampering because we all believe what we want to
believe, particularly when believing Russia committed an act of war
could lead to armed conflict with a superpower…
In other words, if Russia were caught changing vote counts, America
would be even more divided than today: exactly what the Kremlin wants.
And the national will to respond to Russia’s provocation as an act of
war simply wouldn’t be there.
Russia wins if they don’t get caught and Russia wins if they do get caught; what’s not to like? (emphasis added)
Note that Dr. Haseltine makes reference to information that, rather
than the 39 states we know were in some way compromised, it may be the
voting systems in all 50 states the Russians accessed.
Dr. Haseltine goes into detail about the vulnerabilities of voting
systems, covering much of the same territory as Leslie’s review of Dr.
Simon’s work, so I won’t go through it here, but Dr. Haseltine’s summary
is well worth the read.
For our discussion, it’s his ultimate conclusion that warrants attention:
Adding up what we know about Russian intentions and
capabilities, and factoring in the vulnerabilities just listed, I
believe that it was entirely possible votes in the 2016 election were
tampered with, and that attempts could be made to compromise future
elections.
Why hold onto the notion that Russia didn’t try to change votes? (And
if they tried, there’s no reason to think they wouldn’t be ‘invisibly’
successful.)
Dr. Haseltine suggests it is simply not wanting to believe it to be true: “theoptimistic“experts”
are probably wrong, and all of us should acknowledge that our
unconscious (or not-so-unconscious) need to believe that our democracy
can’t be subverted by foreigners”.
Charles Pierce, at Esquire, echoes this view:
The last outpost of moderate opinion on the subject of the
Russian ratfucking during the 2016 presidential election seems to be
that, yes, there was mischief done and steps should be taken both to
reveal its extent and to prevent it from happening again in the future,
but that the ratfucking, thank baby Jesus, did not materially affect the
vote totals anywhere in the country. This is a calm, measured,
evidence-based judgment. It is also a kind of prayer. If the Russian
cyber-assault managed to change the vote totals anywhere, then the 2016
presidential election is wholly illegitimate. That rocks too many
comfort zones in too many places.
Putin isn’t playing.
Saturday, Mar 10, 2018 · 8:21:45 AM EST
·
ian douglas rushlau
DKos member Hudson Valley Mark
in a comment stressed the importance of communicating clear policy
goals to address the vulnerabilities of our voting systems, and his
point is well-taken.
Any new voting system should conform to the following principles:
1. It should use human-readable marks on paper as the official record
of voter preferences and as the official medium to store votes.1
2. It should be usable by all voters; accessible to all voters,
including those with disabilities; and available in all mandated
languages.2
3. It should provide voters the means and opportunity to verify that
the human-readable marks correctly represent their intended selections,
before casting the ballot.3
4. It should preserve vote anonymity: it should not be possible to
link any voter to his or her selections, when the system is used
appropriately. It should be difficult or impossible to compromise or
waive voter anonymity accidentally or deliberately.4No voter should be able to prove how he or she voted.5
5. It should export contest results in a standard, open, machine-readable format.6
6. It should be easily and transparently auditable at the ballot level. It should:
export a cast vote record (CVR) for every ballot,
in a standard, open, machine-readable format,
in a way that the original paper ballot corresponding to any CVR can be quickly and unambiguously identified, andvice versa.7
7. It should use commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) hardware components
and open-source software (OSS) in preference to proprietary hardware and
proprietary software, especially when doing so will reduce costs,
facilitate maintenance and customization, facilitate replacing failed or
obsolete equipment, improve security or reliability, or facilitate
adopting technological improvements quickly and affordably.8
8. It should be able to create CVRs from ballots designed for currently deployed systems9and it should be readily configurable to create CVRs for new ballot designs.10
9. It should be sufficiently open11to allow a competitive market for support, including configuration, maintenance, integration, and customization.
10.It should be usable by election officials: they should be able to
configure, operate, and maintain the system, create ballots, tabulate
votes, and audit the accuracy of the results without relying on external
expertise or labor, even in small jurisdictions with limited staff.
Michael Woff’s book Fire and Fury has attracted tons of
attention for anyone even vaguely curious about life inside the Trump
White House and copies have been flying off the shelves. Wikileaks
posted a PDF copy of the book and pirated copies quickly began making
the rounds. Unsurprisingly, hackers jumped on the opportunity to do some
misdeeds. Cybersecurity firm employee Michael Molsner tweeted the
discovery.
The Daily Beast did a little digging into malware, which is in a PDF file with almost 100 pages cut from the full 328 page version.
The Daily Beast obtained a sample of the malware, and processed it
through an online analysis service, which marked the files as a
so-called backdoor. A backdoor may give hackers remote access to a
victim’s computer.
It’s not the most exciting or underground malware in the world: A
slew of antivirus programs detect the malicious program, according to
results from malware analysis site Virus Total.
So it isn’t the most devastating cyber attack, but it’s important to
get your materials from authorized sources. Hackers aren’t above
capitalizing on nonfiction political bestsellers to gain access to your
computer.
Edward Snowden, who blew the whistle
on NSA surveillance of U.S. citizens, knows a thing or two about
spying. He’s now released an app, Haven, that makes it easier to defend
yourself against the most aggressive kinds.
Haven, now in public beta, turns any Android
smartphone into a sensitive security system. It’s primarily intended to
be installed on a secondary phone — say, last year’s model — which then
takes photos and records sound of any activity in a room where it’s
placed. Haven will then send alerts of any intrusion to a user’s primary
phone over encrypted channels.
A crippling flaw in a widely used code library has fatally undermined
the security of millions of encryption keys used in some of the
highest-stakes settings, including national identity cards, software
and application signing, and trusted platform modules protecting
government and corporate computers.
The weakness allows attackers to calculate the private portion of any
vulnerable key using nothing more than the corresponding public
portion. Hackers can then use the private key to impersonate key owners,
decrypt sensitive data, sneak malicious code into digitally signed
software, and bypass protections that prevent accessing or tampering
with stolen PC's.
The 5 year old flaw is also troubling because it's
located in code that complies with two internationally recognized
security certification standards that are binding on many governments,
contractors, and companies around the world.
The code library was
developed by German chipmaker Infineon, and has been generating weak keys
since 2012 at the latest.
A
quarter of the members of the National Infrastructure Advisory Council,
whose purview includes national cybersecurity, have resigned. In a
group resignation letter, they cited both specific shortfalls in the
administration’s approach to cybersecurity, and broader concerns that
Trump and his administration have undermined the “moral infrastructure”
of the U.S.
The resignations came Monday and were acknowledged by the White House on Tuesday. Nextgov has recently published the resignation letter that the departing councilors submitted. According to Roll Call, seven members resigned from the 27 member Council.
Several of those resigning were Obama-era appointees, including former U.S. Chief Data Scientist DJ Patil and former Office of Science and Technology Policy Chief of Staff Cristin Dorgelo.
Not surprisingly, then, the issues outlined in the resignation letter
were broad, faulting both Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Paris
climate accords and his inflammatory statements after the
Charlottesville attacks, some of which came during what was intended to
be an infrastructure-focused event.
“The
moral infrastructure of our Nation is the foundation on which our
physical infrastructure is built,” reads the letter in part. “The
Administration’s actions undermine that foundation.”
But
the resigning advisors also said the Administration was not “adequately
attentive to the pressing national security matters within the NIAC’s
purview, or responsive to sound advice received from experts and
advisors.” The letter also zeroed in on “insufficient attention to the
growing threats to the cybersecurity of the critical systems upon which
all Americans depend,” including election systems.
While he has ordered better security for government networks, Trump has shown little understanding
or seriousness when it comes to the broader issues surrounding, in his
words, “the cyber.” Most notably, he has refused to accept the U.S.
intelligence community’s conclusion that Russia engineered a hacking and
propaganda campaign meant to subvert the 2016 presidential election,
and even floated the idea of forming a cyber-security task force with Russia. The administration also missed a self-imposed deadline for presenting a comprehensive cyber-security plan.
In a report issued just after the mass resignations, the NIAC issued a report saying that dramatic steps were required to prevent a possible "9/11-level cyberattack."
In the 80's, if you wanted extra lives, the ability to skip levels, to be
invincible, or anything that wasn't included in your console's video
game...you were out of luck. That all changed in 1990 when Codemasters
created the Game Genie, opening the world of console video games to
amazing ways to cheat and to an extent, a form of hacking.
The Game
Genie was important not only for being a groundbreaking device but also
for establishing a legal precedent. In this video we'll take a quick
look at the Game Genie's various abilities and console versions, how it
worked, as well as its fight just to make it to the market.
On Monday, the Interceptpublished a classified internal NSA document
noting that Russian military intelligence mounted an operation to hack
at least one US voting software supplier—which provided software related
to voter registration files—in the months prior to last year’s
presidential contest. It has previously been reported that Russia
attempted to hack into voter registration systems, but this NSA document
provides details of how one such operation occurred.
According to 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 US election
and voting infrastructure. The report, dated May 5, 2017, is the most
detailed US government account of Russian interference in the election
that has yet come to light.
While the document provides a rare window into the NSA’s
understanding of the mechanics of Russian hacking, it does not show the
underlying “raw” intelligence on which the analysis is based. A US
intelligence officer who declined to be identified cautioned against
drawing too big a conclusion from the document because a single analysis
is not necessarily definitive.
The report indicates that Russian hacking may have penetrated further
into US 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:
Russian General Staff Main Intelligence Directorate actors … executed
cyber espionage operations against a named U.S. company in August 2016,
evidently to obtain information on elections-related software and
hardware solutions. … The actors likely used data obtained from that
operation to … launch a voter registration-themed spear-phishing
campaign targeting U.S. local government organizations.
President Trump’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., was promised damaging information about Hillary Clinton
before agreeing to meet with a Kremlin-connected Russian lawyer during
the 2016 campaign, according to three advisers to the White House
briefed on the meeting and two others with knowledge of it.
The
meeting was also attended by his campaign chairman at the time, Paul J.
Manafort, and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner. Mr. Manafort and Mr.
Kushner only recently disclosed the meeting, though not its content, in
confidential government documents described to The New York Times.
The Times reported the existence of the meeting on Saturday. But in subsequent interviews, the advisers and others revealed the motivation behind it.
The meeting — at Trump Tower on June 9, 2016, two weeks after Donald J. Trumpclinched the Republican nomination
— points to the central question in federal investigations of the
Kremlin’s meddling in the presidential election: whether the Trump
campaign colluded with the Russians. The accounts of the meeting
represent the first public indication that at least some in the campaign
were willing to accept Russian help.
And
while Trump has been dogged by revelations of undisclosed
meetings between his associates and the Russians, the episode at Trump
Tower is the first such confirmed private meeting involving members of
his inner circle during the campaign — as well as the first one known to
have included his eldest son. It came at an inflection point in the
campaign, when Donald Trump Jr., who served as an adviser and a
surrogate, was ascendant and Mr. Manafort was consolidating power.
It
is unclear whether the Russian lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya, actually
produced the promised compromising information about Mrs. Clinton. But
the people interviewed by The Times about the meeting said the
expectation was that she would do so.
In
a statement on Sunday, Donald Trump Jr. said he had met with the
Russian lawyer at the request of an acquaintance. “After pleasantries
were exchanged,” he said, “the woman stated that she had information
that individuals connected to Russia were funding the Democratic
National Committee and supporting Ms. Clinton. Her statements were
vague, ambiguous and made no sense. No details or supporting information
was provided or even offered. It quickly became clear that she had no
meaningful information.”
He
said she then turned the conversation to adoption of Russian children
and the Magnitsky Act, an American law that blacklists suspected Russian
human rights abusers. The law so enraged President Vladimir V. Putin of
Russia that he retaliated by halting American adoptions of Russian
children.
“It
became clear to me that this was the true agenda all along and that the
claims of potentially helpful information were a pretext for the
meeting,” Mr. Trump said.
When
he was first asked about the meeting on Saturday, he said only that it
was primarily about adoptions and mentioned nothing about Mrs. Clinton.
Mark
Corallo, a spokesman for the president’s lawyer, said on Sunday that
“Trump was not aware of and did not attend the meeting.”
Lawyers
and spokesmen for Mr. Kushner and Mr. Manafort did not immediately
respond to requests for comment. In his statement, Donald Trump Jr. said
he asked Mr. Manafort and Mr. Kushner to attend, but did not tell them
what the meeting was about.
American intelligence agencies have concluded
that Russian hackers and propagandists worked to tip the election
toward Donald J. Trump, in part by stealing and then providing to
WikiLeaks internal Democratic Party and Clinton campaign emails that
were embarrassing to Mrs. Clinton. WikiLeaks began releasing the
material on July 22.
A
special prosecutor and congressional committees are now investigating
the Trump campaign’s possible collusion with the Russians. Mr. Trump has
disputed that, but the investigation has cast a shadow over his
administration.
Mr.
Trump has also equivocated on whether the Russians were solely
responsible for the hacking. On Sunday, two days after his first meeting
as president with Mr. Putin, Mr. Trump said in a Twitter post:
“I strongly pressed President Putin twice about Russian meddling in our
election. He vehemently denied it. I’ve already given my opinion.....”
He also tweeted that
they had “discussed forming an impenetrable Cyber Security unit so that
election hacking, & many other negative things, will be
guarded...””
On
Sunday morning on Fox News, the White House chief of staff, Reince
Priebus, described the Trump Tower meeting as a “big nothing burger.”
“Talking
about issues of foreign policy, issues related to our place in the
world, issues important to the American people is not unusual,” he said.
But
Representative Adam B. Schiff of California, the leading Democrat on
the House Intelligence Committee, one of the panels investigating
Russian election interference, said he wanted to question “everyone that
was at that meeting.”
“There’s
no reason for this Russian government advocate to be meeting with Paul
Manafort or with Mr. Kushner or the president’s son if it wasn’t about
the campaign and Russia policy,” Mr. Schiff said after the initial Times
report.
Ms.
Veselnitskaya, the Russian lawyer invited to the Trump Tower meeting,
is best known for mounting a multipronged attack against the Magnitsky
Act.
The
adoption impasse is a frequently used talking point for opponents of
the act. Ms. Veselnitskaya’s campaign against the law has also included
attempts to discredit the man after whom it was named, Sergei L.
Magnitsky, a lawyer and auditor who died in 2009 in mysterious
circumstances in a Russian prison after exposing one of the biggest
corruption scandals during Mr. Putin’s rule.
Ms.
Veselnitskaya’s clients include state-owned businesses and a senior
government official’s son, whose company was under investigation in the
United States at the time of the meeting. Her activities and
associations had previously drawn the attention of the F.B.I., according
to a former senior law enforcement official.
Ms.
Veselnitskaya said in a statement on Saturday that “nothing at all
about the presidential campaign” was discussed. She recalled that after
about 10 minutes, either Mr. Kushner or Mr. Manafort walked out.
She
said she had “never acted on behalf of the Russian government” and
“never discussed any of these matters with any representative of the
Russian government.”
The
Trump Tower meeting was disclosed to government officials in recent
days, when Mr. Kushner, who is also a senior White House aide, filed a
revised version of a form required to obtain a security clearance.
The Times reported in April
that he had failed to disclose any foreign contacts, including meetings
with the Russian ambassador to the United States and the head of a
Russian state bank. Failure to report such contacts can result in a loss
of access to classified information and even, if information is
knowingly falsified or concealed, in imprisonment.
Mr.
Kushner’s advisers said at the time that the omissions were an error,
and that he had immediately notified the F.B.I. that he would be
revising the filing.
In
a statement on Saturday, Mr. Kushner’s lawyer, Jamie Gorelick, said:
“He has since submitted this information, including that during the
campaign and transition, he had over 100 calls or meetings with
representatives of more than 20 countries, most of which were during
transition. Mr. Kushner has submitted additional updates and included,
out of an abundance of caution, this meeting with a Russian person,
which he briefly attended at the request of his brother-in-law Donald
Trump Jr. As Mr. Kushner has consistently stated, he is eager to
cooperate and share what he knows.”
Mr.
Manafort, the former campaign chairman, also recently disclosed the
meeting, and Donald Trump Jr.’s role in organizing it, to congressional
investigators who had questions about his foreign contacts, according to
people familiar with the events. Neither Mr. Manafort nor Mr. Kushner
was required to disclose the content of the meeting.
A spokesman for Mr. Manafort declined to comment.
Since
the president took office, Donald Trump Jr. and his brother Eric have
assumed day-to-day control of their father’s real estate empire. Because
he does not serve in the administration and does not have a security
clearance, Donald Trump Jr. was not required to disclose his foreign
contacts.
Federal and congressional investigators have not publicly
asked for any records that would require his disclosure of Russian
contacts.
Ms.
Veselnitskaya is a formidable operator with a history of pushing the
Kremlin’s agenda. Most notable is her campaign against the Magnitsky
Act, which provoked a Cold War-style, tit-for-tat dispute with the
Kremlin when President Barack Obama signed it into law in 2012.
Under
the law, about 44 Russian citizens have been put on a list that allows
the United States to seize their American assets and deny them visas.
The United States asserts that many of them are connected to the fraud
exposed by Mr. Magnitsky, who after being jailed for more than a year
was found dead in his cell. A Russian human rights panel found that he
had been assaulted. To critics of Mr. Putin, Mr. Magnitsky, in death,
became a symbol of corruption and brutality in the Russian state.
An
infuriated Mr. Putin has called the law an “outrageous act,” and, in
addition to banning American adoptions, he compiled what became known as
an “anti-Magnitsky” blacklist of United States citizens.
Among
those blacklisted was Preet Bharara, then the United States attorney in
Manhattan, who led notable convictions of Russian arms and drug
dealers. Mr. Bharara was abruptly fired in March, after previously being asked to stay on by President Trump.
One
of Ms. Veselnitskaya’s clients is Denis Katsyv, the Russian owner of
Prevezon Holdings, an investment company based in Cyprus. He is the son
of Petr Katsyv, the vice president of the state-owned Russian Railways
and a former deputy governor of the Moscow region. In a civil forfeiture
case prosecuted by Mr. Bharara’s office, the Justice Department alleged
that Prevezon had helped launder money linked to the $230 million
corruption scheme exposed by Mr. Magnitsky by putting it in New York
real estate and bank accounts. Prevezon recently settled the case for $6
million without admitting wrongdoing.
Ms. Veselnitskaya was also deeply involved in the making of a film that disputes the widely accepted version
of Mr. Magnitsky’s life and death. In the film and in her statement,
she said the true culprit of the fraud was William F. Browder, an
American-born financier who hired Mr. Magnitsky to investigate the fraud
after three of his investment funds companies in Russia were seized.
Mr. Browder called the film a state-sponsored smear campaign.
“She’s not just some private lawyer,” Mr. Browder said of Ms. Veselnitskaya. “She is a tool of the Russian government.”
John O. Brennan, a former C.I.A. director, testified in May
that he had been concerned last year by Russian government efforts to
contact and manipulate members of Mr. Trump’s campaign. “Russian
intelligence agencies do not hesitate at all to use private companies
and Russian persons who are unaffiliated with the Russian government to
support their objectives,” he said.
Among those now under investigation is Michael T. Flynn, who was forced to resign as
Mr. Trump’s national security adviser after it became known that he had
falsely denied speaking to the Russian ambassador about sanctions
imposed by the Obama administration over the election hacking.
Congress
later discovered that Mr. Flynn had been paid more than $65,000 by
companies linked to Russia, and that he had failed to disclose those
payments when he renewed his security clearance and underwent an
additional background check to join the White House staff.
In May, the president fired the F.B.I. director,
James B. Comey, who days later provided information about a meeting
with Mr. Trump at the White House. According to Mr. Comey, the president
asked him to end the bureau’s investigation into Mr. Flynn; Mr. Trump
has repeatedly denied making such a request. Robert S. Mueller III, a
former F.B.I. director, was then appointed as special counsel.
The
status of Mr. Mueller’s investigation is not clear, but he has
assembled a veteran team of prosecutors and agents to dig into any
possible collusion.
Follow Jo Becker, Matt Apuzzo and Adam Goldman on Twitter.
Maggie Haberman, Sophia Kishkovsky and Eric Lipton contributed reporting. Kitty Bennett contributed research.
Early last August, an envelope with extraordinary
handling restrictions arrived at the White House.
Sent by courier from
the CIA, it carried “eyes only” instructions that its contents be shown
to just four people: President Barack Obama and three senior aides.
Inside was an intelligence bombshell, a report drawn from sourcing
deep inside the Russian government that detailed Russian President
Vladimir Putin’s direct involvement in a cyber campaign to disrupt and
discredit the U.S. presidential race.
But it went further. The intelligence captured Putin’s specific
instructions on the operation’s audacious objectives — defeat or at
least damage the Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton, and help elect her
opponent, Donald Trump.
At that point, the outlines of the Russian assault on the U.S.
election were increasingly apparent.
Hackers with ties to Russian
intelligence services had been rummaging through Democratic Party
computer networks, as well as some Republican systems, for more than a
year. In July, the FBI had opened an investigation of contacts between
Russian officials and Trump associates. And on July 22, nearly 20,000
emails stolen from the Democratic National Committee were dumped online
by WikiLeaks.
Election Hackers Altered Voter Rolls, Stole Private Data, Officials Say
Massimo Calabresi - Jun 22, 2017
The hacking of state and local election databases in 2016 was more extensive than previously reported, including at least one successful attempt to alter voter information, and the theft of thousands of voter records that contain private information like partial Social Security numbers, current and former officials tell TIME.
In one case, investigators found there had been a manipulation of voter data in a county database but the alterations were discovered and rectified, two sources familiar with the matter tell TIME. Investigators have not identified whether the hackers in that case were Russian agents.
The fact that private data was stolen from states is separately providing investigators a previously unreported line of inquiry in the probes into Russian attempts to influence the election. In Illinois, more than 90% of the nearly 90,000 records stolen by Russian state actors contained drivers license numbers, and a quarter contained the last four digits of voters’ Social Security numbers, according to Ken Menzel, the General Counsel of the State Board of Elections.
Congressional investigators are probing whether any of this stolen private information made its way to the Trump campaign, two sources familiar with the investigations tell TIME.
“If any campaign, Trump or otherwise, used inappropriate data the questions are, How did they get it? From whom? And with what level of knowledge?” the former top Democratic staffer on the House Intelligence Committee, Michael Bahar, tells TIME. “That is a crux of the investigation."
Exclusive: Sources close to the intelligence
community report that Director Comey’s FBI computer was illegally
accessed immediately after he was dismissed from his post. They further
report that ‘removable media’ was used in the commission of this crime.
‘Removable media’ is a category describing physical devices that can be
placed into a computer, either to download information or to upload it,
such as a memory card, a USB stick, a removable hard drive, a thumb
drive or similar items.
Sources further report that a person or persons allied to Donald
Trump passed data accessed from Director Comey’s computer to Russian
diplomats. It is not known when or how this took place. A piece of
removable media containing all the data in question has been recovered
from hostile actors, sources say, and is now in the possession of the
Justice Department.
Director Comey is said to have known in advance
that Mr. Trump would dismiss him. He took careful steps, these sources
say, to leave not only a paper trail as we have seen in the story of the
‘Comey Memo’ but
also a digital one. Director Comey’s own primary work computer, and
other computers in and around his former office, were fitted with
sophisticated intelligence community software allowing the Justice
Department to see precisely how and when they were attacked.
The official Foreign Ministry of Russia’s Twitter account posted a tweet showing Foreign Minister Lavarov laughing with Rex Tillerson,
the Secretary of State who has won the Order of Friendship of Vladimir
Putin, over Director Comey’s firing, on the day Donald Trump hosted the
Russians in the White House and verbally gave them top-secret allied intelligence, later published by the Russian news agency Tass.
White House sources say Trump has already discussed his resignation more
than once. Perhaps when he discovers that the justice and intelligence
communities are well aware he breached Director Comey’s computer and
handed FBI data to Russia, he may decide to spare the nation further
trauma and resign.
If he becomes President, Mike Pence will be unable to pardon Donald Trump for any crimes at the state level.
The
much-anticipated Senate hearing on Monday afternoon with former acting
attorney general Sally Yates and former director of national
intelligence James Clapper confirmed an important point: the Russia
story still poses tremendous trouble for President Donald Trump and his
crew.
Yates recounted a disturbing tale. She recalled that on January 26, she requested and received a meeting with Don McGahn, Trump's White House counsel.
At the time, Vice President Mike Pence and other White House officials
were saying that ret. Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, Trump's national security
adviser, had not spoken the month before with the Russian ambassador to
the United States, Sergey Kislyak, about the sanctions then-President
Barack Obama had imposed on the Russians as punishment for Moscow's
meddling in the 2016 presidential campaign. Yates' Justice Department
had evidence—presumably intercepts of Flynn's communications with
Kislyak—that showed this assertion was flat-out false.
At that meeting, Yates shared two pressing concerns with McGahn: that
Flynn had lied to the vice president and that Flynn could now be
blackmailed by the Russians because they knew he had lied about his
conversations with Kislyak. As Yates told the members of the Senate
subcommittee on crime and terrorism, "To state the obvious: you don't
want your national security adviser compromised by the Russians." She
and McGahn also discussed whether Flynn had violated any laws.
The next day, McGahn asked Yates to return to the White House, and
they had another discussion. According to Yates, McGahn asked whether it
would interfere with the FBI's ongoing investigation of Flynn if the
White House took action regarding this matter. No, Yates said she told
him. The FBI had already interviewed Flynn. And Yates explained to the
senators that she had assumed that the White House would not sit on the
information she presented McGahn and do nothing.
But that's what the White House did. McGahn in that second meeting
did ask if the White House could review the evidence the Justice
Department had. She agreed to make it available. (Yates testified that
she did not know whether this material was ever reviewed by the White
House. She was fired at that point because she would not support Trump's
Muslim travel ban.) Whether McGahn examined that evidence about Flynn,
the White House did not take action against him. It stood by Flynn. He
remained in the job, hiring staff for the National Security Council and
participating in key policy decision-making.
On February 9, the Washington Post revealed
that Flynn had indeed spoken with Kislyak about the sanctions. And
still the Trump White House backed him up. Four days later, Kellyanne
Conway, a top Trump White House official, declared that Trump still had
"full confidence" in Flynn. The next day—as a media firestorm
continued—Trump fired him. Still, the day after he canned Flynn, Trump
declared, "Gen. Flynn is a wonderful man. I think he has been treated
very, very unfairly by the media, as I call it, the fake media in many
cases. And I think it is really a sad thing that he was treated so
badly." Trump displayed no concern about Flynn's misconduct.
The conclusion from Yates' testimony was clear: Trump didn't dump
Flynn until the Kislyak matter became a public scandal and
embarrassment. The Justice Department warning—hey, your national
security adviser could be compromised by the foreign government that
just intervened in the American presidential campaign—appeared to
have had no impact on Trump's actions regarding Flynn. Imagine what
Republicans would say if a President Hillary Clinton retained as
national security adviser a person who could be blackmailed by Moscow.
The subcommittee's hearing was also inconvenient for Trump and his
supporters on another key topic: it destroyed one of their favorite
talking points.
On March 5, Clapper was interviewed by NBC News' Chuck Todd on Meet the Press
and asked if there was any evidence of collusion between members of the
Trump campaign and the Russians. "Not to my knowledge," Clapper
replied. Since then, Trump and his champions have cited Clapper to say
there is no there there with the Russia story. Trump on March 20 tweeted,
"James Clapper and others stated that there is no evidence Potus
colluded with Russia. The story is FAKE NEWS and everyone knows it!"
White House press secretary Sean Spicer has repeatedly deployed this
Clapper statement to insist there was no collusion.
At Monday's hearing, Clapper pulled this rug out from under the White
House and its comrades. He noted that it was standard policy for the
FBI not to share with him details about ongoing counterintelligence
investigations. And he said he had not been aware of the FBI's
investigation of contacts between Trump associates and Russia that FBI
director James Comey revealed weeks ago at a House intelligence
committee hearing. Consequently, when Clapper told Todd that he was not
familiar with any evidence of Trump-Russia collusion, he was speaking
accurately. But he essentially told the Senate subcommittee that he was
not in a position to know for certain. This piece of spin should now be
buried. Trump can no longer hide behind this one Clapper statement.
Clapper also dropped another piece of information disquieting for the Trump camp. Last month, the Guardian
reported that British intelligence in late 2015 collected intelligence
on suspicious interactions between Trump associates and known or
suspected Russian agents and passed this information to to the United
States "as part of a routine exchange of information."Asked
about this report, Clapper said it was "accurate." He added, "The
specifics are quite sensitive." This may well have been the first public
confirmation from an intelligence community leader that US intelligence
agencies have possessed secret information about ties between Trump's
circle and Moscow. (Comey testified that the FBI's counterintelligence
investigation of links between Trump associates and Russian began in
late July 2016.)
So this hearing indicated that the Trump White House protected a
national security adviser who lied and who could be compromised by
Moscow, that Trump can no longer cite Clapper to claim there was no
collusion, and that US intelligence had sensitive information on
interactions between Trump associates and possible Russian agents as
early as late 2015. Still, most of the Republicans on the panel focused
on leaks and "unmasking"—not the main issues at hand. They collectively
pounded more on Yates for her action regarding the Muslim travel ban
than on Moscow for its covert operation to subvert the 2016 election to
help Trump.
This Senate subcommittee, which is chaired by Sen. Lindsey Graham
(R-S.C.), is not mounting a full investigation comparable to the inquiry
being conducted by the Senate intelligence committee (and presumably
the hobbled House intelligence committee). It has far less staff, and
its jurisdiction is limited. But this hearing demonstrated that serious
inquiry can expand the public knowledge of the Trump-Russia scandal—and
that there remains much more to examine and unearth.
If it turns out that Donald Trump’s campaign did, indeed, work with
the Russians to defeat Hillary Clinton in last fall’s presidential
election, a majority of the country – 53 percent – thinks the president
should resign.
According to the explosive new poll from Public Policy Polling (PPP),
which debuted Wednesday night on MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow Show, the
American people said – by a 14-point margin – that Trump should step
down if there was collusion.
Another result revealed on Maddow’s program found that a plurality of
the country believes Trump’s campaign did, in fact, work with Russia to
swing the 2016 election in his favor.
If you’re keeping score at home: The American people think both that
Trump’s campaign colluded with Russia and that the president should
resign as a result.
While there is endless political polling released on a weekly basis
asking about hypothetical scenarios, what should be terrifying to the
White House is that the explosive Russia scandal is just one more
investigation or one more small piece of evidence away from making the
questions posed in the PPP survey a reality.
At that point, the president will have to face a country that doesn’t
just believe he isn’t doing a good job, as polls repeatedly suggest,
but also that he should no longer have the job at all.
The Republican National Committee (RNC) tried to conceal payments it
made during the 2016 election to a shadowy intelligence-gathering firm
for opposition research against Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton.
Politico reported on Friday
that the RNC paid $41,500 to the Hamilton Trading Group, a
Virginia-based private company run by former CIA operatives. The agency
worked with a former Russian spy to hunt for information that would show
conflicts of interest between Clinton’s role as Secretary of State and
her interests as a private citizen and leader of the Clinton Foundation.
Observers in politics and intelligence noted that it would be odd for
the RNC to make payments to Hamilton Trading given that the group
specializes in matters pertaining to Russia.
“RNC officials and the president and co-founder of Hamilton Trading
Group, an ex-CIA officer named Ben Wickham, insisted the payments, which
eventually totaled $41,500, had nothing to do with Russia,” wrote
Politico’s Kenneth P. Vogel and Eli Stokols.
Wickham and the RNC initially claimed that the payments were in
return for building and security analyses of RNC headquarters in
Washington.
“But RNC officials now acknowledge that most of the cash — $34,100 — went towards intelligence-style reports
that sought to prove conflicts of interest between Democratic
presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s tenure as Secretary of State
and her family’s foundation,” Politico said.
HTG produced two dossiers, both of which attempted to make a case
that Clinton directed U.S. interventions in Bulgaria and Israel on
behalf of energy firms that donated to the Clinton Foundation, said
individuals familiar with the documents.
Wickham told Politico in a Thursday interview that he floated the
building inspection story because “any other work we may have done for
them” was covered under a nondisclosure agreement.
“I’m not denying that I wasn’t totally forthcoming, but I’m telling
you why,” Wickham told Politico.
“The security stuff that we did, which
is legitimate, was not covered by any kind of a confidentiality
agreement, so I can discuss that.”
Last June, when the RNC filed financial disclosures with the Federal
Elections Commission (FEC), a $3,400 payment to Hamilton attracted
attention because the firm is not known for building security
consultations, but rather for espionage work related to Russia.
“Adding to the intrigue are the firm’s intelligence connections in Russia, where it was known to perform background checks and provide security services for American officials and companies,” said Politico.
The job was handed to former KGB agent Gennady Vasilenko, who declined to comment on the matter.
Wickham denied that his firm looked into any connections
between the Trump campaign and the Russian government, saying he has
“never had any contact with … Trump or Manafort or their people.”
Politico said the RNC has produced documents detailing a list of
Clinton-related issues it tasked Hamilton Trading with researching.
“We certainly are not widely known, as we have always been a two- to
three-man company and have done little advertising,” Wickham said,
adding that the firm has done anti-terror security consultations for
Amtrak and the International Monetary Fund’s offices in Moscow.
It wasn't Donald Trump alone who had ties to the Russians during the
2016 campaign. It turns out that the Republican National Committee used a
firm with ties to Russian intelligence to dig up dirt on Hillary
Clinton.
Perhaps you’ve been wondering how establishment Republicans were so
happy ignoring the looming treason scandal of their President. It very
well could be because they, too, have something Russian to hide.
So it wasn’t Donald Trump alone who had ties to the Russians during
the 2016 campaign. It turns out that the Republican National Committee
used a firm with ties to Russian intelligence to dig up dirt on Hillary
Clinton.
The RNC used former CIA officers’ firm the Hamilton Trading Group,
which has “particular expertise” in Russia, to dig up dirt on Clinton
according to a Politico report.
“RNC officials and the president and co-founder of Hamilton Trading
Group, an ex-CIA officer named Ben Wickham, insisted the payments, which
eventually totaled $41,500, had nothing to do with Russia,” Kenneth P.
Vogel and Eli Stokols reported.
The RNC claimed the payments were for “security.”
“But RNC officials now acknowledge that most of the cash — $34,100 — went towards intelligence-style reports that
sought to prove conflicts of interest between Democratic presidential
candidate Hillary Clinton’s tenure as Secretary of State and her
family’s foundation.”
Oh.
So the RNC was perfectly comfortable working with a firm that raised
eyebrows for its Russian connections, at a time when the intelligence
community was telling them that Russia was interfering in the U.S.
election.
To say this again, as Putin has bragged about information warfare as
the new war, a major U.S. political party sided with a country that
declared information warfare, or war if you will, on the U.S.A.
Yes, it is an act of war, it is meant to destroy western democracy in the end.
The entire Republican Party had strange ties to a government at war
with this country, the country to which Republicans are supposed to be
loyal.
Strange things are afloat. No wonder Congressional Republicans are
doing everything they can to ignore the screaming treason of the White
House. They are quite possibly in on it themselves.
If this scandal comes to a head, that is to say if the intelligence
community turns on the Republican Party in an effort to force them to
deal with the possible collusion with a hostile foreign power in the
White House, the Russia scandal could bring down the Republican Party
for a generation.
Republicans should be smart here; this will come out. They should get
on the right side of history before it’s too late. Sadly, this party’s
elected officials have shown little allegiance to their country.
What is going on here is a scandal that will go down in history. One
of two major parties in the U.S. system working with a foreign power
that has declared war on the U.S.A. That is not to say they colluded
with Russia to bring the U.S. down, but they did work with them as
Russia was attacking the election, an act of war. That much is in
evidence.
The collusion evidence, the circumstantial collusion evidence, in
this case could be as simple as Republicans knew Russians were attacking
the U.S. elections when they worked with this firm with ties to Russian
intelligence. To be clear, there is not public evidence of direct
collusion in terms of quid pro quo right now. There is evidence that the
RNC was deceptive about their connections with Russian intelligence in
this regard, and that they had it during the campaign.
The fact that the head of the RNC at the time is now in the Trump
White House is even more troubling, as Trump has hired people at all
points whose contacts with the Russians during the election have already
caused one of them to be fired and another to step down from overseeing
an investigation into Trump’s ties to Russia.
This should now be amended to the Republican Party’s ties to Russia.
Lucky for them, they are in power of both branches of government and
trying to get their Supreme Court nominee in as the last gatekeeper in a
checks and balances system. The only way this scandal is going to come
out is through the intelligence community leaking to the press.
And that’s why Republicans are so outraged about leaks.
But this is not Republicans trying to protect our national security
secrets. This is Republicans trying to make sure they cover up the fact
that Russia has eyes and ears in the situation room, and has access to
our national secrets because of Trump and the GOP.
It was true that going to the extremist corner they did, Republicans
could not win a national election without cheating. They knew this,
everyone knew this. So it was a shock when Donald Trump, the most
extreme of the extreme, won.
But now, it’s not such a shock because it wasn’t won without
cheating. It was won with the help of a hostile, aggressive government
whose goal is to bring the U.S. down in order to kill the hope of
democracy.