RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.newsweek.com/yes-cyber-spying-that-bad-opinion-1556487

The United States has been attempting to strengthen its cybersecurity since at least 1988, when it enacted the first Computer Security Act—replaced in 2002 by the Federal Security Management Act. It sounds great in concept: federal agencies are required to “develop, document, and implement” programs for security management “including those provided or managed by another agency, contractor, or other source.”

How’s it working out?

Solarwinds, a network management software company, was recently discovered to have had malware inserted into its products. Its clients’ systems have been compromised for as long as nine months. Someone—possibly the Russians, possibly the Chinese—has been inside the U.S. Department of Defense, the Department of Homeland Security, the Treasury Department and major American industries. The list gets longer every day.

The U.S. has a cybersecurity industry that costs the government and private companies billions of dollars. But all that is money down the toilet if the entire infrastructure is compromised—which it currently is. Virtually every computer and computer processor used in the United States is, in part or entirely, made in foreign countries, with China directly and indirectly providing 90 percent of the hardware. We haven’t been looking at hardware for possible infiltration, but we should have been.

/https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/12/deep-state-strike-force-lloyd-billingsley/

The DOJ (Sessions, Rosenstein), FBI (Comey, Strzok), and CIA (Brennan) were all key players in the attempted coup against President Trump. As that unfolded, and long before, a more powerful agency was playing a bigger role, largely out of sight from the media and public.

The Senior Executive Service (SES) was established to “ensure that the executive management of the Government of the United States is responsive to the needs, policies, and goals of the Nation and otherwise is of the highest quality.” SES leaders “serve in the key positions just below the top Presidential appointees” as “the major link between these appointees and the rest of the Federal workforce. They operate and oversee nearly every government activity in approximately 75 Federal agencies,” including the State Department, the Army, Navy, the Departments of Defense, Homeland Security and the Department of Justice.

The SES launched during the Carter administration as part of the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978 and a response to the “moral and management failures of Watergate and Great Society program implementation.” The response was to create another bureaucracy more powerful than the others, “a cadre of high-level managers in the government.”  In 1981, Karlyn Barker of the Washington Post reported that the SES wasn’t working as intended, and that raised an issue.

Back in 1978, Rep. Herb Harris, Virginia Democrat, warned that the SES “will open the door to politicization.” The government provides evidence that the SES was political from the start.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/rick-moran/2020/12/18/as-bad-as-that-hack-of-u-s-government-agencies-was-its-far-worse-than-you-think-n1218811

Information about the massive hack of U.S. government networks just keeps getting worse and worse. Now we learn that America’s nuclear infrastructure was probably compromised, starting with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which oversees a broad range of nuclear activities and includes the NNSA — the National Nuclear Security Administration. It makes and stores the nuclear weapons.

Politico:

They found suspicious activity in networks belonging to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), Sandia and Los Alamos national laboratories in New Mexico and Washington, the Office of Secure Transportation at NNSA, and the Richland Field Office of the DOE.

The hackers have been able to do more damage at FERC than the other agencies, and officials there have evidence of highly malicious activity, the officials said, but did not elaborate.

It’s not likely the hackers were able to penetrate the really sensitive information. The Pentagon says that the malware employed only affected business systems.

“At this point, the investigation has found that the malware has been isolated to business networks only, and has not impacted the mission essential national security functions of the department, including the National Nuclear Security Administration,” Hynes said in a statement. “When DOE identified vulnerable software, immediate action was taken to mitigate the risk, and all software identified as being vulnerable to this attack was disconnected from the DOE network.”

https://www.theepochtimes.com/hack-of-federal-government-larger-than-previously-thought-warns-cisa_3623466.html?utm_source=news&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=breaking-2020-12-17-5

The federal Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) said Thursday that the hacking campaign that targeted the federal government is larger than what was previously known.

The alleged foreign actors gained backdoor access in more ways than through the SolarWinds software, which was publicly disclosed by the FBI and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) earlier this week.

“One of the initial access vectors for this activity is a supply chain compromise of the following SolarWinds Orion products. CISA has evidence of additional initial access vectors, other than the SolarWinds Orion platform; however, these are still being investigated,” CISA said in a statement on Thursday.

But it stressed that the “SolarWinds Orion supply chain compromise is not the only initial infection vector this advanced persistent threat actor leveraged.”

The agency also furthermore warned that the threat “poses a grave risk to the Federal Government and state, local, tribal, and territorial governments as well as critical infrastructure entities” as well as the private sector.

Foreign hackers, whose country of origin is not known, compromised “government agencies, critical infrastructure entities, and private sector organizations” starting in March 2020 or before, according to CISA.

The cybersecurity agency noted that it “expects that removing this threat actor from compromised environments will be highly complex and challenging for organizations,” adding: “It is likely that the adversary has additional initial access vectors and tactics, techniques, and procedures that have not yet been discovered.”

https://www.theepochtimes.com/soft-targets-chinese-spies-have-been-targeting-us-

A report that a suspected Chinese spy spent years cozying up to local and national-level politicians reveals that Beijing is investing significantly in long-term espionage operations to infiltrate U.S. politics, an expert said.

From 2011 to 2015, Christina Fang, a Chinese student at California State University–East Bay, cultivated extensive ties with local politicians in the Bay Area by volunteering in fundraising campaigns and attending political events. U.S. intelligence officials believe she was working under the direction of China’s top spy agency, the Ministry of State Security (MSS), according to a recent investigation by Axios.

Fang developed close ties to Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.), who in early 2015 became a member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. She first knew Swalwell when he was a local city council member. Fang later fundraised for the congressman’s 2014 reelection campaign, and facilitated the placement of an intern in his office, the outlet reported.

She also had romantic or sexual relationships with two unnamed mayors of Midwestern cities, Axios said.

The operation was “beautifully handled” in the way it combined both intelligence gathering and political influence, said Nicholas Eftimiades, a former senior U.S. intelligence official and author of the book “Chinese Intelligence Operations,” in an interview with The Epoch Times.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/foreign-government-backed-hackers-breach-u-s-treasury-report

A “sophisticated hacking group” backed by the Russian government reportedly infiltrated the Department of Treasury’s systems and stole information related to internet and telecommunications policymaking as part of a broader campaign that also hacked the Commerce Department and other government agencies.

The FBI is investigating the attacks and is looking into the Russian hacking group APT29, also known as Cozy Bear, as a potential culprit, according to the Washington Post. The foreign-backed hack was first reported by Reuters. An FBI spokesperson told the Washington Examiner that the bureau “is aware of today’s reporting and is appropriately engaged, however, we decline to comment further.”

As a result of the hack, the National Security Council held a meeting at the White House on Sunday.

The Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency confirmed the incident in a statement but did not suggest who was behind the attack.

“We have been working closely with our agency partners regarding recently discovered activity on government networks,” the agency said. “CISA is providing technical assistance to affected entities as they work to identify and mitigate any potential compromises.”

SolarWinds, an IT company, runs network management systems that were breached by the hackers, as first reported by the Washington Post.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16853/espionage-china-spying-us

Given the emergency, Washington should immediately close down all of China’s bases of operation in the U.S., including its four remaining consulates — Chicago, Los Angeles, New York and San Francisco — and substantially reducing the staff of the embassy. The embassy, in reality, needs only the ambassador, immediate family, and personal staff, not the hundreds currently assigned there.

China’s New York consulate is also an espionage hub. James Olson, a former CIA counterintelligence chief, “conservatively” estimated that China, in the words of the New York Post, “has more than 100 intelligence officers operating in the city at any given time.” New York City, he said, is “under assault like never before.”

Will Beijing merely transfer spies to Chinese banks and businesses operating in the U.S.? Probably, but that will take time and, in any event, Washington can order the closure of non-diplomatic outposts as well.

Others will say American businesses in China need consular support. Of course they do. My reply is that it is in America’s interest to get its companies out of that country, for moral as well as other reasons. The loss of consular support will be one more reason for them to pack their bags in a hurry.

Revelations this month about U.S. Rep. Eric Swalwell, a California Democrat, highlight Beijing’s complete penetration of American society.

China’s influence, intelligence and infiltration attempts are overwhelming America. Given the emergency, Washington should immediately close down all of China’s bases of operation in the U.S., including its four remaining consulates.

Perhaps the most striking aspect of the news about Swalwell is that Fang Fang, a suspected Chinese Ministry of State Security agent also known as “Christine,” first contacted him not while he was sitting on the House Intelligence Committee but when he was a councilmember in Dublin City, California.