RUTHFULLY YOURS

Not one of 44 House Democrats bothered with background checks for members of a close-knit group of Pakistani IT aides who ended up gaining “unauthorized access” to congressional data, a new report from The Daily Caller shows.

House security rules require members to start a background check for employees, but they can also put down that another member has vouched for the person.

The background check was waived for all five IT workers, who made headlines last year for what the House inspector general’s report described as activity with “nefarious purposes.”

Pakistan-born Imran Awan, who served as a tech aide in Congress for 13 years, managed to snag congressional IT jobs with salaries as high as $165,000 for his brothers Abid and Jamal, his wife Hina Alvi, and his friend Rao Abbas, who had just been fired from McDonald’s. Together the group was found logging into accounts of representatives who had not hired them, using representatives’ private usernames, and uploading data off of the House network, according to the inspector general’s report.

Abid was working for Representative Yvette Clarke (D., N.Y.) when $120,000 of computer equipment disappeared. Then-congressman Xavier Becerra, who hired Imran, had his server stolen after the inspector general listed it as evidence in an investigation.

Some of the inspector general’s investigators who reviewed the aides’ network activity mused that they may have been ignoring House security protocol simply to share job duties, but others felt it was something more sinister.

One week ago, the City of Atlanta’s computer system took a hit from a ransomware attack that has left the city still struggling to operate normally. The city was caught off guard on March 22 when the attack took place, and the city is still experiencing issues that are at best an inconvenience and at worst an ordeal.

Details about the attack are still a little cloudy. City authorities did confirm that the attack on their network took place and that a ransom note followed. Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms stated that the attacker demanded $51,000, though no one else has confirmed the amount.

Bottoms spoke out on the nature of a ransomware attack on her city, as CNN reported:

“I just want to make the point that this is much bigger than a ransomware attack,” she said. “This is really an attack on our government, which means it’s an attack on all of us.”

Ransomware is malicious software that blocks users from accessing some or all of their computer systems by locking them out until a ransom is paid. Officials haven’t said whether the city was going to pay the ransom

“Everything is up for discussion,” was the Mayor’s reply when asked directly by reporters whether the city would pay up.

How has the cyber attack affected the daily lives of Atlantans? Fortunately, the city’s 911 system, law enforcement, and public safety systems did not suffer, nor did Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport (though the airport didn’t recover its public wi-fi until Monday). But for the run-of-the-mill citizen attempting to interact with the city, life is certainly not normal.

After eight long years of Barack Obama decimating the military, President Trump is proudly beginning the process of rebuilding the nation’s armed forces and defense capabilities.

As the president signed the omnibus spending bill Friday that avoided another partial government shutdown and funded the government through the end of the fiscal year Sept. 30, Defense Secretary James Mattis, hailed the measure as “the largest military budget in history, reversing many years of decline and unpredictable funding.”

At the White House Trump explained why such a spending boost was necessary as he reflected on the serious damage that the previous president did to national security and military preparedness.

For the last eight years, deep defense cuts have undermined our national security, hallowed our — and they just — if you look at what’s taken out, they’ve hallowed our readiness as a military unit, and put America at really grave risk.

My highest duty is to keep America safe. Nothing more important. The omnibus bill reverses this dangerous defense [trend]. As crazy as it’s been, as difficult as it’s been, as much opposition to the military as we’ve had from the Democrats — and it has been tremendous. I try to explain to them, you know, the military is for Republicans and Democrats and everybody else. It’s for everybody. But we have tremendous opposition to creating, really, what will be the far — by far, the strongest military that we’ve ever had.

Trump said at the press conference that he was signing the massive pork-laden spending bill that contains “a lot of things that I’m unhappy about” because of “national security.”

But I say to Congress: I will never sign another bill like this again. I’m not going to do it again. Nobody read it. It’s only hours old. Some people don’t even know what is in — $1.3 trillion — it’s the second largest ever.

The bill contains an impressive $700 billion in military expenditures, about $3 billion of which will go to the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program. Trump rattled off a list of other line items, $1.8 billion for 24 FA-18E/F Super Hornet aircraft fighter jets, $1.7 billion for 10 P-8, $1.1 billion for 56 UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters, $1.1 billion to upgrade 85 Abrams tanks, and $705 million “for the cooperative programs that we’re working with Israel and others on various missile defense systems.”

The US Department of Justice announced indictments against nine Iranians and the company they worked for who stole data valued in the billions of dollars from professors and others.

The Iranians were part of a huge scheme to steal valuable research and intellectual property from US and foreign universities. In addition to the indictments, the Justice Department recommended sanctioning the individuals and the company, the Mabna Institute.

The US directly connected the hacking operation to the Iranian government, saying the hackers were working for the Revolutionary Guards.

CNN:

“(W)e have unmasked criminals who normally work in total anonymity, hiding behind the ones and zeros of computer code,” said Manhattan US Attorney Geoffrey Berman, who called it a “massive and brazen cyberassault.”

The move from the Justice Department and Treasury follows other US efforts to indict foreign government-linked cyberattackers, including special counsel Robert Mueller’s indictment of Russian operatives for meddling in the 2016 US election, and the Obama administration’s indictment of Chinese military members for the government-sponsored hacking of US companies.

It also comes at a time of tension with Iran, long an adversary of the US. As President Donald Trump reshuffles his national security and diplomacy team, including firing Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and national security adviser H.R. McMaster, experts speculate Trump may be laying the groundwork to pull out of the Iran nuclear deal that the Obama administration negotiated, though Iran’s cyber efforts were not part of that deal.

WASHINGTON — Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein today announced the indictment of nine Iranians accused of perpetrating a large-scale hacking campaign on U.S. colleges and businesses on behalf of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

Gholamreza Rafatnejad, 38, Ehsan Mohammadi, 37, Abdollah Karima aka Vahid Karima, 39, Mostafa Sadeghi, 28, Seyed Ali Mirkarimi, 34, Mohammed Reza Sabahi, 26, Roozbeh Sabahi, 24, Abuzar Gohari Moqadam, 37, and Sajjad Tahmasebi, 30, all citizens and residents of Iran, are charged with computer fraud, wire fraud, conspiracy and identity theft in conducting a coordinated campaign since 2013 of cyber intrusions into computer systems belonging to 144 U.S. universities, 176 universities across 21 foreign countries, 47 domestic and foreign private sector companies, the U.S. Department of Labor, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, the state of Hawaii, the state of Indiana, the United Nations, and the United Nations Children’s Fund.

They worked for the Iran-based Mabna Institute, which was also sanctioned by Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control today along with the nine defendants.

Altogether, the hackers stole more than 31 terabytes of academic data and intellectual property from universities, and email accounts of employees at private sector companies, government agencies, and non-governmental organizations, said the DOJ.

At a news conference today, Rosenstein said the Justice Department is “working with foreign law enforcement agencies and providing the private sector with information that will help to neutralize Mabna’s hacking infrastructure.”

“By bringing these criminal charges, we reinforce the norm that most of the civilized world accepts: Nation-states should not steal intellectual property for the purpose of giving domestic industries a competitive advantage,” he said. “As a result of the indictment, these defendants are now fugitives from justice. There are more than 100 countries where they may face arrest and extradition to the United States. And, thanks to the Treasury Department, the defendants will find it difficult to engage in business or financial transactions outside of Iran.”

U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman said the defendants “targeted more than 100,000 accounts of university professors around the world and, by tricking professors to click on false links, compromised 8,000 accounts,” and “once they gained access to these accounts, the defendants stole massive amounts of academic data and intellectual property.”

“The universities combined had to pay $3.4 billion to access this information. The defendants got it for free,” Berman said. “They targeted data and research from all fields, including science and technology, engineering, social science, medical and other professional fields.”

The stolen documents amounted to more than 15 billion pages of data, he said, comprising “the innovations and intellectual property of some of our country’s greatest minds.”

In the private-sector hacking, the Iranians allegedly infiltrated law firms, technology companies, consulting companies, financial services firms, health care companies, biotechnology companies and others. CONTINUE AT SITE

State-sponsored Russian hackers currently possess the ability to shut down U.S. power plants should they so choose.

The hackers gained access to critical control systems at numerous unspecified power plants beginning in the spring of 2017, allowing them to disrupt the facilities’ operations at will, according to a Department of Homeland Security report released Thursday.

Moscow continues to enjoy access to the machines controlling the power plants and could theoretically disrupt their operations given the requisite level of Russo–American hostilities, multiple government officials and private security professionals confirmed to the New York Times Friday.

“We now have evidence they’re sitting on the machines, connected to industrial control infrastructure, that allow them to effectively turn the power off or effect sabotage,” said Eric Chien, a security technology director at Symantec, a digital security firm. “From what we can see, they were there. They have the ability to shut the power off. All that’s missing is some political motivation.”

DHS and the FBI first warned utilities companies of the emerging threat in June, roughly a year and a half after intelligence agencies first became aware that Russia had redoubled their efforts to infiltrate critical U.S. infrastructure.

Brenda Arthur received an unexpected visit on March 8 that, one week later, leaves her feeling more than a little uneasy.

At her door that day was an officer with the West Virginia State Police. He wanted to know about her involvement in a Freedom of Information request regarding a local mosque.

Arthur, who will turn 67 this summer, is leader of the West Virginia chapter of ACT For America, whose mission is to educate Americans about the advancement of Islamic principles in Western societies.

As a Jewish American, she was concerned about a major expansion of the Islamic Association of West Virginia in her hometown of South Charleston. This mosque has hosted an openly anti-Semitic preacher in the past, and so she went to city hall in late January to have a look at its construction permits and site plans, something that is within the right of every American citizen under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act and state open-records laws.

She had no idea that this perfectly legal activity, performed every day by citizen watchdogs across the U.S., would prompt a visit from the state police.

Arthur was not available to answer the door when Sgt. R.C. Workman came knocking, but Workman left his business card with a hand-written note on the back:

“Brenda: Please contact me at: 304-573-6190.”

Workman’s unit is part of the West Virginia Intelligence Exchange, a secretive outfit that works closely with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s “intelligence fusion center” in West Virginia.

When it comes to cyber security, much attention has been focused on Russia due to that nation’s recent cyber efforts to interfere with the 2016 general election. This includes the creation of bots to spread fake news as well as attempts to penetrate voter registration rolls. China too is active in this new realm of virtual warfare engaging in systematic efforts to steal Western technology. China’s J-20 and J-31 fifth generation jet fighters are said to be based on stealth technology stolen from the United States. China also hacked into U.S. Steel’s computers and stole trade secrets for advanced, high-strength steel and then incorporated that technology in its own manufacturing processes. Other bad actors include North Korea which, in 2014, infamously hacked Sony Pictures Entertainment and also engaged in attempts to digitally loot banking institutions including an unsuccessful effort to loot the Federal Reserve to the tune of $1 billion.

But when it comes to mischief-making, it’s a sure bet that the Islamic Republic is lurking and cyber terrorism is no exception. While Iran’s cyber hacking operatives have not reached the level of sophistication and capability of their Russian and Chinese partners in crime, they are very active in this new area of virtual warfare and are learning quickly.

Iran first connected to the internet in 1992, and by 2000, most Iranians were connected to the information superhighway in some form. Iranian cyber terrorists operating at the behest of the regime initially focused their activities internally; spying on dissidents and those deemed to be headaches for the regime but soon exported their mischief globally.

In 2009, Iranian hackers, calling themselves “Iranian Cyber Army” forced Twitter to shut down for several hours after the hackers defaced the site. Twitter had been used by Green Revolution activists to spread the word about Iran’s rigged 2009 elections.

In the summer of 2011, Iranian hackers struck again, this time targeting the prestigious Dutch certificate authority security company DigiNotar. The hack, which sent shudders through the world of cyber security, enabled Iranian cyber operatives to compromise the Gmail accounts of some 300,000 Iranian citizens. Iranian internal spy agencies were then able access the contents of those accounts. The embarrassing but audacious security breach forced DigiNotar into bankruptcy and dissolution.