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Why should you care? There was a long investigation in separate yet concentrated efforts by both government and private/independent cyber corporations as it related to the hack of Sony. Enter the Lazarus Group, an applied name to hackers that have hit industries such as government, military, financial and entertainment. Few countries are really exempt, as their signature malware has also been found in Japan, India and China.
Lazarus Group has been active since 2009 and to date cannot be attributed to any single actor or country.
Recent malware attacks on Polish banks tied to wider hacking campaign
Hackers targeted more than 100 organizations in more than 30 countries
ComputerWorld: Malware attacks that recently put the Polish banking sector on alert were part of a larger campaign that targeted financial organizations from more than 30 countries.
Researchers from Symantec and BAE Systems linked the malware used in the recently discovered Polish attack to similar attacks that have taken place since October in other countries. There are also similarities to tools previously used by a group of attackers known in the security industry as Lazarus.
The hackers compromised websites that were of interest to their ultimate targets, a technique known as watering-hole attacks. They then injected code into the websites that redirected visitors to a custom exploit kit.
The exploit kit contained exploits for known vulnerabilities in Silverlight and Flash Player; the exploits only activated for visitors who had Internet Protocol addresses from specific ranges.
“These IP addresses belong to 104 different organizations located in 31 different countries,” researchers from Symantec said in a blog post Sunday. “The vast majority of these organizations are banks, with a small number of telecoms and internet firms also on the list.”
In the case of the targeted Polish banks, it’s suspected that the malicious code was hosted on the website of the Polish Financial Supervision Authority, the government watchdog for the banking sector. The BAE Systems researchers found evidence that similar code pointing to the custom exploit kit was present on the website of the National Banking and Stock Commission of Mexico in November. This is the Mexican equivalent to the Polish Financial Supervision Authority.
The same code was also found on the website of the Banco de la República Oriental del Uruguay, the largest state-owned bank in that South American country, according to BAE Systems.
Included in the list of targeted IP addresses were those of 19 organizations from Poland, 15 from the U.S., nine from Mexico, seven from the U.K., and six from Chile.
The payload of the exploits was a previously unknown malware downloader that Symantec now calls Downloader.Ratankba. Its purpose is to download another malicious program that can gather information from the compromised system. This second tool has code similarities to malware used in the past by the Lazarus group.
Lazarus has been operating since 2009, and has largely focused on targets from the U.S. and South Korea in the past, the Symantec researchers said. The group is also suspected of being involved in the theft of $81 million from the central bank of Bangladesh last year. In that attack, hackers used malware to manipulate the computers used by the bank to operate money transfers over the SWIFT network.
“The technical/forensic evidence to link the Lazarus group actors … to the watering-hole activity is unclear,” the BAE Systems researchers said in a blog post Sunday. “However, the choice of bank supervisor and state-bank websites would be apt, given their previous targeting of central banks for heists — even when it serves little operational benefit for infiltrating the wider banking sector.”
What is going on at the NSA? Or is it really the NSA contractor, Booz, Allen and Hamilton? Either way…this is beyond dangerous.
Bring in Harold Martin….. NBC
Read the full indictment here.
According to an indictment released Wednesday, the information stolen by Harold Martin, a former NSA contractor who was arrested in August of last year, may be far more damaging to the U.S. intelligence community than anything taken by Edward Snowden.
On October 5, the New York Timesbroke the story that the FBI had arrested an employee of the intelligence community over suspicions the worker had stolen highly classified computer code.
From that report:
“The contractor was identified as Harold T. Martin III of Glen Burnie, Md., according to a criminal complaint filed in late August and unsealed Wednesday. Mr. Martin, who at the time of his arrest was working as a contractor for the Defense Department after leaving the NSA, was charged with theft of government property and the unauthorized removal or retention of classified documents.”
According to the Times, a neighbor saw “two dozen FBI agents wearing military-style uniforms and armed with long guns” storm Martin’s home and later escort the man out in handcuffs.
At the time, there was speculation that Martin could be connected to stolen NSA code that found its way into the hands of a group called the Shadow Brokers — for a period, Martin worked for the elite NSA unit from which the data was taken — but even now, authorities can’t prove he actually passed on any information.
But the mere fact that he possessed such highly sensitive material is enough to put Martin away for the rest of his life, as the recently released indictment indicates.
“For more than two decades,”Business Insiderwrote on Thursday, “Martin allegedly made off with highly-classified documents that were found in his home and car that included discussions of the US military’s capabilities and gaps in cyberspace, specific targets, and ‘extremely sensitive’ operations against terror groups, according to an indictment released Wednesday.”
The indictment gives the public a much clearer look at the type of data Martin allegedly stole. And next to Edward Snowden, whose security clearance limited the documents he took to mostly training materials, it appears Harold Martin’s reach went far further into the national intelligence community.
Martin is charged with 20 counts of having unauthorized possession of classified material. The government alleges that over this long intelligence career, the 51-year-old took material from the NSA, the National Reconnaissance Office, U.S. Cyber Command, and even the CIA.
Some of the items allegedly taken, according to text from the indictment, include:
A 2008 CIA document containing information regarding foreign intelligence collection sources and methods, and relating to a foreign intelligence collection target.
A USCYBERCOM document, dated August 17, 2016, discussing capabilities and gaps in capabilities of the US military and details of specific operations.
A description of the technical architecture of an NSA communications system.
An outline of a classified exercise involving real-world NSA and US military resources to demonstrate existing cyber intelligence and operational capabilities.
Martin’s first court appearance is set for February 14. If found guilty, he faces up to 200 years in prison. More here.
***
Meanwhile, Putin is allegedly considering returning Edward Snowden to the United States as a goodwill gesture. If so, it is a double game as Putin would never do anything out of kindness without something attached. If Snowden does stand trial for treason/espionage or theft, the United States would then have to offer up classified material and reveal sources and methods which is likely what Russia wants. The Kremlin extended the visa for Snowden until 2020.
***
In part from NBC: Snowden’s ACLU lawyer, Ben Wizner, told NBC News they are unaware of any plans that would send him back to the United States.
“Team Snowden has received no such signals and has no new reason for concern,” Wizner said.
Snowden responded to NBC’s report on Twitter and said it shows that he did not work with the Russian government.
“Finally: irrefutable evidence that I never cooperated with Russian intel,” Snowden said. “No country trades away spies, as the rest would fear they’re next.”
Snowden’s Russian lawyer, Anatoly Kucherena, reacted to the report with dismay.
“There are no reasons to extradite Edward Snowden to the U.S.,” Kucherena said, according to TASS, the state-owned news agency. “This is some kind of speculation coming from so-called US special service sources. I think this topic was and remains on the political plane in the U.S., but it’s American special services that are puppeteering this story with sporadic information plants.”
“There is not the slightest reason to raise or discuss this topic in Russia,” Kucherena said.
Russia, he said, does not sell people. “The Snowden issue cannot be a bargaining chip on any level, neither political nor economic,” he said, according to the news agency.
Former deputy national security adviser Juan Zarate urged the Trump administration to be cautious in accepting any Snowden offer from Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“For Russia, this would be a win-win. They’ve already extracted what they needed from Edward Snowden in terms of information and they’ve certainly used him to beat the United States over the head in terms of its surveillance and cyber activity,” Zarate said.
Unconfirmed: Abu Rofik (or Rafik) Abdul Mukaddim Tatarstani – Russian speaking al-Qaida operative in Syiria Killed in airstrike. Abu Rafiq claims to be a former VDV member. VDV is:
Russia’s elite airborne force (parachute and air assault) is the Vozdushno-Desantnye Voyska (VDV).1 It can be considered a strategic force, on a par with their rocket and space forces. With its origins in the 1930s, Russia’s airborne force is currently the largest and most highly-mechanised in the world. Having fought with distinction during World War II, against the mujahideen in Afghanistan, and in the Five-Day War with Georgia, the presence of Russian airborne troops in Crimea and eastern Ukraine only confirmed their status as an elite force within the Russian military.
Southfront
Note: Great War is (‘Mal’hama’) in the Hadith.
The Blackwater of Jihad
A consortium of elite, well-paid fighters from across the former Soviet Union are training jihadis in Syria. Their business model could go global.
FP: Heavily armed and expertly kitted with body armor and ballistic helmets, the men can be seen defending bunkers, storming buildings, and even posing by whiteboards giving tactical lessons. Though the titles of these YouTube videos are written in Russian Cyrillic, their background music is an a cappella Islamic chant known as a nasheed, which is often used by extremist groups in propaganda films. But the men are no ordinary jihadis. They are members of Malhama Tactical, the world’s first jihadi private military contractor (PMC) and consulting firm.
Malhama Tactical isn’t an enormous military conglomerate like the infamous Blackwater (now named Academi). It consists of 10 well-trained fighters from Uzbekistan and the restive Muslim-majority republics of the Russian Caucasus. But size isn’t everything in military consulting, especially in the era of social media. Malhama promotes its battles across online platforms, and the relentless marketing has paid off: The outfit’s fighting prowess and training programs are renowned among jihadis in Syria and their admirers elsewhere. It helps that until now the group has specialized its services, focusing on overthrowing Bashar al-Assad’s regime and replacing it with a strict Islamic government.
The group’s leader is a 24-year-old from Uzbekistan who goes by the name Abu Rofiq (an Arabic pseudonym that means father of Rofiq). Little is known about him other than that he cycles through personal social media accounts rapidly, using fake names and false information to throw off surveillance efforts. In virtually every video and photo posted online, he wears a scarf or balaclava to cover his face from the nose down, leaving visible only his narrow dark eyes and long, somewhat tangled, pitch-black hair. He speaks fluent Russian, but with a slight Uzbek accent.
Since launching in May 2016, Malhama has grown to do brisk business in Syria, having been contracted to fight, and provide training and other battlefield consulting, alongside groups like the al Qaeda-affiliated Jabhat Fateh al-Sham (formerly known as the Nusra Front) and the Turkistan Islamic Party, a Uighur extremist group from China’s restive Xinjiang province. And despite recent rebel setbacks in Syria, including the loss of Aleppo, demand for Malhama Tactical’s services in the country is as strong as ever, Abu Rofiq told Foreign Policy in an interview conducted over the messaging app Telegram.
But he is also beginning to think about expanding elsewhere. His group is willing to take work, Abu Rofiq says, wherever Sunni Muslims are oppressed. He cites China and Myanmar as places that would benefit from jihad. He also suggests that Malhama Tactical might go back to its roots, returning to fight in the North Caucasus against the Russian government.
In November, the group placed job ads on Facebook looking for instructors with combat experience to join the group. The ad described the outfit as a “fun and friendly team” looking for recruits who are willing to “constantly engage, develop, and learn” and work with Jabhat Fateh al-Sham. It even specified that instructors were privy to benefits like vacation time and one day off a week from jihad. The wording was more befitting of a Fortune 500 company than a group of extremists fighting in a brutal and bloody war. Jihad went global long before Malhama Tactical, but rarely with so entrepreneurial a spirit.
***
Although Malhama Tactical is the first PMC to work exclusively for extremist groups, it’s hardly the first foreign PMC to enter the Syrian battlefield. The Syrian war has now lasted for nearly six years and cost the lives of more than 400,000 men, women, and children. And amid the chaos of groups like the Islamic State, the left-wing Kurdish People’s Protection Units, and Jabhat Fateh al-Sham vying for territory and influence, the Syrian front has also been a boon for military contractors, who have found work fighting on both sides of the war.
The first iteration of PMCs in Syria was the Slavonic Corps, an ill-fated, Hong Kong-registered company comprising ex-Russian military that briefly worked alongside government forces in 2013, according to a report by the Interpreter magazine. But it quickly became clear that they did not have the full support of the Syrian government. First, the Syrian army stole their vehicles, then their paychecks never arrived, and finally a Syrian air force helicopter crashed into the Slavonic Corps convoy after flying too low and running into power lines, injuring one mercenary. The Slavonic Corps’ misadventures came to an end when the group disbanded after a defeat by rebels in the desert near the city of Sukhnah in southern Syria in October 2013. The mercenaries returned home to Moscow and were promptly arrested by the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) for their unsanctioned Syrian intervention.
Following the Kremlin’s own intervention in Syria in September 2015, nearly 1,500 Russian mercenaries arrived from the “Wagner” group, an infamous and secretive Russian PMC that previously fought alongside Russian-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine, according to an investigation by Sky News. Their mission was to assist the Assad regime, and unlike the Slavonic Corps, Wagner enjoys extensive support from the Russian government. Dmitry Utkin, a former special forces brigade commander of Russia’s military intelligence service, allegedly leads the group. Although little is known about Wagner, it’s believed that it mimics Academi’s model by operating as an elite infantry unit and relies on the Russian government for support, even flying into Syria on board official military aircraft and training at a Russian special forces base in Molkino in southwestern Russia. Wagner remains in Syria to this day.
At the same time, a litany of Russian-speaking fighters have fought alongside jihadi groups waging war against the Syrian government. According to the Soufan Group, there are at least 4,700 foreign fighters from the former Soviet Union in Syria, the majority of whom come from the Russian republics of Chechnya and Dagestan. These fighters typically arrive in Syria better equipped and trained than local militants and with years of experience fighting the Russian government in the mountains of Chechnya and Dagestan during the 1990s and 2000s.
These battle-hardened fighters quickly earned respect from local militants, who noticed the Russian speakers took on a much higher death rate than local fighters. They came to populate the ranks of both the Islamic State and Jabhat Fateh al-Sham, as well as various smaller groups, where locals refer to them as inghimasi, a term used among jihadis to refer to fighters who plunge into enemy front lines to inflict the maximum amount of casualties with no plan of returning alive. The archetypal inghimasi fights until he runs out of ammunition before detonating his suicide vest as his position is overrun.
But while many of their compatriots have become front-line shock troops, the former Soviet fighters of Malhama Tactical go a different way, carving out their own distinct niche between the worlds of professional PMCs and jihadi groups operating in Syria. They function as consultants, arms dealers, and, on occasion, elite warriors.
***
Malhama’s elite status makes sense against the background of Abu Rofiq’s own military career. Abu Rofiq told FP that he had moved as a young man from Uzbekistan to Russia, where, in addition to starting a family, he joined one of the Russian government’s most elite military units, a group of airborne troops known as the VDV. In 2013, Abu Rofiq left Russia for Syria, where rather than joining one faction, like most foreign fighters do, he remained independent and moved between them, before founding Malhama in 2016.
Throughout 2016, Malhama Tactical’s units trained the hard-line Islamist rebel group Ahrar al-Sham and Jabhat Fateh al-Sham in urban combat to help their fight against the Syrian regime in Aleppo. In one video, trainees practice firing multiple rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) rounds and work as squads to assault a building. In another, a two-man team clears rooms and eliminates targets using grenades and gunfire, all under the watchful eye of Malhama instructors.
This type of training isn’t cheap — the RPG rounds Malhama uses in its practice sessions are estimated to cost around $800 each on the black market — which is why military training for most rebel and jihadi groups in Syria has tended to consist of little more than marching, acrobatics, and basic marksmanship. But for jihadi groups that can afford it, Malhama Tactical’s infantry training is worth the expense. One European military contractor who spoke on the condition of anonymity acknowledged that the group’s tactical skills would provide it, and whomever it trains, a distinct advantage on the Syrian battlefield.
***
Malhama Tactical’s operators have, on occasion, also acted as special forces for different jihadi groups. In September 2016, they embedded with the Turkistan Islamic Party to help it repulse an Assad regime attack in southern Aleppo, according to a rebel activist source familiar with the group. However, Abu Rofiq says his outfit’s primary goal is to train other rebel and jihadi groups in combat, rather than fight on the front lines. Abu Rofiq admitted that Malhama also produces equipment for other jihadi groups as needed. Malhama, for example, manufactures accessories for the PKM, an extremely popular Russian-made 7.62 mm machine gun. The vests and grips, widely used in Aleppo during the intense fighting there, have become especially sought after among jihadis.
Malhama Tactical also takes its social media presence very seriously. The group advertises its services through Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and the Russian social media site VKontakte, although the group’s account has been suspended. Its Instagram feed has the feel of something produced by a major corporate gun manufacturer. It features artsy, filtered photos of weapons and fighters taken from multiple angles, interspersed between various high-quality Malhama logo designs. With more than 208,160 views on YouTube, Malhama has a large reach, especially for its size. By comparison, the Free Syrian Army al-Moutasem Brigade, which is 50 times larger and half a year older, has just over 110,000 YouTube views. Everyone from rebels in Syria to Ukrainian soldiers and Russian separatists in Donetsk has commented on the group’s posts.
Malhama’s YouTube and Facebook pages also showcase free online guides for jihadis, covering improvised grenade construction, weapon cleaning, room clearing, and urban combat, among other skills. The group’s instructors organize online training sessions — on subjects including battlefield first aid; the use of weapons, such as RPG-7s; hand signal systems for urban combat; and introductions on how to conduct ambushes — when in-person assistance and consulting is not possible.
Although Malhama Tactical charges for its services, Abu Rofiq insists he isn’t a mercenary. He says his group’s motivation transcends money. “Our goal is different; we are fighting for an idea,” he said — namely, jihad against Assad.
“We’ll see a lot more of this activity going forward in the decades to come,” said Sean McFate, an associate professor at the National Defense University and author of The Modern Mercenary, a book about private armies. For McFate, the growth of Malhama Tactical is a natural offshoot of the prolonged Syrian war, but the outfit’s mixture of extremist ideology with the privatization of war is a unique and troubling trend. “A jihadi group doing this is a new level because if you’re talking about hardcore idealists paying for [military training], then that’s a milestone of modern warfare,” McFate said.
Abu Rofiq’s leadership has also brought him unwanted attention from the Russian government, which views him as a major terrorism threat. On Feb. 7, Russian airstrikes flattened Abu Rofiq’s apartment in Idlib, killing his wife, infant son, and several other civilians. Despite initial reports to the contrary, a local source confirmed that the airstrikes missed Abu Rofiq entirely. He had exited his apartment just moments before to help casualties from another nearby bombing.
In either case, Abu Rofiq’s jihadi PMC model has already had a significant effect on battles in northern Syria and could soon inspire copycat organizations outside the Middle East. Even if Abu Rofiq is killed and Malhama Tactical is destroyed, he’s already shaken up the war against Assad — and maybe even the future of the global military-industrial complex.
Neil Hauer, lead analyst for the SecDev Group in Ottawa, Canada, contributed to this report.
My friend Tom Del Beccaro explains in his summary at Forbes how the Federal government maintains primacy over the states for immigration law and item 8 U.S. Code Section 1182, which the liberal court chose never to previously challenge.
Once the information is entered into the system, RAPS generates an appointment notice for the collection of fingerprints used to complete criminal and background checks and to create Employment Authorization Documents (EADs), as appropriate. The applicant will appear at a USCIS service center to provide fingerprints and confirm application information.
RAPS then automatically initiates several background security check processes: Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Name Check, United States Visitor and Immigrant Status Indicator Technology (US-VISIT) and DHS’ Automated Biometric Identification System (IDENT), Customs and Border Protection (CBP) TECS, FBI Fingerprint, and the ENFORCE Alien Removal Module (EARM) (for a full discussion of the background check process, see Section 5.1). RAPS also stores the results of security checks.
When a new application is entered into RAPS, it is forwarded to a USCIS Asylum Office for interview and adjudication. Asylum Offices use RAPS to schedule an asylum interview to evaluate the claim of asylum status and to conduct various aspects of case maintenance such as address changes, updates of information pertaining to dependent claimants, to record preliminary and final decisions, and to generate decision documents. An individual who files for asylum may include in his or her application any spouse or child who is within the United States and appears for the asylum interview. This is because a grant received by the principal asylum applicant is conveyed to the spouse and children included in the family group if the spouse/child is in the U.S. and not otherwise barred from a grant of asylum.
RAPS is a comprehensive case management tool that enables USCIS to handle and process applications for asylum pursuant to Section 208 of the Immigration and Naturalization Act (INA) and applications for suspension of deportation or special rule cancellation of removal pursuant to NACARA § 203. DHS offices worldwide can access RAPS as a resource of current and historic immigration status information on more than one million applicants. DHS officials can use RAPS to verify the status of asylum applicants, asylees, and their dependents to assist with the verification of an individual’s immigration history in the course of a review of visa petitions and other benefit applications as well.
RAPS Typical Transaction
A typical transaction begins when an individual initiates the process to apply for asylum by completing and filing Form I-589, Application for Asylum and for Withholding of Removal, with a USCIS Service Center, or in certain circumstances directly with an asylum office. Service Center personnel receive the application in person or via mail and manually enter, most, but not all, of the information from a new application into RAPS.
As set forth in Section 451(b) of the Homeland Security Act of 2002, Public Law 107-296, Congress charged USCIS with the administration of the asylum program, which provides protection to qualified individuals in the United States who have suffered past persecution or have a well-founded fear of future persecution in their country of origin as outlined under INA § 208 and 8 CFR § 208. USCIS is also responsible for the adjudication of the benefit program established by Section 203 of the Nicaraguan Adjustment and Central American Relief Act (NACARA § 203) (discussed in more detail in Section B below), in accordance with 8 CFR § 240.60 and the maintenance and administration of the credible fear and reasonable fear screening processes, in accordance with 8 CFR §§ 208.30 and 208.31. USCIS developed RAPS and APSS in order to carry out its obligations in administering these benefit programs.
Functions
RAPS and APSS track case status and facilitate the scheduling of appointments and interviews and the issuance of notices (including receipt notices, appointment notices, and decision letters) at several stages of the adjudication process. USCIS Asylum Offices use RAPS and APSS to:
record decisions and to generate decision documents such as approval, dismissal, or rescission of an asylum or NACARA § 203 application,
denial of an asylum application,
administrative closure of an asylum application, or
referral of an asylum or NACARA § 203 application to Executive Office of Immigration Review (EOIR).
The systems also initiate, receive, and record responses for national security and background check screening and prevent the approval of any benefit prior to the review and completion of all security checks. Finally, the systems provide fully developed and flexible means for analyzing and managing program workflows and provide the Asylum Program with statistical reports to assist with oversight of production and processing goals.
Read more from the two DHS documents here and here.
One of the requirements for allowing visa-free entry of tourists from countries in the Visa Waiver Program (VWP) is that those governments share with us information on nationals with terrorism links and/or criminal histories. According to a report of the Government Accountability Office (GAO) issued in May 2016, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has obtained those agreements with most of the countries, but more than a third of the agreements have not been implemented, and no data have been received from them.
In addition, Congress has required reports from DHS on implementation of the VWP with each of the participating countries, but GAO found that DHS has failed to provide many of those reports when due.
The recommendation of agency (GAO-16-498) is that, “DHS should (1) specify time frames for working with VWP countries on the requirement to implement information-sharing agreements and (2) take steps to improve its timeliness in reporting to Congress on whether VWP countries should continue in the program.”
FAIR has consistently pointed to the VWP as a national security threat and called for its termination. This GAO report underscores the security flaw and finds that it is exacerbated by cavalier implementation by DHS
Ms Le Pen’s Front National party has made no secret of the fact that it has taken foreign loans to help bankroll its presidential campaigns because, it has argued, French banks refuse to stump up the funds.
But in light of allegations of Russian interference in the US election of Donald Trump, scrutiny has now turned to Ms Le Pen, who is polled to reach the final round of France’s presidential elections in May.
In an extract of a letter dated November 28 to James Clapper, who heads up 17 American intelligence organisations and agencies, he notes that the Front National “publicly acknowledged that it had received a $9.8 million loan from a Russian bank with links to the Kremlin, allegedly brokered by a sanctioned Russian Duma deputy, according to French press reporting.”
The bank in question was First Czech Russian Bank (FCRB) in Moscow. Mr Turner goes on: “In February 2016, the FN asked Russia for a $30 million load to fund the FN leader Marine Le Pen’s 2017 campaign. More here from the Telegraph.
FITSANAKIS: France’s primary intelligence agency warned the country’s government this week that Russia has launched a secret operation to try to influence the outcome of the upcoming French presidential election in favor of the far right. According to the Paris-based weekly newspaper Le Canard Enchaîné, France’s Directorate-General for External Security (DGSE) has notified the country’s leadership that a covert operation by the Kremlin is already underway, and is expected to intensify in the run-up to April’s election. The spy agency allegedly believes that Russian efforts aim to promote Marine Le Pen, leader of the ultra-right National Front. Le Pen wants to curb immigration to France and remove the country from the European Union.
In an article published on Wednesday, Le Canard Enchaîné said the DGSE’s warning has alarmed the Élysée Palace. The paper also said that French President François Hollande, who chairs the country’s defense council, has decided to devote the entire agenda of the council’s next meeting to the subject of Russia’s alleged interference in the election. Anonymous sources told the paper that, according to a classified DGSE report, Russian spy agencies are using automated systems designed to “fill the Internet with tens of millions” of articles, images and memes that support the National Front candidate. Additionally, several news media that are controlled by Moscow will try to discredit Le Pen’s rivals for the presidency. At the same time, websites such as WikiLeaks —which some American commentators accuse of working with Moscow— will publish leaked information designed to damage Le Pen’s competitors.
The Le Canard Enchaîné allegations sound very similar to accusations leveled against the Kremlin by American intelligence agencies and by members of the United States Democratic Party. However, these allegations have not been supported by concrete evidence, and Russia denies that it had any involvement in last November’s presidential election in the US, which was won by Donald Trump.
*** Meanwhile…. As top U.S. commanders are sounding the alarm of the forgotten war in Afghanistan due to the terror factions operating there including the even more deadly Taliban, Russia is legitimizing them to counter NATO. Are the Western leaders nurturing relationships with the Kremlin good with that as coalition countries have troops in Afghanistan?
“The Russian involvement this year has become more difficult,” Gen. John Nicholson told the Senate Armed Services Committee. “First, they have begun to publicly legitimize the Taliban. This narrative that they promote is that the Taliban are fighting Islamic State and the Afghan government is not fighting Islamic State and that, therefore, there could be spillover of this group into the region. This is a false narrative.”
“I believe its intent is to undermine the United States and NATO,” he later added.
Nicholson was testifying about the current situation in Afghanistan, which he called a stalemate that he needs a few thousand more troops to break.
Among the challenges in the country are the actions of external actors such as Pakistan, Iran and Russia, Nicholson said.
He said Russia’s meddling in Afghanistan started in 2016 and continues to increase.
In addition to spreading a narrative that the Taliban is fighting the Afghan branch of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), Russia has also organized a series of meetings to discuss the future of Afghanistan without inviting the Afghan government, Nicholson said. More here.
NBC
According to an 
VDV
Southfront
