Author Archives: Denise Simon
Securing the Elections, FBI Investigating Hacks
Securing the vote.
The states, which under the US system are responsible for conducting elections, remain concerned about the integrity of the ballot. Thirty-six states have now deployed Albert sensors on their voting infrastructure to allow the Department of Homeland Security to observe state systems that manage either voter information or voting devices (Reuters).
The states also want the Feds to share more threat intelligence. Forty-four states and the District of Columbia took part in a Department of Homeland Security exercise this week (US Department of Homeland Security). The states appear to have gained enough insight into the value of threat intelligence to decide that they want more of it (Reuters). Some advocate Federal standards for the conduct of elections, perhaps even mandatory standards (Atlantic Council). More here.
Meanwhile:
Then there is the matter the FBI is investigating in California.
The FBI launched investigations after two Southern California Democratic U.S. House candidates were targeted by computer hackers, though it’s unclear whether politics had anything to do with the attacks.
A law enforcement official told The Associated Press the FBI looked into hacks involving David Min in the 45th Congressional District and Hans Keirstead in the adjacent 48th District. Both districts are in Orange County and are seen as potential pickups as the Democratic Party seeks to win control of the Congress in November.
A person with knowledge of the Min investigation told the AP on Monday that two laptops used by senior staffers for the candidate were found infected with malware in March. It’s not clear what, if any, data was stolen, and there is no evidence the breach influenced the contest.
The CEO of a biomedical research company, Keirstead last summer was the victim of a broad “spear-phishing” attack, in which emails that appear to come from a friend or familiar source are designed to help hackers snatch sensitive or confidential information, the law enforcement official said. There is no evidence Keirstead lost valuable information.
The investigations so far have not turned up evidence the two candidates in Orange County were political targets.
The official and the knowledgeable person were not authorized to discuss the cases publicly and spoke only on condition of anonymity.
Keirstead was narrowly defeated in the June primary for the seat held by Republican Rep. Dana Rohrabacher. Min came in third in the contest to unseat Republican Rep. Mimi Walters.
Min’s staff was alerted to a potential cyberattack by a facility manager in the software incubator where his campaign rented space. It was later found the computers were infected with software that records and sends keystrokes, with additional software that concealed it from conventional anti-virus tools used by the campaign.
Hackers also used a broad spear-phishing attack in an attempt to gain access, and FBI investigators are still piecing together additional details, the official said.
The two laptops were replaced, and Min’s computer was not infected. The attack on the computers was first reported by Reuters.
Keirstead campaign officials detected repeated attempts to access the campaign’s website.
Rolling Stone magazine, which first reported that cyberattack, said hackers or bots tried different username-password combinations in a rapid-fire sequence over a two-and-a-half-month period to get inside the campaign’s WordPress-hosted website.
According to the campaign, there were also more than 130,000 so-called brute force attempts over a monthlong period to gain access to the campaign’s server through the cloud-server company that hosted the Keirstead campaign’s website, Rolling Stone said.
Computer security experts say that many attempts to gain access to a site hosted with the popular and free WordPress software is not unusual.
“Every WordPress hosted website sees 130,000 brute force attempts over a monthlong period, regardless whether it’s Bohemian basket weaving, a blog about furry costume construction, or a politician website,” said Robert Graham, a cybersecurity expert who created the BlackICE personal firewall.
“Hackers don’t know or care who you are: they only care that you use WordPress,” Graham said in a text message.
Min finished third behind fellow Democrat Katie Porter, who faces Walters in November. In the 48th District, Rohrabacher will face Democrat Harley Rouda, who snagged the second runoff spot by defeating Keirstead by 125 votes.
Is that Russian Submarine Threat Still out There?
It is not just the U.S. Navy that is on alert. Europe’s top Navy Commander:
NAPLES, Italy — Russia is deploying more submarines to the Mediterranean, the Black Sea and North Atlantic than at any time since the Cold War as part of a growing power game driving the U.S. to revive a decommissioned fleet and NATO to strengthen its naval defenses, the Navy’s top commander in the theater said.
Russia is upgrading its submarine forces and improving their missile capabilities, all while relations between Moscow and NATO remain tense over Russia’s annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula in 2014, Adm. James Foggo, commander of U.S. Naval Forces Europe and Africa, said in an interview earlier this month.
“The illegal annexation of Crimea … that certainly has put a strain on our relationship,” Foggo told Stars and Stripes. “It’s their bad behavior, not ours. It’s the things they are doing.”
The Navy is reviving 2nd Fleet, though on a smaller scale than the one deactivated in 2011, to supply more ships in what Foggo described as growing competition between Russia and NATO in the Atlantic Ocean.
The renewed 2nd Fleet will be a Norfolk, Va.-based joint forces command, with many details yet to be worked out, Foggo said, adding that Navy leaders will know more after NATO’s July summit in Brussels. More here.
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This is not really a new condition, it has been going on for a few years without any real U.S. response that is until the Omnibus was passed where monies were allocated for air-dropped sonobuoys that can detect submarines and transmit data back to motherships. The warnings began with Russia, operating in the Mediterranean where missiles were fired into Syria on several occasions.
The United States and Britain have been playing cat and mouse with Russia in several locations. Under Exercise Dynamic Mongoose, 10 NATO countries have been practicing hunting tactics of stealth submarines off Norway’s coast.
This past April, Lockheed Martin was awarded a $1 billion contract for a hypersonic cruise missile.
The Hypersonic Conventional Strike Weapon program is one of two hypersonic weapon prototyping efforts being pursued by the Air Force, and comes in addition to the Tactical Boost Glide program, which the Air Force is working on with DARPA and Raytheon. The service plans to have a prototype ready by 2023.
The Tactical Boost Glide is designed to operate at 5 times the speed of sound to enhance current military systems.
The United States has 70 nuclear powered submarines and 52 attack submarines along with 4 cruise missile armed submarines and 14 ballistic missile submarines. They all patrol bodies of water across the globe.
Adm. John Richardson, Chief of Naval Operations has confirmed increased foreign submarine operations.
According to GlobalFirePower.com, North Korea has the world’s largest submarine fleet by raw numbers with 76, though most of Pyongyang’s fleet consists of shorter-range, electric-diesel coastal patrol craft. China and Russia, both with modern nuclear-powered fleets that rival the U.S. fleet, have 68 subs and 63 subs, respectively.
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, in an interview with the Frankfurt Allgemeine and other news outlets in December, said the Kremlin is investing heavily in its submarine fleet, with 13 delivered since 2013. NATO countries, he said, have let their underwater firepower lag. “We have practiced less and lost skills,” the NATO chief said.
A particular point of concern, said one former high-level U.S. Navy official, is that Moscow may be attempting to tap into or sever some of the 550,000 miles of underwater fiber-optic cables that span the Atlantic and Arctic sea lanes.
“Russians have had a capability … to do things with these cables for the last 20 to 30 years,” said Tom Callender, who once served as head of capabilities for the Navy’s deputy undersecretary office and is now a senior defense fellow at The Heritage Foundation.
“Russians have had a capability … to do things with these cables for the last 20 to 30 years,” said Tom Callender, who once served as head of capabilities for the Navy’s deputy undersecretary office and is now a senior defense fellow at The Heritage Foundation.More than 95 percent of the global internet traffic — military and civilian, classified and unclassified — is transmitted across the network of submerged cables along the ocean floor, according to Washington-based tech firm TeleGeography. The quantity is massive compared with just a decade ago, when just 1 percent of all online traffic went through the cables.
Seabed vulnerability
The majority of the 285 underwater cables in place crisscross beneath heavily trafficked sea lanes of the Atlantic and Arctic regions. According to TeleGeography, the longest single cable stretches 24,000 miles and relays internet traffic and other electronic communications from Europe, Asia and Africa.
The scale and scope of global communications moving through the network of cables — some of which are only 2 inches thick — present a lucrative target that is vulnerable to attack by U.S. adversaries. It also poses a significant challenge to U.S. forces defending the lines. Read more detail here.
Iran Sleeper Cells Parked Around the U.S.
Primer: Two Individuals Charged for Acting as Illegal Agents of the Government of Iran
Could it be that law enforcement officials are working the cases diligently? This adds a deeper dimension to the work of the FBI, ICE and Border Patrol as well as all diplomatic posts in Central America and Latin America. Iran’s economy is in a free-fall, so money/revenue is most important and illicit activities, including attacks are the easiest method to raise operational funds.
Related reading: DoJ’s Bruce Ohr Demoted Again, Project Cassandra?
Iranian-backed militants are operating across the United States mostly unfettered, raising concerns in Congress and among regional experts that these “sleeper cell” agents are poised to launch a large-scale attack on the American homeland, according to testimony before lawmakers.
Iranian agents tied to the terror group Hezbollah have already been discovered in the United States plotting attacks, giving rise to fears that Tehran could order a strike inside America should tensions between the Trump administration and Islamic Republic reach a boiling point.
Intelligence officials and former White House officials confirmed to Congress on Tuesday that such an attack is not only plausible, but relatively easy for Iran to carry out at a time when the Trump administration is considering abandoning the landmark nuclear deal and reapplying sanctions on Tehran.
There is mounting evidence that Iran poses “a direct threat to the homeland,” according to Rep. Peter King (R., N.Y.), a member of the House Homeland Security Committee and chair of its subcommittee on counterterrorism and intelligence.
A chief concern is “Iranian support for Hezbollah, which is active in the Middle East, Latin America, and here in the U.S., where Hezbollah operatives have been arrested for activities conducted in our own country,” King said, referring the recent arrest of two individuals plotting terror attacks in New York City and Michigan.
“Both individuals received significant weapons training from Hezbollah,” King said. “It is clear Hezbollah has the will and capability.”
After more than a decade of receiving intelligence briefs, King said he has concluded that “Hezbollah is probably the most experienced and professional terrorist organization in the world,” even more so than ISIS and Al Qaeda.
Asked if Iran could use Hezbollah to conduct strikes on the United States, a panel of experts including intelligence officials and former White House insiders responded in the affirmative.
“They are as good or better at explosive devices than ISIS, they are better at assassinations and developing assassination cells,” said Michael Pregent, a former intelligence officer who worked to counter Iranian influence in the region. “They’re better at targeting, better at looking at things,” and they can outsource attacks to Hezbollah.
“Hezbollah is smart,” Pregent said. “They’re very good at keeping their communications secure, keeping their operational security secure, and, again, from a high profile attack perspective, they’d be good at improvised explosive devices.”
Others testifying before Congress agreed with this assessment.
“The answer is absolutely. We do face a threat,” said Emanuele Ottolenghi, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies who has long tracked Iran’s militant efforts. “Their networks are present in the Untied States.”
Iran is believed to have an auxiliary fighting force or around 200,000 militants spread across the Middle East, according to Nader Uskowi, a onetime policy adviser to U.S. Central Command and current visiting fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
At least 50 to 60 thousand of these militants are “battle tested” in Syria and elsewhere.
“It doesn’t take many of them to penetrate this country and be a major threat,” Uskowi said. “They can pose a major threat to our homeland.”
While Iran is currently more motivated to use its proxies such as Hezbollah regionally for attacks against Israel or U.S. forces, “those sleeper cells” positioned in the United States could be used to orchestrate an attack, according to Brian Katulis, a former member of the White House National Security Council under President Bill Clinton.
“The potential is there, but the movement’s center of focus is in the region,” said Katulis, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress.
Among the most pressing threats to the U.S. homeland is Hezbollah’s deep penetration throughout Latin America, where it finances its terror activities by teaming up with drug cartels and crime syndicates.
“Iran’s proxy terror networks in Latin America are run by Tehran’s wholly owned Lebanese franchise Hezbollah,” according to Ottolenghi. “These networks are equal part crime and terror” and have the ability to provide funding and logistics to militant fighters.
“Their presence in Latin America must be viewed as a forward operating base against America’s interest in the region and the homeland itself,” he said.
These Hezbollah operatives exploit loopholes in the U.S. immigration system to enter America under the guise of legitimate business.
Operatives working for Hezbollah and Iran use the United States “as a staging ground for trade-based and real estate-based money laundering.” They “come in through the front door with a legitimate passport and a credible business cover story,” Ottolenghi said.
The matter is further complicated by Iran’s presence in Syria, where it has established not only operating bases, but also weapons factories that have fueled Hezbollah’s and Hamas’s war on Israel.
Iran’s development of advanced ballistic missile and rocket technology—which has continued virtually unimpeded since the nuclear deal was enacted—has benefitted terror groups such as Hezbollah.
“Iran is increasing Hezbollah’s capability to target Israel with more advanced and precision guided rockets and missiles,” according to Pregent. “These missiles are being developed in Syria under the protection of Syrian and Russian air defense networks.”
In Iraq, Iranian forces “have access to U.S. funds and equipment in the Iraqi Ministry of Defense and Iraq’s Ministry of Interior,” Pregent said.
The Trump administration has offered tough talk on Iran, but failed to take adequate action to dismantle its terror networks across the Middle East, as well as in Latin American and the United States itself, according to CAP’s Katulis.
“The Trump administration has talked a good game and has had strong rhetoric, but I would categorize its approach vis-à-vis Iran as one of passive appeasement,” said Katulis. “We simply have not shown up in a meaningful way.”
New York: Nazi Ordered Deported in 2004
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