Category Archives: China aggression

5 Eyes Has Memo/Evidence on China Virus Deception

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Primer: Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo is correct, China is using the same fake/false propaganda tactics well known and exploited for decades by Russia’s FSB. Further, while Beijing refuses to allow foreign (read U.S.) scientists into the Wuhan Laboratory for review/investigation, Beijing is also refusing WHO scientists as well.

China sends thousands of medical staff to Wuhan as ...

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FNC: A research dossier compiled by the so-called “Five Eyes” intelligence alliance states that China intentionally hid or destroyed evidence of the coronavirus outbreak, resulting in the loss of tens of thousands of lives around the world.

The 15-page document from the intelligence agencies of the U.S., Canada, the U.K., Australia and New Zealand, was obtained by Australia’s Daily Telegraph newspaper and states that China’s secrecy amounted to an “assault on international transparency.”

The dossier touches on themes that have been discussed in media reports about the outbreak of the virus, including initial denial that the virus could be transmitted between humans, the silencing or “disappearing” of doctors who tried to speak up, the destruction of evidence in laboratories and refusal to provide live samples to international scientists working on a vaccine.

Specifically, the file notes that China began censoring news of the virus on search engines beginning Dec. 31, deleting terms including “SARS variation, “Wuhan Seafood market” and “Wuhan Unknown Pneumonia.”

Three days later, on Jan. 3, China’s National Health Commission, ordered virus samples to be either moved to designated testing facilities or destroyed, while simultaneously enforcing a “no-publication order” related to the disease.

Perhaps most damningly, the dossier states that Chinese authorities denied that the virus could be spread between humans until Jan. 20, “despite evidence of human-human transmission from early December.”

The dossier is similarly unsparing about the World Health Organization (WHO), stating that it toed the Chinese line about human-to-human transmission despite the fact that”officials in Taiwan raised concerns as early as December 31, as did experts in Hong Kong on January 4.”

As of Friday night, the WHO’s official Twitter account still featured a tweet from Jan. 14 that stated: “Preliminary investigations conducted by the Chinese authorities have found no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission of the novel #coronavirus (2019-nCoV) identified in #Wuhan, #China.”

At the same time, the dossier states that throughout February, “Beijing [pressed] the US [sic], Italy, India, Australia, Southeast Asian neighbours and others not to protect themselves via travel restrictions, even as [China] imposes severe restrictions at home.”

At the same time, the file states: “Millions of people [left] Wuhan after the outbreak and before Beijing lock[ed] down the city on January 23.”

The dossier continues the litany of Chinese defensiveness, stating: “As EU [European Union] diplomats prepare a report on the pandemic, [China] successfully presses Brussels to strike language on [China] disinformation.”

Similarly, “As Australia calls for an independent inquiry into the pandemic, [China] threatens to cut off trade with Australia. [China] has likewise responded furiously to US [sic] calls for transparency.”

The Telegraph report does present one point of divergence between the allied governments, with Australia believing the virus most likely originated in the Wuhan wet market and putting the chances it accidentally leaked from a lab at “5 percent.”

By contrast, Fox News reported April 15 that U.S. intelligence officials are increasingly confident that coronavirus likely originated in a Wuhan lab as a consequence of China’s attempt to demonstrate that its efforts to identify and combat viruses are equal to or greater than the capabilities of the United States

President Trump said Thursday that he’s seen evidence suggesting the virus came from a lab after Fox News and others asked if he knew of anything that gave him confidence that the outbreak originated in the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

“Yes, I have,” he replied, “And, I think that the World Health Organization should be ashamed of themselves because they’re like the public relations agency for China.”

Multiple sources previously told Fox News that it is believed standards in Wuhan were disregarded before the virus leaked, prompting Beijing to initiate a cover-up. Sources also claimed the WHO was complicit from the beginning in helping China cover its tracks.

The WHO and China have denied any wrongdoing.

The Telegraph also reported that key figures at the Wuhan Institute of Virology previously worked or trained in Australian government labs where they conducted research on pathogens in live bats as part of an ongoing partnership with the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

According to the dossier, the team’s work at the Wuhan lab involved discovering samples of coronavirus within a cave in Yunnan province and synthesizing a bat-derived coronavirus that could not be cured.

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KEY DATES IN COVID COVER-UP

November 9, 2015:

Wuhan Institute of Virology publish a study revealing they created a new virus in the lab from SARS-CoV.

December 6, 2019

Five days after a man linked to Wuhan’s seafood market presented pneumonia-like symptoms, his wife contracts it, suggesting human to human transmission.

December 27

China’s health authorities told a novel disease, then affecting some 180 patients, was caused by a new coronavirus.

December 26-30

Evidence of new virus emerges from Wuhan patient data.

December 31

Chinese internet authorities begin censoring terms from social media such as Wuhan Unknown Pneumonia.

January 1, 2020

Eight Wuhan doctors who warned about new virus are detained and condemned.

January 3

China’s top health authority issues a gag order.

January 5

Wuhan Municipal Health Commission stops releasing daily updates on new cases. Continues until January 18.

January 10

PRC official Wang Guangfa says outbreak “under control” and mostly a “mild condition”.

January 12

Professor Zhang Yongzhen’s lab in Shanghai is closed by authorities for “rectification”, one day after it shares genomic sequence data with the world for the first time.

January 14

PRC National Health Commission chief Ma Xiaowei privately warns colleagues the virus is likely to develop into a major public health event.

January 24

Officials in Beijing prevent the Wuhan Institute of Virology from sharing sample isolates with the University of Texas.

February 6

China’s internet watchdog tightens controls on social media platforms.

February 9

Citizen-journalist and local businessman Fang Bin disappears.

April 17

Wuhan belatedly raises its official fatalities by 1290.

 

A Deeper Dive on the World Health Organization

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Hold on…it is gonna be a rough ride….President Trump must not only investigate but for sure suspend funding….the reasons go way beyond the recent scandalous headlines.

Given the tight relationship between Dr. Tedros Adhanom, the Director and the Chinese Communist Party, it is a certainty that WHO is in possession of the report noted below:

Chinese researchers initially pointed to the possibility of a lab accident in a study published in February on ResearchGate. “The killer coronavirus probably originated from a laboratory in Wuhan,” wrote researchers — although they also raised the possibility of natural transmission. “Safety level may need to be reinforced in high risk biohazardous laboratories,” continued Botao Xiao and Lei Xiao of Guangxhou’s South China University of Technology.

and then there is this –> The possibility that the virus leaked during a lab accident “is being seriously considered” within the U.S. government, according to another recently retired senior national security official, who pointed to the State Department’s 2019 compliance report on arms control, nonproliferation and disarmament. The report notes that Chinese officials have failed to reassure inspectors they are obeying the Biological Weapons Convention, including by not providing information about research on “numerous toxins with potential dual-use application.”  More here.

From my friend Adam Andrzejewski with his Forbes piece on funding the WHO…the money that flowed in recent years to WHO is remarkable.

With his recent vow to halt and reassess all aid to the World Health Organization (WHO), President Trump legitimized critics who allege that the agency shielded information from the world about the lethality of the coronavirus and its ability to spread by human-to-human contact.

The WHO delegation highly appreciated the actions China has implemented in response to the outbreak, its speed in identifying the virus and openness to sharing information with WHO and other countries.

World Health Organization | January 28, 2020 | Beijing

The most likely presidential policy response will be to re-purpose all or most federal money from the WHO. If done in this manner, the president must notify Congress, but has the executive power to reallocate the monies to other organizations. Therefore, legitimate programs will continue to help humanity.

Responding to our request for comment, the White House, Office of Management and Budget provided a fact sheet detailing the WHO’s “corruption and abuse.”

The W.H.O. really blew it. We will be giving that a good look.

President Donald J. Trump
Our auditors at OpenTheBooks.com reviewed all disclosed grants by federal agencies to the WHO since 2010 and found that $3.5 billion in taxpayer money funded the WHO during this period.

What’s more, only $611.1 million of that funding came from “assessed dues” required by participating countries. The U.S. government voluntarily sent the WHO roughly $2.9 billion more than their required contribution. It’s no surprise that, annually, the United States is the largest funder of the WHO.

We also found that federal funding of the WHO remained strong during the Trump era. We compared the first three years of the Trump administration (FY2017-FY2019) to the first three years during the second term of President Barack Obama’s administration (FY2013-FY2015).

The WHO received more money under Trump than Obama (inflation adjusted): $1.4 billion versus $1.1 billion.

Since 2010, the Agency for International Development (USAID) has led all federal agencies with $1.5 billion in grants to the WHO. Roughly half the USAID grant money funded three programs: humanitarian programs ($345.7 million); polio eradication efforts ($307.8 million); and efforts to eliminate tuberculosis ($116.6 million).

Other programs include efforts in Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Libya, Sri Lanka, Sudan, and Pakistan and included gender-based anti-violence initiatives; life-saving healthcare services to vulnerable populations; and assistance in floods, emergencies, and to war-torn communities.

USAID efforts through the WHO and other international humanitarian aid agencies were singled out in a blistering USAID Inspector General report in 2018, Insufficient Oversight of Public International Organizations Puts U.S. Foreign Assistance Programs at Risk.

As of January 2018, Office of Inspector General (OIG) investigations in the region have resulted in the suspension or debarment of several dozen individuals and organizations, 20 personnel actions, and the suspension of $239 million in program funds under investigation.

USAID Office of Inspector General

The U.S. Department of State gave $820 million to the WHO since 2010. The largest portion of the money consisted of “assessments” or dues to the organization which amounted to $611.1 million. In addition, the State Department funded programs for “general assistance” ($95 million); “refugee” health ($17.3 million); “peacekeeping” ($15.9 million); and emergency vaccines ($2 million).

Here’s an overview of programs funded by other U.S. federal agencies such as the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) ($1 billion), Food and Drug Administration (FDA) ($30 million), National Institutes of Health (NIH) ($13.5 million), Department of Defense ($10 million) and the Environmental Protection Agency ($3.2 million) at the WHO since 2010:

  • Immunizations, Research, Demonstration, and Public Education/Information: $524.1 million — Through the Department of Health and Human Services and Centers for Disease Control, this funding was spent on WHO programs for the eradication of polio around the world. These grants were centralized through WHO headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland.
  • Global AIDS: $134.8 million — The Department of Health and Human Services and the Centers for Disease control funded support services and the strengthening of public health guidelines around the world to mitigate global AIDS.
  • Ebola virus: $73.5 million — In July 2019 and January 2020, the Congo received $15 million in Ebola eradication grants from the Trump administration specifically earmarked for the provinces of North Kivu and Ituri. The rest of the funding flowed through WHO headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, with the majority of the funding between the fiscal years 2015 and 2017.
  • Biomedical research: $37.9 million — The National Institutes for Health (NIH) collaborated with the WHO on biomedical research. These programs included research on allergies, infectious diseases, and immunology. The transactions show that most funding was for “accelerated public health and biomedical research in priority public health objectives.”

The coronavirus pandemic is testing the World Health Organization. Just like any other health care body, every aspect of their operation will receive scrutiny during these times of insecurity and crisis.

Our analysis of WHO funding by U.S. federal agencies shows that taxpayers have been generous and deserve to know how their money is being spent.

Until recently, American commitments remained strong.

Note: All federal government funded delineated in this piece was disclosed through the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act of 2006, co-sponsors Sens. Tom Coburn (R-OK) and Barack Obama (D-IL). (Public Law 109-282, 109th Congress)

Then there is the matter of the CDC…we will cover that another time.

Zoom Bombing, don’t be Fooled

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So, there are several online conference video chat platforms now being used while businesses continue to operate even while doing the stay at home thing. We are aware of course of the common Skype platform, Uber Conference and gaining huge popularity is Zoom.

Warning to the healthcare industry: Since the United States has launched full tele-health platforms, all parties involved in the session(s) should watch carefully the platform(s) for cyber weirdness. All the same warnings and watchful eyes should be applied to the military across the spectrum as forces too are working from remote locations.

How to Record Zoom Meeting on PC, iPhone

In recent days, I have seen reports of Zoom conference/meeting events getting bombed by rogue players. Every nation while struggling to overcome the pandemic, governments and companies are quite vulnerable to breaches of cyber security due to limited employee resources. What better time for bad actors (read China) to attack?

Zoom has also seen a sharp increase in usage, but the attention the teleconferencing solution is receiving continues to be decidedly mixed. TechCrunch reports that researcher Patrick Wardle has found two local security flaws in Zoom’s macOS client.

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While Zoom has certainly drawn investors’ eyes in a good way, it’s also attracted the ministrations of white hat researchers, cybercriminals, the plaintiffs’ bar, and state attorneys general. The platform’s encryption isn’t really end-to-end, the Intercept reports. Instead, it uses familiar transport encryption, which gives Zoom itself the potential to access its users’ traffic. The FBI’s Boston Field Office has issued a detailed warning about the ways in which criminals (conventional criminals out for gain, sleazy hacktivists, and skids out for the lulz) have been able to meddle with Zoom sessions. Check Point describes the ways in which criminals have registered domains that include the name “zoom;” these domains are of course up to no good at all. Zoom was also discovered to have been sharing analytic data with Facebook, a practice Zoom halted after it came to public attention, but not in time to forestall a class action suit under California’s Unfair Competition Law, Consumers Legal Remedies Act, and Consumer Privacy Act. And the New York Times reports that all of this news has prompted New York State’s Attorney General to ask Zoom for an explanation of its privacy and security policies.

So, as I was researching for this piece, I received an email from a distant buddy that read in part:

The government has sought the assistance of outside software experts to move online meetings. In one particular instance, my email buddy noted the following”

I have a Zoom warning. We had a Council meeting this afternoon and it had to end immediately. Fortunately, the Council was 99% finished with the meeting. The reason for ending the meeting is because we were Zoom Bombed (yup this is really the name for it). A participant joined the meeting late and his name was Mr. Off. His first name was Jack and he had a middle name “Me”. You can imaging the video. It was horrible. There were three hosts of the meeting that could control participants. The hosts could not see this participant so they didn’t think anything was wrong. Clearly, the hack knows how to enter a meeting without the controlling hosts knowing what is going on. I saw it and ordered the meeting end immediately. The Chair couldn’t see it and was wondering what to heck was wrong with me. It took about 5 more long seconds for me to yell at people to leave the meeting. We all jumped back on the meeting in five minutes and Mr. Off joined the meeting again.

I will add that only half the participants actually saw the act. We also caught it in time to not have it go live on cable or YouTube. Another participant actually viewed video of three other participants that no one else could see and were likely ready to Bomb the meeting.

In the future, we will use passwords for participants. This is unfortunate for the public because they wont be able to join the Zoom part of the meeting. They will still be able to watch it live on local cable and YouTube. We will set up an email and telephone for public comment if the agenda item requires public comment.

I highly recommend you use passwords for future meetings.

Seems we have a new kind of cyber terrorism going on here….espionage at a silent/covert level. Perhaps we can get some kind of press release from the NSA or something.

 

 

The Reason for the WH and Dr. Birx Chilling New Probability Report

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Primer: We all seem to guess this except for Jim Acosta/CNN and the others at MSNBC. Media continues to blame the Trump White House for the slow response to address COVID-19, while Dr. Birx and Dr. Fauci explained what they did not know very early on. Now we know.

Now some real questions and new policy towards China must be considered. We can start with the $1.8 T in U.S. debt that China holds. The next is challenging American telecommunications companies to squelch China’s advances of 5G. Then there is the next phase of the U.S. trade agreement with China. Add in the mission to stop China’s power agenda across the globe as it is clear, China is fine with killing people and economies across the world.

China has concealed the extent of the coronavirus outbreak in its country, under-reporting both total cases and deaths it’s suffered from the disease, the U.S. intelligence community concluded in a classified report to the White House, according to three U.S. officials.

The officials asked not to be identified because the report is secret and declined to detail its contents. But the thrust, they said, is that China’s public reporting on cases and deaths is intentionally incomplete. Two of the officials said the report concludes that China’s numbers are fake.

The report was received by the White House last week, one of the officials said. The outbreak began in China’s Hubei province in late 2019, but the country has publicly reported only about 82,000 cases and 3,300 deaths, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. That compares to more than 189,000 cases and more than 4,000 deaths in the U.S., which has the largest publicly reported outbreak in the world.

Communications staff at the White House and Chinese embassy in Washington didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.

While China eventually imposed a strict lockdown beyond those of less autocratic nations, there has been considerable skepticism of China’s reported numbers, both outside and within the country. The Chinese government has repeatedly revised its methodology for counting cases, for weeks excluding people without symptoms entirely, and only on Tuesday added more than 1,500 asymptomatic cases to its total.

Stacks of thousands of urns outside funeral homes in Hubei province have driven public doubt in Beijing’s reporting.

Deborah Birx, the State Department immunologist advising the White House on its response to the outbreak, said Tuesday that China’s public reporting influenced assumptions elsewhere in the world about the nature of the virus.

Coronavirus: Doctor at hospital in China's Hubei province ... source

“The medical community made — interpreted the Chinese data as: This was serious, but smaller than anyone expected,” she said at a news conference on Tuesday. “Because I think probably we were missing a significant amount of the data, now that what we see happened to Italy and see what happened to Spain.”

China is not the only country with suspect public reporting. Western officials have pointed to Iran, Russia, Indonesia and especially North Korea, which has not reported a single case of the disease, as probable under-counts. Others including Saudi Arabia and Egypt may also be playing down their numbers.

U.S. Secretary of State Michael Pompeo has publicly urged China and other nations to be transparent about their outbreaks. He has repeatedly accused China of covering up the extent of the problem and being slow to share information, especially in the weeks after the virus first emerged, and blocking offers of help from American experts.

“This data set matters,” he said at a news conference in Washington on Tuesday. The development of medical therapies and public-health measures to combat the virus “so that we can save lives depends on the ability to have confidence and information about what has actually transpired,” he said.

“I would urge every nation: Do your best to collect the data. Do your best to share that information,” he said. “We’re doing that.”

The outbreak began in China’s Hubei province in late 2019, but the country has publicly reported only about 82,000 cases and 3,300 deaths, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. That compares to more than 189,000 cases and more than 4,000 deaths in the U.S., which has the largest publicly reported outbreak in the world.

Map of sampling sites in the Hubei Province of China. Red ... source

 

Abstract

Background: The COVID-19 outbreak containment strategies in China based on non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) appear to be effective. Quantitative research is still needed however to assess the efficacy of different candidate NPIs and their timings to guide ongoing and future responses to epidemics of this emerging disease across the World. Methods: We built a travel network-based susceptible-exposed-infectious-removed (SEIR) model to simulate the outbreak across cities in mainland China. We used epidemiological parameters estimated for the early stage of outbreak in Wuhan to parameterise the transmission before NPIs were implemented. To quantify the relative effect of various NPIs, daily changes of delay from illness onset to the first reported case in each county were used as a proxy for the improvement of case identification and isolation across the outbreak. Historical and near-real time human movement data, obtained from Baidu location-based service, were used to derive the intensity of travel restrictions and contact reductions across China. The model and outputs were validated using daily reported case numbers, with a series of sensitivity analyses conducted. Results: We estimated that there were a total of 114,325 COVID-19 cases (interquartile range [IQR] 76,776 – 164,576) in mainland China as of February 29, 2020, and these were highly correlated (p<0.001, R2=0.86) with reported incidence. Without NPIs, the number of COVID-19 cases would likely have shown a 67-fold increase (IQR: 44 – 94), with the effectiveness of different interventions varying. The early detection and isolation of cases was estimated to prevent more infections than travel restrictions and contact reductions, but integrated NPIs would achieve the strongest and most rapid effect. If NPIs could have been conducted one week, two weeks, or three weeks earlier in China, cases could have been reduced by 66%, 86%, and 95%, respectively, together with significantly reducing the number of affected areas. However, if NPIs were conducted one week, two weeks, or three weeks later, the number of cases could have shown a 3-fold, 7-fold, and 18-fold increase across China, respectively. Results also suggest that the social distancing intervention should be continued for the next few months in China to prevent case numbers increasing again after travel restrictions were lifted on February 17, 2020. Conclusion: The NPIs deployed in China appear to be effectively containing the COVID-19 outbreak, but the efficacy of the different interventions varied, with the early case detection and contact reduction being the most effective. Moreover, deploying the NPIs early is also important to prevent further spread. Early and integrated NPI strategies should be prepared, adopted and adjusted to minimize health, social and economic impacts in affected regions around the World.

 

Google Sent Users 40,000 Warnings

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Primer questions: Did other tech companies do the same and if so, how many? What does Congress know and where are they with a real cyber policy?

Google’s threat analysis group, which counters targeted and government-backed hacking against the company and its users, sent account holders almost 40,000 warnings in 2019, with government officials, journalists, dissidents, and geopolitical rivals being the most targeted, team members said on Thursday.

The number of warnings declined almost 25 percent from 2018, in part because of new protections designed to curb cyberattacks on Google properties. Attackers have responded by reducing the frequency of their hack attempts and being more deliberate. The group saw an increase in phishing attacks that impersonated news outlets and journalists. In many of these cases, attackers sought to spread disinformation by attempting to seed false stories with other reporters. Other times, attackers sent several benign messages in hopes of building a rapport with a journalist or foreign policy expert. The attackers, who most frequently came from Iran and North Korea, would later follow up with an email that included a malicious attachment.

Color-coded Mercator projection of the world.

“Government-backed attackers regularly target foreign policy experts for their research, access to the organizations they work with, and connection to fellow researchers or policymakers for subsequent attacks,” Toni Gidwani, a security engineering manager in the threat analysis group, wrote in a post.

Top targets

Countries with residents that collectively received more than 1,000 warnings included the United States, India, Pakistan, Japan, and South Korea. Thursday’s post came eight months after Microsoft said it had warned 10,000 customers of nation-sponsored attacks over the 12 previous months. The software maker said it saw “extensive” activity from five specific groups sponsored by Iran, North Korea, and Russia.

Thursday’s post also tracked targeted attacks carried out by Sandworm, believed to be an attack group working on behalf of the Russian Federation. Sandworm has been responsible for some of the world’s most severe attacks, including hacks on Ukrainian power facilities that left the country without electricity in 2015 and 2016, NATO and the governments of Ukraine and Poland in 2014, and according to Wired journalist Andy Greenberg, the NotPetya malware that created worldwide outages, some that lasted weeks.

The following graph shows Sandworm’s targeting of various industries and countries from 2017 to 2019. While the targeting of most of the industries or countries was sporadic, Ukraine was on the receiving end of attacks throughout the entire three-year period:

Sandworm’s targeting efforts (mostly by sector) over the last three years.
Enlarge / Sandworm’s targeting efforts (mostly by sector) over the last three years.
Google

Tracking zero-days

In 2019, the Google group discovered zero-day vulnerabilities affecting Android, iOS, Windows, Chrome, and Internet Explorer. A single attack group was responsible for exploiting five of the unpatched security flaws. The attacks were used against Google, Google account holders, and users of other platforms.

“Finding this many zeroday exploits from the same actor in a relatively short time frame is rare,” Gidwani wrote.

The exploits came from legitimate websites that had been hacked, links to malicious websites, and attachments embedded in spear-phishing emails. Most of the targets were in North Korea or were against individuals working on North Korea-related issues.

The group’s policy is to privately inform developers of the affected software and give them seven days to release a fix or publish an advisory. If the companies don’t meet that deadline, Google releases its own advisory.

One observation that Google users should note: of all the phishing attacks the company has seen in the past few years, none has resulted in a takeover of accounts protected by the account protection program, which among other things makes multifactor authentication mandatory. Once people have two physical security keys from Yubi or another manufacturer, enrolling in the program takes less than five minutes.