SecDef and SecState Announce they have no Clue What Russia is Doing

Posted on November 22, 2021November 22, 2021 by Denise Simon

That is a pathetic condition by our agency secretaries and that means the National Security Council at the White House along with the president himself have no clue, hence no policy. What is the problem with Russia you ask?

Not in order of priority.

Early on November 15 astronauts aboard the International Space Station received an unexpected directive: Seek shelter in your docked spacecraft in case of a catastrophic collision. The station was about to pass through a freshly created cloud of orbital debris that posed a significant risk to the seven space travelers on board.

Four NASA astronauts, who had arrived just last week retreated, to their SpaceX Dragon capsule, while Russia’s two cosmonauts and another NASA astronaut took cover in their Soyuz spacecraft. They stayed inside these orbital lifeboats for about two hours, then repeated the exercise roughly 90 minutes later, as the station again passed through the new debris cloud. NASA has since canceled a handful of planned activities, warning that the schedule would be in flux.

“It’s a crazy way to start a mission,” mission control told the crew during a briefing.

The U.S. State Department later confirmed that the debris endangering the space station was produced when Russia tested an anti-satellite (ASAT) weapon and intentionally destroyed one of its own defunct satellites. The impact left behind hundreds of thousands of debris objects that now pose a risk to the ISS crew and other satellites in low-Earth orbit (LEO).

“Even though we know they have this capability, we were shocked that they chose to test it as they did,” says Kaitlyn Johnson, deputy director of the Aerospace Security Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. The test shredded a satellite whose orbit intersects with the path of the ISS, putting the humans on board, including Russian cosmonauts, at risk.

“The things rumbling around my mind are: Why now? What is this tied to? What message are they trying to send? And why that specific satellite?” she says.

The Russian defense ministry has since released a statement confirming the test but denying any risk to the space station: “The U.S. knows for certain that the resulting fragments, in terms of test time and orbital parameters, did not and will not pose a threat to orbital stations, spacecraft and space activities.” more details

Russia has more than 92,000 troops amassed around Ukraine’s borders and is preparing for an attack by the end of January or beginning of February, the head of Ukraine’s defense intelligence agency told Military Times.

Such an attack would likely involve airstrikes, artillery and armor attacks followed by airborne assaults in the east, amphibious assaults in Odessa and Mariupul and a smaller incursion through neighboring Belarus, Ukraine Brig. Gen. Kyrylo Budanov told Military Times Saturday morning in an exclusive interview.

Russia’s large-scale Zapad 21 military exercise earlier this year proved, for instance, that they can drop upwards of 3,500 airborne and special operations troops at once, he said.

The attack Russia is preparing, said Budanov, would be far more devastating than anything before seen in the conflict that began in 2014 that has seen some 14,000 Ukrainians killed. source

The Ukraine military’s assessment of a how a potential attack by Russia would play out shows the country ringed by Russian battalion tactical groups, or BTGs. (Courtesy of Ukraine military)

HALIFAX, Nova Scotia — A top Space Force official admitted on Saturday that the U.S. has “catching up to do very quickly” to match Beijing’s hypersonic capability, one week after China successfully launched a missile that circled the globe before striking a target.

Russia also launched a hypersonic missile from a warship in the Arctic this week, underscoring how quickly Washington, D.C.’s two primary competitors are racing ahead in this technology.

“We’re not as advanced as the Chinese or the Russians in terms of hypersonic programs,” Gen. David Thompson, vice chief of space operations, said during his appearance at the Halifax International Security Forum.

Hypersonic missiles fly at least five times the speed of sound, but their ability to glide on the atmosphere while changing direction at such a high speed makes them virtually impossible — with existing radars — to track and destroy.

While the Pentagon has pushed the development of new hypersonic missiles, the Army isn’t slated to field its first missile until 2024. The Navy is aiming to put its own version of the missile on a destroyer in 2025 and on Virginia-class submarines in 2028.

“It should be no surprise to anyone that China is developing capabilities that would be viewed negatively by like minded allies and partners,” Adm. John Aquilino, head of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, told a small group of reporters on the sideline of the event.

The Space Force is working to “figure out the type of satellite constellation that we need” to track these missiles, Thompson told POLITICO after his public remarks. “It’s a new challenge, but it’s not that we don’t have an answer to this challenge. We just have to understand it, fully design it, and fly it.”

While there’s no timeline for when these new satellites can get into orbit, “we’re evolving our approach and our timelines rapidly,” Thompson said.

Both Thompson and Aquilino expressed concerns for how the often slow and risk-averse acquisition process is affecting the military competition from under the sea and into space.

“The bureaucracy that we’ve built into our defense and acquisition enterprise, not just in space but in other areas, has slowed us down in many areas,” Thompson said. “The fact that we have not needed to move quickly for a couple of decades — in the sense of a strategic competitor with these capabilities — has not driven us or required us to move quickly.” In this photo taken from a video distributed by Russian Defense Ministry Press Service on Oct. 7, 2020, Russian Zircon hypersonic cruise missile is launched. Washington, D.C.’s two primary competitors, China and Russia, are racing ahead in this technology. | Russian Defense Ministry Press Service via AP

The Russian Air Force is training Syrian MiG-29 pilots in air-to-air training, the Russian Ministry of Defence’s Zvezda TV channel reported on 15 November.

“An important stage in the training of any pilot is the launch of guided air-to-air missiles,” Zvezda quoted Maxim Aleksanin, a Russian squadron commander, as saying. “For the first time, Syrian pilots used R-73 guided missiles from MiG-29 aircraft. In the future, we plan to improve the tactics of conducting close and long-range air combat in order to prevent provocations in the skies of Syria, as well as near its borders.”

The video that accompanied the report showed two Syrian MiG-29s (3431 and 3436) being prepared and taking off with R-73 missiles, although not launching them, and at least one was shown carrying a missile as it landed.

Time to Sanction the Mexican Government for Violating Public Safety

Posted on November 22, 2021November 22, 2021 by Denise Simon

In July of 2019: Mexico’s Congress passed an asset forfeiture bill; there were no additional changes to Mexico’s counterterrorism legislation in 2019. The government lacked adequate laws prohibiting material support to terrorists and relied on counterterrorism regimes in other countries to thwart potential threats. Additional reading here.

CARTEL monsters have hung nine bodies from a bridge in a chilling warning to rival gangs amid a bloody Mexico turf war.

A tenth victim was also found on a nearby road by horrified residents in the Zacatecas municipality of Cuauhtémoc on Thursday at around 6am.

Nine bodies were found suspended from a bridge in the municipality of Cuauhtémoc on ThursdayCredit: Reuters

Officials believe the gruesome display is related to a dispute between cartels in the area Credit: AP

Officials warned the disturbing display was likely to be linked to a savage dispute between ruthless criminal gangs that operate in the area.

The nine bodies were eventually removed from the overpass by police at around 10am local time, as locals went about their day.

According to local media, the majority of the deceased were identified as residents of the small town Cuauhtémoc, which has a population of just 6,660.

“They pay for the sins of others, it is not fair that they do this to us because they pay for the sinners,” one spooked local told TV Azteca Noticias.

Another added: “It’s scary to go out at night. You have to go to sleep early and every night there is noise, motorcycles, screaming, things like that.”

An “intense investigation” was underway, the local government said, although no arrests have yet been made.

***

“Operation Lone Star,” is Gov. Greg Abbott’s evolving and expensive plan to secure the U.S.-Mexico border using thousands of state troopers and Texas National Guardsmen. The operation, launched in March, was initially billed by Abbott as an effort to “deny Mexican Cartels and other smugglers the ability to move drugs and people into Texas,” but has since become a sprawling and controversial experiment in the use of state power to secure an international border.

Democrats have denounced it as illegal and unconstitutional, and called for a Justice Department investigation. Republicans have praised Abbott for taking a stand and pushing the envelope.

Abbott has not asked the Biden administration for permission because he does not believe he needs it. Indeed, the entire operation has been designed to operate exclusively with state resources and agencies, and within the existing confines of state law. That’s both a strength of Abbott’s approach and, as I saw for myself in Del Rio, Texas, a major weakness.

Abbott’s Border Operation Is A Bureaucratic Morass

It’s a weakness because it severely limits what the operation can achieve. The basic idea is that Texas state troopers and National Guard troops will arrest illegal immigrants, who will in turn be prosecuted for misdemeanor criminal trespass in hopes that such prosecutions will serve as a deterrent. Whatever the merits of this approach to border security, it comes with a host of caveats and constraints.

To begin with, Texas is only arresting single adult men, not women, children, or family units, which means the state is targeting the migrant population most likely to be quickly expelled to Mexico under Title 42, the pandemic public health order that allows federal immigration officials to send migrants back over the border with minimal processing. The migrant men arrested by Texas law enforcement, by contrast, will remain in state custody for weeks or longer, rather than being sent back to Mexico.

Up until last week, migrant men arrested under Operation Lone Star who posted bond would be transferred to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which would typically expel them under Title 42. But last week ICE told the state it would no longer take custody of these migrants. That means Texas will have to transfer them to U.S. Border Patrol, and as of this writing it remains an open question whether Border Patrol will expel them as they would have under Title 42, had federal agents arrested them, or process them as asylum-seekers.

If the latter, then Operation Lone Star might have the unintended effect of rewarding migrants caught by state authorities: once they’re processed and released by Border Patrol to pursue their asylum claims, migrants have legal status, are allowed to work, and can remain in the United States as their case wends its way through federal immigration courts — a process that can take up to five years.

But even before these problems arise there are strict conditions that have to be met before state authorities can even make an arrest. Migrants can only be arrested on private land where landowners have agreed to press charges, and only on those parcels of land where the Texas National Guard has managed to erect temporary barriers, usually some arrangement of concertina wire that migrants must cut or go over, to ensure the trespass charges will stick.

And before Texas National Guardsmen in particular can arrest anyone, they’re supposed to go through 40 hours of police training (in practice, I’m told that it’s more like a day-long training). Also, the migrants who are arrested have to be transported to state prisons that have been retrofitted to comply with state jail standards, since migrants are being held in pretrial confinement. That in turn means all the corrections officers have to be trained as jailers.

On top of all these requirements, the entire operation depends on the willingness of local county attorneys to prosecute a deluge of misdemeanor criminal trespass cases arising from all these arrests. In Kinney County, which has a population of less than 4,000, the county attorney is a young man named Brent Smith who just took office in January and has never before worked as a prosecutor. He now has about 1,300 cases and counting thanks to Operation Lone Star. (For context, in normal times the Kinney County prosecutor would only take on a couple dozen cases per year.)

By contrast, in neighboring Val Verde County, the local prosecutor, David Martinez, a Democrat, has rejected nearly half the cases that have come through his office from Operation Lone Star. Last month, Martinez told a local news station he rejected the cases either because the migrants in question were seeking asylum or because there was some other problem with the case. (He cited one case in which state troopers re-directed a group of migrants to cross onto private property so they could arrest them for trespassing.)

For all this, out of about 1,500 criminal trespass cases filed since July through Operation Lone Star, only about 3 percent have resulted in convictions, according to a recent report by the Wall Street Journal, which also cited court records showing that of the 170 Operation Lone Star cases resolved as of November 1, about 70 percent were dismissed, declined, or dropped. The remaining cases ended in plea agreements, with most migrants sentenced to time already served.

Meanwhile, all of this is costing Texas hundreds of millions of dollars. Earlier this year, Abbott shifted about $250 million in the state budget to launch the operation, and the GOP-led state legislature later approved an additional $3 billion. In Del Rio, you can see these dollars at work all over town: every hotel parking lot is full of Texas state trooper trucks and SUVs. Uniformed National Guardsmen drive around in armored Humvees. Along some stretches of private land near the Rio Grande, sparkling new chain-link fencing topped by concertina wire stretches out for miles.

Locals seem to appreciate the effort and money being poured into their communities, especially landowners who feel betrayed and abandoned by the Biden administration. One woman told me her family’s ranch has been repeatedly vandalized this year by migrants — trashed, in fact, for the first time in generations. When they called Border Patrol, the answer came back that no one could be spared to come out and investigate. Their advice was, stay away from your ranch, or move. Their message was, incredibly, we can’t protect you.

Indeed, under the direction of Biden and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, Border Patrol has for the past ten months been overwhelmed with the endless task of processing and releasing migrants as fast as it possibly can, with little time or personnel available for patrolling the border. In Del Rio, I spoke to former Border Patrol chief Rodney Scott, who was forced out by the Biden administration in August, and he said agents are demoralized because they’re unable to do their jobs. Instead of intercepting drug and human traffickers or arresting criminals trying to evade detection — the actual job of Border Patrol agents — they’re stuck processing and transporting asylum-seekers.

Scott sees the border as a “national security issue,” but says the Biden administration has a completely different set of priorities. “Unfortunately since January 20, I haven’t seen a single action or even a single conversation while I was still in the chief’s position, to try to slow the flow to actually create a deterrent to illegal entry,” he says. “Every single action has been to basically be more welcoming. How can we process faster? And that’s just going to continue to be an invitation worldwide.”

Is Operation Lone Star Elaborate Political Theater?

Texas, then, really is on its own. Abbott is right that under the circumstances something must be done by the state, but so far his solution seems overly lawyerly and cautious, designed specifically to pass legal muster and win lawsuits rather than create a real deterrent to illegal immigration.

A cynic might suspect that Operation Lone Star, for all its complex interagency coordination and mass deployment of manpower and expensive price tag, is in the end mostly political theater. Its purpose might not be to secure the border so much as to secure Abbott’s right flank against a pair of Republican primary challengers, former GOP Texas Chairman Allen West and former state senator Don Huffines, who accuse Abbott of being too soft on the border.

Given the resources at Abbott’s disposal, West and Huffines — along with plenty of Texas conservatives who are frustrated about the ongoing border crisis — arguably have a point. Former Virginia attorney general Ken Cuccinelli, who led U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services under Trump, has argued that border states have a strong constitutional case for securing their own international borders in the face of federal inaction. Cuccinelli and others cite Article I, Section 10, Clause 3 of the U.S. Constitution, which stipulates that no state can engage in diplomacy or war without the consent of Congress, “unless actually invaded, or in such imminent Danger as will not admit delay.”

The ongoing border crisis, which has seen a record 1.7 million arrests at the southwest border in the last 12 months, constitutes both an invasion and an imminent danger that will not admit delay, the argument goes, and states have a right to act. Not only could border state governors like Abbott invoke emergency powers to return illegal immigrants directly to Mexico, state legislatures could pass laws making it more difficult for illegal immigrants to remain in those states, mostly through strict licensure and screening requirements for sponsors and refugee resettlement organizations.

All of these things, and much else besides, lie far outside the scope of what Abbott is doing in Texas. There is no question at this point that Operation Lone Star, whatever its merits, will not significantly change the situation along the Rio Grande. The border crisis created by the Biden administration is here to stay — a new normal along the southwest border for as long as the White House desires it.

What could change that? Texas could. Abbott could. He has already demonstrated an impressive ability to mobilize and deploy thousands of Texas law enforcement and military personnel, along with every manner of vehicles, barriers, and transports. Nothing like Operation Lone Star has ever been undertaken, yet it is too little, too late — too pinched and small-minded a response to a rolling crisis that now appears to be permanent.

Abbott could wield these tools to press the constitutional question about what border states can do when the federal government leaves them to their own devices. If he doesn’t, he might find the people of Texas are ready to listen to someone who will. source

China versus Taiwan and the United States, Just the Facts

Posted on November 9, 2021November 9, 2021 by Denise Simon

A hacking group has compromised at least nine global organizations in the fields of technology, defense, energy and other key sectors as part of an apparent espionage campaign. Attribution is still ongoing, specific tools and methods used in the apparent hacking efforts are in line with those used by Chinese cyber-espionage group Emissary Panda, also known as TG-3390, APT 27 and Bronze Union.

While China has indeed surpassed the United States in the size of their Navy, the other concern is the build up of Chinese nuclear weapons. Meanwhile, the United States has deployed at least 30 U.S.military forces to Taiwan for training.For years, U.S.-Taiwan military exchanges have been thought of as an open secret—also known by the People’s Republic of China (PRC) leadership in Beijing. However, Tsai became the first Taiwanese leader in decades to publicly acknowledge the existence of a training program.

The United States has deployed the Iron Dome missile-defense system for testing in Guam by U.S. military planners concerned about possible Chinese attacks. Chinese President Jinping awarded additional 'War Powers ...

WAR GAMES:

The Chinese military – the People’s Liberation Army – is waging so-called gray-zone warfare against Taiwan. This consists of an almost daily campaign of intimidating military exercises, patrols and surveillance that falls just short of armed conflict. Since that report, the campaign has intensified, with Beijing stepping up the number of warplanes it is sending into the airspace around Taiwan. China has also used sand dredgers to swarm Taiwan’s outlying islands.

Military strategists tell Reuters that the gray-zone strategy has the potential to grind down Taipei’s resistance – but also that it may fall short, or even backfire by strengthening the island’s resolve. They are also envisioning starker futures. While they can’t predict the future, military planners in China, Taiwan, the United States, Japan and Australia are nonetheless actively gaming out scenarios for how Beijing might try to seize the prized island, and how Taiwan and America, along with its allies, might move to stop it.Xi’s options include seizing Taiwan’s outlying islands, blockades or all-out invasion. Some Taiwanese military experts say Beijing’s next step might be to seize the lightly defended and remote Pratas Islands in the north of the South China Sea. Any of these moves could spin out of control into war between China and America over Taiwan.

Reuters has published a comprehensive report and possible scenarios.

The Chinese military has built targets in the shape of an American aircraft carrier and other U.S. warships in the Taklamakan desert as part of a new target range complex, according to photos provided to USNI News by satellite imagery company Maxar.

The full-scale outline of a U.S. carrier and at least two Arleigh Burke-class destroyers are part of the target range that has been built in the Ruoqiang region in central China. The site is near a former target range China used to test early versions of its so-called carrier killer DF-21D anti-ship ballistic missiles, according to press reports in 2013.

This new range shows that China continues to focus on anti-carrier capabilities, with an emphasis on U.S. Navy warships. Unlike the Iranian Navy’s aircraft carrier-shaped target in the Persian Gulf, the new facility shows signs of a sophisticated instrumented target range.

The carrier target itself appears to be a flat surface without the carrier’s island, aircraft lifts, weapons sponsons or other details, the imagery from Maxar shows. On radar, the outline of the carrier stands out from the surrounding desert – not unlike a target picture, according to imagery provided to USNI News by Capella Space.

There are two more target areas representing an aircraft carrier that do not have the metaling, but are distinguishable as carriers due to their outline. But other warship targets appear to be more elaborate. There are numerous upright poles positioned on them, possibly for instrumentation, according to the imagery. Alternatively these may be used for radar reflectors to simulate the superstructure of the vessel.

The facility also has an extensive rail system. An Oct. 9 image from Maxar showed a 75 meter-long target with extensive instrumentation on a 6 meter-wide rail.

Target range in the Taklamakan desert in Central China. H I Sutton illustration for USNI News

The area has been traditionally used for ballistic missile testing, according to a summary of the Maxar images by geospatial intelligence company AllSource Analysis that identified the site from satellite imagery.

“The mockups of several probable U.S. warships, along with other warships (mounted on rails and mobile), could simulate targets related to seeking/target acquisition testing,” according to the AllSource Analysis summary, which said there are no indications of weapon impact areas in the immediate vicinity of the mockups. “This, and the extensive detail of the mockups, including the placement of multiple sensors on and around the vessel targets, it is probable that this area is intended for multiple uses over time.“

Analysis of historical satellite images shows that the carrier target structure was first built between March and April of 2019. It underwent several rebuilds and was then substantially dismantled in December 2019. The site came back to life in late September of this year and the structure was substantially complete by early October.

China has several anti-ship ballistic missile programs overseen by the People’s Liberation Army Rocket Force. The land-based CSS-5 Mod 5 (DF-21D) missile has a range of over 800 nautical miles. It has a maneuverable reentry vehicle (MaRV) to target ships. The larger CSS-18 (DF-26) has a range of around 2,000 nautical miles.

“In July 2019, the PLARF conducted its first-ever confirmed live-fire launch into the South China Sea, firing six DF-21D anti-ship ballistic missiles into the waters north of the Spratly Islands,” according to the Pentagon’s latest annual report on China’s military. The Chinese are also fielding a longer range anti-ship ballistic missile that initially emerged in 2016.

“The multi-role DF-26 is designed to rapidly swap conventional and nuclear warheads and is capable of conducting precision land-attack and anti-ship strikes in the Western Pacific, the Indian Ocean, and the South China Sea from mainland China. In 2020, the PRC fired anti-ship ballistic missiles against a moving target in the South China Sea, but has not acknowledged doing so,” reads the report.

A Nov. 5, 2021 Capella Space synthetic aperture radar image of the target in the shape of a U.S. aircraft carrier in the Taklamakan Desert H I Sutton Illustration for USNI News

In addition to the land-based anti-ship ballistic missiles, China has a program to equip the People’s Liberation Army Navy H-6 bombers with a massive anti-ship ballistic missile. First revealed in 2018, the CH-AS-X-13 will likely be the largest air-launched missile in existence, and would be large enough to accommodate a hypersonic warhead.

Another possible launch platform for anti-ship ballistic missiles is the new Type-055 Renhai Class large destroyer. Described as a guided-missile cruiser, it will be capable of carrying anti-ship ballistic missiles, according to the Pentagon report.

It’s not the first time China has built an aircraft carrier target in the desert. Since 2003, a large concrete pad, roughly the size of a carrier, has been used as a target. The slab, which is part of the Shuangchengzi missile test range, has been hit many times and is frequently repaired. The new site in the Taklamakan desert is 600 miles away and is much more evolved. The newer ship targets are closer approximations of the vessels that they are supposed to represent.

DoD Graphic

While questions remain on the extent of weapons that will be tested at the new facility, the level of sophistication of what can now be seen at the site show the PLA is continuing to invest in deterrents to limit the efficacy of U.S. naval forces close to China – in particular targeting the U.S. carrier fleet.

According to the Pentagon report released last week, a primary objective of the PLARF will be to keep U.S. carriers at risk from anti-ship ballistic missiles throughout the Western Pacific.

CIA Director in Moscow Did not Stop 90,000 Russian Troops at Ukraine Border

Posted on November 4, 2021November 4, 2021 by Denise Simon

Senator Marco Rubio appears to be the only person really concerned about a Russian invasion of Ukraine. While CIA Director Bill Burns took a delegation to Moscow for what is said to be high level meetings, it has proven to be ineffective in altering Russian operations versus Ukraine. Top Russian security chief met with CIA director Burns ...

As usual we have this –>The Ukrainian Defense Ministry sent a release saying that about 90,000 Russian troops are stationed close to the border in areas east of the country controlled by rebel forces. This comes two days after Ukraine denied that Russian military personnel were in the area.

Eastern Ukraine has been a contentious area for years. In 2014, Moscow annexed the Crimean Peninsula shortly after the Ukrainian Revolution. Over 14,000 people have died as a result of the conflict.

Russian officials said the troops were present due to maneuvers. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that “Russia maintains troops presence on its territory wherever it deems necessary.”

The ministry’s statement said specifically that units of the Russian 41st army have remained in Yelnya, about 260 kilometers (about 160 miles) north of the Ukrainian border.

On Tuesday, Ukraine’s Defense Minister Andriy Taran submitted his resignation and Ukrainian lawmakers quickly approved it Wednesday. Davyd Arakhamia, the head of the parliamentary faction of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s Servant of the People party, said Taran had health problems.

Ukrainian media reported however that Zelenskyy’s office was behind the resignation of Taran and four other ministers, who were also dismissed by parliament on Wednesday.

Russia has cast its weight behind a separatist insurgency in Ukraine’s east that erupted shortly after Moscow’s 2014 annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula.

A massive buildup of Russian troops in Russia’s west have been fueling fears of an escalation of large-scale hostilities.

Russian officials said that the troops were deployed as part of measures to counter security threats posed by the deployment of NATO forces near Russian borders. Russia and the alliance also have blamed each other for conducting destabilizing military exercises near the borders.

**** CIA director makes rare trip to Moscow for talks on Russia ...

The CIA and the delegation came back empty handed it seems.

THE DIRECTOR OF THE United States Central Intelligence Agency has returned to Washington from a surprise visit to Russia, where he led a high-level team of American officials in meetings with their Russian counterparts. The two-day visit was announced almost simultaneously by both the American and Russian governments, following the arrival of the CIA director, William Burns, to Moscow on Tuesday.

Little information has emerged about the participants in the meetings. A statement from the American embassy in Moscow said simply that Burns had traveled there at the request of President Joe Biden, and that other United States officials had traveled with him. It is believed that Karen Donfried, the State Department’s assistant secretary for European and Eurasian Affairs, traveled with Burns. According to the American embassy, the meetings were held on Tuesday and Wednesday and concerned “a range of issues in the bilateral relationship between the United States and Russia.

A minute-long video, which was posted on social media by the Russian TASS news agency on Tuesday, showed a group of five American officials meeting with five Russian officials. The latter appeared to include Nikolai Patrushev, a close political ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, who heads the Security Council of Russia —a body that is roughly equivalent to the United States National Security Council. Prior to his current role, Patrushev served as director of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB).

It is worth noting that Burns speaks Russian and served twice as a diplomat in Russia, most recently as the American ambassador there. Some observers noted that Burns’ trip to Moscow is part of a broader pattern of increasingly frequent meetings between American and Russian officials in recent months. The last four months have seen at least four visits to Russia by senior officials in the Biden administration.

Microsoft Reveals Continued Hacks of Technology Companies

Posted on October 25, 2021October 27, 2021 by Denise Simon

The Russia-linked hackers behind last year’s compromise of a wide swath of the U.S. government and scores of private companies, including SolarWinds Corp. , have stepped up their attacks in recent months, breaking into technology companies in an effort to steal sensitive information, cybersecurity experts said.

In a campaign that dates back to May of this year, the hackers have targeted more than 140 technology companies including those that manage or resell cloud-computing services, according to new research from Microsoft Corp. The attack, which was successful with as many as 14 of these technology companies, involved unsophisticated techniques like phishing or simply guessing user passwords in hopes of gaining access to systems, Microsoft said.

*** SolarWinds Hackers Accessed US Justice Department Email ...

Source: In a recent blog post to the company’s website, Microsoft’s corporate vice president of customer security and trust, Tom Burt, wrote that “state actor Nobelium has been attempting to replicate the approach it has used in past attacks by targeting organizations integral to the global IT supply chain.”

Nobelium is “attacking a different part of the supply chain: resellers and other technology service providers that customize, deploy and manage cloud services and other technologies on behalf of their customers,” according to the company.

Burt wrote that 609 Microsoft customers had been informed that they’d been attacked between July and October of this year close to 23,000 times “with a success rate in the low single digits.”

The attacks, according to the executive, were not aimed at a specific flaw in any of the systems, rather, they were “password spray and phishing” attacks, which are aimed at stealing credentials that grant the attackers access to privileged information.

The Russian state-backed hacking group is, according to Burt, “trying to gain long-term, systematic access to a variety of points in the technology supply chain, and establish a mechanism for surveilling – now or in the future – targets of interest to the Russian government.”

***

Over 600 Microsoft customers targeted since July

“Since May, we have notified more than 140 resellers and technology service providers that have been targeted by Nobelium,” said Tom Burt, Corporate Vice President at Microsoft.

“We continue to investigate, but to date we believe as many as 14 of these resellers and service providers have been compromised.”

As Burt added, in all, more than 600 Microsoft customers were attacked thousands of times, although with a very low rate of success between July and October.

“These attacks have been a part of a larger wave of Nobelium activities this summer. In fact, between July 1 and October 19 this year, we informed 609 customers that they had been attacked 22,868 times by Nobelium, with a success rate in the low single digits,” Burt said.

“By comparison, prior to July 1, 2021, we had notified customers about attacks from all nation-state actors 20,500 times over the past three years.”

This shows that Nobelium is still attempting to launch attacks similar to the one they pulled off after breaching SolarWinds’ systems to gain long-term access to the systems of targets of interest and establish espionage and exfiltration channels.

Microsoft also shared measures MSPs, cloud service providers, and other tech orgs can take to protect their networks and customers from these ongoing Nobelium attacks.

Nobelium’s high profile targets

Nobelium is the hacking division of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), also tracked as APT29, Cozy Bear, and The Dukes.

In April 2021, the U.S. government formally blamed the SVR division for coordinating the SolarWinds “broad-scope cyber espionage campaign” that led to the compromise of multiple U.S. government agencies.

At the end of July, the US Department of Justice was the last US govt entity to disclose that 27 US Attorneys’ offices were breached during the SolarWinds global hacking spree.

In May, the Microsoft Threat Intelligence Center (MSTIC) also reported a phishing campaign targeting government agencies from 24 countries.

Earlier this year, Microsoft detailed three Nobelium malware strains used for maintaining persistence on compromised networks: a command-and-control backdoor dubbed ‘GoldMax,’ an HTTP tracer tool tracked as ‘GoldFinder,’ a persistence tool and malware dropper named ‘Sibot.’

Two months later, they revealed four more malware families Nobelium used in their attacks: a malware downloader known as ‘BoomBox,’ a shellcode downloader and launcher known as ‘VaporRage,’ a malicious HTML attachment dubbed ‘EnvyScout,’ and a loader named ‘NativeZone.’

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