Category Archives: Department of Homeland Security

Hillary Email Server Timeline and Facts

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Like everyone else, tracking the pieces of this scandal takes imagination and could require a spreadsheet that includes names and dates. So, below will be some facts and dates and for sure could be amended as more developments are realized.

1. Bill Clinton had/has his own server dedicated to Clinton business, Foundation operations and speeches.

2. Hillary needed an IT based system during the time she was running for president in 2008, could not use the existing server due to capacity limitations, so she bought yet another which came with an IT person.

3. Server 2 was installed in the basement of the Chappaqua home and managed by a person listed as Eric Hoteham. Likely the real name is Eric Hothem, who was a DC stockbroker and a Democrat fundraiser that worked for Bill. Eric was also an aide to Hillary during her time as First Lady.

4. Several email addresses were created on the 2nd server where they had some numbers assigned like [email protected]. Several identified run from 18-22 but leads to a question ‘were there email addresses created 1-17? There is also a strange email address on the server known as [email protected]. It should be noted that Guccifer hacked the email address of hdr22.

5. Hillary used several communications devices: a Blackberry which is government issued, an iPad and an IPhone. Questions include, were any of these fitted with encryption features, including her server(s)? So far that answer is no.

6. In the handful of emails released to date as required by the Judge via the State Department, Hillary did not know how to use email and there was a time when the server was down which caused issues for Huma Abedin.

7. In June of 2013, the Hillary team went to an outside IT provider known as Platte River, located in Denver. All electronic communications were moved to Platte River and the Hillary server was moved to a data center in New Jersey and subsequently wipe clean. Now the question is what the Denver IT company Platte River providing redundant services and or an encryption platform to protect classified data for the emails? So far the company is not responding to media questions. The decision to transfer the server services was at the same time the emails that included Sidney Blumenthal were hacked by Guccifer.

6. Two weeks ago, the FBI made a call to Platte River to determine the basis of their work for the Hillary communications platform. On Thursday of last week, Hillary’s lawyer, David Kendall surrendered the 3 thumb drives to the FBI. On Wednesday of this week, the FBI took control of the server located in New Jersey.

7. The recent 2 of 4 emails in question that were marked with the top secret classifications due in part that they included geo-spatial information were sent via a compartmentalized system to the State Department. From State Dept., they were then removed from the protected compartmentalized system and sent to the uncertified Hillary system. All the top secret designations were removed, which is a felony.

8. David Kendall, the Hillary lawyer who maintained the 3 thumb drives was also the lawyer of record for General David Petraeus during his email investigation.

9. All of government uses the same ‘sensitive compartmented information security procedures and there is a manual.

10. Additional details on Hillary email server scandals can be found here.

11. Hillary Clinton statements on the email scandals proving the lies so far.

12. Wrap up to date on the server and the law.

13. Huma Abedin, Hillary’s personal aide and confidant has lawyered up with Karen Dunn on two fronts, the overpayment of $10,000 and for the email scandals.

14. In a recent batch of Hillary emails released was an inquiry about a book describing how to delete emails and the consequences that could result in a jail term.

California: Pay Bribe for Drivers License

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California Governor Jerry Brown is perpetuating a national security crisis and yet no one in any Federal capacity is even considering discipline, a memo or other consequence.

Governor Brown opened the pathway for 1.4 million illegals to get a drivers license while others pay a bribe in the case they cannot read English or pass a written test.

In 2010, the illegal phenomena began by the Obama administration when it came to omitting background investigations of illegals and the trucking industry took notice.

Eleven employees of New York’s Department of Motor Vehicles have received indictments for participation in a fraudulent CDL testing scheme.

Brooklyn’s U.S. District Court issued indictments Oct. 24 for 11 DMV security workers at five NYC-area centers. Applicants allegedly paid $1,800 to $2,500 for test answers and escort assistance through the DMV process.

There was and continues to be a mission to stop illegal trucking with the mission statement noted here.

California DMV employees allegedly traded cash for licenses

FNC: At least 100 commercial truck drivers paid up to $5,000 each to bribe California Department of Motor Vehicles employees for illegal licenses, federal authorities said on Tuesday.

Officials said up to 23 traffic accidents could be related to the fraud, though there were no fatalities.

Emma Klem, a 45-year-old Salinas DMV employee, and trucking school owner Kulwidner Dosanjh Singh, 58, both pleaded guilty Tuesday to commit bribery and identity fraud, U.S. Attorney Benjamin Wagner said.

Two other DMV employees in Salinas and Sacramento and two other Central Valley trucking school operators have been arrested on similar charges.

The employees changed computer records to falsely show that drivers had passed written and behind-the-wheel tests after they were bribed by the owners of three truck-driving schools between June 2011 and March 2015, according to court documents.

“Individuals who use their positions to obtain commercial drivers’ licenses for unskilled and untested drivers jeopardize our nation’s security and safety. Allowing unqualified drivers to operate heavy commercial trucks on our highways is honestly quite chilling,” said Carol Webster, acting assistant special agent in charge of the U.S. Homeland Security Investigations office in Sacramento.

 

DMV examiners Andrew Kimura, 30, of Sacramento and Robert Turchin, 65, of Salinas were indicted last week on charges of conspiracy, bribery and fraud in connection with identification documents, along with trucking school owners Pavitar Dosangh Singh, 55, of Sacramento, and Mangal Gill, 55, of San Ramon.

Pavitar Singh and Kimura have pleaded not guilty, while Turchin and Gill are expected to be arraigned on Friday in U.S. District Court in Sacramento.

Kimura’s attorney, William Portanova, said his client is a good person caught in an unfortunate situation, “but we’re going to work through it and help this young man.”

Class A commercial drivers’ licenses are required to operate trucks, including 18-wheel cargo semitrailers. They are tougher to obtain than regular driver licenses. Applicants must pass both a written test and a behind-the-wheel test that is offered at a limited number of DMV locations, including Salinas.

The DMV has canceled or revoked more than 600 licenses that are potentially linked to fraud, including 100 that were pinpointed by investigators, DMV chief investigator Frank Alvarez said. Drivers can retake the tests, sometimes after a hearing, and Wagner said none are likely to be prosecuted during the ongoing probe because investigators are targeting the organizers.

It is the latest in several similar bribery schemes in recent years, including a Fresno case involving 15 people that resulted in a sentence of more than five years in federal prison for the DMV ringleader in 2013.

Alvarez said his department is considering additional safeguards to prevent employees from altering computer records, and it’s attempting to better screen its 10,000 employees and the way it issues commercial drivers’ licenses as it tries to prevent more bribery and fraud crimes.

The charges filed in federal court in Sacramento allege three separate conspiracies. Two of them purportedly involved Gill, who owns trucking schools in Fremont, Lathrop, Fresno and Salinas.

The third involved Pavitar Singh, owner of a school in Sacramento. His attorney, Anthony Capozzi of Fresno, and an attorney for Klem did not return telephone messages.

Christopher Morales of San Francisco, attorney for Kulwinder Singh, said his client is a good family man who recognizes that he erred when he “took shortcuts” to help members of the Indian community who had trouble passing the tests.

His client and Klem face up to five years in prison when they are sentenced Nov. 17.

No attorneys were listed for the two defendants who have yet to appear in court

ISIS Hacking Division Takes on Military and Govt Personnel

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Alleged ISIS leak compromises hundreds of U.S. military & intelligence emails — Dept of Defense is ‘looking into it’

and

The top of the page containing the leak appears to show an unconfirmed link to ISIS

Above: The top of the page containing the leak appears to show an unconfirmed link to ISIS

A Twitter account claiming to be the “IS Hacking Division” has published what appears to be an extensive directory of government emails, passwords, credit cards, phone numbers, and addresses spanning U.S. military departments and divisions, the FBI, U.S. embassies, the Library of Congress, U.S. city officials, the British Embassy, the FTC, and NASA, as well as possible personnel at Wells Fargo.

VentureBeat is able to confirm that the U.S. Department of Defense is “looking into” this alleged hack. We’ve also independently verified that at least several of the items included on that list contained accurate information, but that several of the people were not aware that the leak had occurred.

Other details in the document appear inaccurate or outdated; it lists two Intel Corporation email accounts which apparently do not exist in Intel’s “company email directory,” an Intel spokesperson told VentureBeat.

IS hacking division tweet

The content was published onto a site entitled “zonehmirrors.org,” a domain which was registered under the name Redi Alberto in the city of Lugano, Switzerland.

ISIS Group Claims to Have Hacked Information on U.S. Military Personnel
NBC: A hacker group claiming to be affiliated with the terror organization ISIS on Tuesday posted what it said was the personal information of hundreds of members of the military and government personnel, and urged terrorists to carry out attacks.

Flashpoint Intelligence, a global security firm and NBC News consultant, said it could not authenticate the claim by the so-called “Islamic State Hacking Division” or the accuracy of the information. Islamic State is another name by which ISIS is known.
The Twitter account used has been affiliated with infamous ISIS fighter Abu Hussain Al Britani, Flashpoint said. The account has since been suspended.

The group claimed the information contained names, emails, passwords, and phone numbers of personnel that included individuals from the Air Force, the Marines, NASA and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. There is no indication as to how old the information is, or whether the email addresses and passwords are still valid.

“We are aware of the report but cannot confirm credibility at this time,” a spokesperson for the Department of Defense said in an email. “The safety of our service members is always a primary concern.”

The group had previously claimed it hacked American servers and distributed information on military personnel, but analysts believe that claim was overstated, and the information was instead culled from freely available social media accounts, Flashpoint said.
T he information released Tuesday also included the purported credit card information of several U.S. State Department officials as well as screenshots of private Facebook messages between purported U.S. servicememebers.

Flashpoint analysts said the “hack” — if true — could be significant as it would represent a growing effort by pro-ISIS groups to distribute personal information that could be used in lone-wolf attacks.

The list of those hacked with names, locations, government divisions, embassies and P/W’s is here.  I was just notified that the original link has been taken offline, after some searching I located this link. http://tu3ek4yox26tber2.onion.nu/   Consider the risk if you choose to open it.

Advances and Secret Information on Hacking of Classified Systems

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Hacking never has the sizzle when it comes to terror or scandals, yet it is the cheapest and most effective means of destruction.

So, below are some items you cannot overlook.

A few weeks ago, the unclassified email and information system at the Pentagon, mostly used by the Joint Chiefs of Staff was taken offline due to suspicious malware activity. That system is back online as of this week after all clues pointed to the hack by Russians which led to up to 4000 Pentagon employees losing access to email.

***

Then it has been determined the Chinese have accessed top government officials private emails since 2010.

Chinese hackers have been accessing the private mails of some top United States officials since April of 2010, which coincides with Hillary Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state and her decision to use a private email server, Morning Joe’s Willie Geist reported Tuesday.

“The email grab, first code-named Dancing Panda, targeted top national security and trade officials,” Geist said. “It continued as late as 2014. The timing does overlap with Hillary Clinton’s time as secretary of state and her use of a private email server.”

“Many” top officials have been hacked, according to a high-level intelligence source and a top-secret document obtained by NBC News.

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Now comes a global network of hacking and their successful and criminal activities.

Exposing a new front in cybercrime, U.S. authorities broke up an alleged insider trading ring that relied on computer hackers to pilfer corporate press announcements and then profited by trading on the sensitive information before it became public.

In morning raids in Georgia and Pennsylvania, federal agents arrested five men in the plot, while four others indicted on hacking and securities fraud charges remain at large.

The hackers, who are thought to be in Ukraine and possibly Russia, allegedly infiltrated the computer servers of PRNewswire Association LLC, Marketwired and Business Wire, a unit of Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc., over a five-year period.

They siphoned more than 100,000 press releases including corporate data on earnings that could be used to anticipate stock market moves and make profitable trades. The hackers passed the information to associates in the U.S., who allegedly used it to buy and sell shares of dozens of companies, including Panera Bread Co., Boeing Co., Hewlett-Packard Co., Caterpillar Inc. and Oracle Corp., through retail brokerage accounts. A must read for the rest of the details is here.

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Most chilling of all is the forward leaning and creative uses of drones.

LAS VEGAS, Nev. – Forget Facebook drones that broadcast Wifi. The future is drones that hack from above. A company called Aerial Assault has turned a quadcopter into a flying hacker that scans the world below for insecure devices and vulnerable Wifi ports. Its makers say they built the tool for penetration testing — to help “good guys” diagnose their own weaknesses — but they concede that with a bit of modification, it could be used to exploit those vulnerabilities and install malware from the air. This is why it’s paramount to get your I.T. network looked at by a penetration testing company, you may think this is a scary thing for your company to undergo however, it will actually prevent people (hackers) from stealing your companies information as all of the weak spots would of been identified and then rectified.

The unnamed drone, which may be the first unmanned aerial penetration tool for sale to the public, was on display at the DEF CON hacker conference here last week. It uses a small Raspberry Pi computer running the Kali Linux penetration tester software with the broadcast range extended by alpha radio antennas. It will retail for $2,500 when the Web site goes up in a few days, its makers say.

“We’ve set it up so it does some basic [penetration] testing stuff and coordinates all that data with GPS coordinates from the flight controller. From that, you can extend it with every type of capability that you want Kali Linux to do,” said David Jordan, a representative from Aerial Assault who was selling it on the floor at the DEF CON conference in Las Vegas, Nevada on Sunday.

While the drone isn’t specifically designed to distribute malware, Jordan acknowledged it could be modified to do so. “It is up to the user to decide what they do with it. If the user, they have Raspberry Pi with Kali on it, they can reprogram custom scripts. That’s good for doing more extensive [penetration] testing. But, you know, scripts can be whatever they are,” he said. “Our intended use is for pentesters to be able to diagnose vulnerabilities and help people understand what their Wifi accessibility is, even up in the air.”

 

Plea Deal for 7th Indictment in Brian Terry’s Murder

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In August of 2014, per the Justice Department, Rosario Rafael Burboa-Alvarez became the 7th man charged in the death of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry. Burboa was part of the rip-crew and recruited others for continued operations.

The rip crew did not have weapons on them when their backpacks were searched, but the weapons they used were instead in a hidden cached location and retrieved by the rip crew only hours later.

He and others were monitored by several U.S. agencies that included ATF, FBI and DEA. Yet he is a happier man, due to a plea deal. He pled guilty to the death of Brian Terry.

N4T Investigators: Plea deal given to man indicted in murder of Border Patrol agent Brian Terry

One of the men charged in the murder of U.S. Border Patrol agent Brian Terry pleaded guilty to one count of murder, Monday morning. Once a potential candidate for the death penalty after the murder of the agent, the drawn up plea deal now states that the U.S. and the defendant will ask for 360 months imprisonment, with credit for time served since his arrest in October 2012.

The Justice Department indicted Rosario Rafael Burboa Alvarez last summer in connection with the killing. Alvarez was identified as the recruiter for the rip-off crew that ran into Terry’s elite BORTAC unit in the desert in December 2010. Terry was killed in the ensuing gunfight with the rip-off crew and later two AK-47 variants found at the crime scene were identified as part of the notorious Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives gunwalking operation, Operation Fast and Furious. The scandalous operation was supposed to link guns bought at a Phoenix-area gunstore to cartel gunmen trafficking the weapons to Mexico. Instead, ATF lost more than 2,000 of those weapons. Resulting congressional investigations found that the men linked to the gun purchases were being monitored by different U.S. federal agencies like DEA, the FBI and ATF, but agents weren’t sharing the information with the other agencies.

Burboa was often identified in federal search warrants and charging papers as the recruiter of the group. Burboa, the U.S. said, recruited rip-off crews to rob drug smugglers of their marijuana loads, then paid them after they performed the robbery and returned to Sinaloa. In early December, the rip-off crew entered the U.S. from Mexico, retrieved a stash of weapons and food and went to work, hunting smugglers. Instead, they encountered Terry’s tactical unit that had taken position at the top of a wash.

As part of the plea agreement, the United States agreed not to execute Burboa and to dismiss all other charges against him, including charges of interfering with federal officers and killing Terry with “malice aforethought” the second charge in the superseding indictment.

The plea deal also notes that Burboa had already been ordered expelled from the U.S., though it is not clear if the expulsion order derives from Terry’s murder or from a previous crime.

Burboa’s 30 year sentence is in line with the sentence handed to Manuel Osorio-Arellanes, the man wounded during the firefight. Osorio-Arellanes faced life but was ultimately sentenced to 30 years in 2012. Jaime Avila, Jr., the Operation Fast and Furious gunbuyer who purchased the two AK-47s found at the murder scene was also sentenced in 2012. He received a 57 month sentence.