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#1
Today (12/14) the New York Times printed a story by a couple of investigative journalists that may shake our political world. 

How Moscow Aimed a Perfect Weapon at the U.S. Election

And...

Democratic House Candidates Were Also Targets

Not "quick" reads, there is a wealth of information here, that if proven correct and complete may well be another "Watergate". The reports may be challenged: A good thing, as that's how we are sure to get to the total and unvarnished truth. 

As I'm sure you know, nonsubscribers can log onto NTY.com and read 10 articles a month. You might want to consider reading these. 

Proving once again that subscription based publications paying journalists living wage salaries allow time and resources to follow a story long enough to conclude an investigation that can be reported with some confidence. 

An example, below, from the story, of incompetence by some of the folks who have jobs that require at least basic skills: 


Yared Tamene, the tech-support contractor at the D.N.C. who fielded the call, was no expert in cyberattacks. His first moves were to check Google for “the Dukes” and conduct a cursory search of the D.N.C. computer system logs to look for hints of such a cyberintrusion. By his own account, he did not look too hard even after Special Agent Hawkins called back repeatedly over the next several weeks — in part because he wasn’t certain the caller was a real F.B.I. agent and not an impostor.
“I had no way of differentiating the call I just received from a prank call,” Mr. Tamene wrote in an internal memo, obtained by The New York Times, that detailedhis contact with the F.B.I.

You would think the guy might have called the FBI office, asked for the name of the contact and if he is in fact an offical there, then calling him at his office. Not rocket science. 
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#2
Quote:The Only Thing Saving Us From the Bureaucracy Is Its Abject Incompetence

Politico has a new report on how Hillary Clinton managed to lose the solidly Democratic state of Michigan:

Quote:Everybody could see Hillary Clinton was cooked in Iowa. So when, a week-and-a-half [before the election], the Service Employees International Union started hearing anxiety out of Michigan, union officials decided to reroute their volunteers, giving a desperate team on the ground around Detroit some hope. They started prepping meals and organizing hotel rooms. SEIU—which had wanted to go to Michigan from the beginning, but been ordered not to—dialed Clinton’s top campaign aides to tell them about the new plan. According to several people familiar with the call, Brooklyn was furious. Turn that bus around, the Clinton team ordered SEIU. Those volunteers needed to stay in Iowa to fool Donald Trump into competing there, not drive to Michigan, where the Democrat’s models projected a 5-point win through the morning of Election Day.

This sounds like illegal coordination, though that’s a penalty the other team would be well advised to decline. The New York Times, meanwhile, fills in some details on the hacking of campaign chairman John Podesta’s emails. It seems he received a “phishing” email informing him that someone had signed in to his account and inviting him to click on a link to change his password:

Quote:Given how many emails Mr. Podesta received through this personal email account, several aides also had access to it, and one of them noticed the warning email, sending it to a computer technician to make sure it was legitimate before anyone clicked on the “change password” button. “This is a legitimate email,” Charles Delavan, a Clinton campaign aide, replied to another of Mr. Podesta’s aides, who had noticed the alert. “John needs to change his password immediately.” With another click, a decade of emails that Mr. Podesta maintained in his Gmail account—a total of about 60,000—were unlocked for the Russian hackers. Mr. Delavan, in an interview, said that his bad advice was a result of a typo: He knew this was a phishing attack, as the campaign was getting dozens of them. He said he had meant to type that it was an “illegitimate” email, an error that he said has plagued him ever since.

This story doesn’t quite make sense. If he meant “illegitimate” rather than “legitimate,” why would he type “a” rather than “an”? And why would he say John does need to change his password?
At any rate, it’s probably not the worst thing in the world that this gang isn’t going to be running the government.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/golden-age-f...1481738517
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#3
(12-14-2016, 12:08 PM)Big Rock Wrote:
Quote:The Only Thing Saving Us From the Bureaucracy Is Its Abject Incompetence

Politico has a new report on how Hillary Clinton managed to lose the solidly Democratic state of Michigan:

Quote:Everybody could see Hillary Clinton was cooked in Iowa. So when, a week-and-a-half [before the election], the Service Employees International Union started hearing anxiety out of Michigan, union officials decided to reroute their volunteers, giving a desperate team on the ground around Detroit some hope. They started prepping meals and organizing hotel rooms. SEIU—which had wanted to go to Michigan from the beginning, but been ordered not to—dialed Clinton’s top campaign aides to tell them about the new plan. According to several people familiar with the call, Brooklyn was furious. Turn that bus around, the Clinton team ordered SEIU. Those volunteers needed to stay in Iowa to fool Donald Trump into competing there, not drive to Michigan, where the Democrat’s models projected a 5-point win through the morning of Election Day.

This sounds like illegal coordination, though that’s a penalty the other team would be well advised to decline. The New York Times, meanwhile, fills in some details on the hacking of campaign chairman John Podesta’s emails. It seems he received a “phishing” email informing him that someone had signed in to his account and inviting him to click on a link to change his password:

Quote:Given how many emails Mr. Podesta received through this personal email account, several aides also had access to it, and one of them noticed the warning email, sending it to a computer technician to make sure it was legitimate before anyone clicked on the “change password” button. “This is a legitimate email,” Charles Delavan, a Clinton campaign aide, replied to another of Mr. Podesta’s aides, who had noticed the alert. “John needs to change his password immediately.” With another click, a decade of emails that Mr. Podesta maintained in his Gmail account—a total of about 60,000—were unlocked for the Russian hackers. Mr. Delavan, in an interview, said that his bad advice was a result of a typo: He knew this was a phishing attack, as the campaign was getting dozens of them. He said he had meant to type that it was an “illegitimate” email, an error that he said has plagued him ever since.

This story doesn’t quite make sense. If he meant “illegitimate” rather than “legitimate,” why would he type “a” rather than “an”? And why would he say John does need to change his password?
At any rate, it’s probably not the worst thing in the world that this gang isn’t going to be running the government.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/golden-age-f...1481738517

Yep, I think Delavan "screwed the pooch" and just didn't have the balls to fess up.

And Hillary was doing an okay job of losing voters without the help of the Russians. Nary a peep about those blue collar folks in the rust belt. Cost her dearly. 

But your comment At any rate, it’s probably not the worst thing in the world that this gang isn’t going to be running the government." Could be seen as strange somewhere down the road. I suspect the Trump administration has the potential to blow up worse than any in history. Time will tell. 

Ther real issue however, remains that the Russians (some "players" in Russia: We don't know that it's the government....Yet) are hip deep into our cyber stuff and may very well have influenced our national election, even if they didn't change the result. This time.
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#4
Not my comment. That was from the uber article (linked) by James Taranto, WSJ. I added the emphasis.
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#5
(12-14-2016, 01:38 PM)Big Rock Wrote: Not my comment. That was from the uber article (linked) by James Taranto, WSJ. I added the emphasis.

Sorry.  Embarrassed. I should be more attentive.
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#6
Not at all. Multiple embedded excerpts can be confusing. I just don't want to take credit for something that someone else wrote.
I have no idea how Mr. Trump will perform as president. There are certainly some red flags (so to speak) and indications that there may be trouble ahead. However, I think that would also have been the case if Mrs. Clinton had won. Maybe we can hope for the best, or at least hope to avoid the worst in the years ahead.
Happy holidays.
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#7
(12-14-2016, 02:29 PM)Big Rock Wrote: Not at all. Multiple embedded excerpts can be confusing. I just don't want to take credit for something that someone else wrote.
I have no idea how Mr. Trump will perform as president. There are certainly some red flags (so to speak) and indications that there may be trouble ahead. However, I think that would also have been the case if Mrs. Clinton had won. Maybe we can hope for the best, or at least hope to avoid the worst in the years ahead.
Happy holidays.

Well said. And, I agree that Mrs. Clinton was "no bag of chips". 

Indeed: Hope for the best. (Hell, maybe his cabinet and the congress will keep thiings on track) 

Merry Christmas to you and yours.
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#8
I've wondered about the caliber of IT folks employed by the various parties in elections. I don't necessarily expect perfect performance, no errors. But it's pretty predictable that someone will be trying to hack them, probably multiple someones.

I'd almost bet they try to step up their anti-cyber game next time. Almost.
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#9
(12-14-2016, 06:20 PM)Cuzz Wrote: I've wondered about the caliber of IT folks employed by the various parties in elections. I don't necessarily expect perfect performance, no errors. But it's pretty predictable that someone will be trying to hack them, probably multiple someones.

I'd almost bet they try to step up their anti-cyber game next time. Almost.

I mean, really! The Net has been around for a while now and "hacking" started about 10 minutes after it went online. The guy the FBI contacted who didn't think maybe it was the FBI, was a contractor. More and more of that, and you know about the old saw that with the lowest bidder you get...

Maybe the DNC will start sharing information with post cards. (Can we still send post cards?) 

Sad all the way around. Maybe this will be a wake-up call for ALL organizations. 

Whatever: My own feeling (not worth much) is that whatever happened, it didn't cost Hillary the election. She failed in her own right I think, and Trump did tap into something out there that few were aware of. (And now, Mr. Trump, you have to GOVERN! Maybe a bit tougher than campaigning) 

But, NEXT time, a hack could hurt, and hurt bad! 

Mamma don't let you boys grow up to be cowboys: Teach 'em computer skills!
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#10
Last year the chicoms hacked into us government computers and stole the personal information of over 2 million federal employees.  Obama and the dems didn't even blink.  Suddenly the DNC and John Podesta gets hacked and they are foaming at the mouth.  And it the case of Podesta, who had the most damning emails, it wasn't Russia.  They don't know who it was.  Hackers got into his email account by Podesta opening a misspelled phishing link that he clicked on.  Everyone knows or at least should know, not to open links in emails from people you do not know.  Spare me the fake outrage.
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#11
(12-15-2016, 09:22 AM)SFLiberal Wrote: Last year the chicoms hacked into us government computers and stole the personal information of over 2 million federal employees.  Obama and the dems didn't even blink.  Suddenly the DNC and John Podesta gets hacked and they are foaming at the mouth.  And it the case of Podesta, who had the most damning emails, it wasn't Russia.  They don't know who it was.  Hackers got into his email account by Podesta opening a misspelled phishing link that he clicked on.  Everyone knows or at least should know, not to open links in emails from people you do not know.  Spare me the fake outrage.

Okay. Consider yourself spared. 

This isn't a problem suffered by "on side or the other". Hacking is serious stuff, and while you are right in your criticism of Podesta's peoples stupidy, this threatens our entire system. Russia (and other nation states) are devoting tremendous efforts to break into our systems, both public and private. 

So maybe the outrage is not all that fake.
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#12
(12-15-2016, 09:22 AM)SFLiberal Wrote: Last year the chicoms hacked into us government computers and stole the personal information of over 2 million federal employees.  Obama and the dems didn't even blink.  Suddenly the DNC and John Podesta gets hacked and they are foaming at the mouth.  And it the case of Podesta, who had the most damning emails, it wasn't Russia.  They don't know who it was.  Hackers got into his email account by Podesta opening a misspelled phishing link that he clicked on.  Everyone knows or at least should know, not to open links in emails from people you do not know.  Spare me the fake outrage.

Of course they did. You have no idea what anybody has actually done, you have only the lies your "news" outlets give you to disseminate.
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#13
Quote:Democrats claim Russian hackers stole victory from Hillary Clinton, yet President Obama told alleged comedian Trevor Noah that they released “what were frankly not very interesting emails that didn’t have any explosive information in them.” Well, either the content of the emails influenced the outcome, or not—which is it? And that isn’t the only contradiction in this narrative.
Another is the amazingly reckless information security programs of the Clinton campaign and Democratic National Committee. New details Wednesday in the New York Times still manage to astonish, even from someone who ran her own homebrew email server out of her basement as Secretary of State.
The Times reported that a Federal Bureau of Investigation special agent repeatedly called the DNC and left multiple voicemails warning that its computer system appeared to have been compromised. DNC staffers never called back for seven months because they told the Times they weren’t sure he was a real agent.
The Clinton campaign faults the FBI for not showing up in person at the DNC, as if it is the FBI’s fault the FBI wasn’t taken seriously. Yet two separate hacking rings, uncoordinated and unknown to each other, penetrated the DNC system.
Meanwhile, campaign chairman John Podesta was taken in “phishing” email, a relatively unsophisticated deception to trick someone into giving up a password. His aides thought the message was perhaps suspicious, but the IT team told them it was legitimate and to follow the link. Mr. Podesta also hadn’t activated two-factor authentication on his Gmail account, which might have provided another layer of security.
Not to blame the victims, but the reality of the modern era is that cyberattacks are a constant menace that requires vigilance. When the Chinese can steal millions of individual records from the Office of Personnel Management, any campaign must know that it is likely to be a target and take countermeasures to protect sensitive information.
Joe Kennedy told his kids never to write anything down that might one day appear on the front page of the Times. The modern analogue is to turn on two-factor authentication.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/phishing-the...1481761502
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#14
(12-15-2016, 11:32 AM)Big Rock Wrote:
Quote:Democrats claim Russian hackers stole victory from Hillary Clinton, yet President Obama told alleged comedian Trevor Noah that they released “what were frankly not very interesting emails that didn’t have any explosive information in them.” Well, either the content of the emails influenced the outcome, or not—which is it? And that isn’t the only contradiction in this narrative.
Another is the amazingly reckless information security programs of the Clinton campaign and Democratic National Committee. New details Wednesday in the New York Times still manage to astonish, even from someone who ran her own homebrew email server out of her basement as Secretary of State.
The Times reported that a Federal Bureau of Investigation special agent repeatedly called the DNC and left multiple voicemails warning that its computer system appeared to have been compromised. DNC staffers never called back for seven months because they told the Times they weren’t sure he was a real agent.
The Clinton campaign faults the FBI for not showing up in person at the DNC, as if it is the FBI’s fault the FBI wasn’t taken seriously. Yet two separate hacking rings, uncoordinated and unknown to each other, penetrated the DNC system.
Meanwhile, campaign chairman John Podesta was taken in “phishing” email, a relatively unsophisticated deception to trick someone into giving up a password. His aides thought the message was perhaps suspicious, but the IT team told them it was legitimate and to follow the link. Mr. Podesta also hadn’t activated two-factor authentication on his Gmail account, which might have provided another layer of security.
Not to blame the victims, but the reality of the modern era is that cyberattacks are a constant menace that requires vigilance. When the Chinese can steal millions of individual records from the Office of Personnel Management, any campaign must know that it is likely to be a target and take countermeasures to protect sensitive information.
Joe Kennedy told his kids never to write anything down that might one day appear on the front page of the Times. The modern analogue is to turn on two-factor authentication.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/phishing-the...1481761502
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#15
(12-15-2016, 12:48 PM)SFLiberal Wrote:
(12-15-2016, 11:32 AM)Big Rock Wrote:
Quote:Democrats claim Russian hackers stole victory from Hillary Clinton, yet President Obama told alleged comedian Trevor Noah that they released “what were frankly not very interesting emails that didn’t have any explosive information in them.” Well, either the content of the emails influenced the outcome, or not—which is it? And that isn’t the only contradiction in this narrative.
Another is the amazingly reckless information security programs of the Clinton campaign and Democratic National Committee. New details Wednesday in the New York Times still manage to astonish, even from someone who ran her own homebrew email server out of her basement as Secretary of State.
The Times reported that a Federal Bureau of Investigation special agent repeatedly called the DNC and left multiple voicemails warning that its computer system appeared to have been compromised. DNC staffers never called back for seven months because they told the Times they weren’t sure he was a real agent.
The Clinton campaign faults the FBI for not showing up in person at the DNC, as if it is the FBI’s fault the FBI wasn’t taken seriously. Yet two separate hacking rings, uncoordinated and unknown to each other, penetrated the DNC system.
Meanwhile, campaign chairman John Podesta was taken in “phishing” email, a relatively unsophisticated deception to trick someone into giving up a password. His aides thought the message was perhaps suspicious, but the IT team told them it was legitimate and to follow the link. Mr. Podesta also hadn’t activated two-factor authentication on his Gmail account, which might have provided another layer of security.
Not to blame the victims, but the reality of the modern era is that cyberattacks are a constant menace that requires vigilance. When the Chinese can steal millions of individual records from the Office of Personnel Management, any campaign must know that it is likely to be a target and take countermeasures to protect sensitive information.
Joe Kennedy told his kids never to write anything down that might one day appear on the front page of the Times. The modern analogue is to turn on two-factor authentication.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/phishing-the...1481761502

Strange. You just "retweeted" Big Rock's post. You guys use the same computer? The one in the bedroom?  Laughing

(Okay. I should apologize for that. Damn! Somehow I just CAN"T!)
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