There’s no denying the pattern — Russia is attacking the credibility of U.S. institutions to create chaos and stir up distrust of our leaders, engineers, and scientists. This video looks at Russian efforts to spread anti-vaccination propaganda and to push for “energy choice,” a sneaky effort to break up the utilities that actually secure our energy grid (from their cyberattacks).
The online news website Axios has published a handy visual search tool for exploring the final report from Special Counsel Robert Mueller.
The Axios team coded each passage in the 448-page report, calling out the major people, organizations, events, places and topics for easy browsing.
They categorized over 2,500 pieces of text — all you have to do is select a topic of interest from the dropdown. The matching passages then appear highlighted for you.
Pay particular attention to the passages involving Russia’s “Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU)” and “Internet Research Agency,” which have been central to the Kremlin’s political and economic meddling in the United States and across the West.
The Russian government has deliberately set false GPS signals affecting thousands of ships and airplanes moving through the Black Sea near Ukraine. This is according to the Centre for Advanced Defense, a security think tank, which reports that Russia has hacked the global navigation satellite system (GNSS) on a mass scale.
The C4AD study found that 1,311 civilian ships were affected by the false GNSS signals across nearly 10,000 incidents.
Analysis by the cyber security monitoring service Digital Shadows noted that:
The geographical placement of the spoofing incidents closely aligns with places where Vladimir Putin was making overseas and domestic visits, suggesting that Russian forces had developed mobile GNSS jamming units to provide protection for the Russian president. The incidents also align with the locations of Russian military and government resources.
A bill introduced by Sens. Marco Rubio (R-FL) and Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) would require that the Director of National Intelligence inform Congress within 60 days of every federal election whether there was any foreign meddling — and if so, impose sanctions on the offenders.
The Rubio-Van Hollen bill resembles an executive order issued by President Trump last year requiring the administration to determine if foreign election interference occurred and, if so, to impose sanctions. The senators supported the president’s executive order, but nevertheless want to see their legislation get passed.
The dangers of an electromagnetic pulse, or EMP, are the stuff of nightmares — think widespread blackouts, halting of air travel, crippling of the U.S. economy and potential total social breakdown.
Officials have been warning for years that Russia, China, Iran or North Korea could unleash an EMP attack on the U.S. electric grid; or just as scary, one could be caused by a solar flare.
Recognizing the potential devastating effects an EMP would bring, the White House took action this week via an Executive Order from President Trump to protect the nation’s critical infrastructure from EMPs, boost detection capabilities and plan for recovery should one occur.
While unleashing an EMP attack would be an indisputable act of war, and bring a swift response from the U.S., it could be a highly effective first strike. Military leaders in adversarial countries know this, and EMP weapons have become part of their planning doctrines, according to a government report.
“It is the policy of the United States to prepare for the effects of EMPs through targeted approaches that coordinate whole-of-government activities and encourage private-sector engagement,” the executive order said.
Hackers are at it again — seeking to disrupt industrial production and cause economic damage in the West through ransomware cyber attacks.
In the latest case, the giant Norwegian aluminum manufacturer Norsk Hydro was hit with a cyberattack that forced it to shut down some plants and operate others manually. These attacks are a far cry from the “election meddling” that has come to dominate our public perception of foreign interference. Rather, they are causing significant direct and indirect financial harm to the targets.
Aluminum prices rose to a 3-month high when news of the attack became public, while Norsk Hyrdo’s stock fell 3.4%.
It’s not yet clear who the perpetrators of the cyberattack were, or whether they succeeded in extracting a ransom payment from Norsk Hyrdo to “unlock” the hacked systems.
“Other cyber attacks have downed electricity grids and transport systems in recent years, and an attack on Italian oil services firm Saipem late last year destroyed more than 300 of the company’s computers.”
Reuters UK
Global aluminum production is dominated by just a few companies, with the 2 largest in China and Russia, and production problems can quickly escalate into disruptions of the global supply chain.
As Paul Manafort heads off to federal prison for 7 1/2 years for an array of crimes — including tax evasion and the laundering of illicit gains from his pro-Russia political consulting work — it’s worth revisiting just what money laundering is.
The ability to move money into and around the U.S. and Europe is an essential component of Russia’s recent interference activities, which include supporting environmental protests against pipelines and trolling public debates on divisive issues. Better that these activities appear to be “organic” than directed and carried out by the Kremlin’s intelligence apparatus.
Not only that, the Russian oligarchs and Putin cronies who operate corrupt enterprises need a way to stash their cash, preferably with the stability that Western banks and institutions provide.
Investigators worldwide are working to identify and stop all the ways that Russian criminals are trying to beat the system — and having some success. But much remains unknown, including how much Russia may be injecting into foundations, associations, and other nonprofits. Already there are indications that Russian money was bankrolling both the NRA (on the right) and environmental nonprofits (on the left). This follows the typical Russian playbook of playing both sides to sow chaos.
Read more from Business Insider on how criminals attempt to disguise the proceeds of illegal activity. It won’t be the last we hear about Russian money laundering!
The Russian Internet accounts that interfered with the 2016 elections — and a range of ongoing U.S. commercial interests — appear to be shifting tactics as they look ahead to 2020.
The trolls are focusing less on creating original content, and more on amplifying already existing content and using hacked devices to create new legitimate-looking accounts. This is according to experts at several cybersecurity and research firms who spoke with Bloomberg News.
A new Gallup poll found that Russia is now deemed the chief U.S. enemy globally and that Russia’s military power is viewed as a “critical threat” to vital U.S. interests.
Russia has displaced North Korea as the foreign power viewed to be the greatest enemy of the U.S. Whereas a year ago 51% of Americans surveyed viewed North Korea as the prime threat vs. 19% saying the same of Russia, the pendulum has now swung to a point where 32% view Russia as the chief enemy vs. 14% North Korea.
Fear of Russian interference and leverage over Ukraine, Germany and other U.S. allies in Europe is palpable, according to the U.S. ambassador to the European Union.
Gordon Sondland, the senior American diplomat at the EU, spoke of the tension that Russia is creating across the continent, in an interview with Euronews.
Sondland cited the NordStream2 project as one policy area where the U.S. disagrees with some allies — asserting that Europe has other viable energy sources and need not rely on Russian gas, which Russia has been known to curtail supply of in order to exert political pressure.