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Another Mega Group Spy Scandal? Samanage, Sabotage, and the SolarWinds Hack
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The devastating hack on SolarWinds was quickly pinned on Russia by US intelligence. A more likely culprit, Samanage, a company whose software was integrated into SolarWinds’ software just as the “back door” was inserted, is deeply tied to Israeli intelligence and intelligence-linked families such as the Maxwells.

In mid-December of 2020, a massive hack compromised the networks of numerous US federal agencies, major corporations, the top five accounting firms in the country, and the military, among others. Despite most US media attention now focusing on election-related chaos, the fallout from the hack continues to make headlines day after day.

The hack, which affected Texas-based software provider SolarWinds, was blamed on Russia on January 5 by the US government’s Cyber Unified Coordination Group. Their statement asserted that the attackers were “likely Russian in origin,” but they failed to provide evidence to back up that claim.

Since then, numerous developments in the official investigation have been reported, but no actual evidence pointing to Russia has yet to be released. Rather, mainstream media outlets began reporting the intelligence community’s “likely” conclusion as fact right away, with the New York Times subsequently reporting that US investigators were examining a product used by SolarWinds that was sold by a Czech Republic–based company, as the possible entry point for the “Russian hackers.” Interest in that company, however, comes from the fact that the attackers most likely had access to the systems of a contractor or subsidiary of SolarWinds. This, combined with the evidence-free report from US intelligence on “likely” Russian involvement, is said to be the reason investigators are focusing on the Czech company, though any of SolarWinds’ contractors/subsidiaries could have been the entry point.

Such narratives clearly echo those that became prominent in the wake of the 2016 election, when now-debunked claims were made that Russian hackers were responsible for leaked emails published by WikiLeaks. Parallels are obvious when one considers that SolarWinds quickly brought on the discredited firm CrowdStrike to aid them in securing their networks and investigating the hack. CrowdStrike had also been brought on by the DNC after the 2016 WikiLeaks publication, and subsequently it was central in developing the false declarations regarding the involvement of “Russian hackers” in that event.

There are also other parallels. As Russiagate played out, it became apparent that there was collusion between the Trump campaign and a foreign power, but the nation was Israel, not Russia. Indeed, many of the reports that came out of Russiagate revealed collusion with Israel, yet those instances received little coverage and generated little media outrage. This has led some to suggest that Russiagate may have been a cover for what was in fact Israelgate.

Similarly, in the case of the SolarWinds hack, there is the odd case and timing of SolarWinds’ acquisition of a company called Samanage in 2019. As this report will explore, Samanage’s deep ties to Israeli intelligence, venture-capital firms connected to both intelligence and Isabel Maxwell, as well as Samange’s integration with the Orion software at the time of the back door’s insertion warrant investigation every bit as much as SolarWinds’ Czech-based contractor.

Orion’s Fall

In the month since the hack, evidence has emerged detailing the extent of the damage, with the Justice Department quietly announcing, the same day as the Capitol riots (January 6), that their email system had been breached in the hack—a “major incident” according to the department. This terminology means that the attack “is likely to result in demonstrable harm to the national security interests, foreign relations, or the economy of the United States or to the public confidence, civil liberties, or public health and safety of the American people,” per NextGov.

The Justice Department was the fourth US government agency to publicly acknowledge a breach in connection to the hack, with the others being the Departments of Commerce and Energy and the Treasury. Yet, while only four agencies have publicly acknowledged fallout from the hack, SolarWinds software is also used by the Department of Defense, the State Department, NASA, the NSA, and the Executive Office. Given that the Cyber Unified Coordination Group stated that “fewer than ten” US government agencies had been affected, it’s likely that some of these agencies were compromised, and some press reports have asserted that the State Department and Pentagon were affected.

In addition to government agencies, SolarWinds Orion software was in use by the top ten US telecommunications corporations, the top five US accounting firms, the New York Power Authority, and numerous US government contractors such as Booz Allen Hamilton, General Dynamics, and the Federal Reserve. Other notable SolarWinds clients include the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Microsoft, Credit Suisse, and several mainstream news outlets including the Economist and the New York Times.

Based on what is officially known so far, the hackers appeared to have been highly sophisticated, with FireEye, the cybersecurity company that first discovered the implanted code used to conduct the hack, stating that the hackers “routinely removed their tools, including the backdoors, once legitimate remote access was achieved—implying a high degree of technical sophistication and attention to operational security.” In addition, top security experts have noted that the hack was “very very carefully orchestrated,” leading to a consensus that the hack was state sponsored.

FireEye stated that they first identified the compromise of SolarWinds after the version of the Orion software they were using contained a back door that was used to gain access to its “red team” suite of hacking tools. Not long after the disclosure of the SolarWinds hack, on December 31, the hackers were able to partially access Microsoft’s source code, raising concerns that the act was preparation for future and equally devastating attacks.

FireEye’s account can be taken with a grain of salt, however, as the CIA is one of FireEye’s clients, and FireEye was launched with funding from the CIA’s venture capital arm In-Q-tel. It is also worth being skeptical of the “free tool” FireEye has made available in the hack’s aftermath for “spotting and keeping suspected Russians out of systems.”

In addition, Microsoft, another key source in the SolarWinds story, is a military contractor with close ties to Israel’s intelligence apparatus, especially Unit 8200, and their reports of events also deserve scrutiny. Notably, it was Unit 8200 alumnus and executive at Israeli cybersecurity firm Cycode, Ronen Slavin, who told Reuters in a widely quoted article that he “was worried by the possibility that the SolarWinds hackers were poring over Microsoft’s source code as prelude to a much more ambitious offensive.” “To me the biggest question is, ‘Was this recon for the next big operation?’” Slavin stated.

Also odd about the actors involved in the response to the hack is the decision to bring on not only the discredited firm CrowdStrike but also the new consultancy firm of Chris Krebs and Alex Stamos, former chief information security officer of Facebook and Yahoo, to investigate the hack. Chris Krebs is the former head of the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and was previously a top Microsoft executive. Krebs was fired by Donald Trump after repeatedly and publicly challenging Trump on the issue of election fraud in the 2020 election.

As head of CISA, Krebs gave access to networks of critical infrastructure throughout the US, with a focus on the health-care industry, to the CTI League, a suspicious outfit of anonymous volunteers working “for free” and led by a former Unit 8200 officer. “We have brought in the expertise of Chris Krebs and Alex Stamos to assist in this review and provide best-in-class guidance on our journey to evolve into an industry leading secure software development company,” a SolarWinds spokesperson said in an email cited by Reuters.

It is also worth noting that the SolarWinds hack did benefit a few actors aside from the attackers themselves. For instance, Israeli cybersecurity firms CheckPoint and CyberArk, which have close ties to Israeli intelligence Unit 8200, have seen their stocks soar in the weeks since the SolarWinds compromise was announced. Notably, in 2017, CyberArk was the company that “discovered” one of the main tactics used in an attack, a form of SAML token manipulation called GoldenSAML. CyberArk does not specify how they discovered this method of attack and, at the time they announced the tactic’s existence, released a free tool to identify systems vulnerable to GoldenSAML manipulation.

In addition, the other main mode of attack, a back door program nicknamed Sunburst, was found by Kaspersky researchers to be similar to a piece of malware called Kazuar that was also first discovered by another Unit 8200-linked company, Palo Alto Networks, also in 2017. The similarities only suggest that those who developed the Sunburst backdoor may have been inspired by Kazuar and “they may have common members between them or a shared software developer building their malware.” Kaspersky stressed that Sunburst and Kazuar are not likely to be one and the same. It is worth noting, as an aside, that Unit 8200 is known to have previously hacked Kaspersky and attempted to insert a back door into their products, per Kaspersky employees.

Crowdstrike claimed that this finding confirmed “the attribution at least to Russian intelligence,” only because an allegedly Russian hacking group is believed to have used Kazuar before. No technical evidence linking Russia to the SolarWinds hacking has yet been presented.

Samanage and Sabotage

The implanted code used to execute the hack was directly injected into the source code of SolarWinds Orion. Then, the modified and bugged version of the software was “compiled, signed and delivered through the existing software patch release management system,” per reports. This has led US investigators and observers to conclude that the perpetrators had direct access to SolarWinds code as they had “a high degree of familiarity with the software.” While the way the attackers gained access to Orion’s code base has yet to be determined, one possibility being pursued by investigators is that the attackers were working with employee(s) of a SolarWinds contractor or subsidiary.

US investigators have been focusing on offices of SolarWinds that are based abroad, suggesting that—in addition to the above—the attackers were likely working for SolarWinds or were given access by someone working for the company. That investigation has focused on offices in eastern Europe, allegedly because “Russian intelligence operatives are deeply rooted” in those countries.

It is worth pointing out, however, that Israeli intelligence is similarly “deeply rooted” in eastern European states both before and after the fall of the Soviet Union, ties well illustrated by Israeli superspy and media tycoon Robert Maxwell’s frequent and close associations with Eastern European and Russian intelligence agencies as well as the leaders of many of those countries. Israeli intelligence operatives like Maxwell also had cozy ties with Russian organized crime. For instance, Maxwell enabled the access of the Russian organized crime network headed by Semion Mogilevich into the US financial system and was also Mogilevich’s business partner. In addition, the cross-pollination between Israeli and Russian organized crime networks (networks which also share ties to their respective intelligence agencies) and such links should be considered if the cybercriminals due prove to be Russian in origin, as US intelligence has claimed.

Though some contractors and subsidiaries of SolarWinds are now being investigated, one that has yet to be investigated, but should be, is Samanage. Samanage, acquired by SolarWinds in 2019, not only gained automatic access to Orion just as the malicious code was first inserted, but it has deep ties to Israeli intelligence and a web of venture-capital firms associated with numerous Israeli espionage scandals that have targeted the US government. Israel is deemed by the NSA to be one of the top spy threats facing US government agencies and Israel’s list of espionage scandals in the US is arguably the longest, and includes the Jonathan Pollard and PROMIS software scandals of the 1980s to the Larry Franklin/AIPAC espionage scandal in 2009.

Though much reporting has since been done on the recent compromise of SolarWinds Orion software, little attention has been paid to Samanage. Samanage offers what it describes as “an IT Service Desk solution.” It was acquired by SolarWinds so Samanage’s products could be added to SolarWinds’ IT Operations Management portfolio. Though US reporting and SolarWinds press releases state that Samanage is based in Cary, North Carolina, implying that it is an American company, Samanage is actually an Israeli firm. It was founded in 2007 by Doron Gordon, who previously worked for several years at MAMRAM, the Israeli military’s central computing unit.

Samanage was SolarWinds’ first acquisition of an Israeli company, and, at the time, Israeli media reported that SolarWinds was expected to set up its first development center in Israel. It appears, however, that SolarWinds, rather than setting up a new center, merely began using Samanage’s research and development center located in Netanya, Israel.

Several months after the acquisition was announced, in November 2019, Samanage, renamed SolarWinds Service Desk, became listed as a standard feature of SolarWinds Orion software, whereas the integration of Samanage and Orion had previously been optional since the acquisition’s announcement in April of that year. This means that complete integration was likely made standard in either October or November. It has since been reported that the perpetrators of the recent hack gained access to the networks of US federal agencies and major corporations at around the same time. Samanage’s automatic integration into Orion was a major modification made to the now-compromised software during that period.

Samanage appears to have had access to Orion following the announcement of the acquisition in April 2019. Integration first began with Orion version 2019.4, the earliest version believed to contain the malicious code that enabled the hack. In addition, the integrated Samanage component of Orion was responsible for “ensuring the appropriate teams are quickly notified when critical events or performance issues [with Orion] are detected,” which was meant to allow “service agents to react faster and resolve issues before . . . employees are impacted.”

In other words, the Samanage component that was integrated into Orion at the same time the compromise took place was also responsible for Orion’s alert system for critical events or performance issues. The code that was inserted into Orion by hackers in late 2019 nevertheless went undetected by this Samanage-made component for over a year, giving the “hackers” access to millions of devices critical to both US government and corporate networks. Furthermore, it is this Samanage-produced component of the affected Orion software that advises end users to exempt the software from antivirus scans and group policy object (GPO) restrictions by providing a warning that Orion may not work properly unless those exemptions are granted.

Samanage, Salesforce, and the World Economic Forum

Around the time of Samange’s acquisition by SolarWinds, it was reported that one of Samanage’s top backers was the company Salesforce, with Salesforce being both a major investor in Samanage as well as a partner of the company.

Salesforce is run by Marc Benioff, a billionaire who got his start at the tech giant Oracle. Oracle was originally created as a CIA spin-off and has deep ties to Israel’s government and the outgoing Trump administration. Salesforce also has a large presence in Israel, with much of its global research and development based there. Salesforce also recently partnered with the Unit 8200-linked Israeli firm Diagnostic Robotics to “predictively” diagnose COVID-19 cases using Artificial Intelligence.

Aside from leading Salesforce, Benioff is a member of the Vatican’s Council for Inclusive Capitalism alongside Lynn Forester de Rothschild, a close associate of Jeffrey Epstein and the Clintons, and members of the Lauder family, who have deep ties to the Mega Group and Israeli politics.

Benioff is also a prominent member of the board of trustees of the World Economic Forum and the inaugural chair of the WEF’s Centre for the Fourth Industrial Revolution (C4IR), making him one of the most critical players in the unfolding of the WEF-backed Great Reset. Other WEF leaders, including the organization’s founder Klaus Schwab, have openly discussed how massive cyberattacks such as befell SolarWinds will soon result in “even more significant economic and social implications than COVID-19.”

Last year, the WEF’s Centre for Cybersecurity, of which Salesforce is part, simulated a “digital pandemic” cyberattack in an exercise entitled Cyber Polygon. Cyber Polygon’s speakers in 2020 included former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair, the Prime Minister of Russia Mikhail Mishustin, WEF founder Klaus Schwab, and IBM executive Wendi Whitmore, who previously held top posts at both Crowdstrike and a FireEye subsidiary. Notably, just months before the COVID-19 crisis, the WEF had held Event 201, which simulated a global coronavirus pandemic that crippled the world’s economy.

In addition to Samanage’s ties to WEF big shots such as Marc Benioff, the other main investors behind Samanage’s rise have ties to major Israeli espionage scandals, including the Jonathan Pollard affair and the PROMIS software scandal. There are also ties to one of the WEF’s founding “technology pioneers,” Isabel Maxwell (the daughter of Robert Maxwell and sister of Ghislaine), who has long-standing ties to Israel’s intelligence apparatus and the country’s hi-tech sector.

The Bronfmans, the Maxwells, and Viola Ventures

At the time of its acquisition by SolarWinds, Samanage’s top investor was Viola Ventures, a major Israeli venture-capital firm. Viola’s investment in Samanage, until its acquisition, was managed by Ronen Nir, who was also on Samanage’s board before it became part of SolarWinds.

Prior to working at Viola, Ronen Nir was a vice president at Verint, formerly Converse Infosys. Verint, whose other alumni have gone on to found Israeli intelligence-front companies such as Cybereason. Verint has a history of aggressively spying on US government facilities, including the White House, and created the backdoors into all US telecommunications systems and major tech companies, including Microsoft, Google and Facebook, on behalf of the US’ NSA.

In addition to his background at Verint, Ronen Nir is an Israeli spy, having served for thirteen years in an elite IDF intelligence unit, and he remains a lieutenant colonel on reserve duty. His biography also notes that he worked for two years at the Israeli embassy in Washington, DC, which is fitting given his background in espionage and the major role that Israeli embassy has played in several major espionage scandals.

As an aside, Nir has stated that “thought leader” Henry Kissinger is his “favorite historical character.” Notably, Kissinger was instrumental in allowing Robert Maxwell, Israeli superspy and father of Ghislaine and Isabel Maxwell, to sell software with a back door for Israeli intelligence to US national laboratories, where it was used to spy on the US nuclear program. Kissinger had told Maxwell to connect with Senator John Tower in order to gain access to US national laboratories, which directly enabled this action, part of the larger PROMIS software scandal.

In addition, Viola’s stake was managed through a firm known as Carmel Ventures, which is part of the Viola Group. At the time, Carmel Ventures was advised by Isabel Maxwell, whose father had previously been directly involved in the operation of the front company used to sell bugged software to US national laboratories. As noted in a previous article at Unlimited Hangout, Isabel “inherited” her father’s circle of Israeli government and intelligence contacts after his death and has been instrumental in building the “bridge” between Israel’s intelligence and military-linked hi-tech sector to Silicon Valley.

Isabel also has ties to the Viola Group itself through Jonathan Kolber, a general partner at Viola. Kolber previously cofounded and led the Bronfman family’s private-equity fund, Claridge Israel (based in Israel). Kolber then led Koor Industries, which he had acquired alongside the Bronfmans via Claridge. Kolber is closely associated with Stephen Bronfman, the son of Charles Bronfman who created Claridge and also cofounded the Mega Group with Leslie Wexner in the early 1990s.

Kolber, like Isabel Maxwell, is a founding director of the Peres Center for Peace and Innovation. Maxwell, who used to chair the center’s board, stepped down following the Epstein scandal, though it’s not exactly clear when. Other directors of the center include Tamir Pardo, former head of Mossad. Kolber’s area of expertise, like that of Isabel Maxwell, is “structuring complex, cross-border and cross industry business and financial transactions,” that is, arranging acquisitions and partnerships of Israeli firms by US companies. Incidentally, this is also a major focus of the Peres Center.

Other connections to Isabel Maxwell, aside from her espionage ties, are worth noting, given that she is a “technology pioneer” of the World Economic Forum. As previously mentioned, Salesforce—a major investor in Samanage—is deeply involved with the WEF and its Great Reset.

The links of Israeli intelligence and Salesforce to Samanage, and thus to SolarWinds, is particularly relevant given the WEF’s “prediction” of a coming “pandemic” of cyberattacks and the early hints from former Unit 8200 officers that the SolarWinds hack is just the beginning. It is also worth mentioning the Israeli government’s considerable ties to the WEF over the years, particularly last year when it joined the Benioff-chaired C4IR and participated in the October 2020 WEF panel entitled “The Great Reset: Harnessing the Fourth Industrial Revolution.”

Start Up Nation Central, an organization aimed at integrating Israeli start-ups with US firms set up by Netanyahu’s longtime economic adviser Eugene Kandel and American Zionist billionaire Paul Singer, have asserted that Israel will serve a “key role” globally in the 4th Industrial Revolution following the implementation of the Great Reset.

Gemini, the BIRD Foundation, and Jonathan Pollard

In addition to Viola, another of Samange’s leading investors is Gemini Israel Ventures. Gemini is one of Israel’s oldest venture-capital firms, dating back to the Israeli government’s 1993 Yozma program.

The first firm created by Yozma, Gemini was put under the control of Ed Mlavsky, who Israel’s government had chosen specifically for this position. As previously reported by Unlimited Hangout, Mlavsky was then serving as the executive director of the Israel-US Binational Industrial Research and Development (BIRD) Foundation, where “he was responsible for investments of $100 million in more than 300 joint projects between US and Israeli high-tech companies.”

A few years before Gemini was created, while Mlavsky still headed BIRD, the foundation became embroiled in one of the worst espionage scandals in US history, the Jonathan Pollard affair.

In the indictment of US citizen Pollard for espionage on Israel’s behalf, it was noted that Pollard delivered the documents he stole to agents of Israel at two locations, one of which was an apartment owned by Harold Katz, the then legal counsel of the BIRD Foundation and an adviser to Israel’s military, which oversaw Israel’s scientific intelligence-gathering agency, Lekem. US officials told the New York Times at the time that they believed Katz “has detailed knowledge about the [Pollard] spy ring and could implicate senior Israeli officials.”

Subsequent reporting by journalist Claudia Wright pointed the finger at the Mlavsky-run BIRD Foundation as one of the ways Israeli intelligence funneled money to Pollard before his capture by US authorities.

One of the first companies Gemini invested in was CommTouch (now Cyren), which was founded by ex-IDF officers and later led by Isabel Maxwell. Under Maxwell’s leadership, CommTouch developed close ties to Microsoft, partially due to Maxwell’s relationship with its cofounder Bill Gates.

A Coming “Hack” of Microsoft?

If the SolarWinds hack is as serious as has been reported, it’s difficult to understand why a company like Samanage would not be looked into as part of a legitimate investigation into the attack. The timing of Samanage employees gaining access to the Orion software and the company’s investors including Israeli spies and those with ties to past espionage scandals where Israel used back doors to spy on the US and beyond raises obvious red flags. Yet, any meaningful investigation of the incident is unlikely to take place, especially given the considerable involvement of discredited firms like CrowdStrike, CIA fronts like FireEye and a consultancy firm led by former Silicon Valley executives with their own government/intelligence ties.

There is also the added fact that both of the main methods used in the attack were analogous or bore similarities to hacking tools that were both discovered by Unit 8200-linked companies in 2017. Unit 8200-founded cybersecurity firms are among the few “winners” from the SolarWinds hack, as their stocks have skyrocketed and demand for their services has increased globally.

While some may argue that Unit 8200 alumni are not necessarily connected to the Israeli intelligence apparatus, numerous reports have pointed out the admitted fusion of Israeli military intelligence with Israel’s hi-tech sector and its tech-focused venture capital networks, with Israeli military and intelligence officials themselves noting that the line between the private cybersecurity sector and Israel’s intelligence apparatus is so blurred, it’s difficult to know where one begins and the other ends. There is also the Israeli government policy, formally launched in 2012, whereby Israel’s intelligence and military intelligence agencies began outsourcing “activities that were previously managed in-house, with a focus on software and cyber technologies.”

Samanage certainly appears to be such a company, not only because it was founded by a former IDF officer in the military’s central computing unit, but because its main investors include spies on “reserve duty” and venture capital firms linked to the Pollard scandal as well as the Bronfman and Maxwell families, both of whom have been tied to espionage and sexual blackmail scandals over the years.

Yet, as the Epstein scandal has recently indicated, major espionage scandals involving Israel receive little coverage and investigations into these events rarely lead anywhere. PROMIS was covered up largely thanks to Bill Barr during his first term as Attorney General and even the Pollard affair has all been swept under the rug with Donald Trump allowing Pollard to move to Israel and, more recently, pardoning the Israeli spy who recruited Pollard during his final day as President. Also under Trump, there was the discovery of “stingray” surveillance devices placed by Israel’s government throughout Washington DC, including next to the White House, which were quickly memory holed and oddly not investigated by authorities. Israel had previously wiretapped the White House’s phone lines during the Clinton years.

Another cover up is likely in the case of SolarWinds, particularly if the entry point was in fact Samanage. Though a cover up would certainly be more of the same, the SolarWinds case is different as major tech companies and cybersecurity firms with ties to US and Israeli intelligence now insist that Microsoft is soon to be targeted in what would clearly be a much more devastating event than SolarWinds due to the ubiquity of Microsoft’s products.

On Tuesday, CIA-linked firm FireEye, which apparently has a leadership role in investigating the hack, claimed that the perpetrators are still gathering data from US government agencies and that “the hackers are moving into Microsoft 365 cloud applications from physical, on-premises servers,” meaning that changes to fix Orion’s vulnerabilities will not necessarily deny hacker access to previously compromised systems as they allegedly maintain access to those systems via Microsoft cloud applications. In addition to Microsoft’s own claims that some of its source code was accessed by the hackers, this builds the narrative that Microsoft products are poised to be targeted in the next high-profile hack.

Microsoft’s cloud security infrastructure, set to be the next target of the SolarWinds hackers, was largely developed and later managed by Assaf Rappaport, a former Unit 8200 officer who was most recently the head of Microsoft’s Research and Development and Security teams at its massive Israel branch. Rappaport left Microsoft right before the COVID-19 crisis began last year to found a new cybersecurity company called Wiz.

Microsoft, like some of Samanage’s main backers, is part of the World Economic Forum and is an enthusiastic supporter of and participant in the Great Reset agenda, so much so that Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella wrote the foreword to Klaus Schwab’s book “Shaping the Fourth Industrial Revolution.” With the WEF simulating a cyber “pandemic” and both the WEF and Israel’s head of Israel’s National Cyber Directorate warning of an imminent “cyber winter”, SolarWinds does indeed appear to be just the beginning, though perhaps a scripted one to create the foundation for something much more severe. A cyberattack on Microsoft products globally would certainly upend most of the global economy and likely have economic effects more severe than the COVID-19 crisis, just as the WEF has been warning. Yet, if such a hack does occur, it will inevitably serve the aims of the Great Reset to “reset” and then rebuild electronic infrastructure.

(Republished from The Last American Vagabond by permission of author or representative)
 
• Category: Foreign Policy • Tags: Hacking, Israel, Mossad, SolarWinds 
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  1. Jiminy says:

    So it will be in cyberspace that the next three towers will fall. I wonder if it will begin twenty years to the day.

    • Replies: @Frank frank
  2. Israel is the gift that keeps on giving. Lol.

    JFK
    USS Liberty
    91 gulf war
    September 11 mossad/cia attack
    03 Iraq war
    Epstein/Wexner honeypot operations
    Microsoft hack

    It’s almost like some other worldly power is using that country to destroy civilization. Lol

    Revelation 2:9

    Revelation 3:9

    Biden’s got 9 out of 26 in his administration

    Somebody call E Michael Jones

    • Replies: @Bert33
    , @Alfred
    , @JWalters
  3. Richard B says:

    Another great article from Whitney Webb.

    Regarding the article, certainly one takeaway would be that, though they’re good at acquiring power, they’re no good at managing it.

    Another way of putting this would be to say that, though they’re good at infiltration, subversion, radical ingratitude, betrayal, insane hatred, vindictive hysteria, denial, projection, destruction and death, they’re just no good at social management.

    Case in point: A country they control whose social institutions are all in free fall, The United States of America. Which, if we were to be perfectly honest, we’d be better off simply referring to as The United States of Israel. In which case we’d have to replace each of the 50 stars on the flag with stars of David. Who knows? Maybe they will. Stranger things have happened in history.

    But that would draw too much attention to the USA’s many, many social failures. Which, of course, are always – always – the result of self-focused, low-character leadership.

    And Character is, in this case, How we treat others.

    • Agree: Alfred, annamaria
  4. A very good article, with one point of dubiety.

    A cyberattack on Microsoft products globally would certainly upend most of the global economy and likely have economic effects more severe than the COVID-19 crisis, just as the WEF has been warning.

    A gross exaggeration, but the Western MSM can be relied upon to make such a cyberattack appear like a massive World crisis – just like they’ve done with COVID-19, which is nowhere near as virulent even as Hong Kong Flu.

    Gerorge Orwell famously wrote:
    “Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.”
    To which he should have added: Who controls the media controls the present.
    For the majority, indoctrinated by the MSM, this seems sadly to be true.

    • Replies: @R2b
  5. The U.S. military, surveillance state, and government have willingly sold off national security secrets and have made every American business, institution, and individual vulnerable as a result of it.

    Bill Clinton permitted technology national security secrets developed by the military, U.S. companies, and universities, all financed by tax payers to be handed over to the CCP by U.S. tech companies that opened factories in China which required the blue prints to the technology in exchange for the CCP to allow them to do it.

    NYC is now the new Mossad cyber front, after the NSA and US gov permitted them to all open office in NYC managing day to day operations of US gov., US businesses, and US citizens and residents communications systems and security.

    The Negav Desert is the new home of almost every U.S. Silicon Valley company, all invited by Israel to open fronts there, after the US gov and tax payers catapulted the Silicon Valley Titans to unprecedented levels of wealth in world history.

    The espionage perpetrated by the US government and survellance state is the primary problem!

    There is no such thing as national security as long as these these foxes are guarding the hen house.

    They really should all be tried for treason!

    Cambridge Analytica was used to spy on US citizens during the 2016 election in order to shift the burden onto another country. They frequently hire intelligence agents from foreign countries as unofficial but frequently practiced policy.

    I have noticed that spies have no loyalty to any country or institution. They often work together with spies fro other countries. They are thieves. People spy because they are sex offenders, thieves, intellectual property thieves, or identity thieves. There is no such thing as an honest spy. Their entire life is a series of lies, and it has to be since what they are doing is illegal. Then of course there is the Five Eyes apparatus strengthening bonds in the international surveillance state.

    They will sell anything to anyone, and what has happened in Ametica is 100% proof. Nothing is off the table. Everything and everyone has a price as far they are concerned.

    Andrea Iravani

  6. @Jiminy

    I’m not sure I follow the twenty years interval or the significance of the three towers (being a 9/11 reference), but you seem to imply it’s some eschatological and/or messianic thing. Could you or someone else explain?

    • Replies: @Jiminy
  7. A tree is best measured when it’s down.

    The only question at hand–once the electronically addicted IQistas abandon their angle of dominating the world by means of interdependence–is that upon examining the size of whatever as will soon lie in the dust, (be it 911 or Microsoft) whether we should ever again allow ourselves to become so dependent upon a thing so large and vulnerable.

    We did not need the computer to experience the beauty of America prior to abandoning the gold standard, and we don’t need the computer now. Yeah, rave on with all that hype Steve Jobs gave to John Scully, ie, You want to sell sugar water all your life, or you want to come with me and change the world?

    Jobs had a good mind, yet a monolithically weak objective when it came to change. There is nothing new under the sun. Let it crash.

  8. So they’re laying out the groundwork for blaming “hackers” rather than central bankers and politicians when the financial system collapses?

    • Replies: @theMann
  9. “Kissinger had told Maxwell to connect with Senator John Tower in order to gain access to US national laboratories, which directly enabled this action, part of the larger PROMIS software scandal.”

    You can blame the two Jews for obviously being Jews but John Tower should have been hanged, quartered and displayed in the four corners of these United States for disloyalty.

    • Replies: @annamaria
  10. chuckywiz says:

    Hope to see more articles like this instead of the good old beaten up concepts. Or opinionated write up.
    Does anyone know what kind of job Jonathan Pollard got in Israel? Chief of intelligence collection agency.

    • Replies: @druid55
  11. Many years ago, on the Yahoo News message boards, after I was awakened to some hard truths about our country , I made a prediction that this day would come – that one day it would get pretty bad (free speech) in America, with the usual suspects behind it, and that the closer Americans get to the truth, the worse it will get.

    We’re here.

    This fine article by Whitney Webb indicates what might be next. Pretty scary.

    Just a note – Gab is a good alternative in case Unz finally gets taken down. And vice versa. They have a Dissenter browser that will allow you to comment on anything, evidently.

    I lurk here a lot because the comments are the best I’ve ever seen anywhere.

    God bless, everyone.

    • Replies: @Bert33
    , @Irish Savant
  12. The hack, which affected Texas-based software provider SolarWinds, was blamed on Russia on January 5 by the US government’s Cyber Unified Coordination Group. Their statement asserted that the attackers were “likely Russian in origin,” but they failed to provide evidence to back up that claim.

    I wonder when the U.S. government last made a statement that wasn’t a lie.

    • Replies: @Aardvark
  13. Bert33 says:

    Rut-roh! Secret Govt. Israeili cyber-spyphuckers doing their secret crypto thing screwing aound with the federal elections systm, apparently. . Hopefully by 2022 the ywill have dumped Dominion completely and IBM will drop something on the desk that is SO honest, any attempt to alter or subvert the results throws a Big Red Flag up on the screen with a red whoopie light on top. Voter’s receipt would also be nice. And, if they DO catch/confirm Israeli/other foreign hackage evident in any USG computer system including our voting system, the public reporting requirement will be coverup-proof. RUB that nose in the rug

  14. Bert33 says:
    @dirtyharriet

    Democrats will never silence America. When you tell people to shut up in this country, it just makes them MORE angry, study more, take notes, etc. Myabe Twitterbook will be open next year…maybe they won’t.

  15. Bert33 says:
    @The ADL hates me

    Really? I went there years ago, got to stick my hand in the Holy Post Hole, got to see every gold and jewelry shop in the city I think because that was the apparent main thrust of the tour, and was generally impressed by the friendly nature of the people. There is a LOT of history there and if you can get over the politics stuff, then you should go and see the place with your own two eyes. Bring your wallet, you’ll need it.

  16. theMann says:
    @Stan d Mute

    I would have just agreed there but I was apparently out of options.

    Indeed, the Banksters and their allies are going to try every lie that they can muster to deflect from their criminality. If one works, they run we with it, if not, they just drop it and go with the next lie.

    The question of our time is how the Media, across the spectrum, nestles so happily in the bosom of the Financial Filth of the world. This requires everybody from the camera and soundcheck guys to the on air “talent” and writers to willingly acquiesce in the vilest of lies when there is absolutely no need, or even benefit, in their doing so.

    • Replies: @Margaret Bartley
  17. Given all the coziness between the hacked and the hackers, I have to wonder why bother to hack at all?

    • Agree: Ugetit, annamaria
    • Replies: @Irish Savant
    , @AnnonnGuest
  18. I’ve spent most of my working life in this arena (IT architecture for large organisations) and it’s clear to me that what passes for cyber security in America and most of the Anglosphere is so compromised by the Israelis and their sayanim as to be meaningless. They have gained de facto control, a control further bolstered by their political and financial dominance. I’m quite serious in saying that the people of America are defenseless against a power so great. The scale of the treachery by so many Americans in enabling this catastrophe beggars belief.

  19. Hillaire says:

    Is it at all possible in light of all the evidence, that there is a long hauled zionist plan for total world domination.
    Is it possible the WEF, Trilateral etc are fronts for jewish financialism and perhaps more?

    Is eretz israel to be the messianic cyborg brain of this coming bio-confinement dystopia, and are all these incredibly jewish tek golems going home to moshe, hatching like larvae from the corpse of a soon to be subjugated, deracinated west.

    will the corn syrup GMO men make a last stand now globo shlomo no longer requires them to clean his shoes..

    or will they still deny globo shlomo even exists ?

  20. @dirtyharriet

    True but Gab doesn’t have capabilities to host anything like the UR. I’m currently looking for a new blog platform that isn’t part of the techno Control Grid. Suggestions welcome.

  21. Sean says:

    Ms Maxwell’s mother was a gentile Frenchwoman (the dowry she brought was the basis for Robert Maxwell’s wealth). As as a citizen of France, Ghislaine Maxwell could not have been extradited from that country to the US, so all she had to do was leave for France, at some point during the serval months after Epstein committed suicide and her name became a household ford but before she was arrested. There were certainly months when she could not have been stopped from leaving the country on a normal flight. Currently she is kept in worse conditions than the convicted serial killers in ADX Florence supermax Supermax: being woken ever 15 minutes and losing her hair and becoming underweight.

    The real prize is industrial secrets such as are needed for manufacturing, and hundreds of millions of consumers’ Big Data such as Facebook have access to. Political campaigns need that data too, and I would not be surprised if it was easily available to the Israel Lobby contacts without anymore that a request.

    Do the spymasters of Israel need to hack the more traditional type of secrets, which are military ones? I think they have enough of their people in positions of power to get anything they want, from the CIA, Pentagon, or White House.

    Why use hack-back tactics when you can drop a nuke on your cyber attackers?According to the draft for the Pentagon’s 2018 Nuclear Posture Review, the U.S. would consider using nuclear weapons to respond to non-nuclear attacks.
    While the Pentagon’s proposed policy change suggests the U.S. should “only consider the use of nuclear weapons in extreme circumstances to defend the vital interests of the United States or its allies and partners,” large cyber attacks are considered “extreme circumstances.”

    World authority Professor W. Ian Lipkin was warning the Chinese for almost two decades after the appearance of SARS in 2003 that their live wildlife wet markets were nature’s laboratory for creating novel coronaviruses. This was the most important piece of information around, and though invaluable every “intelligence” agency ignored it. The only ones who didn’t were some animal rights group: WEIRD humanitarians turned out to be the hard headed realists, eh? The wicked recklessness of China not only was not punished, it paid off for them replacing Trump, who called them economic rapists, with Biden, who has said China is no competition for America.

    If China had understood that not only a massive cyberattack, but the culpably reckless creation of a pandemic that would kill hundreds of thousands of Americans might well bring a certain amount of thermonuclear retribution, then they probably would have made sure Covid-19 didn’t happen.

  22. Jiminy says:
    @Frank frank

    Let’s be frank. Of course nothing is going to eventuate any time soon, especially closer to the anniversary date, because that would be too blatant and obvious. And these guys don’t do obvious, do they? Twenty years to the day. No way. But the US needs it’s enemies. It can’t be bin Laden because he’s in Davey Jones’s locker. It can’t be the Taliban, because they’re now good guys. Can’t be China because of the Biden’s love for them. Both Saddam and Gaddafi have met their makers. If I was a betting man, I’d put money on America’s gatekeeper, Israel.
    Going by past history something will take place that will galvanise people, and all attention will be focused on the new problem. It’s worked in the past and so it will work again. You have to hand it to them though, two planes flying into skyscrapers was pretty original. Surely the public wouldn’t fall for that again.
    And as for mentioning the three towers, I could have said the new pearl harbour instead. So I think that was a metaphor, school was so long ago. But the lull before the storm is conspicuous. In the modern world with heavy reliance upon computers, the damage that can be achieved is mind-blowing. It could turn out to be the big one to end all false-flag events.

    • Replies: @Sean
  23. GMC says:

    Americans are dumb as rocks – It’s like in a war movie where the soldiers come across one of those old sign posts in the country they are fighting in – the sign posts have arrows pointing to different cities – Berlin > – Closed – Paris > – Closed – Moscow> Closed – Israel>Open – Tel Aviv>Open – – Israel >Open – —but everyone wants to still go to – Moscow > lol dumb as rocks.

  24. Sean says:
    @Jiminy

    Going by past history something will take place that will galvanise people, and all attention will be focused on the new problem.

    Senator McClennan’s hearings into corruption started in 1957. That year a woman who was a partner in his law firm disappeared after she refused to help a Jewish colleague steal money from a deceased client’s $15 million will. McClellan was apparently complicit in hiding this matter from public view, thereby preventing proper investigation. Possibly he had some conscience as in 1970 he coauthored and sponsored the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act which stretched legal principles. Perhaps because RICO, is of dubious constitutionality it was rarely used until the glory-lusting Giuliani showed prosecutors/FBI how organised crime prosecutions brought kudos. They threw all their resources at the mafia, and in the process they took their eye off the terrorists (read Peter Lance). Of course 9/11, the SECOND attempt to destroy the the WTC with some infrastructure shared with the first (read lance) resulted from that greedy Jew murdering a morally upright woman in 1957.

    Re the above bolded text, yes there tends to be insouciance over any problem and then a tipping point after which excessive priority and diminishing returns become the order of the day because everyone wants to be the dragon-slaying hero. Just one thing: why was 9/11 orchestrated to frame Afghanistan. Why wasn’t the false flag designed to make Saddam’s Iraq the dragon. Or Iran, or Iraq and Iran?

    • Replies: @Jiminy
    , @AnonStarter
    , @Tumi
  25. So basically the Jews have full-spectrum control over the USA at this point. Expect tens of millions of Americans to be murdered, a la Bolshevik Russia and Eastern Europe. Let’s hope Elon’s rockets can get us off this prison planet before the Jewish AI gets us fully in its death grip, but sadly, I expect they already have plans to poison Musk. “We can’t allow another Henry Ford, oy vey.”

  26. druid55 says:
    @chuckywiz

    The grand raja owning two palestinian villages for taxation, prostitution, etc. Talmoodic!

  27. Nancy says:

    So we have this upcoming Israeli cyber-pandemic, plus the banksters’ Great Reset takeover (see Engdahl’s latest), and ‘truth’/media ownership/censorship by same Talmudists (and Israel major rabbi demanding Israel take over the world now! because America is falling… is the moshiac here already?) …. is it the scent of desperation? Are they really over-reaching? jumping the shark?

    If the zombies can/will not wake up, they will be choosing their own demise.. nothing we can do for them (except maybe present a ‘model’). BTW, Christ clearly stated that we either serve (mutually exclusive) God or Mammon (‘wealth’ Talmudists’ idol). If only as a highly regarded wise man, his words ring very very true (unlike fake X-ianity). Are there any left who’ve chosen ‘God’? (or an ‘intelligence/consciousness etc’ that is ‘greater’ than human intelligence, if you will … and somehow ‘available’ to the well-intentioned). Is it hopeless as ‘they’ would like those of us ‘in the know’ to believe? Is there strength/power in (even small) numbers? I give the Grange Motto as a very basic operating model: ‘In essentials, unity … in non-essentials, freedom … in all things, charity.”

    (I know this is ‘simple minded’ in light of all the erudition on this site, but I think creativity, of all kinds, is called for today. And I’m too old to have much pride : )

    • Thanks: R2b
  28. Whitney’s articles are always ‘Keepers’ as they are like filing cabinets that pull out, and keep on pulling, with narrative born out of a moral sense that was probably given early training in not believing the official narrative of 9/11.

    Well the threads do come together, as what is pejoratively referred to as connecto, reveals a connectivity of facts literally on stolen light….

    Remember the old ‘fiber-optics’ ads back when….

    the players go way way back

    So file under Webb to uncover the thread!

    • Replies: @R2b
  29. R2b says:
    @Verymuchalive

    The adjective is most appropriate!
    Why do you diminish that?
    It is the next step.
    According to their texts.
    There are probably systems in waiting, after a global shutdown.
    Do you not see that?
    Why do you diminish that?
    Are you in telaviv?

  30. R2b says:
    @Abdul Alhazred

    What are you mumbling about!?

    • Replies: @Abdul Alhazred
  31. The implanted code used to execute the hack was directly injected into the source code of SolarWinds Orion. Then, the modified and bugged version of the software was “compiled, signed and delivered through the existing software patch release management system,” per reports.

    I am not a developer, but it would seem –

    1) you would need the source code of the software product to pull this off

    2) a simple hash check of the compiled ‘patch’ would be sufficient to disclose that the software being distributed is not the same at the byte-level as the legitimate release, developed in-house

    3) almost everything is reliant upon a cartel media that will not cover outrageous conduct that would normally touch off public outrage (i.e. -Pollard and his alleged handler pardons never mentioned outside of some Print media by either Repub/Dem house media organs) coupled with in-house puppets reliably serving at the behest of the adversary state.

    The code that was inserted into Orion by hackers in late 2019 nevertheless went undetected by this Samanage-made component for over a year, giving the “hackers” access to millions of devices critical to both US government and corporate networks.

    What struck me initially is that the ”mystery” (/s) adversary state was very careful – initially – not to ‘waste’ exposing their software development by conducting a test-run where they upload a benign ‘patch’ to see if it gets detected (bad hash) by the software distributor. It does not get detected, and they subsequently proceed with delivery of the malware, which also does not get detected, seemingly an impossible feat, with any credible effort to the contrary.

    After the 2020 election results post up, seemingly stupid moves are suddenly made by the same actors, which are likely if not certain to get picked up by the outside security vendor, not affiliated with Solar Winds or US Govt.

    Given the degree to which the new appointees of the incoming Biden Admin will have full access to uncontaminated NSA data on these intrusions to pursue investigation once the outgoing Trump appointees are no longer ‘minding the store’ (Biden’s own son’s remote imaging coming soon) it seems an effort to exfiltrate quietly would not be possible due to the scope of the intrusions.

    If mystery adversary has to lose the operation, its better to blow it up beyond the point of reconstruction, while you still have a pretense of deniability and complicit puppets in place – and, like clockwork, it was soon after the initial Solar Winds announcement that the Biden team reps were restricted from involvement in briefings or security participation.

    Since you cant quietly undo all the intrusions, and since you are reliant on gate-keeper(s) who will be booted from positions of control soon, you deliberately blow up the entire program and then use the Administration transition period to obliterate the evidence that could be used to reconstruct the scheme, from the inside.

  32. Jiminy says:
    @Sean

    Why wasn’t it Israel and Saudi Arabia? My guess is it had something to do with the fact that those goat herders are walking around on about three trillion dollars worth of mineral wealth. It seems like a veritable treasure trove of copper, gold, uranium, lithium, talc, marble, cobalt, iron, and oil. The list goes on. The Russians knew what they were fighting for. I’m sure people associated with the decision of invading Afghanistan have made a lot of money in the process.

  33. @Old and Grumpy

    So they can blame it on the Russians!

  34. @Sean

    Just one thing: why was 9/11 orchestrated to frame Afghanistan. Why wasn’t the false flag designed to make Saddam’s Iraq the dragon. Or Iran, or Iraq and Iran?

    Both Afghanistan and Iraq neighbor Iran, a prime target. As you know, it’s strategically foolish to wage full on war with Iran, hence the pincer move. To date, America has used both intimidation and sanctions to bring Iran to its knees. Israel also uses Afghanistan as a means by which to infiltrate and gather intel on Iran:

    https://www.jpost.com/middle-east/reports-israel-spying-on-iran-from-afghanistan-580328

    Prior to 9/11, Iraq was already on Israel’s hit list and the bait-and-switch scam seems to have worked rather well on the ugly American, nearly 2/3rds of whom approved of invasion after having the living daylights scared out of them. Directly blaming Iraq would’ve been a waste.

  35. Globalist Ziocorporatism is not about waiting for anyone to realise that globalist Ziocorporatism is the driving force behind these geopolitical developments, and China/Russia are playing their part as good business partners of Ziocorporate “multipolarity”. Even the chances for a forceful Iranian “resistance” are looking slim and unlikely.

    Everything changes to stay the same, the options are localised for individual associations, not much more. Great reset tax and data cattle are ready for harvest.

  36. mcohen says:

    ah so ah so the maxwells again.beloved sister is being held in jail as collateral,which was the real reason behind the epstein project.to flush her out.

    fffffffffllllllllllluuuuuuusssssshhhhhhh.

    how come Whitney Webb brings up ancient history about Robert maxwell.hmmm……very suspicious.
    Could it be that the deceasing of maxwell pissed off some very dangerous people,who will not rest until justice is served.

    even more interesting.
    2 beloved princesses are presently being held hostage.ghislaine maxwell and meng wanzhou

    both connected to cyberboondoggles

    I say lets do one better.

    kick google,Facebook and twitter out and replace with local companies

    get usa tech out of your country.let that be the the 2021 resolution of every country.just block them

  37. @R2b

    That Whitney’s articles are important so keep them, so you have a catalogue, for there is a red thread that is connecting that which she is putting together from her researches…

    • Replies: @R2b
  38. mcohen says:
    @Sean

    Sean you make a good point.ghislaine maxwell and the Huawei princess meng wanzhou are somehow part of this puzzle but the fact is that american tech giants need to be curtailed.In australia Google is facing a reckoning.
    Another is ebay that has gone from user friendly to user rorter.
    The achieves heel of all these companies is cybersecurity.
    Cybersecurity is paramount.

    A good example is the theft of bangladesh treasuries by North Korean hackers.mentioned is fireye in link

    https://www.google.com/url?q=https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bangladesh_Bank_robbery&sa=U&ved=2ahUKEwi-l_3v-bDuAhW4wTgGHeBWAagQFjAAegQIARAB&usg=AOvVaw3zH3j2-I5ym_mcIJnXm2l_

    • Replies: @Tumi
  39. Much appreciation for the article though I am not sure if I agree with the suggestions in it. I do agree that the Israeli rightwing and various Jewish interests have a lot of influence in the US govt and media, probably a bit too much.

    Whitney Webb’s articles on the virus and previous biowarfare and bio-related incidents were also very interesting and much appreciated by me.

    Please keep up the good work. IMO, this is real journalism in action, and Whitney does the vocation of journalism proud.

  40. Alfred says:
    @The ADL hates me

    If I were a betting man, I would put my money on a power cut across all of the USA and Canada (same system really). It would take months to get it back up again. Half the population would be gone.

    It is really hard to overestimate how evil some people are.

  41. I spent decades as a professional software developer. From my perspective, the most likely source for the hack is Solarwinds itself. It had a small secretive crew of people write the malicious code and via the normal channels, that code got added to the overall product. It was then compiled and distributed to do its dirty work. The bulk of their development staff could have been completely oblivious to what a hand full of special operators did.

    Once they got what they wanted, they blew the whistle on themselves as a way of presenting themselves as victims and good guys.

    It’s standard operating procedure to have a group write a section of code to perform a specific function and have another group just issue a call to that code without ever knowing what’s in it at the source level. It’s a trust relationship that can easily be misused and probably was.

    Having access to the source isn’t enough. You also need the make architecture on how to compile that source to produce the executable application. If someone got hold of the entirety of Microsoft’s millions upon millions of lines of Windows source code, for example, it would take a million man hours to understand it and without the make architecture, which is usually quite complex, they would never be able to produce the identical output but would produce something with a different set of bugs.

    It’s the million man hours required to understand where and how to insert malicious code that tells me that knowledge probably existed already as part of the faux hack.

    • Replies: @Trial by Wombat
  42. Tumi says:
    @mcohen

    “ good example is the theft of bangladesh treasuries by North Korean hackers.mentioned is fireye in link”

    I have heard about Indian IT involvement in this scandal. Bangladesh employs IT ,banking security and corporate personnel from India . Most of these positions are in government sectors . It is widely believed that Indian financial and IT experts siphoned the money off .
    Indian expatriate working in
    Bangladesh remits about 4-5 billions dollars to India .
    Bangladesh ‘s stock market was crashed few years ago . India was suspected . About 3 yrs ago Bangladesh didn’t renew the contract with India partly due to this but did it with China .

  43. Tumi says:
    @Sean

    “ Why wasn’t the false flag designed to make Saddam’s Iraq the dragon. Or Iran, or Iraq and Iran”
    Afghanistan and USA – both had been holding negotiations over access to oil pipeline .
    Taliban was refusing .
    Afghanistan was already portrayed as a dangerous state where Bin Laden hid and carried on his terrorism from . All terror at that point were pointed at Bin Laden .

    World readily accepted Afghanistan was responsible . But it never accepted even after 2 years that Saddam was despite the insistence of Judith Butler , Lowrey Malorley, Wolfpwotz , Scooter , Feith , Abrams , Kagan clans and dog catcher Kristol and Runsfoeld .

    There was no terror activity on part of Saddam .
    But WMD was always used as a threat form Iraq .
    If there were any radioactive device based attack Iraq would have been blamed and attacked .

    America would have had difficulties in persuading to zero on WMD while ignoring the threat of terrorism which USA had experienced on 911.

    911 has done to USA what Kristalnacht did to Germany . Taboo and psychological barrier to killing babies girls children elderly and to citizen of countries not involved by any stretch of imagination like Somalia Yemen Libya Syria were also swept up .

    Will be there be comeuppance ? Absolutely. We are seeing that in the societal breakdowns in the West , drug abuses , suicide , poverty and turning away from science logical thinking and from choosing compromise. War has made certain section very rich . Like it did in Pakistan from money delivered by USA West and by Saudi Arab in 80. Social engineering by a different method
    took place in Pakistan but with the same scars that we now see in USA— divisiveness , corruption ,inequities and violence . Pakistan engaged in terrorism in additional areas including in Iran , China even and India .
    USA engaged into wars into additional areas .
    Pakistan used religious institutions and primitive type of communication .
    USA used and developed more sophisticated media .

    But the very nature of corruption are nepotism and inequities which force reorganization of the society into classes . Unavoidable . America has descended into this likely scenario .Nationalism and religious fanaticism may look different but both are the child of the same forces and process . The levers that wield and manipulate or control it have no loyalty .That’s why Pakistani PM can perk millions abroad and get into bed with arch enemy India .
    Without war in Afghanistan , Indian peninsula would have been a different place today – more sleepy, more egalitarian, more Democratic and less racial less inequality .

    911 has done same to USA and UK .

    I am sure in late 80s and 90s rich corrupt Pakistan felt justified validated and proud in their newly gotten fame and wealth . It’s no different from what’s our rich peopel stealing from government ( lobby , defense , social media giant , banking , and endowments and hedge fund ) feel.

    • Agree: annamaria
  44. “The Cloud” The one stop shop for all your hacking needs.

    How can the mega-warehouse of digital info run by the NSA in Utah NOT be affected?

    I’ve been leery of The Cloud for about a decade. It happened when one of the hip millennials at work told us that our proprietary, copywrited material was going to be on it. I said, “let me get this straight. The material we produce will be handed over to a third party who will grant or deny access based on their whim?” At this point she whirled around and waved her hand and said, “It will be on The Cloud!”

    I knew then that the day would come when any and all info would be subject to theft.

    Too bad these Smart People never heard the saying, don’t put all your eggs in one basket.

  45. Aardvark says:
    @Ray Caruso

    A number of religions are/were based on the concept of there is an invisible entity that is almighty, no you can’t seem them or communicate with them, but the special priest like person can… the priest can then say the special entity wants the people to sacrifice a person/animal, give offerings, worship, pray, etc. The adherents of the religion are taught to cast out the non-believer or even persecute them.

    So we have Statolatry, and one of the supreme beings of Statolatry has declared “them Russians did it!”. The skeptic will ask “Can you show us the proof?”. The Supreme responds back “No, because that would reveal our methods so trust us, it was them.”. Then the adherents cast out the skeptics “you’re unhinged or deranged, you need to be re-educated”.

  46. Nancy says:
    @Sean

    IF ‘gain of function’ ( i.e., increasing infectiousness), engineered at Wuhan lab, subsidized by Fauci et al, succeeded (or could the ‘success’ could be ‘facsimilated’ sp? by hysterical media drumbeat), there might be a need for still existing ‘wet markets’ in order to blame China… ?

  47. @No Friend Of The Devil

    William Carr, in his book published in the late 50s called Pawns in The Game, said that before World War I, the British govenment agreed to support the state of Palestine if the powerful New York Jewish groups could get the US into WWI on the side of England, which they did.

    This Israeli control in the US goes back much earlier than the NSA. Carr’s book has a lot of details I’ve forgotten about the deals that were cut around the time of the Russian revolution.

    • Replies: @Nancy
  48. There were several newsstories about Salesforce cutting off email services for Trump and the RNC. I didn’t know the backstory to Salesforce, thanks for filling us in on that.

  49. Nancy says:
    @Margaret Bartley

    IIRC Untermeyer et al blackmailed Wilson into appointing Brandeis and entering WWI. But, we only ‘see’ what the ‘spotlight’ of MSM is pointed at; all the rest is hidden in the dark, until those with their own ‘torches’ prowl about. Thanks heavens for those interested in ‘the rest of the story’. Thanks : )

  50. @RoatanBill

    From my perspective, the most likely source for the hack is Solarwinds itself. It had a small secretive crew of people write the malicious code and via the normal channels, that code got added to the overall product. It was then compiled and distributed to do its dirty work. The bulk of their development staff could have been completely oblivious to what a hand full of special operators did.

    Once they got what they wanted, they blew the whistle on themselves as a way of presenting themselves as victims and good guys.

    FireEye discovered the hack, as far as initial public notice, however it was reported that Solarwinds personnel engaged in financial moves in the lead in to disclosure.

    The main overall reason that the Israeli’s are expected to be immediately eye-balled is – They are curiously notable for their absence in all speculation by every political figure and appointee, they are the worlds major purveyor of spyware against civilians and private interests, and they are notable for operating out of eastern europe.

    Given the degree to which they are running global spying operations against pure civilians, and going un-named and un-addressed for it, it would be extremely conspicuous NOT to consider them, even without the noted business entanglements.

    If you look at the main parties pitched to in Jareds’ Abraham Accords, you will find mentions of them as customers to Israel’s NSO Group for instance.
    These are global efforts which stalk, harass, and victimize civilians using the Israeli supplied spyware. (Only Israeli Media have had the courage to report on these abuses)

    The Turks actually have gone to the point of creating their own national web site reporting the links used in the SMS messages sent to initiate the attacks on their civilian population –

    In late 2019, Turkey’s Government-run Computer Emergency Response Team (USOM) appears to have observed Pegasus attacks involving both MONARCHY and SNEAKY KESTREL, and sinkholed some domain names used by these operators on a national level.

    USOM publishes a “list of malicious links” (“zararlı bağlantılar”) available on their website. The list of indicators includes domain names, URLs, as well as IP addresses.

    https://citizenlab.ca/2020/12/the-great-ipwn-journalists-hacked-with-suspected-nso-group-imessage-zero-click-exploit/

    Circles, whose products work without hacking the phone itself, says they sell only to nation-states. According to leaked documents, Circles customers can purchase a system that they connect to their local telecommunications companies’ infrastructure, or can use a separate system called the “Circles Cloud,” which interconnects with telecommunications companies around the world.

    According to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, all U.S. wireless networks are vulnerable to the types of weaknesses reportedly exploited by Circles. A majority of networks around the globe are similarly vulnerable.

    The company was reportedly founded in 2008, acquired in 2014 by Francisco Partners, and then merged with NSO Group.

    https://citizenlab.ca/2020/12/running-in-circles-uncovering-the-clients-of-cyberespionage-firm-circles/

    During the same period that Solar Winds was breaking public, Pollard was freed, and soon Netanyahu was reported making a public appearance to a commemoration event for Adelson with his honored guest, Pollard, the spy sent against the USA. Trump was soon pardoning Pollard’s accused Israeli handler, quietly.

    Just for the KNOWN actions the Israelis should be facing international sanctions and paying off huge damages to the people their admin has deliberately victimized. To NOT scrutinize them in continuing attacks is nonsensical.

    • Replies: @RoatanBill
    , @annamaria
  51. @Trial by Wombat

    In cyber crime it is next to impossible to identify who actually did the deed if it was done professionally and competently. Traffic can be routed through so many compromised boxes that a trace would have to have access to the entire world’s machines WHILE the hack was being perpetrated. To the best of my knowledge, such an oversight system does not exist.

    Any reports from anyone that claims this or that party is guilty is blowing smoke probably politically motivated smoke. That any external entity did it is possible only if the security at the target was so awful and for so long that that alone smells of collusion. The most likely scenario is that it was an inside job, just as the DNC data extraction was an inside job.

    As far as I’m concerned, Israel has no right to exist since it largely occupies stolen land. It’s a slow motion theft that stretches over decades. If some entity nuked it, the entire world would be free of a major criminal enterprise with tentacles all over the world.

    If someone involved with specific knowledge came forward to provide evidence that Israel or any other nation’s spook agencies were involved, then we might get somewhere. Short of that, it’s all guesswork with everyone pointing at the usual suspects from their perspective.

    • Thanks: Nancy
    • Replies: @R2b
  52. @theMann

    The question of our time is how the Media, across the spectrum, nestles so happily in the bosom of the Financial Filth of the world. This requires everybody from the camera and soundcheck guys to the on air “talent” and writers to willingly acquiesce in the vilest of lies when there is absolutely no need, or even benefit, in their doing so.

    If you go to Americans4Innovation.blogspot.com, they talk about the Pilgrim Society, which was formed in the early 1900s by Fleet Street (London Media establishment). Over the years, the Pilgrim Society became the origins of MI5, MI6, the CIA, and who knows what else? It’s a complex read, and I haven’t finished it all yet.

    Back in the late 90s, when In-Q-Tel was first being formed, there were some articles about it.

  53. JWalters says:
    @The ADL hates me

    A lot of evidence that backs up your list has been assembled, suitable for skeptical newbies, at
    “War Profiteer Story”
    https://warprofiteerstory.blogspot.com

    • Thanks: annamaria
  54. annamaria says:
    @Trial by Wombat

    “Just for the KNOWN actions the Israelis should be facing international sanctions and paying off huge damages to the people their admin has deliberately victimized. To NOT scrutinize them in continuing attacks is nonsensical.”

    — Agree.

  55. In the beginning, God kicked them out of the Garden of Eden. You might think it was a warning Judeo Christian Zionist Oxymorons.

  56. R2b says:
    @Abdul Alhazred

    Ok, that’s more clear.
    I agree completely!
    Just read this piece a second time.
    Together with Bollyn, she is digging up connections.
    Seems they all end up on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean!

  57. R2b says:
    @RoatanBill

    I can’t judge for the technicals you bring forth, but isn’t the article pointing at just that ”Insider-capability”, the connections between people and company’s, all being tied, some way or other to Israel?
    What do you make of ”Cyber Polygon”, WEF simulation, and probable real life launching?

    • Replies: @RoatanBill
  58. @R2b

    What I’m saying is there is no proof possible for who did it in most cyber crime cases if done by a competent agent. The Israeli gov’t and the US gov’t are the same thing in many cases. They’re so intertwined that distinctions are difficult to discern. Israel is a line item in the US budget.

    Jews lead a disproportionate percentage of corporations relative to their population, so it should come as no surprise that if anything sinister happens, the jews are probably part of it.

    My gut instinct says this hack was engineered from inside the company at some level because an outside unassisted hack would be very difficult for anyone without intimately knowledge. To have a software firm with such sloppy security and for so long as to allow an outside agent to gain the required knowledge is tough to swallow. Possible, but not likely.

    • Replies: @R2b
  59. R2b says:
    @RoatanBill

    Ok. I waited 24 hours. What about cyber polygon, from you who know what is possible, and not?

  60. @No Friend Of The Devil

    How else do you run an off-shored enterprise without the required intellectual property? Were the Chinese meant to guess it all, or were the workers all to be executed at shift end, and a new batch hired the next day? Sinophobes are not the sharpest knives in the drawer.

  61. @Sean

    SARS CoV 2 was almost certainly created in a US lab, one of the scores the US maintains around the world, where bat corona-viruses are intensively ‘studied’ including ‘Gain of Function’ experimentation. I do admire your insouciant advocacy of thermo-nuclear genocide. Very American.

  62. @Mulga Mumblebrain,

    Mulga Mumblebrain,

    Did it ever occur to you that there are many steps in the assemble process? Did you even know that one person does not make an entire phone, and that there are countries all over the world? Did it ever occur to you that I oppose the Chinese government not because I am a Sinophobe, but because of what the Chinese government has been doing? Probably not. You really do a fantastic job of making a cmplete ass out of yourself!

    Andrea Iravani

  63. @annamaria

    Had me a durned furrball stuck in my gizzard ’til just now. Great emetic.

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