ttps://news.sky.com/story/biden-to-make-cybersecurity-a-top-priority-after-massive-hack-attack-on-the-us-government-12165958
Over the last four years Donald Trump and his Reactionary Republicans have consistently failed the people of America. The list of these failures due to incompetence or neglect is long and horrifying: the Covid pandemic (230,000 dead, and counting), surging unemployment, crushing student debt, a possible tidal wave of evictions and the heartbreak of the nearly forgotten opioid epidemic (more than 70,000 drug overdoses in 2019, with a little more than 50,000 due to opioids alone).
Now add to this list of dismal outcomes what may be one of our worst national security failures in decades: the massive cyber security breach of not only an unknown number of private companies, but also numerous branches of the federal government.
Because you all are progressives I expect that you have already read the New York Times article that broke this story. For the less progressive, or maybe those busy battling the coronavirus in our hospitals, here is a brief summary of what has been reported.
It is believed that Russian hackers managed to breach the defenses of a company called SolarWinds, a cyber security management company based in Austin, TX. SolarWinds is what is known as a third party vendor, selling various kind software that allows companies to manage their own networks, systems and information technology infrastructure.
Donald Trump is still the Commander-in-Chief of the United States of America. He has the power as well as the responsibility to protect our people, our institutions, our infrastructure and our cyber security.
He isn’t. Trump has been shockingly disengaged from every duty he has as president. Instead of trying to solve the many problems of our nation Trump is doing almost nothing at all, save for continually complaining about nonexistent voter fraud and trying to rerun a race that he certifiably lost.
It wouldn’t be so bad that he has checked out of all or his presidential responsibilities if he would at least assist the Biden administration in their transition so they could get a jump on things in January. But he won’t even do that. He is essentially useless to the nation.
Here are some things to keep in mind as the news of our most recent cyber screwing by the Russians continues to play out.
-This is bad, really bad.
The Russians have now breached so many cyber walls and have access to so many secrets it is certain they will be able to use some of the information to our great detriment.
There are several specific things that are very worrying.
Standards and safeguards were incredibly lax.
The Russians were able to easily breach the cyber safeguards of SolarWinds because the company did not even use adequately strong passwords. The company had to be told after the fact that their File Transfer Protocol server had as its password: solarwinds123 (honestly). Even some of the employees passwords were published on Github. Of course, this might have been due to the fact that SolarWinds did not have a chief information security officer.
ttps://news.sky.com/story/biden-to-make-cybersecurity-a-top-priority-after-massive-hack-attack-on-the-us-government-12165958
How many companies or agencies are using SolarWinds software? How many private companies are using their software? And how many back doors are there that the Russians can use to get whatever data they want? God knows - and maybe no one else.
SolarWinds is just one of many third-party software and services companies in a very long supply line that feeds into our governmental computers. How many other providers have the same unbelievably poor safeguards and bad data security administration? The supply chains are very long, and who in the Trump administration is watching them?
The width and breath of breaches will be a gold mine of useful information to the Russians - and anybody they share it with.
Just within our federal government the variety of different agencies hacked means that the Russians can get almost any kind of data they want: military, health, national security, telecommunications operations, codes, names of employees, legal information, government contacts, etc. The ability to match pieces of information from various sources and cross check it against information from other sources should give the Russians a great ability to understand how we work, make informed guess as to what we have, what we lack, what we will do (about anything) and how vulnerable we are about anything. If knowledge is power then the Russians are going to be very powerful against us.
The New York Times, in an article that was published two days subsequent to it initial reporting, put it succinctly and miserably, “It is now clear that the broad Russian espionage attack on the United States government and private companies, underway since spring and and detected by the private sector only a few weeks ago, ranks among the great intelligence failures of modern times.”
-Trump continues to protect Russia by down playing the problem and trying to blame someone else.
The evidence that the Russians were the ones who made the security breaches is - well, very, very strong.
From the very beginning experts suspected the Russians because the breaches had so many characteristics of a Russian operation. This was no smash and grab operation. The size, scope, and expense of such a vast operation argued for it to be a large and sophisticated nation-state operation. It was run by someone who was patient and careful and avoided detection skillfully. There were breaches to gain information that was mostly political, intelligence or military, rather than to steal trade secrets as a way to make money. And all of this argued for someone who had a lot of sophistication and practice.
Yeah, this sounds like the Russians. They have been using cyber espionage against us for a long time. And they are good at it. The whole world knows, and believes (unlike Donald Trump) that the Russians were the ones who stole emails from Hillary Clinton and the Democratic party in 2016.
After some initial coyness about who might have been responsible for the espionage breaches some of Trump’s strongest supporters now admit that it was the Russians. Mike Pompeo, Trump’s Secretary of State, has come around, saying, “I think it is now the case that we can say pretty clearly that it was the Russians that engaged in this activity.”
https://news.yahoo.com/secretary-state-pompeo-says-hack-065008748.html
But not Trump. He can not admit failure, nor even consider that there is a serious problem. For almost a full week, as one after another damaging news report about the cyber breaches pounded us, Trump remained silent. He said - nothing!
When Trump was finally forced by the weight of bad news releases to address the issue (on Saturday, 12/19) it was to make a desperate attempt to downplay and minimise it. On Saturday Trump sent out one of his stupid and somewhat incoherent rage tweets, “The cyber hack is far greater in the fake new media than in actuality … everything is well under control” and “Russia, Russia, Russian is the priority chant whenever anything happens because Lamestream is, mainly for financial reasons, is petrified of discussing the possibility that it may be China (it may!!)”
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9067761/Donald-Trump-rages-against-Russia-probe-2016-massive-hack.htmlhttps://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9067761/Donald-Trump-rages-against-Russia-probe-2016-massive-hack.html
This is typical of the stupidity of Trump’s denials: he tries to say that the very obvious problem is not a real problem - but if it is, it’s a problem that is the fault of someone else (not him, and not Russia).
Blaming China for everything (trade wars, theft of technology, currency manipulations, etc.) is a favorite thing for Trump and the Reactionary Republicans to do. In their minds it ties in so neatly with other problems they would like to deny - like the fact that they genuinely lost the presidential election. Trump ended his Saturday tweeting blitz by insinuating that the cyber hack, which he first refused to acknowledge then tried to dismiss, may have been connected to the baseless voter fraud conspiracy theories, writing, “There also could have been a hit on our ridiculous voting machines during the election, which is now obvious that I won big!”
Trump is completely unwilling to admit that a huge cyber attack has been inflicted on America, or that the Russians did it. But I am sure that if he could get anyone other than his idiot supporters to believe that it was a hack on voting machines that lost him the election, then Trump would happily admit to the hack.
Trump and the Reactionary Republican just keep on failing America. We are suffering illness, unemployment, debt, addiction and now the danger and humiliation of being cyber screwed, yet again, by the Russians.
Trump has protected Vladimir Putin and Russian from criticism all during his presidency. He has overlooked Putin’s invasions of independent countries, the subjugation of the Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula, the assassination of political opponents, the cyber attacks in the 2016 and many other things. He virtually got on the ground and licked Putin’s shoes during the 2018 Helsinki meeting by claiming that he didn’t believe Russia interfered on his behalf in the 2016 because, well, Vladimir said he didn’t. And to hell with what our own (and other government’s) intelligence experts believed.
God help us - January 20, 2021 can not come quickly enough.
Live progressive, succeed progressive, vote progressive.