Showing posts with label GCHQ. Show all posts
Showing posts with label GCHQ. Show all posts

Friday, 19 March 2021

Echelon Spy Network Revealed

The Echelon spy network revealed


By Dark Politricks

This article has been taken from the BBC Website and I am reproducing it here, as it was from my old site and the article was not copied across when I moved here. So I used the Wayback Machine to get a copy. I did this in case the original ever disappears so that there is record of an “official”  news establishment admitting that such an all invasive privacy destroying system exists and has done so for quite a while.

By Andrew Bomford of BBC Radio 4′s PM programme

Imagine a global spying network that can eavesdrop on every single phone call, fax or e-mail, anywhere on the planet.

It sounds like science fiction, but it’s true.

Two of the chief protagonists – Britain and Americaofficially deny its existence. But the BBC has confirmation from the Australian Government that such a network really does exist and politicians on both sides of the Atlantic are calling for an inquiry.

On the North Yorkshire moors above Harrogate they can be seen for miles, but still they are shrouded in secrecy. Around 30 giant golf balls, known as radomes, rise from the US military base at Menwith Hill.

Linked to the NSA

Inside is the world’s most sophisticated eavesdropping technology, capable of listening-in to satellites high above the earth.

The base is linked directly to the headquarters of the US National Security Agency (NSA) at Fort Mead in Maryland, and it is also linked to a series of other listening posts scattered across the world, like Britain’s own GCHQ.

The power of the network, codenamed Echelon, is astounding.

Every international telephone call, fax, e-mail, or radio transmission can be listened to by powerful computers capable of voice recognition. They home in on a long list of key words, or patterns of messages. They are looking for evidence of international crime, like terrorism.

Open Oz

The network is so secret that the British and American Governments refuse to admit that Echelon even exists. But another ally, Australia, has decided not to be so coy.

The man who oversees Australia’s security services, Inspector General of Intelligence and Security Bill Blick, has confirmed to the BBC that their Defence Signals Directorate (DSD) does form part of the network.
“As you would expect there are a large amount of radio communications floating around in the atmosphere, and agencies such as DSD collect those communications in the interests of their national security”, he said.
Asked if they are then passed on to countries like Britain and America, he said: “They might be in certain circumstances.”

But the system is so widespread all sorts of private communications, often of a sensitive commercial nature, are hoovered up and analysed.

Journalist Duncan Campbell has spent much of his life investigating Echelon. In a report commissioned by the European Parliament he produced evidence that the NSA snooped on phone calls from a French firm bidding for a contract in Brazil. They passed the information on to an American competitor, which won the contract.
“There’s no safeguards, no remedies, ” he said, “There’s nowhere you can go to say that they’ve been snooping on your international communications. Its a totally lawless world.”
Breaking the silence

Both Britain and America deny allegations like this, though they refuse to comment further. But one former US army intelligence officer has broken the code of silence.

Colonel Dan Smith told the BBC that while this is feasible, it is not official policy: 
Technically they can scoop all this information up, sort through it, and find what it is that might be asked for,” he said. “But there is no policy to do this specifically in response to a particular company’s interests.”
Legislators on both sides of the Atlantic are beginning to sit up and take notice. Republican Congressman Bob Barr has persuaded congress to open hearings into these and other allegations.

In December he is coming to Britain to raise awareness of the issue. In an interview with the BBC he accused the NSA of conducting a broad “dragnet” of communications, and “invading the privacy of American citizens.

He is joined in his concerns by a small number of politicians In Britain. Liberal Democrat MP Norman Baker has tabled a series of questions about Menwith Hill, but has been met with a wall of silence.
“There’s no doubt it’s being used as a listening centre,” he said, “There’s no doubt it’s being used for US interests, and I’m not convinced that Britain’s interests are being best served by this.”
The original article on the BBC news site has actually been removed but you can still find a copy on the Wayback Machine Archive. I wouldn't be surprised if that site is removed soon due to "Cancel Culture", when people want all their Internet History "Scrubbed" from the web this is one site that they ask to have archived content remove from.

Here is a direct link to it > news.bbc.co.uk.

By Dark Politricks

© 2012 Dark Politricks









Thursday, 4 February 2021

How To Help Me Out and Defend Yourself Online From Internet Censorship....

Internet Censorship and Defending Yourself Online


By Dark Politricks


As you may or may not know I have had recent health problems which the consultant first diagnosed as Cancer and has meant the majority of my spare time is either spent in hospitals, doctor surgeries, chemists or travelling between them all. I have a scan on a huge lump on my leg this week actually and not particularly looking forward to going to the hospital to get it.

Luckily I live in the UK so the NHS is paid for out my National Insurance contributions - never let anyone tell you it's free. However car parks, prescriptions, fuel and everything else costs money therefore I am trying to raise some money so that I can keep my main websites running.

Unlike MSM defined "real" news commentators I don't get paid to blog or write any of the essays I have for DarkPolitricks.om for the last 10+ years, and the few payments I get from Google advertising or £2 donations whilst appreciated do not cover the server bills I used to pay out of my own pocket each month to keep darkpolitricks.com running. 

This is why I moved to blogger to let them take the Twitter Rush traffic when a link is posted, and 100+ BOTS, HACKBOTS, SCRAPERS, SOCIAL MEDIA BRAND BOTS, SERPS, CONTENT ANALYSIS BOTS, FAKE COMMENTERS come steaming to your site all at one time.

I have been kicked off multiple servers, had multiple free versions of this blog taken offline by WordPress without so much as a reason and I have lost count of the number of emails I get from detractors or people claiming I am either a right wing tea-party supporting Israel lover or a far left Jew hating terrorist in waiting, or a Soros paid Russian Fake news Dis-Info agent. Therefore I run this site not for any financial gain and certainly not to win any popularity contests. If you like my site then please consider linking to it, even copying part of an article from one of the posts and linking here for the rest,

I have managed to get an advert free, basic WordPress backup site up and running which if you can never get to here you can check out at darkpolitics.wordpress.com.

I have now sold the extra domains that I had, and I could have helped you start your own alternative search engine as I have at > https://cse.google.com/cse?cx=005138288515408039386:xatdxpwn9on#gsc.tab=0 which only has on it sites that Google has de-ranked, or doesn't want you to read. You can get images and videos from Bitchute.com and Brandnewtube.com, I am constantly trying to add more sites to the search engine even though Google restricts you to viewing only 3 pages of results for some reason, however they will be relevant, and probably hidden from the mainstream.




However if  you have a spare domain and want a proper #altnews search engine, styled, and ranked for others to use then you can always contact me in the comments. I previously made a "Super Search Engine" which took the top 10 results from Google, BING and Yahoo, removed duplicates and made a proper alternative search engine as it would ignore a massive list of establishment news sites like the BBC, MSNBC, CNN, The Washington Post, New York Times and so on. 

Therefore you just needed 30 good results from alternative or de-ranked sites with just the information you really wanted to see with all the establishment propaganda removed. 

I still code, and if you fancy owning an alternative search engine that takes results from DuckDuckgo.com, Startpage.com and other search engines, then contact me and we can work something out. Whilst I have made this "altnews search engine from Googles own tools" it remains based on the pages Google has de-ranked. I would really like to make a proper search engine using various proxies and main news results from various search engines but with all the chaff MSM removed and styled nicely, my way though.

However if you are looking for ways to help me then here are some that are basically free, donating money or giving me money without having to do anything at all. This would be great to see people help me carry on the fight whilst I am constantly called stupid names like a paid Russian Dis-Info agent sent to disrupt US elections LOL

I have been showcasing proper "Squad" members since before 2010, showing 3rd party Presidential debates which weren't even shown on US TV but were on RT.com (how messed up is that), as the US blames Russia for influencing their election. I have also been calling for a "Peoples Party" for a long time now.

So here are some other ways you can help me continue writing for Darkpolitricks.com.as well as protecting your own online safety..

How To Help Me

1. Please make a donation at the side of the page, the URL is different but the owner of the account still knows it is money for me. Any amount is much appreciated. You can go directly to paypal.me/strictlysoftware and the developer who helps on my sites will know to give me the money as long as you put in the reference (reason), DarkPolitricks somewhere. You can of course use your own PayPal account to send money as a donation to that same PayPal account name, as "Friends and Family" and put in the reason box "Donation for Blogging". or if you run your own WordPress site on your own server then you can still get some premium plugins that will not only auto tag your content, boost your SEO, and Tweet out variations of different messages and #hashtags to different accounts very easily with his plugins over at > https://www.strictly-software.com/plugins.




2. Please "visit"... my Google sponsors if you see any, and don't have adBlockers installed. An open tab with the adverts page open, whilst you are reading one of  my articles, with a few clicks and scrolls up and down on it now and then all helps. Especially "if you are interested in the content...." etc etc...cough cough... you get the drift. However if you have turned DNT on in BRAVE or any other browser than Google's Chrome who introduced it but doesn't respect it, and turned 3rd party tracking cookies off so that adverts are not relevant to you then you won't see many ads relevant to you. In BRAVE they auto strip advertiser tracker cookies, but a web extension like Ghostery can help you remove most cookies and trackers from a site even if you are not using that browser. 

3. f you ever need to buy an Amazon voucher please use the advert in the top right corner to click through tot the Amazon site where you can buy a voucher and I get a small percentage of it's value. I know Amazon are evil, but they are one of the few ways online #altnews bloggers like me get paid a slice of the cost of the voucher and there is nothing stopping you use the vouchers to buy privacy gear e.g burner phones, foil wraps for muffling a smart phones WIFI signal and more.

4. Use the BRAVE browser and help give me money for free. Download BRAVE and set it up to donate your BAT (Basic Attention Tokens), for allowing small adverts to play in the bottom right corner of your screen (up to 5 per hour). This earns you money which you can automatically donate to this site each month. The more BAT the better as I can change it into crypto currency. As DarkPolitricks.com is an official BRAVE Verified Creator, it means I am listed in their system and it's easy for anyone to donate their BAT or a % of it to my site per month,

Also by using BRAVE as a browser is good for both speed and privacy as it not only cuts bandwidth and speed up page loads by removing all the Google Tracking cookies and 3rd party cookies that are passed along from Google and other sites. It also helps use less battery power on your phone, and shows you on a new tab the amount of time / bandwidth / Trackers & Ads blocked on your travels. 

It also uses TOR as an incognito window, as it's based on Chromium, so you benefit from the onion ring that TOR gives you making it harder for people to track your movements and can put you in any place in the world when visiting a page.

Download BRAVE from here: https://brave.com/download/ 




Or use the TOR Browser itself which is a bit like a VPN as it takes you though 3 proxy browsers before going to your page of choice. Using a VPN is always good as well if you can afford it but you can find free VPNS at https://uk.pcmag.com/encryption/4328/the-best-free-vpns.

- Download TOR Browser from either of these two sites:
or




If you want to see the difference between using a VPN and TOR then check this article out as it explains the differences and how you can still use the two together if you want, 


Your privacy is being eroded day by day, CCTV systems are being linked together so that the footage can all be stored unconstitutionally of course in city sized underground data centres, lookup TRAPWIRE (the codename for the program), and also watch Person of Interest if you can, as it's pretty realistic in this day and age of super quantum AI computers, connected up to follow your movements through the city, on busses and tubes and as you visit shops. Why does all this CCTV footage need to be stored in a mega under ground data centres if it wasn't to enable the users to play it back and see what Mr X or Mrs Y were doing on a certain day?

There is no need for embedded RFID chips as those in the 90's who believed Clinton was going to implement the mark of the beast to stop Right Wing Militias did as we now all carry smart phones. 


It truly is a recording device of everything you say. Just like the Bixby helpers on Samsung phones which must be listening (even recording) what you are saying all the time, just like Amazon Alexa's and Google DOT's for them to know when you actually say "Alexa play me a sad song about police state UK" etc, this is scary prospect. 

Even SmartTV's are now doing it, watching you through webcams, and listening through microphones to what you are saying, or as they would say "watching hand gestures to help get accurate results", or maybe it could be used as just a tool for cops to spy into on your lounge. Just read your SmartTV's Privacy Conditions to see how much they spy on you and ask yourself why?

Forget the danger of 5G gadgets, electronic plug sockets and fridge monitors to help you automatically order more Orange juice when it gets low. All these magnetic waves at various frequencies coming from devices such as routers and computers at night is bad enough. Yet to read in Samsung's SmartTV Privacy Policy that all speech commands and body movements are sent to their own data centres before being sent off to "Other unspecified 3rd parties" should concern you. These 3rd parties could just be advertisers or even the Police who due to new Police State COVID laws need less evidence to raid a property or even the NSA or GCHQ for all we know. It would be helpful if Samsung bothered to tell u though!

Professor John William Frank from the Usher Institute at the University of Edinburgh claimed that no more transmitter towers should be built and the global roll-out of 5G should be halted until further investigations are conducted into potential risks associated with the next-generation network technology.

So now the kids of today have no real concept of privacy, and post every little thing they do online they are actually creating the electronic surveillance state that many have been warning about for years,

Help Yourself Stay Safe On The Internet


Yes there are some things you can do to mitigate this electronic intrusion into your lives such as:
  1. Use non smart phones to make calls if you can. Take the battery and SIM card out in-between travelling, Burners are well and alive in those shops on the high street that sell everything "wink wink", as well as online. Just having a burner with a load of credit on it can not only save you from being tracked but it can also save a new date as you won't have constant beeps from apps not supported by your phone to distract you.
  2. Don't fill your home with helpful spy devices that constantly listen to your voice even when you think they are off. How would they know you said "Alexa play this song on the radio", unless it wasn't listening all to you all the time?
  3. If you do have a smart phone don't take it everywhere and if possible forward calls to an older less sophisticated device. If you are going out and know you won't need any "smart phone features" take an older Cell phone with you that can text as well. Are your really that vain you need to check your Instagram or Facebook status every 5 minutes?
  4. Don't get lazy, turn lights on and off, TV's off at the wall at night and do your own shopping don't leave it all down to automation. It will save you on electricity bills as well. Also turn your router off at the wall and stop all the magnetic fields that would be entering your brain all night otherwise. If you are not needing WiFi then why have it turned on?
  5. When online use a VPN, a secure browser like BRAVE, or Chromium with an add-on like Ghostery and Web Developer Toolbar so you can delete or even turn off cookies, JavaScript and use TOR to get about without making it easy for people to follow your trail online. Use search engines designed for privacy that don't keep logs and delete your history automatically like Duckduckgo.com and Startpage.com. Always run the free, and probably best anti virus tool, Malware Anti-Malwarebytes on any new program or file recently downloaded and regularly run weekly scans of your machines, no need to get the premium version. Just ensure you keep your PC clean with CCleaner and run Malwarebytes weekly at least,
  6. Also regularly check your Programs and Features and order by date. Make sure you don't see any new applications that have been recently downloaded that you don't know about. If you need to reboot your PC and go into Safe Mode to remove them then that's the best way.
  7. If you have to carry a smart phone somewhere turn it off and put it in a box wrapped with tinfoil around and around the box. Even with the battery off there is always enough charge to ping nearby phone masts so muffling the signal with foil might help disguise the use of triangulation to find your position if someone is looking for it. The default mode before GPS became available, and of course I don't need to tell you to turn off Google's Location History in your Google Account if you have one as it will keep a map of your movements using GPS for every day you have it enabled.
  8. When searching online, in BRAVE or TORBrowser use DuckDuckgo.com or Startpage.com as your search engines, these are two security conscious search engines that will not keep logs of your searches and strip out trackers as well as using POST searches which mean your search term is not in the query-string as in google e.g www.google.com/search?q=[search term], and therefore stored in your companies gateways log files, or ISP log files for easy searching. It takes a lot of data to store a whole POST search every time which is why GET requests are usually made instead when searching sites.
If you want to help spread #altnews results, and put my custom search engine into your own site so that people can get news from de-ranked sites, and videos that YouTube.com may have already banned then please just copy this JavaScript into your site somewhere.

<script async src="https://cse.google.com/cse.js?cx=005138288515408039386:xatdxpwn9on"></script>
<div class="gcse-search"></div>

Note: For maximum compatibility your pages must specify an HTML5 doctype and a viewport e.g

<!DOCTYPE html>
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1">


Either that or just place a link to the search engine for people to use:



Just remember we are not just in a fight for free speech anymore but to be able to say anything on social media at all. This is why video makers are moving to bitchute.com or brandnewtube.com and new versions of social media platforms attempt to open for business before being squashed shut as we saw the other week.

So anything you can do to help spread #altnews and keep people being able to access views that you may not agree with but should allow people to say, then well done

If you clap for censorship like the Left did all the other week as Trump was banned from social media along with many other right wing groups then you will be hitting yourself in the face when it comes to your turn as we saw this week with many left wing and socialist groups, some of the biggest in Europe being shut down from speaking in the now Establishment controlled Silicon Valley online places of "dialogue". As long as you are not for Palestinian rights, anti-war, or say something that the establishment considers "Fake News".

Don't wish something for someone else. It can easily come and bite you in the ass and then who is going to stick up for you when you have already been shouting loudly that others should be censored. We don't all want to live in China do we?

Remember the quote....
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."
Let's try and live by it....

So if you can help Dark Politricks out with one of the many ways explained earlier. It will be much appreciated. There is also plenty of information on helping you keep your online privacy as well.

Thanks

By Dark Politricks

© 2021 Dark Politricks

Sunday, 20 January 2019

How our phones are now Spy's in our pockets

How our phones are now Spy's in our pockets

By Dark Politricks


Remember the days when "conspiracy theorists" worried about the "mark of the beast" and people being micro-chipped so that the Government could follow everywhere they went and everything they did?

Well there is no need to worry about microchips anymore, we already have walked into George Orwell's 1984 with our Smart Phones, Smart TV's, Google DOTS, Amazon Echo's and all the rest of the modern day tech that seemingly makes our lives easier but in reality is also constantly monitoring us at the same time.

You may just think that the recording of our position on the planet all the time by either your phones GPS signal or Google's Location tracking, is just a helpful way to show you nearby events or shops that may interest you.

However this information not only is almost impossible to turn off but it's also passed on by the companies to Government agencies to log your behaviour.

If you have read your Smart TV's terms and conditions lately as I have done, you will see that it talks about recording you at all times through the TV's web cam as well as passing this information onto "unspecified 3rd parties".

Why are they unspecified? Who are they and why can't Samsung, Sony or Panasonic tell us what they are doing with this data they have captured of us sitting in front of the box?

Maybe it's because the NSA or GCHQ has a helping hand from the tech companies who now work alongside them.

Google are known to work with the CIA helping them on their PRISM type algorithms that allow agents to type into a CIA search engine an email address or phone number and get results of the person, their close contacts, details of social media posts, emails and website viewing history.

If this is the case why should we think that the CIA is not in a symbiotic relationship in which Google passes them data for their databases?

If they have already admitted building an underground data centre in UTAH the size of a city to hold all the data they collect on people what reason is there to think they are not using this data to spy on us?



How helpful would it be if the live feed of a bunch of terrorists, drug dealers, or even someone having a quite joint with their friends in front of Family Guy, is passed along from your Samsung TV to the local Police Station?

Suddenly you get a knock on the door and find yourself being arrested for supplying a drug and all because you passed a spliff to a friend in front of an all seeing, all listening, modern smart TV.

Oh and they have a recording of it happening to back up their claims, all from your TV set or the Amazon Echo sitting on your table that recorded it all happening! Live video footage and the sound evidence to go with it. A perfect spy in the room system.

If you don't believe how much we have slipped into an Orwellian society and how much our phones record our behaviour, even without SIM Cards, GPS enabled and Flight mode on then watch this recent FOX video.

In it they take two phones on a journey around the city. One with no SIM, no WiFi, and in Flight mode and one with it all enabled. Guess what?

When they got back from their trip round town they monitored all the data that was sent to Googles servers when the phones were attached to the WiFi system. They logged all the data and believe it or not the phone without WiFi in Flight Mode actually sent more data to Google than the one that had a SIM card in.

It sent information such as the number of steps you walked, the height off the ground you were, the temperature, when it thought you were in a car, and despite not having GPS or Location turned on it still logged it from pings to the phone masts.

It seems you cannot get away from Google tracking you and most phones are built around Googles technology, their email, play store, apps and settings and that is not to mention what the phone itself is recording behind your back.




Phones also can record you at all times due to the permissions you give them or the issues you get from removing certain applications like Googles Play Store. It basically states that it can record you at any point in time - why?

What function does this serve apart from spying on what you are saying.

A phone cannot accurately gain information about the potential products you would like from a few words in a long conversation it records to promote certain adverts at you when you next surf the web, so why is it doing it?

Is it because the new Silicon Valley / Intelligence / Government Nexus is all in bed with each other and want a Stasi like state, one in which people willingly engage in?

Watch this video for more information on how phones record you 24/7.



So where is this data going?

The phones, TV's and Google DOTS that don't stop recording you when you stop talking are obviously passing this information onto other places apart from advertising companies they say they are. 

They don't specify that they will be logging you at all times even when you switch your phones GPS and Location setting off, therefore they are being devious in making you believe you can actually stop them logging your position at all times. They can listen in to what you say through the microphone and video you from front and back webcams, not to mention logging your GPS position. 

Helpful apps like Samsung's Health app, monitors your heart rate, stress levels and oxygen levels. It also logs the steps you take each day with the phone on you, when it thinks your asleep (presumably due to you not using the phone), and probably sends all this data off to the Government so they can monitor health levels around the country.

We truly need to get back to dumb phones without GPS, masking tape over your web cams and get rid of constant spy bots like Amazons and Googles DOTS. It maybe tough to let go to your personal computer in your pocket but why not just use Facebook on your PC at home and take a simple phone out with you that can make calls and send texts only. 

They are designed specifically for older people not interested in the bells and whistles and are perfect for a dumb phone that does what you need without logging your constant actions.

This is just something to think about when you go to bed tonight with your phone on charge on the bed stand. Just what is your phone sending off to far away data-centres about your days activities and any nightly fun or lack of it in the sack.

If our generation doesn't do anything about the lack of privacy and civil rights we have noticed diminish before our eyes then the next generation is sure to grow up thinking that it is perfectly normal to live in a world where every moment is posted on Facebook, every photograph sent to Instagram and a phone goes with them wherever they go 24/7 365 days a year sending data to their phone company, advertisers and Government agencies constantly.

By Dark Politricks

© 2019 Dark Politricks



Tuesday, 28 January 2014

The Syrian Electronic Army - A Russian Payback for the NSA and PRISM?

The Syrian Electronic Army - A Russian Payback for the NSA and PRISM?

By Dark Politricks

After recent attacks by the Syrian Electronic Army on big western media and personal targets I think something else is going on than just a renegade bunch of pro-Assad hackers getting lucky by hacking certain websites.

In recent weeks the Syrian Electronic Army has attacked big targets such as Microsoft, Skype,  CNN, the BBC and even Barack Obama's Twitter and Facebook accounts.
It seems to me that someone is sending the west a message.

A message that is meant to mean a lot more than just signalling that they are just a group of good Syrian hackers.

I think the message is meant to say a lot more than: "look I can hack your twitter account", and from a recent talk given by the Israeli PM on the need for Internet security, I think the west are getting a little jittery about their technological supremacy when it comes to obtaining personal information for their own ends.

The recent hack attack on the President of the USA's social media accounts seem to me to be a warning  from a certain country that "you may have the NSA / GCHQ and back doors into all US social media accounts BUT we do as well".

The message from the Syrian Electronic Army when they hacked the account was to remind people being mis-informed by their media and politicians that the Syrian rebels were NOT the moral equivalent of the US "founding fathers" as some idiots were claiming but in fact they were al-Qaeda linked terrorists committing horrible atrocities.

The Syrian Electronic Army reminded the west through the Presidents hacked accounts that the US backed al-Qaeda linked rebels in Syria are committing terrorist attacks that would be condemned if they occurred in any other country than Syria.

From the article:

President Obama’s official Twitter and Facebook accounts – which have a combined audience of 76 million followers – were hacked by the Syrian Electronic Army and used to promote a link to a video which highlights how US-backed rebels are committing terror attacks in Syria.
The account was compromised less than a day after Obama's presidential campaign website was also hacked by the SEA.


As a techie I work with computers every day. I see our own servers being constantly probed with attempts to hack and control them through XSS, SQL Injection and other methods. I even created my own software defence system for a certain big website I had created that our company sells a lot.

After all these years one thing is perfectly clear from analysing the hacks, the majority of them come from Russian servers.

All techies know the Russian Mafia has control of numerous botnets to use for DDOS attacks and other forms of hacking.

The official definition of a BotNet is:

A network of private computers infected with malicious software and controlled as a group without the owners' knowledge, e.g. to send spam.
Many techie magazines have spoken of the recent sophisticated TARGET hack which compromised up to 70 million consumers credit card details and shown how the code that was used could be linked back to older Russian malware.

This TARGET hack attack was so sophisticated no existing anti-virus software could detect it and it has been used in up to 6 other attacks in recent months since the Black Friday shopping weekend in America.

From BGR.

Target on Friday further revealed the scope of the hacking attack it suffered during the busy 2012 Black Friday and Christmas shopping season, saying that additional personal data has been stolen by hackers, on top of credit/debit card information and encrypted pins. The company said that the stolen info includes names, mailing addresses and phone numbers or email address from as many as 70 million Target customers. The number is significantly higher than the previous estimate, which suggested that up to 40 million credit and debit card numbers were stolen.

The investigators have also revealed that any known antivirus software couldn’t detect the malware used, with hackers having also added in features that covered the fact that they were actually copying data from the credit and debit cards swiped in point-of-sale (POS) machines. Interestingly, the malware was programmed to steal data during prime business hours (i.e from 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. local time) and store it on an internal Target server that was also controlled by the hackers.

“What’s really unique about this one is it’s the first time we’ve seen the attack method at this scale,” iSight Partners senior vice president Tiffany Jones said. “It conceals all the data transfers. It makes it really hard to detect in the first place.”


So not only do we have Russian linked undetectable hacks going on inside the USA that are stealing money direct from people's credit cards, but we have on the scene a new group of Syrian hackers who seem to be capable of hacking into nearly every major social media website account - just as the NSA can do with their PRISM software.

Whether these hacks are happening through social engineering methods e.g sending a link in an email to trick people to enter their bank or website account details or through the use of comprimised networks, keyloggers, Trojans and other forms of viruses I don't know, but they seem to be succeeding whenever they try.

We all know that Russia is Syria's ally.

Therefore is it too much of a stretch to believe that the Syrian Electronic Army has Russian help or is even formed by Russian military skilled in the art of electronic warfare?

It is only a guess but all these hack attacks on the west come just after Edward Snowden has revealed the scale of the Wests own ability to obtain personal data from the Internet.

Not only that but he has proven that all the major social networks from Twitter to Facebook can be accessed at will by the NSA/GCHQ to obtain users information.

Therefore I am wondering, is this Russia sending back a message that they are perfectly capable of using their own methods to obtain important data or crash / hack websites?

Whether Snowden has anything to do with this or not I have no idea but I think the probability is pretty low. As Glenn Greenwald said if he were a Russian spy they wouldn't have kept him waiting in an airport lounge for months and instead would have lauded him as a hero before rushing him to safety to debrief him of all his secrets ASAP.

The Russians may not host the major backbone servers that the Internet is based upon.

They may not even host any of the major social media sites like Twitter or Facebook that have 500 million users and therefore make it much easier to access the databases of such sites.

However they do have years of hacking experience and probable control of millions of personal PC's that could be used without the owner's knowledge in a coordinated hack attack.

You may even be sitting on an infected computer right now.

One of the first things many sophisticated viruses do is block ports and install their own firewall and virus checking software so that another virus cannot remove them from the infected machine. Therefore you may think your computer is safe from your regular scans but in reality it could be compromised and sending occasional packets of data in DDOS attacks controlled by Russian software.

As I said, this is all conjecture, but the timing of attacks and the targets (western news broadcasters and western shoppers) make it seem like this sort of message is being sent.

The Russian Mafia, who were mainly ex KGB agents when the USSR split up, were the first criminal gangs to start to use hacking and viruses to steal identities, bank accounts and other forms of financial fraud.

Whilst script kiddies in the west were just happy to see their Macro viruses spread the net wiping files from computers before being emailed on to more computers using the infected PC's email contact list - the Russians were out to make big bucks from their hacking.

Therefore it would come as no surprise to me if I was to learn that the Syrian Electronic Army is full of Russian cyber attack specialists and that the hack attacks against the west will continue to rise with ever more sophisticated hacks on the same lines as the TARGET hack.

I may be wrong but it's something to think about.....  

View the original article Are the Russians telling the West that they can hack just as well as the NSA can too? at darkpolitricks.com.

Tuesday, 31 December 2013

The end of year Dark Politricks review 2013

The end of year Dark Politricks review 2013

By Dark Politricks

Once again I bring the year to a close with a review of what I think are the biggest stories of the last 365 days.
There are so many to choose from therefore I have just picked a few of the important points that managed to make it from the alternative news to the mainstream and back again.
There is a poll at the end and it would be great if you could take part and let me know your thoughts on the matter.
Syria - war averted for once.
For once the Axis of war didn't get its way when it came to the war they desperately wanted in Syria. This war had been planned since 9.11 and it was part of the "Sweep it all up. Things related and not" comment made by Donald Rumsfeld in the aftermath of the 9.11 attacks.
Iraq was to fall first, then Syria and finally Iran. A splintered Middle East with no serious opposition to US / Israel power in the regime was the aim. A Greater Israel was the dream and a fractured opposition had to be created for the dream to become true.
However after the debacle of the Iraq war Iran became the main benefactor of the US/UK failure to suppress the uprising and they left with their tails between their legs. This scared the hell out of Israel and meant that the axis of evil had to ferment a Sunni uprising to get the Shiites and Sunnis fighting amongst themselves all over the region to prevent a united Iraq coming under the total influence of Iran.
The plan was to destroy Syria and block Syrian  help to their Hezbollah agents who were receiving arms from their benefactor to use against northern Israel. Not only would Syria be cracked into a hundred pieces as Alawites fought Sunni's and Shiites, but the Christians who had lived there for thousands of years in peace would be caught in the middle as Church after Church was destroyed, ancient villages taken over and ruined, and kids were forced at gun point to convert to Islam.
However it was determined Russian Diplomacy that prevented this useless war in the Middle East over Syria from coming to fruition. Whilst the French, British and US were trying to gain public support for another war, the people just weren't buying their lies anymore.
US soldiers put their jobs on the line and used social media to show their disdain for fighting yet another war alongside al-Qaeda terrorists with their #IdidntJoin and #NoSyriaWar Twitter campaigns.
They could see that their Government was duplicitous and had no problems using al-Qaeda as the bogeyman in one part of the world and then supply guns, training and support for them in another war zone if it helped their geo-political goals.
Here are just a few of the photos from the #IdidntJoin and #NoSyriaWar Twitter campaign.
Twitter Flooded With Active Duty Military & Veterans Opposing Attack on Syria 020913join1
Twitter Flooded With Active Duty Military & Veterans Opposing Attack on Syria 020913join1
Twitter Flooded With Active Duty Military & Veterans Opposing Attack on Syria 020913join1
Twitter Flooded With Active Duty Military & Veterans Opposing Attack on Syria 020913join1
Twitter Flooded With Active Duty Military & Veterans Opposing Attack on Syria 020913join1
With videos of Free Syrian Army soldiers (supposedly moderates) eating hearts and lungs of dead soldiers and then putting them up on Youtube.com, the world quickly saw that this was no rebel army that shared their common culture, ideals and ethics that we did in the west. Why on earth would we want to fight alongside this lot of Islamic heart eaters.
Also why was it that our leaders were so keen to back the heart eating, beheading, child killing nutters in Syria when they are basically the same people who were killing our own soldiers on the streets of London such as the horrible case of Lee Rigby?
With fake claims of Chemical weapons attacks by Syrian forces, and huge stashes of Sarin gas found in rebel compounds it was clear the idea was to use a false flag attack to draw us into the war on the side of the Saudi and UAE backed Islamic extremists.
However with Russian diplomacy actually paying dividends, and the amazing display of UK bottle that showed the UK government wouldn't just blindly follow the USA into any war they wanted us in, the plan to bomb Syria soon fell apart.
The Syrian regime said they would hand over all their chemical weapons and come to the peace table, something the Islamic terrorists didn't want to do without first getting President Assad to resign. However the US accepted the plan and another war has been averted - so far.
The war was all about taking Syria off the chessboard so that Hezbollah was weakened and Iran would become Isolated.
However this hasn't happened and it has shown the west up for its real reasons for starting another useless war in the Middle East. Geo-political reasons, protection of Israel, the splintering of any anti-western alliances and the building of more military bases in sensitive areas that control oil and major shipping lanes.
The Iraq War
The 10th birthday of the Iraq war was the bloodiest since 2008. with 1000's of deaths everyday the bombings continue daily as Sunni extremists fight the Shiite government and the civilians are caught in the crossfire.
The plan may have been to get the Iraqi's fighting amongst themselves but instead it has given the Iraqi's a Shiite government focused towards Iran. This is probably the reason the number of roadside bombings assassinations and killings has been ramped up as Sunni's try to re-gain power through force.
It does make me laugh now to see that picture of George Bush aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln claiming that the war in Iraq was now over back in 2003, on May 1st - just over a DECADE ago!
George W Bush stated at the time that this was the end to major combat operations in Iraq. However it was just the beginning of the Iraqi insurgency.
In fact the majority of casualties, both military and civilian, occurred after this foolish speech by the "Commander-in-Chief" of the allied forces.
Mission un-acomplished
Edward Snowden
He has been the receiver of many awards this year but he is still stuck in limbo with only temporary asylum in RussiaEdward  Snowden was  the NSA analyst that had to go on the run to reveal what he knew about the massive surveillance state the USA had built up over the past decade.
The start, of this huge monitoring of the masses began many years ago with programs like ECHELON, yet after 9.11 the rules were brushed aside about not spying on your own countrymen and the US Constitution was treated like the piece of old paper George W Bush once claimed it was.
With the help of Glenn Greenwald and a number of papers including The UK's Guardian, Snowden and Greenwald revealed the massive computer servers that were literally sucking terabytes of data straight from major routers, under water pipes, and back doors in commonly used programs.
Programs and applications many of us use such as Google, Facebook, Yahoo, Skype, Twitter and many others who were secretly working in cahoots with the security state.
Programs such as PRSIM were revealed to the masses and it was quickly explained how just with an email address or telephone number an NSA analyst could enter it into a computer and then find out anything about that person that resided online.
From email boxes "in the cloud" such as Gmail (which was the downfall of CIA chief David Petraeus ) to TRAPWIRE a huge link up of CCTV cameras, traffic cameras, cinema and parking tickets and credit card purchases in shops the data "trapped" could be used to monitor your movements through a city 24/7.
In fact the amount of data was so large that the US Government had to build a city sized computer server warehouse in UTAH to hold it all.
"heavily fortified $2 billion center (and) should be up and running in September 2013. Flowing through its servers and routers and stored in near-bottomless databases will be all forms of communication, including the complete contents of private emails, cell phone calls, and Google searches, as well as all sorts of personal data trails—parking receipts, travel itineraries, bookstore purchases, and other digital “pocket litter."
As most of us are all walking around with monitoring devices on us 24/7 i.e phones we are basically asking to be tracked. Our modern phones contain a myriad of ways to monitor and track us from having the microphone remotely turned on to listen to us or the camera switched on to take photographs of our surroundings. That's forgetting about the GPS positioning that pinpoints us at any time. Useful for when you have lost your phone but not so handy when you don't want the security state to know where you are.
Even with GPS disabled, triangulation from phone masts can be used to pinpoint us less accurately, and have you noticed how all smart phones nowadays make it impossible to remove the battery?
That's because even with your phone switched off there is enough electricity in the device to "ping" it and locate it or turn on the microphone or camera. The only way to be safe would be to leave it at home when your going somewhere you "shouldn't" or buy an old "numpty" phone - one of those designed for OAP's that let you text and make calls only.
Oh and don't forget that Google and IPhone have been caught numerous times recording all our GPS co-ordinations on a hidden database in the phone that can be easily removed (even without wires) by Policemen to find out where we have been. Think you are living in George Orwell's 1984 - well we are well past that by 30 years now!
You can read some of the ways to reduce your Internet footprint on this article of mine but unless you want to live without a phone, TV and computer you are basically hooked into the Matrix and available for monitoring at any time.
Edward Snowden is wanted by the US government for revealing state secrets but many see him as a hero for revealing the level of spying the NSA went to after the reigns were let off them after 9.11.
With the UK's GCHQ basically acting as their "bitch" and doing lots of dirty work purely for cash. The "Special Relationship" is alive and well. Also without a written Constitution or Bill or Rights to rein them in the junior partners across the Atlantic are able to get away with a whole lot more than the NSA can. Even trawling the whole Internet for data to be analysed for "potential" threats.
These NSA analysts are even going even as far as playing games like World of Warcraft because they believed terrorists were using the inbuilt talking and messaging features within the VOIP games to send messages to each other about potential attacks - either that or it was some clever clogs idea at the NSA to let them play games all day whilst their superiors thought they were working.
Edward Snowden gave this years Channel 4 alternative Christmas speech. It is well worth listening to.
Chelsea Manning
An important story which was supposed to be about liberty and war crimes was turned into a MSM piece about sexuality and unimportant questions. This was due to Chelsea Manning's decision to mitigate his "crimes" on a "confused sexual identity status" instead of the morality of what he was doing by revealing war crimes by the US Army in Iraq.
What should have been a massive debate in the public sphere about the legality of acts of war was turned into a farce.  The war crime such as the one he released to WikiLeaks which showed innocent Iraqi's and TV reporters shot to death by US pilots who were almost climaxing during the event was totally ignored and just treated as "war as normal".
Who should junior soldiers report these crimes against humanity to. Crimes which break numerous International laws and conventions?
What happens if they are ignored or punished. Would they even dare to bring the matter up to a superior and would that superior even listen or would they be disciplined for breaking the all important rule to "shut your mouth and do your job".
With the number of US female soldiers who complain about sexual assault being jailed in containers in Iraq for just raising the issue it is clear the US military has no time for "complainers" whether the complaint is valid or not.
In July of 2005, Jamie Leigh Jones, then 20 and working in Iraq, alleged she was gang-raped and beaten by fellow KBR employees and locked in a shipping container by managers after she sought out law enforcement. Jones and her lawyers, who lost a federal civil suit against KBR in July, said nearly 40 other female KBR employees who worked in Afghanistan and Iraq told them stories of rape, beatings and sexual harassment.
The FED celebrated it's 100th birthday in 2013.
Responsible for numerous bubbles, booms n busts, the US Federal Reserve act was passed in the dead of night in 1913.
This act enabled the big banks to control the money supply of the USA by printing it and  then lending it to their friends in the banking world. With the positions in the Treasury and the big banks like Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan acting more like a revolving door it is no wonder the big banks always get their bailouts on the backs of the poor tax payers when they play roulette with our savings and pensions and then lose.
With a few lone voices like Ron Paul calling for an end to the FED the movement to end this printing of fiat currency and the Government paying it back with interest from tax payers has been brought to the mainstream and more and more people are asking why we have such a system in the first place.
With many founding US fathers claiming the war of Independence was about controlling their own money and not letting the English tax them without representation the FED would be the anti-Christ if they could see it in action now.
The Federal Reserve Act was passed in 1913 in response to a wave of bank crises, which had hit on average every six years over a period of 80 years. The resulting economic depressions triggered a populist movement for monetary reform in the 1890s. Mary Ellen Lease, an early populist leader, said in a fiery speech that could have been written today:
Wall Street owns the country. It is no longer a government of the people, by the people, and for the people, but a government of Wall Street, by Wall Street, and for Wall Street. The great common people of this country are slaves, and monopoly is the master. .. . Money rules. .. .Our laws are the output of a system which clothes rascals in robes and honesty in rags. The parties lie to us and the political speakers mislead us. .. .
We want money, land and transportation. We want the abolition of the National Banks, and we want the power to make loans direct from the government. We want the foreclosure system wiped out.
That was what they wanted, but the Federal Reserve Act that they got was not what the populists had fought for, or what their leader William Jennings Bryan thought he was approving when he voted for it in 1913. In the stirring speech that won him the Democratic presidential nomination in 1896, Bryan insisted:
[We] believe that the right to coin money and issue money is a function of government. .. . Those who are opposed to this proposition tell us that the issue of paper money is a function of the bank and that the government ought to go out of the banking business.
I stand with Thomas Jefferson. .. and tell them, as he did, that the issue of money is a function of the government and that the banks should go out of the governing business.
With Wall Street banks that were called "Too big to fail" in 2008 now almost 3 times as big in 2013 Wall Street is a monster out of control. The Occupy moment may have opened some people eyes to how debt based money really works and how the US Government is occupied and owned by Wall Street banksters but it is not enough.
Without some banksters being jailed for their crimes as they were in Iceland the banksters will continue to steal and pillage money from the masses. Then when they are caught out when their  convoluted investment pyramid schemes fail as they always do they claim bailouts from the tax payers. The same game goes on as usual.
A few heads on poles outside the City of London and Wall Street including those of Jamie Dimon and Lloyd Blankfein would be a nice start but until the austerity measures implemented by our government starts to bite hard not enough people will get angry enough to demand blood for their poverty and the bankers crimes.
Hopefully 2014 will be a better year as more and more people are becoming awakened to the games played all around them by Governments and banks. If 2013 ha been a good year for you then great if not lets all plan to make 2014 a better one.
Please take the time to let me know what you think the most important act of 2013 was with this poll. You can add comments or extra options as I have only put in a few of many possible questions.
Use the comment box on the page at the bottom or the comment box on the Polldaddy page if you want.

View the original article My end of year Dark Politricks review 2013 at darkpolitricks.com