Free Republic

Beijing, now Moscow.… Who else is hiding in broadband gateways?The US government today said it disrupted a botnet that Russia's GRU military intelligence unit used for phishing expeditions, spying, credential harvesting, and data theft against American and foreign governments and other strategic targets. This latest court-authorized takedown happened in January, and involved neutralizing "well over a thousand" home and small business routers that had been infected with the Moobot malware, which is a Mirai variant, according to FBI Director Christopher Wray, speaking at the Munich Cyber Security Conference on Thursday. Moobot can be used to remote-control compromised devices and launch...

Multiple intel sources: Baltimore bridge collapse was an “absolutely brilliant strategic attack” on US critical infrastructure - most likely cyber - & our intel agencies know it. In information warfare terms, they just divided the US along the Mason Dixon line exactly like the Civil War. Second busiest strategic roadway in the nation for hazardous material now down for 4-5 years - which is how long they say it will take to recover. Bridge was built specifically to move hazardous material - fuel, diesel, propane gas, nitrogen, highly flammable materials, chemicals and oversized cargo that cannot fit in the tunnels...

... However, Russia experts and a Wagner defector who told the ICC that the Kremlin had ordered "atrocities" in Ukraine have noted several bizarre occurrences on the night of the terror attack. Former GRU Colonel Igor Salikov says that police units supposedly disappeared around the time of the attack, while Vlad's elite forces stationed nearby also failed to show. He claims it all points to a "botched inside job" by the FSB or a poorly executed response by Russian emergency services. Another key detail is the amateur way the four gunmen handled their Kalashnikov machine guns despite ISIS fighters undergoing...

https://archive.org/details/americasretreatfromvictory_2402_librivox audio link the subversion has been happening for decades.

His name is Carsten Linke and he was recently promoted to a top post in Germany’s intelligence service, the B.N.D. The NY Times reports he was the “director of technical reconnaissance — the unit responsible for cybersecurity and surveilling electronic communications.” He was also a double-agent being paid cash to pass information to Russia. He was apparently asked for specific information on the location of US HIMARS launchers in Ukraine:Russia’s FSB spy service asked Carsten Linke last autumn via a courier to pass on precise information on the positioning of the Himars and Iris-T rocket systems that had been supplied...

The incidents come to light via a federal memo following a deliberate attack last week in Moore County, North Carolina, that left tens of thousands of people without power for days as seasonal temperatures fall. In Washington state and Oregon, spokespeople for several energy companies - Puget Sound Energy, the Cowlitz County Public Utilities District and Bonneville Power Administration - confirmed the attacks occurred in November. A federal law enforcement memo revealed that the Pacific Northwest substations have described attacks using 'handtools, arson, firearms, and metal chains possibly in response to an online call for attacks on critical infrastructure.'

Russia’s counterintelligence agency on Monday claimed that the car bomb that killed the daughter of Vladimir Putin’s ally Alexander Dugin was planted by a female Ukrainian spy who then fled to Estonia. Officials with FSB have identified Darya Dugina’s alleged assassin as 43-year-old Natalia Vovk, who they said was acting as part of a criminal plot “orchestrated and perpetrated by Ukrainian special services,” according to Russian state news agency TASS. FSB published a video compilation allegedly that opens with Vovk entering Russia in her grey Mini Cooper, which sports plates issued by the Kremlin-backed separatist Donetsk People’s Republic. A second...

The car bomb attack on 'Putin's Rasputin' - who Vladimir deemed 'uncontrollable' - has 'all the hallmarks of a Russian GRU execution' because the military spy group 'often include a target's family', an expert has claimed. Yuri Felshtinsky, author of Blowing up Ukraine: The Return of Russian Terror and the Threat of World War III, has claimed the attack on Putin loyalist Alexander Dugin's daughter would have been authorised by the Kremlin. He claimed that Dugin, 60, had a reputation for being 'unruly' and that the Kremlin is 'using Dugin in its own global propaganda war' counting on the fact...

Car bombs used to be a fixture of gangland feuds in 1990s Russia but have since fallen out of fashion. This makes it all the more striking when, as happened last night, such a device rips through a car just outside Moscow, killing Darya Dugina, daughter of the controversial nationalist ideologue Alexander Dugin. She was a prominent figure in her own right, a journalist working for an outfit Washington says is owned by Russian businessman Evgeny Prigozhin – under sanctions in the West for being the godfather of both the Wagner mercenary group and the infamous social media ‘troll farms’...

The daughter of an ultranationalist Russian ideologue believed to have had a strong influence on Vladimir Putin has been killed in a car bomb on the outskirts of Moscow, according to multiple media reports. Darya Dugin, daughter of Russian political commentator Alexander Dugin – dubbed “Putin’s brain” – died when the Toyota Land Cruiser she was driving was ripped apart by a powerful explosion about 20km west of the capital at around 9.30pm local time. The blast occurred near the village of Bolshiye Vyazemy, according to Russian media sites Baza and 112, and state-owned Novaya Gazeta. Witnesses said debris was...

The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) has exposed the agent network of the Main Directorate of the General Staff of the Russian Federation (GRU), which was supposed to assist the Russian Federation in the seizure of Ukraine. "It, in particular, included MP Andriy Derkach, who, according to the investigation, oversaw the creation of a number of private security companies in different areas to use these structures for the rapid seizure of Ukraine," the SBU press service reports on the Telegram channel. It is noted that the operational development of the network was carried out for a long time, but the...

El Salvador has officially joined the Red regimes of Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Ecuador, and Bolivia. South America is turning Red, dark Red, and little is being said to alert North Americans of the encroaching Red plague. Perhaps that's because North America is moving in the same direction. The President of the United States has surrounded himself with socialists, and some of those closest to him have had a part in turning South America Red. According to the Associated Press (March 17, 2009), Mauricio Funes, the presidential candidate of the Farbundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) is the new head of...

The information presented below confirms the participation of each of the listed individuals in the Derkach tapes disinformation campaign, demonstrates the connection between them, as well as the coordinated nature of their actions. On January 11, 2021, the US Treasury Department imposed sanctions on a number of Ukrainian politicians and civil servants for interfering in the US presidential elections by spreading disinformation. The decision concerned the individuals involved in the publication, legitimization and distribution of the disinformation concerning so-called “Derkach tapes”, in which allegedly Joe Biden and Petro Poroshenko discuss issues of Ukrainian politics and raise the topic of Burisma....

According to two sources, around the time of Russia's late February invasion of Ukraine, a cyber unit of Russia's GRU military intelligence service again conducted targeting-reconnaissance operations against a major U.S. liquefied natural gas exporter, Freeport LNG. U.S. LNG exports have long been a priority concern for Russia, viewed by Russian President Vladimir Putin as a means for the United States to undercut Russia's domination of the European gas market. On June 8, Freeport LNG suffered an explosion at its liquefaction plant and export terminal on Texas's Quintana Island. The damage suffered means the facility is not expected to resume...

Russia’s aggression against its neighbor isn’t just power politics and geostrategy, it’s about core issues of faith and identity. It’s finally happened. Early today, after weeks of will-he-or-won’t-he speculation, Russian President Vladimir Putin declared war on his neighbor and launched a major, multi-pronged invasion into Southern, Eastern, and Northern Ukraine. This is just the first military phase of many to come, only a small amount of the vast forces that Moscow has marshalled on Ukraine’s frontiers have entered action yet. Any judgements about the progress of the war would be premature (though this newsletter will be providing regular assessments on...

Swiss authorities in Zurich put Vladislav Klyushin, a Russian businessman widely noted for his Kremlin ties, on a flight bound for the U.S. on Saturday, ending a months-long extradition fight that cast a pall over this summer’s Putin-Biden talks in Geneva. Swiss reporters first confirmed Klyushin’s extradition Saturday night; the U.S. Justice Department on Monday said the 41-year-old, a top official at Moscow-based IT firm called M-13, would stand trial on charges of insider trading, citing information allegedly “stolen from U.S. computer networks,” netting “tens of millions of dollars in illegal profits.” The charges carry potentially decades’ worth of prison...

A wealthy Russian businessman indicted in Boston late last year on hacking and insider trading charges could have access to documents and information about the 2016 election hacking in the U.S. Vladislav Klyushin was extradited to the U.S. from Switzerland late last month and charged with overseeing a multinational scam that pried privileged documents that companies were filing with U.S. regulators before they were public, then trading on the information. Among his employees, and also named in the indictment, is Ivan Yermakov – who was among a dozen Russian military intelligence officers former special counsel Robert Mueller indicted in 2018...

I started reading through and or skimming the tranche of released transcripts of testimony that has been hidden from view for far too long yesterday and found myself on the second Bannon interview. These are in alphabetical order with dates also listed oddly, so you need to pay attention when a witness testimony spans two days, such as Bannon’s, as it can be confusing when reading. Bannon’s has the two days with the second day listed first. I had read beyond Bannon when I realized there was a transcript missing. The transcript for Intelligence Community Inspector General Michael Atkinson is...

he Czech Republic is informing its NATO and European Union allies about suspected Russian involvement in a 2014 ammunition depot explosion and will discuss the matter at an EU foreign ministers' meeting on Monday, acting Foreign Minister Jan Hamacek said on Twitter on Sunday. The central European country expelled 18 Russian embassy staff on Saturday and said that investigations linked Russian intelligence to the explosion, which killed two people. The expulsions and allegations by Prague have triggered its biggest dispute with Russia since the end of the communist era in 1989. The Interfax news agency cited Vladimir Dzhabarov, first deputy...

The Czech Republic is expelling 18 employees of the Russian embassy in Prague, who were allegedly "identified as members of the Russian secret services", Foreign Minister Jan Hamacek said at news conference. According to local media reports, the move comes in response to evidence obtained by the country's security services which suggests Russia's involvement in two ammunition depot explosions in 2014 in the Czech Republic which killed two people. Meanwhile, Prime Minister Andrej Babis said in the same news conference that "there is well-grounded suspicion about the involvement of officers of the Russian intelligence service GRU, unit 29155, in the...