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Russian intel officers charged with hacking Dems, Clinton to disrupt election

July 13, 2018 by www.nbcnews.com Leave a Comment

WASHINGTON — Twelve Russian intelligence officers have been indicted in connection with the bitcoin-funded hacking of Democratic organizations and the Hillary Clinton campaign “with the intent to interfere” in the 2016 election, officials announced Friday.

The charges, brought by special counsel Robert Mueller and announced by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, come at a diplomatically sensitive time — just days before President Donald Trump meets formally for the first time with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki.

Among the new details: the conspirators allegedly first tried to compromise email accounts used by Clinton’s personal office on July 27, 2016, the same day that Trump appeared to urge Russia to go after her emails at a campaign press conference in Florida.

Prosecutors say that in August 2016, a U.S. congressional candidate requested and received from stolen documents related to an opponent from an online persona created by the Russian cabal. And a state lobbyist received stolen data on Democratic donors later that month, the indictment alleges.

Read the full indictment here

Rosenstein, who laid out the allegations at a news conference that began while Trump was meeting with Queen Elizabeth in London, said he had briefed Trump earlier in the week and that the president was “fully aware” of the charges in the indictment.

A statement from the White House did not address the allegations of Russian government interference and focused only on what was not in the indictment.

“Today’s charges include no allegations of knowing involvement by anyone on the campaign and no allegations that the alleged hacking affected the election result. This is consistent with what we have been saying all along,” the statement said.

The broad strokes of the hacking operation had already been made public, but the indictment provided new details and named names.

The court papers say that the defendants — two of whom were also charged with orchestrating attacks on state election systems — disseminated emails stolen from the Democrats through two online personas that they created, Guccifer 2.0 and DC Leaks.

William Bastone of the Smoking Gun website tweeted later Friday that he was the “U.S. reporter” referred to in the indictment who had received from Guccifer 2.0 the “password access to a nonpublic, password-protected website” that contained emails that had been stolen from “Victim 1.”

We’re the “U.S. reporter” referenced in para 45b of new Russian hacking indictment. “Victim 1” is former Clinton campaign worker Sarah Hamilton. We first exposed the Guccifer 2.0/DC Leaks connection on 8/12/16: https://t.co/ROQfKLCBi2 pic.twitter.com/FVIiaZNbBl

— The Smoking Gun (@tsgnews) July 13, 2018

The defendants used spear-phishing techniques to steal user names, passwords and emails and paid for the operation with bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, the indictment alleges.

“The goal of the conspiracy was to have an impact on the election,” Rosenstein said, adding that the indictment does not allege the Russian conduct changed the vote count or outcome of the 2016 election that put Trump in the White House.

Mueller, who has been investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election and possible collusion by the Trump campaign for more than a year, says the 12 defendants in Friday’s indictment are members of the GRU, Russia’s military intelligence agency.

Beginning in March 2016, they allegedly used fake identities and bogus accounts to trick volunteers and employees of Clinton’s 2016 campaign and gain access to usernames and passwords that they used to steal emails and hack into other computers.

They allegedly also hacked into the networks of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and the Democratic National Committee.

The goal of the conspiracy was to have an impact on the election.

The indictment says that in August and September 2016, Russians posing as Guccifer 2.0 were in contact with a person who communicated with senior Trump campaign officials, flagging emails posted and offering assistance.

“Please tell me if i can help u anyhow…it would be great pleasure to me,” Guccifer 2.0 wrote, according to the indictment. The description matches a contact that longtime Trump associate Roger Stone has previously said he had with Guccifer.

The court papers also say that an unidentified organization — which matches the description of Wikileaks — coordinated the release of DNC emails with Guccifer 2.0 in July 2016 with an eye toward disrupting the party’s convention.

“if you have anything hillary relayed we want it in the next tweo [sic] days prefable [sic] because the DNC is approaching and she will solidify bernie supporters behind her after,” the organization wrote, according to the indictment.

Inside a Russian troll factory

Aug. 1, 2018 04:03

DNC Chair Tom Perez said the latest indictments show the magnitude of the Russian operation. “This is not a witch hunt and it is certainly not a joke, as Donald Trump has desperately and incorrectly argued in the past,” Perez said. “It’s long past time for him and his allies in the Republican Party to stop ignoring this urgent threat to our national security.”

The hackers were identified as Viktor Borisovich Netyksho, Boris Alekseyevich Antonov, Dmitriy Sergeyevich Badin, Ivan Sergeyevich Yermakov, Aleksey Viktorovich Lukashev, Sergey Aleksandrovich Morgachev, Nikolay Yuryevich Kozachek, Pavel Vyacheslavovich Yershov, Artem Andreyevich Malyshev, Aleksandr Vladimirovich Osadchuk, Aleksey Aleksandrovich Potemkin, and Anatoliy Sergeyevich Kovalev — all officials in Unit 26165 and Unit 74455 of GRU.

Kovalev is accused of targeting a state voter system in the U.S. In July 2016, he allegedly hacked the website of an unnamed state board of elections and stole information for 500,000 voters. The following month, he hacked into the computers of a U.S. vendor that supplied software used to verify voter registration information.

Friday’s announcement isn’t Mueller’s first move against the Russians. In February, he brought charges against 13 Russian nationals who allegedly carried out a campaign of social media-fueled information warfare — some of it supporting Trump and disparaging Clinton — that he said was aimed at meddling in the 2016 election.

Ken Dilanian reported from Washington. Kenzi Abou-Sabe, Dartunorro Clark, Jane C. Timm and Tracy Connor reported from New York.

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Defence investigates ‘alarming reports’ RAAF pilots could be lured to work for Chinese military

October 19, 2022 by www.abc.net.au Leave a Comment

Australia is following the United Kingdom by investigating whether retired defence pilots have been lured with lucrative contracts to help train the Chinese military in air warfare.

Key points:

  • Britain’s defence ministry is investigating whether RAF pilots were lured to help train China’s military
  • Defence Minister Richard Marles has ordered an investigation into whether Australian pilots were also enticed
  • Opposition Leader Peter Dutton says new laws are needed to prevent secrets being shared

Britain’s Ministry of Defence has announced it is taking immediate steps to “deter and penalise” UK personnel who work for the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), following revelations dozens of former RAF pilots are being paid as instructors in China.

A spokesperson from the British Ministry of Defence said the training and the recruiting of pilots did not breach any current UK law but officials there and in other countries were trying to deter the activity.

“It is a lucrative package that is being offered to people,” one Western official was cited as saying, adding that “money is a strong motivator”.

Some of the Chinese packages are believed to be as much as 237,911 British pounds ($427,067) with British media reporting that a South African flying academy has acted as an intermediary head-hunter for the PLA.

Here, Defence Minister Richard Marles has ordered his department to investigate whether any Australian military personnel may have also been enticed to work for the PLA Air Force.

In a statement, Mr Marles said he would be “deeply shocked and disturbed” if any former Australian personnel were also serving in China.

“When our ADF personnel sign up to the defence force, they do so to serve their country and we are deeply grateful of that,” he said.

“I would be deeply shocked and disturbed to hear that there were personnel who were being lured by a pay cheque from a foreign state above serving their own country.

“I have asked the department to investigate these claims and come back to my office with clear advice on this matter.”

Calls for new laws to stop secrets and methodologies being handed to China

Former defence minister and now opposition leader Peter Dutton also described the reports as “alarming” and challenged Labor to introduce new laws to prevent the activity.

“My call today is on Richard Marles the defence minster to introduce legislation to deal with this issue. If there is a hole in the legislation now, the Coalition will support a change which will tighten it up,” Mr Dutton said.

“We can’t allow our secrets and our methodologies to be handed over to another country and particularly not China under President Xi.

“If there is legislation required, we will support that. If the government is not minded to introduce the legislation then the Coalition will introduce that legislation into the parliament.”

Mr Dutton said new laws should make it an offence for current and former Australian Defence Force personnel “to disseminate” information to countries where they were not authorised to do so.

US admirals paid hundreds of thousands to work on Australian shipbuilding projects

Concerns have been raised in the United States about the number of retired US admirals being handed lucrative contracts to work on Australian naval shipbuilding programs.

An investigation by the Washington Post found six retired US naval officers have worked for the Australian government since 2015 on contracts worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Last year, the defence department and the former Morrison government refused to reveal details of the American-dominated panel advising Australia on submarines when approached by the ABC.

According to the Washington Post, more than 500 retired US military personnel, including dozens of generals and admirals, have taken lucrative jobs since 2015 working for foreign governments, mostly in countries known for human rights abuses and political repression.

Pentagon spokesperson Brigadier General Pat Ryder says there are strict regulations in place on all former employees of the US Department of Defense.

“For example, they remain bound by laws governing non-disclosure of any non-public government information, this includes classified information or information they may have obtained through their federal employment,” he said.

“There are policies, there are laws, there are regulations, they are well established, and it is something that DOD members are educated on, retirees on and you are required to follow them.”

Posted 19 Oct 2022 19 Oct 2022 Wed 19 Oct 2022 at 2:56am , updated 19 Oct 2022 19 Oct 2022 Wed 19 Oct 2022 at 3:33am

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How Taiwan used women’s voices to send secret messages into China and woo defectors

May 29, 2023 by www.npr.org Leave a Comment

Enlarge this image

Large loudspeakers stand at the Beishan Broadcasting Wall, built in 1967 to transmit propaganda from Taiwan to mainland China, in Kinmen, Taiwan. An Rong Xu/Getty Images hide caption

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An Rong Xu/Getty Images

Large loudspeakers stand at the Beishan Broadcasting Wall, built in 1967 to transmit propaganda from Taiwan to mainland China, in Kinmen, Taiwan.

An Rong Xu/Getty Images

KINMEN, Taiwan — Back in the 1970s, Tian Liyun could not travel to China’s mainland, but her voice could.

She was among a crew of Taiwanese broadcasters who took turns trying to cajole listeners in Communist China to defect. They recited slogans and played music, with powerful speakers and shortwave radios carrying their message the short distance across the strait to mainland China.

Not to be outdone, on the other side of the strait, China set up its own loudspeakers to blare missives and music back at Taiwan.

Now discontinued, the dueling propaganda broadcasts echoed a turbulent history shared by China and Taiwan — driven apart by unresolved historical enmity after a bloody civil war . For the Taiwanese women at the front line of this audio standoff, the job gave them a unique viewpoint into cross-strait relations and Taiwan’s eventual democratization. Their stories gain new relevance today at a time of heightened tensions between Taiwan and China.

“Our job was to fight for hearts and minds,” Tian, 67, says.

A sometimes musical approach to information warfare

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A megaphone facing the Chinese mainland marks the tourist location of the Beishan Broadcasting Wall, which Taiwan used for broadcasting propaganda to mainland China, is seen on April 8, in Kinmen, Taiwan. Chris McGrath/Getty Images hide caption

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Chris McGrath/Getty Images

A megaphone facing the Chinese mainland marks the tourist location of the Beishan Broadcasting Wall, which Taiwan used for broadcasting propaganda to mainland China, is seen on April 8, in Kinmen, Taiwan.

Chris McGrath/Getty Images

It was 1974 when Taiwan’s government first sent Tian to Kinmen, a tiny island that’s far closer to China — less than 2 miles off the coast at certain points — than it is to the main island of Taiwan.

At the time, Taiwan was ruled under martial law by an authoritarian one-party state , which was laser-focused on battling its way back to defeat the Chinese Communist Party that ruled the mainland.

Taiwan’s National Security Bureau tasked Tian and the other broadcasters not just to win over Chinese across the strait, but also transmit coded messages to Taiwan’s spies on the mainland.

China did its best to block the shortwave signals and set up its own loudspeaker system to drown out Taiwan’s broadcasts with recordings of speeches from Communist leaders.

“Our broadcasts to China always suffered interference,” says Chen Xiaoping, 65, another former Taiwanese broadcaster. “They would play Peking opera, the loud cymbals muddling the sound of our broadcasts.”

One of the key tools for information warfare was the female voice — especially the dulcet tones of Teresa Teng, one of Taiwan’s biggest pop stars at the time. Though officially banned in Communist China, Teng’s music was nonetheless coveted by Chinese listeners, who cherished cassette tapes with her music copied on them, smuggled in from the then-British colony of Hong Kong .

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This photo in 2020 shows a life-size cutout of the late popular Taiwanese singer Teresa Teng, who would take part in broadcasts across the water to China, displayed at a showroom at the Mashan Observation Post at Taiwan’s Kinmen Island. Sam Yeh/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

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Sam Yeh/AFP via Getty Images

This photo in 2020 shows a life-size cutout of the late popular Taiwanese singer Teresa Teng, who would take part in broadcasts across the water to China, displayed at a showroom at the Mashan Observation Post at Taiwan’s Kinmen Island.

Sam Yeh/AFP via Getty Images

In 1979, Chen began hosting a radio show called Teresa Time , dedicated to playing Teng’s music for an hour each day to listeners in China. She says using Teng’s music was strategic, because the singer enunciated extremely clearly, so her words could go long distances without getting muddled.

“The thinking was, Teng’s beautiful voice could penetrate people’s hearts and because you listened to her music and heard her speak, you would know just how prosperous and free a place Taiwan is, and you would want to defect [from China] towards freedom,” Chen explains.

Now looking back, she laughs at this argument, given its long authoritarian rule. “That was what the times were like then. For us broadcasters, [the content] had nothing to do with our lives at all, actually. It was completely a matter of national policy,” she says.

The few women on the base

For two decades starting in the late 1950s, Communist China and Taiwan routinely shelled each other . Taiwan’s Matsu and Kinmen islands took the brunt of China’s artillery fire, due to their proximity to the mainland. On Kinmen, thousands of people were killed by the shelling. Today many older buildings on Kinmen still bear bullet holes and shrapnel scars.

This wall on Taiwan’s Kinmen island still bears bullet holes from the 1949 Battle of Guningtou between Nationalist and Communist forces. Emily Feng/NPR hide caption

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Emily Feng/NPR

But in 1979, the shelling stopped. That’s when broadcaster Zhen Meihui, 65, arrived on the island chain of Matsu, which is just a few miles from China’s southeast coast and was fortified with Taiwan’s troops at the time. Few other journalists wanted her position, but she thought of the posting as a great adventure.

“My family asked me what I was doing going to such a dangerous place, but I thought, how great is that?” Zhen told NPR.

For broadcasters stationed on Taiwan’s outlying islands — some of the few women on military bases their — life outside of work was closely monitored by military authorities. The women were required to have male chaperones with them wherever they went. Going to the local movie theater or the produce market was often the highlight of the week.

The broadcasts were also tightly controlled. Taiwanese intelligence agents would write the scripts and check them word for word. The broadcasters recorded their segments on tape reels, which were amplified toward China by a powerful shortwave radio system originally built in the early 20th century by the islands’ then Japanese colonizers.

The broadcasters were encouraged to sound warm and natural, recording conversational segments about the weather, local Taiwanese news, and played recordings of patriotic Taiwanese songs as well as Mandarin pop ballads.

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Hidden in the undergrowth, Nationalists on Kinmen Island transmit news and slogans to the Communist Chinese coast, circa 1954. Fernand Gigon/Three Lions/Getty Images hide caption

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Fernand Gigon/Three Lions/Getty Images

Hidden in the undergrowth, Nationalists on Kinmen Island transmit news and slogans to the Communist Chinese coast, circa 1954.

Fernand Gigon/Three Lions/Getty Images

“Speaking behind the microphone and having their voices transmitted by radio waves seemed to be just another way to perform their grace and femininity,” says Isabelle Cockel , an academic at Britain’s University of Portsmouth who has studied women in Taiwan’s military.

Some recordings also involved hanhua , or “yelling words,” that would blare out of enormous outdoor loudspeakers on Kinmen and Matsu. Zhen learned to stretch out her syllables as she yelled, so a phrase like “Dear compatriots!” could take up to five seconds and be clearly heard. Shortwave broadcasts also had to be read at a precise speed.

Under Taiwan’s authoritarian state, any slip-ups in pronunciation were punished.

“We laugh at North Korea now, but back then, we were just like them,” says Chen, the host of Teresa Time .

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Parallels

Responding To Nuclear Test, S. Korea Cranks Up The K-Pop

North And South Korea Dismantle Loudspeakers Blaring Propaganda On The DMZ

The Two-Way

North And South Korea Dismantle Loudspeakers Blaring Propaganda On The DMZ

Intelligence officials also required the broadcasters to occasionally transmit Morse code-encrypted messages for their spies in mainland China.

Both Chen and Zhen say they also made regular segments teaching Chinese pilots how to defect to Taiwan.

“Planes then couldn’t carry enough fuel to fly directly from China to Taiwan. So I would teach listeners some techniques, like how to wave your airplane wing flaps a certain way to signal to allies: ‘I am defecting. I want to go to Taiwan,'” Chen remembers.

In 1982, a Chinese pilot named Wu Ronggen successfully defected to Taiwan with his plane. He had become enamored by Teresa Teng’s voice while secretly listening to Chen’s radio show.

Listeners connected with the announcers

Enlarge this image

A speaker is seen on the Beishan Broadcasting Wall, used for sending audio propaganda toward mainland China in Kinmen, Taiwan. The structure is composed of 48 speakers and used to broadcast music and messages to people across the strait. An Rong Xu/Getty Images hide caption

toggle caption

An Rong Xu/Getty Images

A speaker is seen on the Beishan Broadcasting Wall, used for sending audio propaganda toward mainland China in Kinmen, Taiwan. The structure is composed of 48 speakers and used to broadcast music and messages to people across the strait.

An Rong Xu/Getty Images

The radio broadcasts ended in the 1980s as Taiwan began a path toward democracy. In 1987, the island ended nearly four decades of martial law, and in 1996, it held its first competitive presidential election.

Amid these political reforms, the broadcasters hustled to find their place in a shifting media landscape. Once entirely state controlled, media outlets could now be run independently. Underground radio stations were allowed to formally register as commercial entities.

“I went from being an announcer who read other peoples’ manuscripts to being able to start writing and producing myself, to even start a radio station and learning new communication technologies,” says Tian, the broadcaster once based on Kinmen. She is now a journalist for a private multimedia company.

Despite earlier hostility, the women behind the broadcasting say their perceptions toward China have softened over the decades. “Of course, at the time we really thought our compatriots in China were suffering and we really felt in our hearts we could help them and lift their spirits,” says Chen, the Teresa Time host.

They also built personal connections to listeners in China through radio. Tian says Chinese listeners would often write letters to her and ask about her safety.

A museum exhibit shows what was once a radio broadcasting room on Kinmen Island, Taiwan. Emily Feng/NPR hide caption

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Emily Feng/NPR

A sense of shared Chinese culture also connected the broadcasters and their secret, dedicated listeners. “We saw ourselves as all culturally Chinese people who had received a Chinese education. And many [who had fled to Taiwan after the Chinese civil war] always hoped to go back to their home in China,” Tian says. A large minority of Taiwan’s population is descended from Chinese troops and refugees, and Taiwan’s post-civil war government emphasized its Chinese roots, though that focus has decreased in the last decade.

Chen even traveled to China in the early 2000s, when cross-strait tensions eased, to give talks at university campuses and meet her former listeners and their children. Many people in China had listened to her show despite the threat of punishment if they were caught.

As a young broadcaster, she had been trained to think of Chinese people as gongfei , or communist bandits, as Taiwanese propaganda called them. But traveling to China, she realized, “it was in a closed-off environment that we became mysterious to each other.” A few people came to her talks because they were curious what a Taiwanese person looked like; they had never seen one before.

Seeing each other in the same room, Chen said, she realized people in China and Taiwan were not very different after all in their pursuit of happiness and prosperity. “And, of course, we hope that everyone in China can be free,” she says.

As for the towering speakers, Kinmen’s Beishan Broadcasting Wall has become a tourist destination.

And to this day, the crooning ballads of Teresa Teng still play from its speakers — now softly, for visitors to enjoy — as relics from a time of strife that still resonates.

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Congress Advised To Allow Cyber Counter-Attacks on Chinese Hackers

November 18, 2015 by dailycaller.com Leave a Comment

In a new report, Congress was advised to allow revenge-hacking of Chinese attackers that have been stealing information and data from US companies and government agencies. These attacks are typically state-backed by China and have been responsible for distributing stolen trade secrets from America.

The U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission released its 2015 report Tuesday, according to The Associated Press , and examined the problem of cyber attacks aimed to steal important data. The report noted that current US policies don’t allow for counter-attacks saying:

U.S. law does not allow retaliatory cyber attacks by private citizens and corporations, nor does it appear to allow counterintrusions (or ‘‘hack backs’’) for the purpose of recovering, erasing, or altering stolen data in offending computer networks.

It then went on to suggest Congress assess this choice saying, “International law has not kept up with developments in cyber warfare, and no international consensus exists on how to attribute or appropriately respond to cyber attacks.”

Later in the report, the commission went on to list solutions to the cyber espionage problem recommending:

Congress assess the coverage of U.S. law to determine whether U.S.-based companies that have been hacked should be allowed to engage in counterintrusions for the purpose of recovering, erasing, or altering stolen data in offending computer networks. In addition, Congress should study the feasibility of a foreign intelligence cyber court to hear evidence from U.S. victims of cyber attacks and decide whether the U.S. government might undertake counterintrusions on a victim’s behalf.

The Associated Press reported that China views itself as a victim of hacking, and that the cyber intrusion problem has long been a point of tension between the two countries. The AP said that the Security Review Commission is normally very critical of China.

This isn’t the first time China has taken information illegally from the U.S. The Intellectual Property Commissions Report estimated that China was between 50 percent and 80 percent of the problem with international IP theft from the US.

“Stolen corporate software—from basic computer and network operating systems and office technology to sophisticated design algorithms— allows companies to cut costs unfairly,” the report stated. “The problem is rampant in many countries around the world, but in the People’s Republic of China (PRC), a country to which so many overseas supply chains extend, even ethical multinational companies find themselves complicit.” (RELATED: Fool Me Twice… China Attacks Seven Companies After US Cyber Truce)

The report also cited a study conducted in 2011 by the US International Trade Commission that found,” if IP protection in just China were improved to a level comparable to that in the United States, the U.S. economy would obtain an estimated $107 billion in additional annual sales and net U.S. employment could increase by 2.1-million jobs.”

Chief security strategist of American network security company FireEye, Richard Bejtlich, told the AP, “We need to get our hackers to go after their hackers to put pressure on them and disrupt their operations. We need to start with more government pressure, not put the private sector in that role.”

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