9. I'm confused about where DarkSide is based. I read one piece that said Romania. Now, I'm reading Russia, and other former satellite nations. How do we know where they are based? You know, technically speaking, and if we know where they are, why aren't we stuxnetting them or something?
10. Frankly, when I heard how RobinHoody DarkSide was I thought what a good way to make a buck. Community of hackers respects you. Good slice of cheese but not greedy ($1m - $4m, with affiliates getting 75%, and you donating money to children's funds....). Does this sound acid-driven to you the way it does to me? Just a reality check.
11. Maybe I'm naà ¯ve, but wouldn't it be easy to sting a group like DarkSide by pretending to be an affiliate and gaining digital info concerning DarkSide's physical location? Remember, after the NYT, WaPo and the WSJ got "breached" within days we had photos of the hacker group and the building they were operating out in Shanghai, same for the Russkies after the 2016 election.
Now that we know that there'll be rolling pearlharbors ahead on the infrastructure frontier, otherwise nice miscreants doing the dirty with our system of government and way of life by effing up our infra, FireEye and CrowdStrike will be called in as "technical" experts to back the US political assessments (this is what happened in 2016: Mandiant and CrowdStrike were called in to validate the break-in details at the DNC, critics occasionally complaining that no access was given to the FBI -- well, maybe that's because, ala Snowden, CrowdStrike is the FBI). It's getting more and more like Nazi Germany, that way, all the time. Private-public partnerships are one thing, but their permanent merge, ala Ike's warning, is another. (See Snowden's Homo contractus chapter in his 2019 memoir Permanent Record for an understanding of how quasi cyber-security companies, manned by ex-spooks who've "retired," but have kept their top-secret clearances, and escape public accountability for their deeds and assessments, while doing the same work they did before they "retired." Snowden "worked for Dell" on paper, but actually worked at the CIA headquarters in Langley.)
Another angle to watch for, now that we can set our watches in anticipation of the next pearlharbor event, is people in power making a buck off insider knowledge. Last year, just before the pandemic ramped up, Dianne Feinstein, and others in Congress, were charged with selling stock on Wall Street just in time to avoid losses. Feinstein didn't deny that there were transactions of that sort, only that it was her husband who did it and she didn't know. Now, with the Colonial breach, and CrowdStrike called in, House Democrat leader Nancy Pelosi, who has a million-dollar investment in CrowdStrike, stands to make a pretty penny after the Colonial breach caused CrowdStrike's stocks, and cybersecurity sticks in general, to rise. Like Feinstein, Pelosi said her husband handled the investment. RealClear Politics has a fuller accounting of this nonsense. The Pelosis began investment in September 2020: It would be of interest to find out why they decided to invest in that stock at that time. On other words, what did she know and when did she know it?
Personally I wish the DarkSiders were more like the Mel Brooks gang. Men in Tights. Hoarse lisperers. Not the unintentional laughs of bad logic but a finely honed comedic script that Brooks was a genius at in his prime. Remember how tired Lily von Stumpf got playing Lady Liberty night after night, mattress on her back? Well, WaPo says Democracy Dies in Darkness, and with Jeff Bezos at the helm that's all but guaranteed.
Last year Big Pharma began their ka-ching-a-ling millionpede march toward big profits. This year, it's Big Security's turn. Next up, DarkSide will have Big Power by the grids -- grids that give us the Breath of Life we can't live without known as the Internet. It'll take more than apology if DarkSide fucks with our hivemined social-media apparatus. And t hen it's on to War -- we all profit! Hug?
UPDATE: Problem Yok! 5/15/21
Well, by some reports, DarkSide has been taken down, and outstanding victims of their ransomware have been given decrypters. A message from DS says, "The following actions will be taken to solve the current issue: You will be given decryption tools for all the companies that haven't paid yet. " So Colonial should have a decrypter for free now. So, now Kevin Mandia can go home; his intrusion service is no longer needed to help Joe Blount rebuild his system; probably Colonial's highly paid techies can do that. And CrowdStrike (FBI) can now stand down, another mission accomplished for the Deep State that Bill Moyers so eloquently describes.
WaPo is reporting that Mandiant has sourced the intended data servers to which DarkSide was intending to flow the files stole from Colonial Pipeline. It's not Russia or east bloc, but New York! WaPo:The hackers, a criminal group thought to operate mostly out of Russia, also appeared to be readying to extort Colonial by stealing data that it could later threaten to release unless a fee were paid. But Mandiant quickly traced the stolen data to a server owned by a New York hosting firm, which over the weekend shut the server down, preventing any data from flowing to the hackers, according to several people familiar with the matter.
No mention of the FBI's findings or good buddy CrowdStrike's findings.
Joe's fine with the breach. It resulted in a windfall. Some MSMs are reporting that the cyber breach caused shortages, but this is contradicted by a NYT piece that said the pandemic had slowed traffic enough that storage tanks along the Colonal service line had plenty of gasoline in them, and only panic buyers and Nervous Nellies were affected. The breach had caused the price of gasoline to rise at the pump by several cents, essentially resulting in a windfall for Colonial. Biden said we mustn't price gouge: It's Not Who We Are. What leadership! It was like FDR all over again.
One wonders how a guy like Joe Blount, with all his connections to former Bush officials and Deep State functionaries, like Mandiant and Crowstrike people, could have gotten himself in the position to be ransomed to begin with. Just recall that Mandia had gone before Congress in 2011 and told them the US government in 9 out of 10 cases had alerted Fortune 500 corporations and key infrastructure companies to their vulnerabilities. Surely, Joe would have been alerted.
The MSM is promoting the idea that ransomware is now mainstreaming and will become a feature of future cyber assaults. The NYT piece above says, "The explosion of ransomware cases has been fueled by the rise of cyberinsurance - which has made many companies and governments ripe targets for criminal gangs that believe their targets will pay - and of cryptocurrencies, which make extortion payments harder to trace." So, their should be stories ahead about the rocks in the head of such insurance companies -- unless, of course, there's another angle (wink).
It's sounding more and more like the Colonial Pipeline monkey business is another false flag cooperative effort between government figures and a willing corporate partner to play along (it's the petroleum industry and this one a Koch brothers enterprise, so moral high grounds are involved from the folks who helped give us ecocidal climate change), with a view to pushing through new security legislation that validates the "cyberwar" we're in, while making lots of people investment money (hello, Nancy Pelosi). By the way, did Nancy ever pay that ransom for the return of her podium stolen during the January 6 Barnum and Bailey clown show in DC?
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