So when I launch chrome it generally opens to the news.google.com page which is just a news aggregator. I could say it is very biased and agenda driven. This is true of most places even the alternative sites. The problem is that it seems to be only the mainstream media and the sites this google aggregator panders to that do not want you to question. They will tell you how it is, won't bother to back up the claims they make, and will continue to push debunked claims as though evidence debunking them had not come out. Furthermore, while their trust and numbers are plummeting even at small percentages of people that exclusively still get news from such sources that is still A LOT of people.
Yet, for me it is annoying to realize that on any given day when that website pops up the top post is going to likely be about Trump whether he is the most important thing going on that day, that week, etc or not. The agenda is clear "don't stop talking about Trump, repeat a lie often enough and it becomes the truth". Is Trump a saint or great? That's for individuals to decide. I've known for some time that the mainstream media is pushing an agenda of lies. They are backed by people claiming Trump has made actions that in reality it is they that have been doing them. This is right out of "Rules for Radicals" which was written by Saul Alinsky who Hillary Clinton was in frequent contact with and even did a thesis on his works.
This morning as I fired up my browser here is the top story on news.google.com.
Do you know what really makes me angry about this? It isn't that it has anything to do with Trump. It is that they are STILL playing upon the ignorance of the masses.
You see most of the masses don't actually know anything about hacking. They only know what is shown to them in CSI, NCIS, Movies, and others sources that seek to glamorize it. Well what they don't know is these depictions of hacking are FAKE. They are a facade of what hacking is, what computer security is, how it works, etc. It is set in a way that is fun to watch as the real thing would be quite boring as a spectator engagement.
I'm going to say it now. They have ZERO proof that the Russians hacked anything. They don't even have anything that technically could be classified as evidence. I will explain why, as you see this IS MY FIELD. In my day to day job I have to deal with hackers and compromised machines on almost a weekly basis.
First let that set in... If I am dealing with it on a weekly basis why are people not getting arrested?
Well first contrary to popular television and movies actually tracing a hacker back to their location is nearly impossible these days. At one time it was not, but it has become increasingly difficult over time.
The crux of it is this. When you are on the internet you are given an IP ADDRESS. Think of that as you would a POST OFFICE BOX. Some people have static IP addresses which mean that IP address never changes. I have one at my house, all of my clients do, and typically servers require them (not always). So if I were to hack from my house and jump into say the DNCs server the logs (if I didn't delete them) would show a login and what I did from my IP ADDRESS. Since it is a static IP address they could then contact my Internet Service Provider (ISP) and get my physical address.
The MSM Russian hacking narrative is not even using that detail. The only evidence they have claimed have been 1) a Phishing email John Podesta supposedly opened, and 2) supposedly a Cyrillic keyboard was used by the hacker.
First. Phishing emails and scripts are freely shared all over the internet. The Russians (people/citizens not necessarily the government) do write a lot of hacking tools that anyone can use and share them on the internet. Why? It is not actually illegal for people to hack in Russia provided they do not hack sites within Russia. This is what I learned from a documentary on the subject. This may have changed since that documentary. So a Phishing email... That could literally have been done by anyone anywhere that bothered to do a quick search and find some scripts they can use. With the amount of spam and things in your junk folder it should be apparent it does not take a hacking genius to put these things together. It also would be pretty sloppy and less direct than a Nation State(aka government) would do.
Second. The Cyrillic keyboard. There are people that use such keyboards all over the world. They do tend to go along with Russian language, but that does not mean they are from Russia. You cannot prove someone is from Russia simply from the type of keyboard. Furthermore, recent wikileaks Vault 7 releases have shown that the CIA intentionally uses such keyboards to try to frame other targets for acts. Do we know this was done? No. Yet it is just as likely as the narrative claimed by things like this news article that set me off this morning.
So that is the TWO pieces of evidence I've heard referred to. They don't prove anything. They'd be meaningless in court.
Let's return to the IP ADDRESS situation though. As if a hacker is stupid enough or extremely new and ignorant enough to hack from their own IP ADDRESS and not purge it from logs, or do it while someone else is doing a packet capture (which they wouldn't know) then that hacker can and will get caught.
There is a second type of IP ADDRESS which most of you are using now. It is called a Dynamic IP address. It is typically handed out by what is known as a DHCP server. When you connect to some network at your house, at a coffee shop, etc it will reach out looking for a DHCP server. They'll do what is called a handshake where they basically discuss how to talk. The DHCP server will tell your computer or device "You get to be IP address 192.168.0.56" or something like that where the number 56 is the important part for you. It will also tell your computer that the gateway is 192.168.0.1 or something like that.
It assigns that IP address 56 to you from a pool. When your machine disconnects it marks that IP address as available to be used again.
Now the gateway itself likely has a static IP address (but not always) and that address will be something that is unique to it on all of the internet. It is how the rest of the internet knows to find it.
Anyone using the internet from that gateway will appear to the rest of the world to be coming from that address. So if there are 200 machines using that gateway and one of them is used to hack a server. That server will show a login from the gateway IP address. At that point we can conclude that the hacker was using one of those 200 machines. By the way, most of you at your house are going through a DHCP server with your ISP unless you are paying for a static IP address.
Now if they can get access to the gateway itself and it has good enough logs they can potentially find out which MAC address (unique hardware address though they can be spoofed) was the culprit at a given time. Most gateways do not keep such active logs as it would quickly fill up their memory and/or storage space.
Yet that all assumes the hacker is either stupid or ignorant.
What a hacker would really do if they knew what they were doing would be several things.
1st) They might use what is known as a VPN server so they are going through a service that creates a virtual tunnel and totally hides their own IP address. There are free and paying services for this all over the internet as it has legit uses as well such as allowing remote users to safely connect to work network without compromising the security of that network.
2nd) They likely would compromise other machines and devices yet. Once you do this you can hop through them like a chain. This part they do show correct on television and movies. The hopping part. What they totally get wrong is how easy it is to track back to the source. It doesn't work remotely close to like they show on those things.
The logs on the server that is hacked will show the last IP (the last HOP) of the person connected. If they are packet capturing while the hack is occurring they could find that IP. Go to whois or some other registry and find out who owns that IP. They can then call that persons server admin and maybe setup a packet capture there and show the next hop it is coming from. They would then need to whois, and contact that admin.
They don't have the ability to simply do that automatically. It would take a lot of phone calls and time. Furthermore, this only works reliably if you can do it WHILE the hack is occurring. It is almost pointless to do after the fact.
If you get to one of those hops and it happens to be an entry point for an anonymous VPN then at that point the trail is lost.
These are simple things to do for any hacker that has a basic understanding of such things. A government would certainly qualify, for if their hackers don't know this basic stuff then in reality their hackers suck and are no threat. Russia's hackers don't suck.
So basically this entire narrative so far is bullshit. Yet it keeps being pushed it keeps being stressed. Let's keep prodding and poking at Russia simply because we don't like Trump and see if we can restart the cold war or perhaps a big ass world war.
That is information based purely from a technical understanding of how the internet and hacking works.
Now let's get into the other issue. None of the government agencies claiming there is evidence were even given access to the servers. They are being fed this information about evidence from a third party company. This is "Just take our word for it" being treated as evidence.
This discussion is all based upon fantasy and is fake. If you want to see the definition of FAKE NEWS this would certainly qualify as it is complete bullshit and it has been complete bullshit since it was first spoken. Anyone that truly understands hacking would know it is once we started hearing what their supposed evidence was, lack of access to the servers, etc.
Yet they keep pushing it... why?
Because it actually has nothing to do with Russia and hacking other than war and the cold war being profitable. It is more about the people that own those news companies not being happy that Donald Trump won the election after the media put so much time and effort into getting Hillary elected. For the first time in my life the media failed to force the population to elect someone they like. They are panicking. They are losing their control. They are desperate to regain it.
So why do I get angry? I get angry because this entire Russian hacking narrative is preying upon the ignorance of the population when it comes to how hacking and catching hackers actually works. Because the population knows almost nothing about how this stuff really works they are spinning a fairy tale as though it is true. Let me tell you it is just as implausible if they started telling you that Putin has a secret herd of unicorns that he kills and skins to make his clothes.
EDIT: And I happened to see that page again...
To which I can only say "No shit? Why wouldn't he?" That is completely normal behavior and what anyone would do in a normal year. However, if your name is Donald Trump suddenly ordinary behavior is written in news articles as though it wouldn't be. Hillary would jump all over a meeting like that if they had damaging information she could use against Trump. Yet, the news which I am becoming to despise due to their so obvious yet also so stupidly executed agenda would have you look at every NORMAL thing as though it is not normal. At least if it has anything to do with Trump.
EDIT 2: And then another day... I wake up fire up my browser
2nd story listed is this one
Those are both in Top Stories section. A little further down is the World section. Here is the first one there:
The sad thing with this pattern is it is not as bad as it was a month or two ago. During those times I'd say easily 75% of the headlines seemed to be Trump bashing. So in that sense it is less in quantity, but they still are pushing the same narratives over and over again. Repeat a lie often enough and it becomes the truth. Doesn't seem to be working out that way.
