LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: NYT’s Deep State Hero and Much, Much More. “How does it feel to learn that there is a powerful self-interested bureaucracy asserting itself above and against the will of the people?”
It feels like I’ve been reading the papers since the early ’80s.
UH-OH: Unpatched routers being used to build vast proxy army, spy on networks. “Multiple malware campaigns are spreading hacks of MikroTik gear, including failed Monero miners.”
According to a report by Netlab 360’s Genshen Ye, more than 7,500 of them are actively being spied on by attackers, who are actively forwarding full captures of their network traffic to a number of remote servers. Additionally, 239,000 of the devices have been turned into SOCKS 4 proxies accessible from a single, small Internet address block.
MikroTik provides routing and wireless hardware for Internet service providers and businesses worldwide, including ISP and campus network infrastructure such as outdoor fiber routers and wireless backbones. The vulnerable routers discovered by Netlab 360, still configured with an unpatched interface for the company’s Winbox router configuration utility, are widely distributed—but the largest concentrations of affected networks were in Brazil and Russia. There were 14,000 devices identified operating using US-based IP addresses.
Previously, researchers at Trustwave had discovered two malware campaigns against MikroTik routers based on an exploit reverse-engineered from a tool in the Vault7 leak—the first originally targeting routers in Brazil with CoinHive malware. The attack injected the Coinhive JavaScript into an error page presented by the routers’ Web proxy server—and redirected all Web requests from the network to that error page. However, in routers affected by this type of malware found by the Netlab 360 team, the attackers had shot themselves in the foot. “All the external web resources, including those from coinhive.com necessary for web mining, are blocked by the proxy ACLs (access control lists) set by attackers themselves,” noted Ye.
I’ve been very happy with the security features of Ubiquiti’s UniFi line of prosumer-grade network gear, which came recommended to me by an IT friend.
HMM: China ‘nearing mass production’ of J-20 stealth fighter after engine problems ironed out.
The WS-15 engine features cutting-edge single-crystal turbine blades and has been in development for several years, but Chinese technicians have struggled to get it into mass production.
However, many of the problems – which largely related to blades overheating at top speeds – have been ironed out in ground tests and trial flights, putting the goal of a consistently high quality product in sight, sources told the South China Morning Post.
I’ll believe China is producing First World jet engines when they find export customers for them who aren’t s—hole countries.
Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov are being hunted in connection with the attempted murder of Sergei Skripal, Yulia Skripal and police officer Nick Bailey.
The men are also facing charges of conspiracy to murder 67-year-old Mr Skripal, the use and possession of novichok contrary to the Chemical Weapons Act, and causing grievous bodily harm with intent to Yulia Skripal and Mr Bailey.
Speaking in the House of Commons, Prime Minster Theresa May said the two suspects were officers of the Russian intelligence service GRU. She said “only Russia” had the motive to carry out the attack.
Well, yeah.
I FAIL TO SEE A PROBLEM HERE: China Is Getting Less Bang for Its R&D Buck Than Peers.
You would think that with their reputation for being a “fast follower” and all that stolen IP that China would get more out of less spending, but apparently not.
JEFF SANDERS: Are There Really Jihadist Training Camps in the U.S.?
JOHN ELLIS: The 5 Most Overrated Beers.
The best beer is the one in your hand, even if it isn’t all that good.
CHRISTIAN TOTO FLASHBACK: Celebs Pledge Allegiance [to Obama].
JUSTICE: Man who threatened to kill Ajit Pai’s children pleads guilty, faces prison. “‘I will find your children and kill them,’ man wrote after net neutrality repeal.”
VOTERS CAN BE PRETTY SMART: Voters Say Politics, Not Issues, Driving Kavanaugh Opposition.
NEWS YOU CAN USE? Toyota is recalling 1 million hybrids at risk of catching fire. “More than half of the affected vehicles are in Japan, while just under 200,000 are in the United States. The rest were sold in Europe and other markets. US drivers will start receiving recall notices by mail this month.”
SCRAPPLEFACE: New Cruz Ad: Beto ‘Not as Cool as Every Texan Thinks.’
TOXIC DEMASCULINIZATION FROM GETTY IMAGES: Discover Masculinity Undone.
UNEXPECTED HEADLINES: France ready to deploy navy in scallop dispute with Britain.
HAM-FISTED: Texas GOP Gives Beto O’Rourke a Boost, ‘Exposing’ His Punk Band Roots. “Ted Cruz must be wondering why the Texas GOP is helping his Democrat opponent.”
You have to wonder if there might be some intraparty fighting over Cruz involved in this stuff.
COUNTERPUNCH: Trump Mocks Chuck Todd’s Call For Press To ‘Fight Back.’
To be fair, Todd is eminently mockable.
AL-BRITAINIA: Fan of Iran’s Revolution Topped Labour’s NEC Poll.
Last night’s NEC election results focused on the shocking election of Peter Willsman, a man dropped from the Momentum slate, disowned by media savvy Corbynistas like Owen Jones, Ash Sarkar, and Matt Zarb-Cousin after his rant about the anti-Semitism crisis being faked by Jewish Trump supporters. Little attention has been given to the person who topped the poll, Yasmine Dar.
On this video from last year Dar is celebrating the Iranian Islamic Revolution, a regular annual event for her which Guido reported on last year. The Iranian regime is built on a foundation of the corpses of enemies and has no greater enemy than Israel, a nation that they have many times promised to “wipe from the face of the earth”. Iran competes with North Korea among the dregs of states which systematically violate human rights. Amnesty International reports document the harsh penalties for “un-Islamic behaviour”, most famously the death penalty for same-sex relationships. This is the regime she celebrates, her “happy time” with holocaust deniers, anti-semites and conspiracy theorists.
Dar won seat on the NEC, the governing body of the Labour Party, after topping the poll with 88,176 votes, an astounding margin of victory for someone without a significant national profile.
Labour seems to think the crocodile they imported will eat them last, but the fact is that it’s consuming them first — from the inside.
(Hat tip, Seth Tillman.)
SEE THE VIOLENCE INHERENT IN THE LEFTISM: Car Ramming Attack on Dallas Fox Affiliate After ‘Meet the Press’ Host Says to ‘Fight Back’ Against Fox News.
Update: We know more about the (alleged) attacker now, and while it’s impossible to tell what his politics might be, he does seem unhinged enough to be triggered by what he sees on TV.
RED ON RED: Former Kansas Governor Endorses Democrat over Kobach. “Bad news for a badly divided Kansas Republican party.”
BYRON YORK: On Trump-Russia, too much secrecy keeps public in dark.
“Secrecy is a mode of regulation,” Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan wrote in 1997, when the congressionally-created board he headed, the Commission on Protecting and Reducing Government Secrecy, released a report. “In truth, it is the ultimate mode, for the citizen does not even know that he or she is being regulated.”
Moynihan hoped that a “culture of openness” would develop to balance the culture of secrecy. It didn’t happen. A dozen years later, in 2009, the New York Times editorialized that the federal government’s creation of “107 different categories of restricted information … seems designed not to protect legitimate secrets but to empower bureaucrats.” Still more recently, when the House held hearings on secrecy in 2015, the journalist Terry Anderson testified, “The Moynihan commission recommended some changes in the law, including an office of declassification. Nothing was acted upon.”
Today, the culture of secrecy is keeping the public from learning some basic facts about the Trump-Russia affair, even as newscasts and newspapers are filled with reporting, speculation, and debate about it. When it comes to allegations that the Trump campaign conspired with Russia to fix the 2016 election, the Justice Department and other agencies have withheld information from the public because such information is classified, or because it is purportedly critical to an ongoing investigation, or because officials just want to keep the Department’s secrets secret.
P.J. O’Rourke quipped back in the mid-’90s, about that book allegedly authored by Hillary Clinton, that “You’re the child and Washington is the village.” Nothing’s changed since then.
SPACE FORCE: Pentagon Plans to Deploy Space-Based Missiles. “Orbiting missile defenses to counter Chinese, Russian hypersonic, ballistic missiles.”
LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: Kavanaugh, Big Tech on the Hill and Much, Much More. “The media was also excited to announce that Kavanaugh refused to shake the hand of a Parkland shooting victim’s father. I have a feeling he didn’t know who this gentleman was but who cares because it makes a great story. Sure, there were people screaming like maniacs, I don’t know why Mr. Kavanaugh would not want to touch some friendly, crazed strangers.”
Such an amazing circus but I never seem to get any bread.
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