Russian and Ukrainian criminals favor The Planet for their Web hosting

Last Updated on Monday, 8 March 2010 10:46 Written by Jeffreycarr Monday, 8 March 2010 10:46 0 Comments

James McQuaid has published an eye-opening post which graphically demonstrates what I’ve been saying ever since the first Project Grey Goose report came out in October, 2008; i.e., that the U.S. is the favored hosting provider for bad actors around the world. In this case, we’re talking about criminal enterprises operating out of Russia and the Ukraine and just one of the 20 or so U.S. companies who sell services to them – The Planet of Plano, TX.

By the way, there’s nothing in the unclassified 12 initiatives of the CNCI that call out this critical problem, yet its one of the easiest and least expensive problems to solve.

“Cyber War”, by any other name, is still a major f’ng problem

Last Updated on Sunday, 7 March 2010 10:57 Written by Jeffreycarr Sunday, 7 March 2010 10:56 3 Comments

I’m so tired of this constant back and forth bullshit over whether or not cyber war exists. It’s just a term, for better or for worse, that members of the public recognize. Whether or not the term has merit is not the point. I’ve repeatedly said that cyber war doesn’t exist even though I wrote a book that uses the phrase in the title. How many people would have picked up a book called “Inside Cyber Attacks, Cyber Crime, Cyber Espionage, Informatized War, Information War, and Computer Network Operations”? That title would have been more accurate but no one would buy it, which pretty much defeats the point of writing a book. What needs to be discussed is not the term “cyber war”, but what the term represents; i.e., how State, State-sponsored, and Non-State actors are using the Internet to:

• rob banks on a massive scale unlike anything we have ever seen
• commit acts of espionage against U.S. corporations that costs the U.S. millions of dollars in stolen intellectual property
• commit acts of espionage against Department of Defense and DoD contractor networks that serves to accelerate other nation states’ race to achieve parity or near-parity with superior U.S. military technology
• commit acts of network intrusion into U.S. critical infrastructure for the purpose of remaining dormant until needed to delay or stop an imminent U.S. military action against an adversary state.

And these bullet points are just the tip of the iceberg, but they’re sufficient to make my point, which is that arguing about what we call this issue shoud be at the very bottom of the list of things that need to be done right now. I agree that Mike McConnell over-stated the case but that doesn’t mean that everything he said was wrong. I think Howard Schmidt under-stated the case, but that’s understandable considering his position as cyber coordinator. And I think that Ryan Singel, while he detests hype used by others, is not adverse to using it himself; i.e., “Cyberwar Hype Intended to Destroy the Internet“. Really? “Destroy the Internet”? Come on.

Update on the “accidental shooting” of Magomed Yevloyev

Last Updated on Thursday, 4 March 2010 11:16 Written by Jeffreycarr Thursday, 4 March 2010 11:14 0 Comments

I couldn’t believe this story when I first read about it on August 31, 2008. In fact, I blogged about it at the time because it reminded me of the accidental shooting scene in Pulp Fiction. Here’s how RIA Novosti reported it back then:

MOSCOW, August 31 (RIA Novosti) – The owner of a banned website in the Russian North Caucasus republic of Ingushetia died of gunshot wounds sustained while riding in a police car on Sunday.

Magomed Yevloev died in hospital in the republic’s largest city of Nazran.

A source in the republic’s Interior Ministry told RIA Novosti that Yevloev’s death had come about after he was detained by police at Magas Airport. Police officers then put him in a police car to take him to Nazran to give testimony regarding “a criminal case.”

“Preliminary reports say that as the vehicle that Yevloev and the police officers were in was moving, one of the police officers’ guns accidentally went off, and a bullet hit Yevloev in the head,” the source said.

“He was shot straight in the temple,” said Magomed Khazbiyev, Yevloev’s official representative, adding that doctors had done all they could to save his life.

The police officer who shot him was sentenced to 2 years in a penal colony after being convicted of “negligent homicide owing to the improper discharge by a person of his professional duties“, however that has now been reduced to two years of house arrest because the crime was changed to negligent homicide. A high court judge dropped the “improper discharge” part.

I thought that the killing of  Yevloyev was so noteworthy that I used it to open Chapter 1 of my book:

Whenever someone asks if anyone ever died in a cyber war, Magomed Yevloev springs to mind.

On August 31, 2008, in the North Caucasus Republic of Ingushetia, Yevloev was arrested by Nazran police, ostensibly for questioning regarding his anti-Kremlin website Ingusheta.ru. As he was being transported to police headquarters, one of the officers in the car “accidentally” discharged his weapon, … into the head of Magomed Yevloev.

The U.S. Department of State called for an investigation. Vladimir Putin reportedly said that there would be an investigation. To date, nothing has been done. Ingushetia.ru (now Ingushetia.org) and the Chechen website kavkazcenter.com are some of the earliest examples of politically motivated Russian cyber attacks dating as far back as 2002. In other words, in addition to Russian military operations in Chechnya, there were cyber attacks launched against opposition websites as well.

The Russia Georgia War of August 2008 is the latest example, occurring just a few weeks before Magomed Yevloev’s killing. If anyone would qualify as a casualty of cyber warfare, it might just be this man.

Now I see that the man who took over Ingushetia.ru after Magomed Yevloev’s death was also killed last October, albeit under mysterious circumstances.