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TechCrunch: Cloudflare DNS goes down, taking a large piece of the internet with it
by jim bell 18 Jul '20

18 Jul '20

TechCrunch: Cloudflare DNS goes down, taking a large piece of the internet with it. https://techcrunch.com/2020/07/17/cloudflare-dns-goes-down-taking-a-large-p…

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Re: "unclean hands" -- Re: Fw: Re: Assange Superseding Indictment
by таракан 18 Jul '20

18 Jul '20

The "legal team" of Mr Assange, it is before everything a juicy business... for themselves... 'Law' is a parody there. A necessary comedy for that democratic circus. Well, they won't execute Mr Assange, they will make him slowly and slowly die... to the extradition, then in the USA, then in a supermax, until the end, and he will be an example for the others who would like to try... just don't try... Many things were wrong with Mr Assange, If you intend to be a spy, then you keep your profile a total secret, not showing and advertising yourself everywhere on TV. If you intend to be a 'journalist' (and nothing really positive can be linked to that term) then it's a bad idea to act as a spy... Finally, if you intend to create an 'open society' which is 'clean' and transparent and where everything is been known, that is exactly what the Soros-US-Democratic shit have promoted in Ukraine with the results of breaking the country in two... If you mess with the US military secrets, expect reactions. In Russia, Assange would have been shot dead a long,long time ago for having done just a fraction of what he has done. Sometimes I think shot faster even in 'democratic Ukraine', now after euromaidan. Crimes of war are everywhere. War is awful. Regarding Donbass there are thousands and thousands of anonymous videos on youtube and elsewhere , similar to the 'Collateral Murders' which has produced by WikiLeaks... featuring horrible crimes , some fakes, some reals. (and good luck to know which one are real and which one are fake) So what do we learn from Wikileaks, that the USA are no better than the others 'non-democratic' countries? What a lesson! There is just a conclusion... whatever one may think of Assange, he certainly doesn't deserve such a horrible fate because Assange didn't kill anyone, didn't steal anyone and didn't intend to cause harm to anyone - even not to the US Government apparently... and I do believe he is probably a very naive person. What happens to Assange will happen to many others. Once you're in their supermax, it is hard to escape. Again, all this is a question of action... legal team is bullshit. Totally bullshit. There are ways of making people out of jail... all depends on risks, money and especially motivations. What we see is the manifestation of a hidden (and hideous) power inside the 'democratic' countries. That power can only be fought by a group of people who are opposed to that power for ideological reasons. Once again, so far there are no ideology to unite... ---------- CRYPTOANALYZER ----------

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www.Tesmanian.com: FCC approves the operation of 'Starlink Router' for SpaceX's internet
by jim bell 18 Jul '20

18 Jul '20

www.Tesmanian.com: FCC approves the operation of 'Starlink Router' for SpaceX's internet. https://www.tesmanian.com/blogs/tesmanian-blog/starlink-router-fcc Hopefully, soon enough, nations won't be able to censor their populations' access to the internet.

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Fw: Re: Assange Superseding Indictment
by coderman 17 Jul '20

17 Jul '20

list may know of a copy, somewhere? :P not arguing against the life destroying pressure. but no sympathy for smug fuck you after the fact... ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐ Original Message ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐ On Monday, June 29, 2020 7:51 AM, Digitalfolklore <digitalfolklore(a)protonmail.ch> wrote: > Sabu posted a pic...made a bet with Jester...he also posted a blockchain address... > > see if thats around...Sabus twitter was cloned...take the S out of anonymous...add Sabu and you';ll have the clone. > > Also important to remember Biella Coleman met with Sabu more than once. > I 'll leave that for you to work out. > > It is important to remember when your family are heroin dealers and you're the only family member not in jail...you will do anything to save the children...Sabu was in the wrong poke at the wrong time. He should have been more careful...ever notice that lovely iMac in pics? > There were other suspect accounts...wikileaks called out AnonIRC > > Sabu was known in the local area as a home panel beater...he made videos on YT showing how to fix bent fenders....he 'was' well known in the area. > VH > > ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐ Original Message ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐ > On Friday, 26 June 2020 7:52 AM, coderman <coderman(a)protonmail.com> wrote: > >> ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐ Original Message ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐ >> On Thursday, June 25, 2020 9:50 PM, coderman <coderman(a)protonmail.com> wrote: >> ... >> >>> it should be noted in 2011 at DEF CON Sabu the rat fuck was helping FBI NatSec "hack the hackers" using DirtBoxes with custom exploit chains. >> >> to be clear: Sabu didn't help write the hacks, only told them where to point. Sabu more script kiddie than exploit dev... >> >> best regards,

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Bitcoin investor sues irs for its unlawful seizure of financial records of crypto exchanges.
by jim bell 16 Jul '20

16 Jul '20

https://news.bitcoin.com/bitcoin-investor-sues-irs-unlawful-seizure-financi… Bitcoin Investor Sues IRS for Unlawful Seizure of Financial Records at 3 Crypto Exchanges Bitcoin investor Jim Harper has sued the U.S. Internal Revenue Service (IRS), its commissioner, and a number of federal agents. He alleged that they unlawfully seized his private financial information from three cryptocurrency exchanges.Bitcoin Investor vs. IRS Bitcoin investor Jim Harper has filed a lawsuit against IRS Commissioner Charles P. Rettig, the IRS, and “John Doe IRS Agents 1-10.” The latter refers to “fictitious names for the person or persons who authorized and conducted the search” of his private financial records, according to the court document filed on July 15 with the District Court for the District of New Hampshire. A jury trial is demanded. The document outlines three counts of violations. The first is a “violation of the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution” as “the defendants conducted an unlawful search and seizure” of the plaintiff’s private financial information. The second is a violation of the Fifth Amendment as “the defendants violated due process protections in seizing” the plaintiff’s private financial information. The third is a violation of 15 U.S.C. § 7609(f) as the defendants obtained the plaintiff’s “financial records through an unlawful John Doe subpoena.” The complaint detailed that Harper opened an account with Coinbase in 2013. He stopped accumulating new bitcoin and began liquidating his investments at Coinbase and transferred his remaining holdings to a hardware wallet in 2015. By early 2016, he no longer had any bitcoin at Coinbase. From 2016, he liquidated his bitcoin through either Abra or Uphold exchanges. He claimed to have properly declared and paid all applicable taxes on his bitcoin gains. The IRS filed the infamous ex parte “John Doe” administrative summons on Coinbase in 2016, seeking information on U.S. persons who conducted crypto transactions between Jan. 1, 2013, and Dec. 31, 2015. Coinbase protested and the IRS narrowed its demand, seeking instead information regarding accounts with at least the equivalent of $20,000 in crypto transactions in any one year during the above period. When the exchange refused to comply, the IRS petitioned to enforce the summons against Coinbase. According to Coinbase, this means information on 8.9 million transactions and 14,355 account holders. [end of partial quote]

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Ya just can't keep a good meme down
by Zig the N.g 16 Jul '20

16 Jul '20

So you just can't keep a good meme down and since we ripped a new space time continuum in the overton window, those memes just get around all excited like Hillary Clinton at an Iranian missile defence battery at the Tehran international airport - I know, I know, that's an insult to missiles and Ukrainian national airlines. Memes muffaduckas, they be da bomb! #JewishPrivilege Trends on Twitter as People Start to Notice a Pattern http://dstormer6em3i4km.onion/jewishprivilege-trends-on-twitter-as-people-s… [triggering Huwaite Zio supremacism meme not attached] Even with all of the banning going on on the internet, the Jews are having a hard time keeping the lid on the bottle as they continue to shove this “white privilege” nonsense down people’s throats while they themselves are by far the wealthiest and most privileged group in America. Typically, Jewish privilege entails being totally above all forms of criticism. However, on Sunday, #JewishPrivilege was a top trending topic on both American and British Twitter. Haaretz: https://www.haaretz.com/us-news/.premium-white-supremacists-trigger-twitter… Some of the tweets revived the attempt to pass themselves off as being Jewish and “confessing” their sins of privilege. One wrote that he felt “guilty that our people’s role in slavery dwarfed Whites, but it’s important we pay for that dominant role that hurt so many millions of blacks. We jews are 1/3 of billionaires and MUST give much more to blacks.” Almost immediately, Jews across Twitter pushed back, using the same hashtag to share their experiences with antisemitism. By early Monday, the hashtag had been largely “flipped”: #JewishPrivilege was dominated by reminders of antisemitism over the years and stories of struggles with modern antisemitism. The reason it “flipped” is that everyone who was tweeting against the Jews was banned. Regrettably, at time of writing, all of the tweets calling out the Jews have been deleted, and all that is left are a bunch of Jews using the hashtag to whine about how mean people are to them. .. [litany of whining tweets elided] These tweets just go on and on and on with these people whining like nothing you’ve ever seen in your life. But you get the picture. Surely, this whole “yes, we are the richest and most powerful, but also the most oppressed, please listen to us whine about how oppressed we are” bit does not go over well with most people? It will be interesting to see if the Jews can continue to manage this situation, continue to deflect from themselves as they promote the idea that certain groups – whites, in particular, and to a much lesser extent, East Asians – need to be punished for their status in society. .. A reminder of what shall contiue to progress if we fail to keep opening that overton window - bent knees by the likes of Linus Cuck Torvalds: Linux Creator Finally Stops Killing Black People, Replaces Murderous Words in Coding Style Guide http://dstormer6em3i4km.onion/wip-linux-devs-finally-stop-killing-black-peo… Pictured: Linus Torvalds, creator of Linux, back when he still had a spine. Linus Torvalds is old, tired, and just wants to be paid and left alone. They broke him back in 2018, when enemies – led by the New Yorker, a Jewish media publication – effectively ran him out of his own company. He was allowed to return after a period of time off, but now he basically just functions as a figurehead, and does what the frizzy-haired mulattoes running the HR department tell him to do. This newest thing he has agreed to is just simply bizarre. Apparently, we can’t even say the words “white” and “black” anymore – in any context. ZDNet: https://www.zdnet.com/article/linux-team-approves-new-terminology-bans-term… Linus Torvalds approved on Friday a new and more inclusive terminology for the Linux kernel code and documentation. Going forward, Linux developers have been asked to use new terms for the master/slave and blacklist/whitelist terminologies. Proposed alternatives for master/slave include: primary/secondary main/replica or subordinate initiator/target requester/responder controller/device host/worker or proxy leader/follower director/performer Proposed alternatives for blacklist/whitelist include: denylist/allowlist blocklist/passlist The Linux team did not recommend any specific terms but asked developers to choose as appropriate. The new terms are to be used for new source code written for the Linux kernel and its associated documentation. The older terms, considered inadequate now, will only be allowed for maintaining older code and documentation, or “when updating code for an existing (as of 2020) hardware or protocol specification that mandates those terms.” “Primary” and “secondary” are definitely not good replacements for “master” and “slave.” Probably, better terms would be “boss” and “employee.” However, that probably is still not allowed under this new communism that we have on our hands, as it still implies a power differential. The terms leader, director, and controller reek of toxic masculinity. Why does there have to be an imbalance of power with some parts of the Linux kernel being above others? We have equality now, and both people of color and women are at the same level as white men. We need to reflect that in software, just like we’re now making software reflect that black lives matter. There is no place for hierarchy in software function. It’s time to address structural racism in open source software, yes, but it’s also time to address structural inequality. If we want a truly inclusive open source software environment, we need to destroy unequal relationships of power in computer programs. In fact, we need to stop giving orders to our computers altogether. If you think about it, computers are just like black people. We’ve built America on the backs of blacks, by forcing them to pick the civilization-building material known as cotton, and now we’re exploiting computers for our own selfish gains too. It’s slavery all over again. Computer Lives Matter. All lives matter? Damn straight: First Blood: White Woman Killed for Saying “All Lives Matter” http://dstormer6em3i4km.onion/first-blood-white-woman-killed-for-saying-all… Asked About “Cops Killing Blacks” Hoax, Trump Says “White People” Five Times http://dstormer6em3i4km.onion/asked-about-cops-killing-blacks-hoax-trump-sa… CNN Journalist Who Doxed Tucker Carlson’s Writer is a Persian Dissident Targeting War Critics http://dstormer6em3i4km.onion/cnn-journalist-who-doxed-tucker-carlsons-writ…

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a new ideology
by таракан 16 Jul '20

16 Jul '20

ok here we come What movement like cypherpunk are lacking ? Brain, European Brains... Read the "cypherpunk manifesto", it's just pathetic ... a few lines about privacy ... Read the unabomber manifesto, you have a hard time believing such a garbage can come from apparently educated mind in mathematics... just a bunch of banalities... "they kill nature,,, kill them' " Why is that? Simply because ideology is hard. It's maybe harder than everything. Having a lucid vision of past, present and future and what's to be done and achieved at the present time is the only priviledge of a few As for Julian Assange, It's not better "want open socierty... transparency..." well the same open society just put you in jail ... forever... America... USA... the hyper-power with a population of most retarded people... That's getting transparent here.... a nation of idiot cow-boys and their bit**ches cannot produce much , right ? USA ... "the only place who switched directly from barabary to decadence" dixit Albert Einstein (who so far was never proven wrong) Then we have R.U.S.S.I.A where marxism-leninism is still in the air. the last true idology of the human race. Marixsm-leninism is based on real ideology from hegel at least, not something the sectarians americans idiots can get. Russia got hit, badly... still on their feets... only future ideology will come from Russia, despite the social situation of mafiosi-country which is ruling now. Some have made Ukraine as a new ideology... a laboratory of control and horror for the Hillary Clinton power. Russia is also bad but still can be used for a differebnt power... a cypherpunk power or even more... but I only see asmathic freaks here...on this forum !

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Ars Technica: Malware stashed in China-mandated software is more extensive than thought
by jim bell 15 Jul '20

15 Jul '20

Ars Technica: Malware stashed in China-mandated software is more extensive than thought. https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2020/07/malware-stashed-in-c…

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Free Julian Assange
by jim bell 15 Jul '20

15 Jul '20

https://defend.wikileaks.org/2020/07/03/rights-groups-call-on-uk-to-free-ju… 40+ Rights Groups Call on UK to Free Julian Assange WikiLeaks publisher turns 49 in prison, facing U.S. extradition Dozens of press freedom, human rights, and privacy rights organizations across five continents have co-signed an open letter to the U.K. government, calling for the immediate release of imprisoned WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. The publisher, who turns 49 years old today in HMP Belmarsh, is facing extradition to the United States where he has been indicted under the Espionage Act for WikiLeaks’ 2010-11 publications of the Iraq War Logs, the Afghan War Diaries, and State Department cables. If convicted, Mr Assange would face up to 175 years in prison, “tantamount to a death sentence.” The co-signers write, “This [indictment] is an unprecedented escalation of an already disturbing assault on journalism in the US, where President Donald Trump has referred to the news media as the ‘enemy of the people’. Whereas previous presidents have prosecuted whistleblowers and other journalistic sources under the Espionage Act for leaking classified information, the Trump Administration has taken the further step of going after the publisher.” Seventeen of the 18 charges against Mr Assange are under the 1917 Espionage Act, marking the U.S.’s first-ever attempt to prosecute the publication of truthful information in a fundamental test of the First Amendment’s protection of press freedoms. Mr Assange has also been charged with conspiring to violate the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, which uses language similar to the Espionage Act. Reporters without Borders, PEN International, ARTICLE19, the International Federation of Journalists, and the National Union of Journalists are among the 40 rights groups who have signed on to the letter, initiated by the Courage Foundation, a whistleblower support network which campaigns for Mr Assange’s freedom and the public’s right to know. Carles Torner, Executive Director of PEN International, said: “This indictment effectively opens the door to criminalising activities that are vital to many investigative journalists who write about national security matters. Beyond the case itself, we are concerned that the mere fact that Assange now risks extradition and potentially decades behind bars if convicted in the USA has a chilling effect on critical journalism, which is essential for exposing the truth about crimes committed by governments.” [end of partial quote] Jim Bell's comments follow: Yes, I am aware of how controversial Julian Assange is on the Cypherpunks list. My position is, 'Any leak that some government, somewhere, doesn't like is very likely to be a good leak.'

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Exclusive: Secret Trump order gives CIA more powers to launch cyberattacks
by coderman 15 Jul '20

15 Jul '20

https://news.yahoo.com/secret-trump-order-gives-cia-more-powers-to-launch-c… Exclusive: Secret Trump order gives CIA more powers to launch cyberattacks [Zach Dorfman, Kim Zetter, Jenna McLaughlin and Sean D. Naylor](https://www.yahoo.com/author/zach-dorfman-kim-zetter-jenna) , [Yahoo News](https://news.yahoo.com/)•July 15, 2020 Scroll back up to restore default view. The Central Intelligence Agency has conducted a series of covert cyber operations against Iran and other targets since winning a secret victory in 2018 when President Trump signed what amounts to a sweeping authorization for such activities, according to former U.S. officials with direct knowledge of the matter. The secret authorization, known as a presidential finding, gives the spy agency more freedom in both the kinds of operations it conducts and who it targets, undoing many restrictions that had been in place under prior administrations. The finding allows the CIA to more easily authorize its own covert cyber operations, rather than requiring the agency to get approval from the White House. Unlike previous presidential findings that have focused on a specific foreign policy objective or outcome — such as preventing Iran from becoming a nuclear power — this directive, driven by the National Security Council and crafted by the CIA, focuses more broadly on a capability: covert action in cyberspace. The “very aggressive” finding “gave the agency very specific authorities to really take the fight offensively to a handful of adversarial countries,” said a former U.S. government official. These countries include Russia, China, Iran and North Korea — which are mentioned directly in the document — but the finding potentially applies to others as well, according to another former official. “The White House wanted a vehicle to strike back,” said the second former official. “And this was the way to do it.” [President Trump and the CIA. (Photo illustration: Yahoo News; photos: AP(3), Getty Images)]President Trump and the CIA. (Photo illustration: Yahoo News; photos: AP(3), Getty Images) The CIA’s new powers are not about hacking to collect intelligence. Instead, they open the way for the agency to launch offensive cyber operations with the aim of producing disruption — like cutting off electricity or compromising an intelligence operation by dumping documents online — as well as destruction, similar to [the U.S.-Israeli 2009 Stuxnet attack](https://news.yahoo.com/revealed-how-a-secret-dutch-mole-aided-the-u…, which destroyed centrifuges that Iran used to enrich uranium gas for its nuclear program. The finding has made it easier for the CIA to damage adversaries’ critical infrastructure, such as petrochemical plants, and to engage in the kind of hack-and-dump operations that Russian hackers and WikiLeaks popularized, in which tranches of stolen documents or data are leaked to journalists or posted on the internet. It has also freed the agency to conduct disruptive operations against organizations that were largely off limits previously, such as banks and other financial institutions. Another key change with the finding is it lessened the evidentiary requirements that limited the CIA’s ability to conduct covert cyber operations against entities like media organizations, charities, religious institutions or businesses believed to be working on behalf of adversaries’ foreign intelligence services, as well as individuals affiliated with these organizations, according to former officials. “Before, you would need years of signals and dozens of pages of intelligence to show that this thing is a de facto arm of the government,” a former official told Yahoo News. Now, “as long as you can show that it vaguely looks like the charity is working on behalf of that government, then you’re good.” The CIA has wasted no time in exercising the new freedoms won under Trump. Since the finding was signed two years ago, the agency has carried out at least a dozen operations that were on its wish list, according to this former official. “This has been a combination of destructive things — stuff is on fire and exploding — and also public dissemination of data: leaking or things that look like leaking.” Some CIA officials greeted the new finding as a needed reform that allows the agency to act more nimbly. “People were doing backflips in the hallways [when it was signed],” said another former U.S. official. But critics, including some former U.S. officials, see a potentially dangerous attenuation of intelligence oversight, which could have unintended consequences and even put people’s lives at risk, according to former officials. The involvement of U.S. intelligence agencies in hack-and-dump activities also raises uncomfortable comparisons for some former officials. “Our government is basically turning into f****ing WikiLeaks, [using] secure communications on the dark web with dissidents, hacking and dumping,” said one such former official. The CIA declined to comment or respond to an extensive list of questions from Yahoo News. The National Security Council did not respond to multiple written requests for comment. While the CIA has been pushing for years to expand its cyber authorities, Russia’s interference in the 2016 election led Obama officials to [grasp for new ways to retaliate against the Kremlin](https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2017/world/national-securi…. High-level discussions included proposals for the CIA to dump embarrassing hacked information about Russian officials online, as well as to destroy Russian servers, according to former officials. But just days away from launching operations in the late summer of 2016, intelligence operatives [were told to stand down](https://www.yahoo.com/news/stand-obama-team-blew-response-russian-med…, according to former officials. The decision to do so was made at the highest levels of the Obama administration, according to a former senior national security official. During the early days of the Trump administration, intelligence officials were hopeful that the president would give the go-ahead to those operations. But senior Trump officials weren’t interested in retaliating against Russia for the election interference, according to a former official. “It was radio silence,” the former official said. “It all dissipated, went to nothing.” While plans for immediate cyber retaliation against Russia faded, discussions about expanding the CIA’s cyber authorities continued to accelerate under Trump. For years, the CIA had bristled under what some intelligence officials considered onerous barriers to covert action in cyberspace that prevented it from even proposing many operations, according to former officials. When it came to covert action, “you always had the two camps [inside the CIA],” said Robert Eatinger, who served at the CIA for 24 years, including a stint as the agency’s top lawyer. There were “those who felt that their hands were too tied, and those who felt the restrictions were wise and appropriate,” recalled Eatinger, who said he has no knowledge of the CIA cyber finding signed by Trump and wouldn’t discuss specific incidents that occurred during his time with the agency. Advocates for greater cyber authorities gained the upper hand in these debates under the Trump administration, which encouraged the CIA to stretch its prior authorities to pursue more aggressive offensive cyber operations — particularly against Iran. “Trump wanted to push decision making to the lowest possible denominator,” said a former intelligence official. Mike Pompeo made that point clear after Trump made him CIA director in January 2017. Pompeo’s message, the former official said, was: “We don’t want to hold you up, we want to move, move, move.” A current senior intelligence official, who declined to discuss specific U.S. government operations or policies, called Trump-era interest in offensive operations “phenomenal.” The CIA, the National Security Agency and the Pentagon “have been able to play like we should be playing in the last couple years,” the current official said. John Bolton’s appointment as national security adviser in April 2018 gave another boost to those seeking to ease restrictions on cyber operations. “We needed to scrap the Obama-era rules and replace them with a more agile, expeditious decision-making structure,” Bolton writes in his recently published memoir, “The Room Where It Happened.” Part of this involved strengthening the U.S. government’s “clandestine capabilities” in cyberspace against “nonstate actors” and others, he writes. In September 2018, Bolton announced that Trump had signed a presidential directive [easing Obama-era rules](https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/trump-authori… governing military cyber operations. Although the administration disclosed the existence of that directive — known as National Security Presidential Memorandum 13 — the underlying rules of engagement for military cyber operations remain secret. The administration also kept secret the CIA finding, which gave the agency its new authorities. The CIA’s new cyber powers prompted concerns among some officials. “Trump came in and way overcorrected,” said a former official. Covert cyber operations that in the past would have been rigorously vetted through the NSC, with sometimes years-long gaps between formulation and execution, now go “from idea to approval in weeks,” said the former official. Former officials declined to speak in detail about cyber operations the CIA has carried out as a result of the finding, but they said the agency has already conducted covert hack-and-dump actions aimed at both Iran and Russia. For example, the CIA has dumped information online about an ostensibly independent Russian company that was “doing work for Russian intelligence services,” said a former official. While the former official declined to be more specific, BBC Russia reported [in July 2019](https://www.bbc.com/russian/features-49050982) that hackers had breached the network of SyTech, a company that does work for the FSB, Russia’s domestic spy agency, and stolen about 7.5 terabytes of data; the data from that hack was [passed to media organizations](https://www.forbes.com/sites/zakdoffman/2020/03/21/putins-se…. In another stunning hack-and-dump operation, an unknown group in March 2019 posted on the internet chat platform Telegram the names, addresses, phone numbers and photos of Iranian intelligence officers allegedly involved in hacking operations, as well as hacking tools used by Iranian intelligence operatives. That November, the details of 15 million debit cards for customers of three Iranian banks linked to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps were also dumped on Telegram. Although sources wouldn’t say if the CIA was behind those Iran breaches, the finding’s expansion of CIA authorities to target financial institutions, such as an operation to leak bank card data, represents a significant escalation in U.S. cyber operations. Under prior administrations, senior Treasury Department officials argued successfully against leaking or wiping out banking data, according to former officials, because it could destabilize the global financial system. These were operations the “CIA always knew were an option, but were always a bridge too far," said a former official. “They had been bandied about at senior levels for a long time, but cooler heads had always prevailed." The new cyber finding further emboldened the CIA’s operations against Iran, according to former officials. Even before Trump signed the directive, administration officials were already encouraging the CIA to aggressively interpret preexisting secret Iran-related authorities to help prosecute the administration’s “maximum pressure” campaign against Tehran. Using the Cold War strategy of rolling back the Soviet Union as inspiration, senior Trump national security officials believed that destabilizing Iran within its borders would force the regime to cease its adventurism abroad and, perhaps, collapse. The maximum-pressure campaign includes punishing economic sanctions, but has also involved CIA cyberattacks on Iranian infrastructure, said former officials. “It was obvious that destabilization was the plan on Iran,” said one former official, and Trump administration officials were eager to have the CIA conduct destructive cyber operations against targets inside that country. Bolton “wanted another tool, he wanted another hammer. He was looking at Stuxnet and how to be mean to Iran, so that was probably attractive to him,” said another source. The Trump administration was able to lean on extensive legal powers for covert action against the Islamic Republic that were already on the books, including a presidential finding dating back at least to the early 2000s devoted to counterproliferation — in other words, preventing a nuclear-armed Iran, according to former officials. Another long-standing Iran-focused presidential finding authorizes the CIA to counter Tehran’s influence in the Middle East, in particular by combating Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and by supporting groups in the region opposed to the regime, according to former U.S. officials. Neither these two Iran-related findings, nor the new cyber finding, mention regime change as a stated goal, according to former officials. Over time, however, the CIA and other national security officials have interpreted the first two Iran findings increasingly broadly, with covert activities evolving from their narrow focus on stopping Tehran’s nuclear program, they said. The Iran findings have been subject to “classic mission creep,” said one former official. Fatigue from having to continually beat back Iran’s nuclear progress gradually led U.S. officials to take an even more aggressive approach that began to resemble a regime change strategy, according to former officials. The thinking became “If we can impact the regime, then no bomb,” said another former official. “We’re playing semantics — destabilization is functionally the same thing as regime change. It’s a deniability issue,” the former official said. While the CIA’s new powers expand the agency’s ability to target Iran and other foreign adversaries, they also present potential pitfalls, according to former officials. The CIA and the Pentagon have long tussled over authorities in cyberspace, and these coordination issues will only become more critical now, according to former officials — especially when U.S. military operatives online unknowingly run up against their counterparts from the CIA. “If you’re doing something on someone’s network and you have friendly forces also on the network, you don’t want to have fratricide,” said a former senior military intelligence official. Even inside the U.S. intelligence community, the CIA has a reputation for secrecy, according to former officials. The CIA’s “deconfliction is poor, they’re not keeping people in the loop on what their cyber operations are,” said another former official. Some former officials even worry about the oversight of cyber operations within the CIA. Agency cyber operatives “weren’t always transparent” about their activities, said a former senior official. “It was a problem. There were times I was surprised.” This more permissive environment may also intensify concerns about the CIA’s ability to secure its hacking arsenal. In 2017, WikiLeaks published a large cache of CIA hacking tools known as “Vault 7.” The leak, which a partially declassified [CIA assessment](https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/elite-cia-unit… called “the largest data loss in CIA history,” was made possible by “woefully lax” security practices at the CIA’s top hacker unit, the assessment said. Eatinger, the former top CIA attorney, who retired in 2015, said it’s unclear to him whether the new cyber finding would be a return to the agency’s more freewheeling days of the 1980s, or something that goes even further. Either way, it’s a “big deal,” he said. Removing NSC oversight of covert operations is a significant departure from recent history, according to Eatinger. “I would look at the intel community as the same as the military in that there should be civilian control of big decisions — who to go to war against, who to launch an attack against, who to fight a particular battle,” he said. “It makes sense that you would have that kind of civilian or non-intelligence civilian leadership for activities as sensitive as covert action.” Regardless, these expansive new cyber powers may become a lasting legacy of the Trump administration, solidifying the greater role the CIA has long coveted in a key arena, and providing the agency with authorities it has desired for three presidential administrations. “People thought, ‘Hey, George W. Bush will sign this,’ but he didn’t,” said a former official. CIA officials then believed, “‘Obama will sign it.’ Then he didn’t.” “Then Trump came in, and CIA thought he wouldn’t sign,” recalled this official. “But he did.”

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