http://lasinkhole.wordpress.com/2013/05/07/sites-down/
http://www.matthewaid.com/post/49519697113/cyber-attack-on-us-banks-and-government-websites
( With Benghazi threatening to heat up , interesting timing for a cyber strike ! )
http://www.breitbart.com/InstaBlog/2013/05/06/Benghazi-Witness-You-Should-Have-Seen-What-Clinton-Tried-to-Do-to-Us-That-Night
As reported by FOX News, the names of the three “whistle-blowers” who will testify next Wednesday at a Congressional Committee on the Benghazi massacre are Mark Thompson, Gregory Hicks and Eric Nordstrum. White House spokesperson Jay Carney may think that Benghazi happened a long time ago; however, these “whistle-blowers” are about to make the Benghazi White House cover up a very current problem. From the Blaze comes the following people who will be testifying; Gregory Hicks, deputy chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in Libya at the time of the September assault; Mark Thompson, former Marine and deputy coordinator for operations at the State Department’s Counterterrorism Bureau; and Eric Nordstrom, the former top security officer in Libya. Nordstrum also testified in front of the House Oversight committee back in October (VIDEO), saying staff at the US consulate in Benghazi lacked sufficient protection; however, Thompson and Hicks have yet to speak publically.
Think about this in its totality. The PJ Tatler brings up a very interesting point. How damning do you think these individuals testimony is if the White House was willing to threaten them with the end of their careers if they testified, you can be sure they will have something interesting to add to what we know about the attack. A terror attack blamed on a video tape by the Obama Administration where four Americans were murdered as no one came to their aid.
Last week, Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC) promised “explosive” Benghazi hearings were coming and said, “direct testimony by eyewitnesses is always the most compelling.” There has been much talk between the House Republicans and the Obama White House that these three men and other have been prevented by the White House to tell their stories of their knowledge of what occurred that night. Many that were there fear of retaliation of losing their job if they testify. This could have devastating effects on Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton’s future run for President.
These individuals are true patriots for coming forward and setting America straight on what happened, even though the Obama White House and their propaganda machine, the MSM, will do everything in their power to slander them, call them liars and undermine their credibility. As theJawa Report opines, Most likely leftist and Bronco Bama’s MFM are working hard to destroy the credibility of these patriots before the hearing even starts.
Many Websites Down This Afternoon, including ALL MSN sites.
1
Hack attack! We expect this to get fixed in a few hours.
Here it disturbs our -
Here it disturbs our -
- major news sites
- updates on the SB200 vote
http://www.matthewaid.com/post/49519697113/cyber-attack-on-us-banks-and-government-websites
( With Benghazi threatening to heat up , interesting timing for a cyber strike ! )
Cyber Attack on US Banks and Government Websites Expected on May 7th
May 3, 2013
OpUSA Threatens Banks, Government
Anonymous: ‘We Will Wipe You Off the Cyber Map’
Tracy Kitten
BankInfoSecurity.com
May 2, 2013
Security experts say that OperationUSA, a coordinated online attack against banking and government websites slated for May 7, is a serious threat. As a result, organizations should be upping their distributed-denial-of-service attackmitigation strategies to guard against the attacks, which are being coordinated by the hacktivist group Anonymous.
Experts advise that call-center staff should be educated about DDoS attacks, in case customers call in about online outages or experience difficulty accessing accounts. And network and security teams should actively monitor Internet traffic onMay 7 and take steps to block specific IP addresses.
Anonymous has said the attacks are being waged because of perceived social and political injustices. In an April 21 Pastebin post, it states: “Anonymous will make sure that this May 7th will be a day to remember. On that day Anonymous will start phase one of operation USA. America, you have committed multiple war crimes in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and recently you have committed war crimes in your own country.”
The group goes on to say U.S. financial institutions will be targeted for attack. “Do not take this as a warning,” the post states. “You cannot stop the Internet hate machine from doxes, DNS attacks, defaces, redirects, DDoS attacks, database leaks and admin takeovers.”
The White House website and eight other federal government sites, plus those of 133 U.S. banking institutions, are listed as targets in an April 24 AnonymousPastebin post.
Anonymous says it simply plans to take these sites offline: “We will now wipe you off the cyber map.”
Experts say the threat is serious and few of the targeted organizations, other than the top 50 U.S. banking institutions, have made significant investments to withstand the attacks.
OpIsrael vs. OpUSA
And while coordinated DDoS attacks waged by Anonymous last month against organizations in Israel had little impact, experts say similar attacks could be devastating in the United States. That’s because the U.S. Internet infrastructure is much more dynamic. In Israel, the Internet pipeline is much easier to close off and contain, making it easier to block bad traffic, says Marc Gaffan, co-founder of online security provider Incapsula.
During OperationIsrael, the attackers failed to take over enough servers within that nation to effectively launch the attacks, he adds. But the attackers have learned from their mistakes and have likely taken over more U.S.-based web servers and improved the coordination of their attack, says Ronen Kenig, an Israel-based researcher for DDoS-mitigation provider Radware.
“What we know from some of the information that has been shared in forums and other communication channels is that this is going to be very similar to what we saw in OperationIsrael,” he says. “The same groups are involved.”
OperationUSA aims to get widespread attention for Anonymous by accomplishing online destruction and disruption, Kenig says - the same goal OpIsrael set out to accomplish.
OpIsrael’s failure should not lead U.S. organizations to take OpUSA lightly, stresses fraud expert Avivah Litan, an analyst for consultancy Gartner. “This should all be taken very seriously,” she says. “The main message is that they [hacktivists’ attacks] just aren’t going away, and, instead, are getting more organized and more unsettling.”
Leading U.S. banking institutions, which have been battling targeted DDoS strikes since mid-September, are best equipped to withstand the online traffic surge OpUSA could dole out, Kenig says.
“The smaller banks are not prepared, and the government side is not very well prepared, either,” Kenig says. “If a massive attack will come, I’m sure we will see many of the government websites going down.”
Will Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Join?
Security experts are speculating about whether Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Cyber Fighters, the hacktivist group that’s taken credit for the series of DDoS attacks against U.S. banks during the past eight months, will join the OpUSA movement. In some ways, Anonymous and Izz ad-Din al-Qassam share similar goals - to humiliate and annoy the U.S., says Rodney Joffe, senior technologist for online security provider Neustar Inc.
While Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Cyber Fighters has been reluctant to push its DDoS force to full capacity, the attackers behind OpUSA aren’t likely to practice the same discretion, Joffe says.
“I would be surprised if al-Qassam got behind this effort,” Joffe says. “They’ve been very careful not to provoke a response from the U.S. government. They’ve done just enough to be a nuisance. Those behind OpUSA don’t have the same motivations, and they don’t appear to be as sophisticated.”
Dan Holden of DDoS-mitigation provider Arbor Networks says associating itself with Anonymous does not really help Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Cyber Fighters. “However, the one thing that does lead me to think it’s possible would be the much larger impact the attack would have with their involvement,” he adds.
“I would say that if they do become involved, that the likelihood of the attacks being successful goes way up,” Holden adds. “OpIsrael didn’t seem to have a ton of impact, but the defensive capability outside of the banks is likely to be less, and therefore this could be used as an excuse by QCF [Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Cyber Fighters] to expand their efforts and realize a win, so to speak, given the dwindling effect many of their attacks have had lately.”
Without the participation of Izz ad-Din al-Qassam, OpUSA will be less effective, Kenig acknowledges. “This is a serious threat,” Kenig says. “But if the attackers are going to be successful, they will definitely need more botnets. If the Cyber Fighters join the attack and bring their botnet on, the attacks will be significant.”
http://enenews.com/attack-campaign-against-u-s-nuclear-workers-malware-installs-broader-and-more-ambitious-than-previously-thought-campaign-began-nearly-2-months-ago
http://fukushima-diary.com/2013/05/university-of-toronto36-govs-are-using-surveillance-software-to-spy-on-the-citizens-including-japan-us-and-canada/
( Spying much wider than generally believed to be the case... )
http://enenews.com/attack-campaign-against-u-s-nuclear-workers-malware-installs-broader-and-more-ambitious-than-previously-thought-campaign-began-nearly-2-months-ago
Ars Technica, May 3, 2013 (h/t Anonymous tip): Internet Explorer zero-day exploit targets nuclear weapons researchers [...] Attackers exploited a previously unknown and currently unpatched security bug in Microsoft’s Internet Explorer browser to surreptitiously install malware on the computers of federal government workers involved in nuclear weapons research, researchers said on Friday. [...]
Ars Technica, May 6, 2013: Internet Explorer 0-day attacks on US nuke workers hit 9 other sites[...] The revelation, from a blog post published Sunday by security firm AlienVault, means an attack campaign that surreptitiously installed malware on the computers of federal government workers involved in nuclear weapons research was broader and more ambitious than previously thought. [...] A separate blog post from security firm CrowdStrike said its researchers unearthed evidence suggesting that the campaign began in mid-March. [...] Malicious links embedded in the Department of Labor website focused on webpages that dealt with illnesses suffered by employees and contractors developing atomic weapons for the Department of Energy. But they went on to say the campaign could be much broader. [...]
http://fukushima-diary.com/2013/05/university-of-toronto36-govs-are-using-surveillance-software-to-spy-on-the-citizens-including-japan-us-and-canada/
( Spying much wider than generally believed to be the case... )
University of Toronto,”36 govs are using surveillance software to spy on the citizens including Japan, US and Canada”
Posted by Mochizuki on May 6th, 2013 · No Comments
According to the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto, 36 governments are using the surveillance software to spy on their citizens.
It’s exclusively sold to the governments by FinFisher, a “governmental IT intrusion” company owned by the UK-registered Gamma International.
It infects computers and mobile phones by using a “right-to-left override,” which is typically used to render writing in Arabic.
Full report and article here →
Wag the dog before the big Benghazi Hearings on Wednesday ?
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/may/6/white-house-tries-deflect-criticism-benghazi-whist/
and.....
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/may/6/white-house-tries-deflect-criticism-benghazi-whist/
The White House on Monday attempted to deflect new criticism on the administration’s handling of the Benghazi attacks from a firsthand witness and an additional whistle-blower, arguing that an internal State Department review charged with investigating the September attacks was led by an “unimpeachable” team.
When confronted with reports of new complaints by whistle-blowers preparing to testify Wednesday before a House committee looking into the Benghazi attacks, Mr. Carney repeatedly touted the credentials of the two men charged with conducting the State Department's Accountability Review Board and called their investigation “unsparing” and “highly critical.”
Retired Ambassador Thomas Pickering and Adm. Michael Mullen, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, led the review, which faulted leadership and management deficiencies in two State Department offices in allowing the U.S. diplomatic post to become vulnerable to the attack that killed four Americans, including Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens.
“There was an accountability review board led by two men of unimpeachable expertise and credibility,” Mr. Carney said, “who oversaw a process that was rigorous and unsparing, that was highly critical in some areas and that produced a series of recommendations that have all been acted on by the State Department, as the president insisted be the case.”
Gregory Hicks, Mr. Stevens‘ deputy and one of the top American diplomats in Libya during the attack, has criticized that review, saying it let people “off the hook.” The State Department's Office of Inspector General now is investigating the findings of the review board, Fox News has reported.
Mr. Hicks also told congressional investigators last month that a special forces team in Tripoli, Libya, was told to stand down and not respond to the attack at a U.S. diplomatic post in Benghazi despite its close proximity. In Mr. Hicks‘ estimation, a second wave of attacks on a nearby CIA annex in Benghazi could have been prevented if the U.S. military could have scrambled a flight when it first learned of the attacks, which would go on for seven hours.
Pentagon officials have said they didn’t have military assets in position to launch such an air assault, and Mr. Hicks has acknowledged concerns that refueling tankers were not close enough to the nearest fighter jets.
Mr. Carney said he “didn’t have access to” Mr. Hicks‘ interview and referred reporters to the Department of Defense and the Accountability Review Board.
He also repeated an assertion first made last week, arguing that the White House is “not aware of anyone being blocked from talking to Congress if they chose or wanted to speak to Congress.”
Mark. I. Thompson, a former Marine who now serves as the deputy coordinator for operations in the State Department’s Bureau of Counterterrorism, also has told congressional investigators that then-Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton effectively cut the bureau out of the decision-making loop that night. Mr. Thompson also is set to testify Wednesday.
State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki has called the allegation “100 percent false,” and Daniel Benjamin, who ran the department’s Counterterrorism Bureau at the time, also put out a statement Monday morning strongly denying the charges.
“I ran the bureau then, and I can say now with certainty, as the former coordinator for counterterorrism, that this charge is simply untrue,” he said. “Though I was out of the country on official travel at the time of the attack, I was in frequent contact with the department. At no time did I feel that the bureau was in any way being left out of deliberations that it should have been part of.”
and.....
http://beforeitsnews.com/opinion-conservative/2013/05/cbs-news-blockbuster-u-s-special-forces-told-you-cant-go-to-benghazi-during-attacks-2635578.html
CBS News Blockbuster: U.S. Special Forces told “you can’t go” to Benghazi during attacks
Monday, May 6, 2013 12:35
By Susan Duclos
One news report after another is coming out into the massive Benghazi coverup perpetrated by people within the Obama administration as the congressional hearings are scheduled to start on Wednesday, May 8, 2013.
Earlier I wrote about the official Obama administration “Benghazi Talking Points” completely unraveling, with published copies of three different versions by The Weekly Standard and how even a Democratic Congressman acknowledged deliberate inaccurate reports coming from the Obama administration.
CBS News now releases a blockbuster report, showing that U.S. Special forces were told “you can’t go now, you don’t have the authority to go now,” causing them to miss a flight that could have saved the lives of the four Americans killed in Benghazi, Libya on 9/11/12.
The account from Gregory Hicks is in stark contrast to assertions
from the Obama administration, which insisted that nobody was ever told
to stand down and that all available resources were utilized. Hicks gave
private testimony to congressional investigators last month in advance
of his upcoming appearance at a congressional hearing Wednesday.
According
to excerpts released Monday, Hicks told investigators that SOCAFRICA
commander Lt. Col. Gibson and his team were on their way to board a
C-130 from Tripoli for Benghazi prior to an attack on a second U.S.
compound “when [Col. Gibson] got a phone call from SOCAFRICA which said,
‘you can’t go now, you don’t have the authority to go now.’ And so they
missed the flight … They were told not to board the flight, so they
missed it.”
No assistance arrived from the U.S. military
outside of Libya during the hours that Americans were under attack or
trapped inside compounds by hostile forces armed with rocket-propelled
grenades, mortars and AK-47 rifles.
The CBS News report also published excerpts from Hicks’ April interview with congressional investigators on the House Oversight Committee.
Due to the nature of the information finally being exposed about the events of September 11, 2012, before, during, and after the attack, and the Obama administration’s subsequent lies told to the American people, even left-wing news sites are headlining with things like “Vindicated: Charges Of A Benghazi Cover-Up No Longer ‘Fox-Induced Hysteria’.”
The emergence of a number of whistleblowers who have come forward to refute the claims made by some members of President Barack Obama’s
administration relating to the September 11, 2012, attack on an
American consulate in Benghazi does not directly implicate the White
House in a cover-up. They do, however, demolish the
politically-motivated allegations by a slew of commentators on the left
who asserted that those reporters doggedly investigating the American response
to the attack were onto something. Those left-of-center commentators
who dismissed the investigation into the Benghazi attack as a right-wing
delusion animated by a personal hatred of the president have never
looked more vacuous.
An interim report from the House investigation
into the administration’s response to Benghazi released in April is
particularly damning. The report found that the decision to withdraw
security assets from the region is likely to have come from the highest
levels of the State Department. The report also found State’s talking
points relating to the attack were altered to remove references to Al
Qaeda’s involvement. These edits are unlikely to have been made to
protect classified information, and may have been made to support the
White House’s election year claim that the terror group had been
effectively neutralized.
Some of the claims made by the Benghazi whistleblowers support the interim House report’s assertions.
The American Spectator addresses the initial investigation by the “Accountability Review Board,” and the witness testimony they never bothered investigating:
Also yesterday, Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) said that the Obama
administration had literally threatened one or more of the Benghazi
whistleblowers and that hospital records had been tampered with to
conceal the identity of at least one of the survivors of the
attack.
So what is the Obama administration trying to hide? Pretty much
everything.
Last week, we learned that the State Department’s Inspector
General is investigating the Pickering-Mullen “Accountability
Review Board” for, among other things, its failure to investigate
and get statements from the Benghazi survivors. Before there were
whistleblowers there were survivors, yet the comprehensively
misnamed “Accountability Review Board” didn’t question them.
Which isn’t a surprise. The ARB did what it was paid to do:
limit the damage and blame people under Hillary Clinton for the
failures of leadership and management. It was, simply, a whitewash.
We’ll probably wait a long time for the IG to report the facts —
2017 sounds like the right time frame.
More from CNN’s Jake Tapper and Dana Bash:
Hicks said that four U.S. Special Forces troops in Tripoli, led by
Lieutenant Colonel Gibson, planned to hitch a ride on the Libyan plan to
travel to Benghazi to help.
“We fully intended for those guys to go, because we had already
essentially stripped ourselves of our security presence, or our security
capability to the bare minimum,” Hicks recalled.
But the four were informed by someone with United States Africa
Command – SOCAFRICA – that they didn’t have the authority to do so,
Hicks said.
“So Lieutenant Colonel Gibson, who is the SOCAFRICA commander, his
team, you know, they were on their way to the vehicles to go to the
airport to get on the C 130 when he got a phone call from SOCAFRICA
which said, ‘you can’t go now, you don’t have authority to go now,’”
Hicks said. “And so they missed the flight.”
“They were told not to board the flight, so they missed it,” Hicks
said. “I still remember Colonel Gibson, he said, ‘I have never been so
embarrassed in my life that a State Department officer has bigger balls
than somebody in the military.’ A nice compliment.”
There is no doubt that information will be coming out at a fast rate leading up to the hearings on May 8, 2013.
A couple of questions come to mind.
How soon before Obama throws former Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton under the bus and how hard will the Clinton’s come out swinging once he has?
Recent related WuA posts
All Libya, 9-11 Attack WuA related posts found here.
Benghazi Witness: 'You Should Have Seen What (Clinton) Tried to Do to Us That Night'
Mark I. Thompson will make the allegation that Hillary Clinton "tried to cut the department's own counter-terrorism bureau out of the chain of reporting and decision-making" as they responded to the Benghazi attacks.
Thompson is a former Marine and the current deputy coordinator for operations in the agency's counter terrorism bureau. He will appear before the House Oversight Committee on Wednesday to testify about the Benghazi attacks.
Fox News is also reporting that ANOTHER official from counteroffensive made the same allegation "about Clinton and Under Secretary for Management Patrick Kennedy to trusted national security colleagues back in October."
"You should have seen what (Clinton) tried to do to us that night,"the second official in State's counter-terrorism bureau told colleagues back in October. Those comments would appear to be corroborated by Thompson's forthcoming testimony.
Joe diGenova, who represents Mr. Thompson has alleged "his client has been subjected to threats and intimidation by as-yet-unnamed superiors at State, in advance of his cooperation with Congress." Thompson's account was "suppressed" by the ARB (Accountability Review Board).
The State Department responded these allegations are "100 percent" false.
and......
Benghazi-gate: Names of Benghazi Whistle-Blower Witnesses Revealed … Mark Thompson, Gregory Hicks and Eric Nordstrum
BENGHAZI-GATE … The Whistle-Blowers Edition:As reported by FOX News, the names of the three “whistle-blowers” who will testify next Wednesday at a Congressional Committee on the Benghazi massacre are Mark Thompson, Gregory Hicks and Eric Nordstrum. White House spokesperson Jay Carney may think that Benghazi happened a long time ago; however, these “whistle-blowers” are about to make the Benghazi White House cover up a very current problem. From the Blaze comes the following people who will be testifying; Gregory Hicks, deputy chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in Libya at the time of the September assault; Mark Thompson, former Marine and deputy coordinator for operations at the State Department’s Counterterrorism Bureau; and Eric Nordstrom, the former top security officer in Libya. Nordstrum also testified in front of the House Oversight committee back in October (VIDEO), saying staff at the US consulate in Benghazi lacked sufficient protection; however, Thompson and Hicks have yet to speak publically.
Think about this in its totality. The PJ Tatler brings up a very interesting point. How damning do you think these individuals testimony is if the White House was willing to threaten them with the end of their careers if they testified, you can be sure they will have something interesting to add to what we know about the attack. A terror attack blamed on a video tape by the Obama Administration where four Americans were murdered as no one came to their aid.
Their identities have been a well-guarded secret, known only to their high-powered lawyers and a handful of House lawmakers and staff. But now Fox News has learned the names of the self-described Benghazi “whistleblowers” who are set to testify before a widely anticipated congressional hearing on Wednesday.Rep. Issa: GOP Oversight May 8th Benghazi hearing will be streamed live at http://Oversight.House.Gov at 11:30 here
Appearing before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee will be three career State Department officials: Gregory N. Hicks, the deputy chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in Libya at the time of the Benghazi terrorist attacks; Mark I. Thompson, a former Marine and now the deputy coordinator for Operations in the agency’s Counterterrorism Bureau; and Eric Nordstrom, a diplomatic security officer who was the regional security officer in Libya, the top security officer in the country in the months leading up to the attacks.
Last week, Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC) promised “explosive” Benghazi hearings were coming and said, “direct testimony by eyewitnesses is always the most compelling.” There has been much talk between the House Republicans and the Obama White House that these three men and other have been prevented by the White House to tell their stories of their knowledge of what occurred that night. Many that were there fear of retaliation of losing their job if they testify. This could have devastating effects on Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton’s future run for President.
These individuals are true patriots for coming forward and setting America straight on what happened, even though the Obama White House and their propaganda machine, the MSM, will do everything in their power to slander them, call them liars and undermine their credibility. As theJawa Report opines, Most likely leftist and Bronco Bama’s MFM are working hard to destroy the credibility of these patriots before the hearing even starts.
“What difference does it make”? ~ Hillary Rodham Clinton
“The future doesn’t belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam” ~ Barack Ohama
“Benghazi happened a long time ago” ~ Jay Carney
