Iranian interference in the 2020 elections, FBI issues Most Wanted, 10 million $ reward

a reply to: BrujaRebooted


The wanted poster also makes a strong hint that Iran was involved somehow, but doesn't provide any clues as to whether they have any evidence on that, or what that evidence might be.

We know very little at this point, and that's beyond frustrating.

Almost infuriating.

originally posted by: BrujaRebooted

originally posted by: Nyiah
a reply to: BrujaRebooted

What a nice neat little surprise for Christmas -- complete with the bow & ribbon, even. Gee, could we get any luckier here, the government gave folks just the right boogiemen to fret over out of the blue!


I dunno about anyone else, but I smell bull# plain as day. Uncle Sammie's up to something, bet on it.

More will be revealed, but I agree, somethings weird. I get a feeling its like a grand Friday news dump. Christmas weekend. Havent they used the holidays as distraction in the past?

Did you read the warrant itself?

The reason that there's no fuss is that it had its day in the sun when the story broke in 2020. There was all sorts of howling and yowling about it (surely you read some of this. I certainly did.)

The "election interference" was sending threatening letters to people from both parties, pretending to be Proud Boys and trying to stir up trouble, illegally accessing computers (and failing to get into at least one of them) -- etcetera. Details here

Here's some stories from 2020 that covered the situation.

www.npr.org...

www.nbcnews.com...

the "proud boy" emails from 2020 sent by these goons

In December 2020, the FBI put out a PSA on them about a website threatening election officials.



So... election interference was nasty letters and emails and cyberthreats. And the men are from New York.

originally posted by: Byrd

originally posted by: BrujaRebooted

originally posted by: Nyiah
a reply to: BrujaRebooted

What a nice neat little surprise for Christmas -- complete with the bow & ribbon, even. Gee, could we get any luckier here, the government gave folks just the right boogiemen to fret over out of the blue!


I dunno about anyone else, but I smell bull# plain as day. Uncle Sammie's up to something, bet on it.

More will be revealed, but I agree, somethings weird. I get a feeling its like a grand Friday news dump. Christmas weekend. Havent they used the holidays as distraction in the past?

Did you read the warrant itself?

The reason that there's no fuss is that it had its day in the sun when the story broke in 2020. There was all sorts of howling and yowling about it (surely you read some of this. I certainly did.)

The "election interference" was sending threatening letters to people from both parties, pretending to be Proud Boys and trying to stir up trouble, illegally accessing computers (and failing to get into at least one of them) -- etcetera. Details here

Here's some stories from 2020 that covered the situation.

www.npr.org...

www.nbcnews.com...

the "proud boy" emails from 2020 sent by these goons

In December 2020, the FBI put out a PSA on them about a website threatening election officials.



So... election interference was nasty letters and emails and cyberthreats. And the men are from New York.

Wait...

10 million dollar rewards for democrat criminals posing as Trump supporters?

Do you know if the FBI plans to expand this program?

Do you have their phone number handy?


JK of course, thank you for this information.

The reward amount is still curious, as are the many similarities to the Fountain Hills/Maricopa case.

Have any idea why the FBI posted this now?

a reply to: Byrd

Thank you for your links and comments. I briefly recall this, but didnt give it much attention at the time, bcoz spam? meh…

The frustrating thing for me is the lack of consistent and accurate info about the actual hacks. Your first link says ‘voter website’. Ok, what exactly is that and what database is obtainable from such a hack?

One link said publicly available voter info free or for purchase. And an unnamed media outlets network. Could be some independent rag like your first link? So it could be anyone.

One of your links seemed to care only about disassociating the alleged hacks and emails with the Biden campaign. We couldnt have an Iran, Iran, Iran, nope, that would be bad. Deflect, confuse!

Interesting sum of money for two punks playing espionage. Its troubling they've expended resources on this. Wish they had spent this effort on important crimes, like foreign donations to CF and Hunter’s real job, bagman it seems.

Kamala was crying about our democracy being at risk. They are shifting to voting reform shenanigans. COVID is over from the federal perspective too it appears. They are behind they 8-ball getting it done for Nov tho’. Implementing change, at the least, will sow lots more nice confusion, which will help a cheat.

From here on out, all admin priority is saving congress from the red wave headed for DC.

originally posted by: BrujaRebooted
a reply to: Byrd

Thank you for your links and comments. I briefly recall this, but didnt give it much attention at the time, bcoz spam? meh…

The frustrating thing for me is the lack of consistent and accurate info about the actual hacks. Your first link says ‘voter website’. Ok, what exactly is that and what database is obtainable from such a hack?

It was a state website, according to the NY post

The two suspects, who were indicted by a grand jury in Manhattan federal court, downloaded confidential voter data from 100,000 voters in an unnamed state in September and October 2020, prosecutors said.

I would guess (based on my experience as an elections judge) that they accessed the "poll book"; the database for voter verification (which will also say what party you registered with.) This would include your address, including the address of people in the Witness Protection Plan, various agents (FBI) and officials who need to keep their address private but still vote.

One link said publicly available voter info free or for purchase.

Texas voter info is free. You can look up your own info. Politicians can look it up and use it for targeted mailings (which is how your party knows to send you materials.)

One of your links seemed to care only about disassociating the alleged hacks and emails with the Biden campaign. We couldnt have an Iran, Iran, Iran, nope, that would be bad. Deflect, confuse!

There's more than one group of hackers out there toying with America... and more than one Iranian group and more than one attempt.

Like this from 2019:

Hackers that appear to be linked to Iran's government have targeted the 2020 US presidential election, according to tech company Microsoft.

The group attacked more than 200 email accounts, some of which belonged to people associated with "a US presidential campaign", it said.

The target was President Donald Trump's re-election campaign, sources told Reuters news agency.

...
"The targeted accounts are associated with a US presidential campaign, current and former US government officials, journalists covering global politics and prominent Iranians living outside Iran," Microsoft said.

(only four were compromised)

Source: www.bbc.com...

Interesting sum of money for two punks playing espionage. Its troubling they've expended resources on this. Wish they had spent this effort on important crimes, like foreign donations to CF and Hunter’s real job, bagman it seems.

It's not two punks. It's two cyber security experts working for Iran. This story has a lot of the details you're asking for (and they apparently hacked Alaska.)

They also were after access to "content management systems" on news sites (PC Magazine article from November 201) which would allow them to plant fake news stories on any news website (including your favorite news sources)

They were stopped.

And no, you're not going to get a full accounting until they're caught and there's a trial. Prosecutors aren't giving away their best cards.

a reply to: BrujaRebooted

So, if they were to turn themselves in or give valid information on themselves, would they get the $10 million? LOL

Cheers - Dave

And as to "why"... well, welcome to the new warfare.

Wars haven't stopped, but they're moving from bloody confrontations to cyber attacks. Every country does it-- tries to influence the attitude of countries they see as being opponents. We've done it to Iran, and they've come back at us. Russia and China are our major opponents and now Iran is joining them and North Korea is making some inroads. (on our side, the big guns would be the US, the UK, and Israel

As you can see from the date on the article there, this has been going on for quite some time (more than a decade.)

Pot, meet kettle.

In this case, Iran wants the US focused on internal problems to such an extent that we're not paying attention to them. The big issue right now seems to be nuclear, and the production of nuclear fuel. They've been allowed to enrich uranium for power plants but what they're producing is closer to weapons grade uranium (there was a segment of one of NPR's programs on this yesterday that I listened to. Full of interesting detail.)

Part of the Iranians' motivation is revenge against Trump for actions he took while in office.

originally posted by: Ghostsdogood

The reward amount is still curious, as are the many similarities to the Fountain Hills/Maricopa case.

Have any idea why the FBI posted this now?

I don't see it as similar at all.

And the FBI (or any other agency) can't just declare "we want these guys" and put up a reward. In order to put out a "wanted" poster they have to be able to make a case for prosecution. Judges then review the evidence and the accusation and IF it matches all the tests to be legal, then they can start doing a public hunt (they were hunting all along. Now it's made public.)

Since it's an international scope here, they've got to dance with other agencies and other nations as well.

If we lived in the Marvel Universe, Major PlotD'vice could say "let's go get these guys" and have a warrant and reward out within 15 minutes. But that's not how our government and legal system work, as I'm sure you remember from high school civics class.

You can get a sense of how tedious the process can be by reading some of the autobiographies or books like Fitzpatrick, Robert, and Jon Land. Betrayal: Whitey Bulger and the FBI Agent Who Fought to Bring Him Down. Forge Books, 2012. (another lengthy manhunt and years putting together a solid case that would hold up in court)

Iran issued arrest warrant for Trump in 2020 for droning Qasem Soliemani

Soliemani was commanding general of the Quds force, responsible for destroying Israel (“the little Satan”) on the path to destroying the USA (“the Great Satan”).

Quds force Handled overseas terrorism for the Centralized civilian Iran government.

The USA originally became an enemy of Iran in the early 50s, by the overthrow of Democratically elected PM Mosaddegh

So intervening in trumps de-election would have a certain symmetry...

Iran issued arrest warrant for Trump in 2020 for droning Qasem Soliemani

Soliemani was commanding general of the Quds force, responsible for destroying Israel (“the little Satan”) on the path to destroying the USA (“the Great Satan”).

Quds force Handled overseas terrorism for the Centralized civilian Iran government.

The USA originally became an enemy of Iran in the early 50s, by the overthrow of Democratically elected PM Mosaddegh

So intervening in trumps de-election would have a certain symmetry...

a reply to: Byrd

If a state ‘voter website’ exposes PII (thats IT terminology for personal identifying information). By law, thats a big deal, and the IT shop needs a review to understand why they arent performing to security stands and best practices. Heads should roll. And every person in that compromise is required to be notified personally about the breach.

Of course there are many multiple hacker groups, many govt sponsored, many rogue, that constantly probe all .gov sites. 24/7. Day in day out. China, Russia, Iran, Pakistan, North Korea are the majors. The cure is to spend at least 10 million nationwide to have cyber security personnel training and assistance reviewing their server and database configurations.

Both these guys are under thirty. To this old retired applications developer, they are punks. Why were they in the US is a question I have. H1Bs? School? Parents fled? Who were their employers in the US? Did such employers have IT contracts with any of the states that were ‘hacked’? System access is the easiest hack there is. Someone working for someone like Dominion would likely have end-to-end access.

The media breach isnt interesting to me unless its a major. CMS apps are generic, off the shelf and lots of IT contractors maintain those systems for news agencies as well. Not everyone is doing good IT security. Not everyone can afford it. But if its Joe in his basement with a blog, its still a crime to hack him, even if every single one of his backdoors is open.

Nope, not going to know until we know. If ever.

originally posted by: BrujaRebooted
a reply to: Byrd

If a state ‘voter website’ exposes PII (thats IT terminology for personal identifying information). By law, thats a big deal, and the IT shop needs a review to understand why they arent performing to security stands and best practices. Heads should roll. And every person in that compromise is required to be notified personally about the breach.

Most state sites like Texas have a way for you to look up your own voter information and check it out.

Here's basically what states often provide when a party asks for voter rolls


Of course there are many multiple hacker groups, many govt sponsored, many rogue, that constantly probe all .gov sites. 24/7. Day in day out. China, Russia, Iran, Pakistan, North Korea are the majors. The cure is to spend at least 10 million nationwide to have cyber security personnel training and assistance reviewing their server and database configurations.

Both these guys are under thirty. To this old retired applications developer, they are punks. Why were they in the US is a question I have. H1Bs? School? Parents fled? Who were their employers in the US? Did such employers have IT contracts with any of the states that were ‘hacked’?

Actually, I assumed they were in New York because of the filing. The news story, however, says they were employed by the Iranian state, so they might not even have been in the US.

System access is the easiest hack there is.

Reading the articles, they were using standard social tactics (email, etc) to install something to gain access. Looking for a victim to give them an open door.

Someone working for someone like Dominion would likely have end-to-end access.

They're not accused of accessing voting machines. Just news sites and threatening voters and government officials via email.

The media breach isnt interesting to me unless its a major. CMS apps are generic, off the shelf and lots of IT contractors maintain those systems for news agencies as well. Not everyone is doing good IT security. Not everyone can afford it. But if its Joe in his basement with a blog, its still a crime to hack him, even if every single one of his backdoors is open.

In this case, the CMS was secure and their efforts were foiled.

Nope, not going to know until we know. If ever.

The articles I linked had a lot of info.

Like you, I'm someone who was coding Big Iron way back then and moved on to coding midis and then PC's (machine language to assembly to Cobol (ugh!) and onward to C++ and Visual Basic and all that other jazz.) There's enough detail in the stories to figure out what's going on and to see that it's just a social engineering thing and not even bot swarms or script kiddies (or even real hacking like the Cult of the Dead Cow did)

a reply to: Butterfinger

You missed the part they were hacking for Biden.

originally posted by: carewemust
a reply to: network dude

What a "Cover Up" at the very top looks like. The Govt statement is worded very simplistic, so the news media will re-publish it as is, for mass consumption by the gullible.

“The November 3rd election was the most secure in American history. Right now, across the country, election officials are reviewing and double checking the entire election process prior to finalizing the result."

“While we know there are many unfounded claims and opportunities for misinformation about the process of our elections, we can assure you we have the utmost confidence in the security and integrity of our elections, and you should too. When you have questions, turn to elections officials as trusted voices as they administer elections.

From 12/12/2020: www.cisa.gov...

People are starting to see how broad and deeply imbedded the "Election Voting Fraud Organization" candidate Joe Biden bragged about, really was, and still is. (Biden says Dems will maintain control in Nov 2022. Here we go again.)

Biden also made another similar comment within the last month. I won't get the wording 100% right because I can't remember the first half very well but the second part I remember clearly. It was pretty much "it doesn't matter how many votes are cast in the coming elections, it matters who counts the votes"

a reply to: Byrd

Dominion’s website advertises that they offer end-to-end solutions. That would mean someone working for them may reasonably be found to have access to all data and programs supporting an election. Voter registration applications / websites and databases. Voter scrub applications and data. Voting machine software and hardware, ballot and signature validation apps and databases, and finally, results reporting interfaces and data assurance review. This is off the top of my head.

Apparently the audit in AZ found problems all along the process.

The FBI Most Wanted poster indicates that computers resources were successfully breached and damaged.

Its a big problem when people think they understand a business process but dont have the technical knowledge to understand how IT supports the business and where pitfalls and security failures can occur. Many hacks are an inside job by someone that knows the passwords. Like when people mistakenly think it was about Hilary’s little old emails, which we all use, but it was really about having an email SERVER meant for only her, and no State Dept IT people having access i.e. she was hiding it from other govt employees tasked with managing her email security, for a number of reasons. A major difference that people didnt understand. Here is another example. You think Dominion only sells counting software and hardware, but their own we site says otherwise. Their employee would have access to all of it, registration, validation and tabulation.

Like .govs, news media CMS sites may be prized targets subject to continual probes as well. If not successful, meh. The attempt is common as rain.

There is frustratingly little information about these two characters. But I would agree it was social media and email tomfoolery, except for the size of the reward.

for 10 mil? I'd turn myself in.

i'm sure our 17 intelligent agencies knew about it along with every other one in the whole world.