Showing posts with label World. Show all posts
Showing posts with label World. Show all posts

Monday, March 18, 2013

Nobel Peace Prize Winner Sends Nuclear-Capable B-52s Over Korea as Warning to Non-Nobel Peace Prize Winner

As the first Nobel Peace Prize winner to direct the killings of over 4,700 individuals using drone-based warfare (including children, if the Puffington Roast is to be believed) and to reverse himself on a missile defense shield, President Obama added another feather to his hawk cap this week:

AP: Pentagon highlighting bomber missions in Korea


The United States is flying nuclear-capable B-52 bombers on training missions over South Korea to highlight Washington's commitment to defend an ally amid rising tensions with North Korea, Pentagon officials said Monday.

Pentagon press secretary George Little said one B-52 flew over South Korea on March 8, and the deputy defense secretary, Ashton Carter, said during a visit to Seoul that another bomber mission is scheduled for Tuesday.

B-52 bombers are capable of launching nuclear-armed cruise missiles, but Little said those participating in the Korean exercise are not armed with nuclear weapons... the Pentagon used the occasion to draw attention to the role B-52 bombers play as part of an American nuclear "umbrella" over South Korea and Japan - both of which feel threatened by North Korea's development of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles.

"We're deeply concerned about North Koreans behavior and rhetoric," Little told reporters.

In a more dramatic demonstration of that concern, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel on Friday announced that the U.S. is beefing up its defenses against a potential North Korean missile attack on the U.S. He said that over the coming four years the Pentagon will add 14 missile interceptors to the 26 it already has in place at Fort Greely, Alaska, at an estimated cost of $1 billion.

Obama's reversal on a missile-defense shield is particularly troubling. As The Wall Street Journal puts it, his about-face represents a "A tacit admission that the U.S. will soon be vulnerable to attack."


Helpful Message for Cypriot Bankers

Tyler Durden:

If you see this man coming to make a withdrawal, it may be a good idea to run.



Cyprus: The Canary in the Coal Mine?

Henry Blodget, for once in his life, may be on to something here:

...Some of Cyprus's banks, like many banks in Europe, are bankrupt... Cyprus went to the eurozone to get a bailout, the same way Ireland, Greece, and other European countries have.

The eurozone powers-that-be (mainly Germany) gave Cyprus a bailout and insisted that the depositors in Cyprus's banks pay part of the tab — a startling condition that has never before been imposed on any major banking system since the start of the global financial crisis in 2008.

The deal did not touch the bondholders. Why the depositors? These are folks who had their money in the banks for safe-keeping.

When Cyprus's banks reopen on Tuesday morning, every depositor will have some of his or her money seized. The current plan is that accounts under 100,000 euros will have 6.75% of the funds seized. Accounts over 100,000 euros will have 9.9% seized. And then the eurozone's emergency lending facility and the International Monetary Fund will inject 10 billion euros into the banks to allow them to keep operating.

...Not surprisingly, news that deposits in Cyprus's banks would be seized triggered an immediate run on the banks... Depositors rushed to ATMs and tried to withdraw their money before it could be seized. But the ATMs weren't working. And the government has now made it impossible to transfer money out of the country.

...ever since the Great Depression wiped out a big percentage of the world's banks, vaporizing the bank depositors' savings in the process, banking system regulators have tried to do everything they can to protect bank depositors... Because the moment depositors think that there is risk to their savings, they rush to banks to yank their money out.

That's called a run on the bank. And since no bank anywhere has enough cash on hand to pay off all its depositors at once, runs on the bank cause banks to go bust.

...now, thanks to the eurozone's bizarre decision in Cyprus, the illusion that depositors don't need to yank their money out of threatened banks because they'll be protected has been shattered... Depositors in Cyprus banks will lose some of their money. They will be furious about this. And they will, rightly, feel that it is grossly unfair — because depositors in the bailed-out banks in Ireland, Greece, etc. didn't lose their money. And they will feel like fools for not having taken their money out.

...Other depositors at weak banks all over Europe, in places like Spain, Italy, and Greece, will rightly wonder whether this is the beginning of a new era of bank bailouts, an era in which bank depositors are going lose some of their money. What do you think those other depositors in Spain, Italy, Greece, etc., are going to feel like doing when they realize that, if their banks ever need a bailout, they might have their deposits seized?

...Well, then, a good portion of Europe might suddenly experience a good old-fashioned bank run. That, to put it mildly, could be a disaster. It could bring the European financial crisis, which has lurched from one flare-up to another for most of the past five years, to a rather sudden head.

Econoblogger Karl Denninger says that Cyprus is a preview of coming attractions for those of us in the United States.

And he asserts that our Cyprus event will occur within two years. Because the laws of mathematics always trump those of politics.


Image hat tips: Zero Hedge (top) and NBC News.

Sunday, March 17, 2013

Preview of Coming Attractions: Full-On Bank Run in Cyprus as Depositors' Assets Seized by Government-Banker Complex

This is government-sponsored theft, plain and simple. And it is a sign that the civil society is unraveling in Europe.

ATMs drained as bailout tax triggers run on bank deposits


In a move that could set off new fears of contagion across the eurozone, anxious depositors drained cash from ATMs in Cyprus on Saturday, hours after European officials in Brussels required that part of a new €10 billion ($12.6 billion) bailout must be paid for directly from the bank accounts of savers.

The move - a first in the three-year-old European financial crisis - raised questions over whether bank runs could be set off elsewhere.

Jeroen Dijsselbloem, president of the group of euro-area ministers, on Saturday declined to rule out taxes on depositors in countries beyond Cyprus... Although banks placed withdrawal limits of €400 on ATMs, most of them had run out of cash by early evening. People around the country reacted with disbelief and anger... ''This is a clear-cut robbery,'' said Andreas Moyseos, a former electrician who is a pensioner in Nicosia, the capital...

...[The seizure] came with almost no warning at the beginning of a three-day religious holiday... Under an emergency deal reached early on Saturday in Brussels, a one-time tax of 9.9 per cent is to be levied on Cypriot bank deposits of more than €100,000 effective on Tuesday, hitting wealthy depositors - mostly Russians who have put vast sums into Cyprus's banks in recent years. But even deposits under that amount would be taxed at 6.75 per cent, meaning that Cyprus's creditors will be confiscating money directly from pensioners, workers and regular depositors to pay off the bailout tab...

This is an idiotic step and one that could trigger bank runs throughout Europe.

Oh. And think it can't happen here? There are steps that our own federal government is taking that say otherwise.


Sunday, March 10, 2013

STUNNING PHOTOS OF POLLUTION IN CHINA: Could Someone Let the EPA Know About This?

As the EPA tries to micro-manage industrial policy in the United States using unlawful and impossible dictates, the world's worst polluter goes unmentioned in the U.S.:

In China, public anger over secrecy on environment


When China's environment ministry told attorney Dong Zhengwei he couldn't have access to two-year old data about soil pollution because it was a "state secret", it added to mounting public outrage over the worsening environment.

...The environment has already been one of one of the most frequently raised issues at the annual parliament session and China's authoritarian government has admitted it has a problem... China does not usually allow public scrutiny of governance, particularly on sensitive issues such as corruption and security. But public anger over the environment may force authorities to accommodate the public in small ways...


...A choking smog in Beijing in January, far above hazardous levels, has been one of the most dramatic signs of China's environmental problems, but Dong is convinced that soil pollution is the country's "silent killer." ... Citing "state secrets", the environment ministry last month denied a request from Dong for information on data on soil samples that was collected in a national survey that started in 2006 and ended in 2010.

...And just last month, the government acknowledged for the first time that pollution had given rise to "cancer villages", admitting that cancer rates in villages near factories and polluted rivers were far higher than they should be.

In short, while the EPA tightens the screws on America's already clean industries using flatly unlawful tactics, America's policy-makers ignore the elephant in the atmosphere.


Thursday, March 07, 2013

Spring Break in Mexico 2013: Security Risks, Travel Recommendations

A Stratfor Research Special Report

Every year between January and March, U.S. college administrators remind their students to exercise caution during spring break. These well-meaning guidelines often go unread by their intended recipients, as do travel warnings issued to citizens by the U.S. State Department. As a result, many regular visitors to Mexican resort areas believe they are safe from transnational criminal organizations, more commonly known as cartels. While many people do travel to Mexico safely (approximately 150,000 U.S. citizens travel to the country each year), there is a misconception that cartels want to avoid interfering with the profitable tourism industry, or that they only target Mexican citizens. This simply is not true.

Nothing in the behavior of Mexican cartels indicates that they would consciously keep tourists out of the line of fire or away from the gruesome displays of their murder victims. Violence related to the cartels is spreading, and while tourists may not be directly targeted, they can be caught in the crossfire or otherwise find themselves in situations where their security is compromised. Transnational criminal organizations, it should be remembered, are more than just drug traffickers: They participate in extortion, robbery, rape and carjackings. And where cartels are violently targeting each other, local gangs can take advantage of law enforcement's resulting distraction to commit crimes of their own.

Mexico's Drug War

Violence between competing criminal organizations in Mexico has been ongoing for more than two decades. In the last decade, this violence has escalated nearly every year. According to Mexico's National System of Public Security, 2006 saw 11,806 murders. Subsequently, there were 10,253 murders in 2007, 13,155 in 2008, 16,118 in 2009, 20,681 in 2010, 22,480 in 2011, and 20,560 in 2012.

The core of the conflict centers on the most valuable routes for trafficking drugs through Mexico. Several groups are waging a violent campaign for control of these corridors. Meanwhile, the Mexican government is using the military to combat drug traffickers, adding an additional actor to the conflict. No part of the country, whether on a trafficking route or not, has been immune to the effects of organized crime, particularly as cartel-related violence has increasingly spread to competition over local criminal enterprises such as retail drug sales, kidnapping, extortion and prostitution, among other activities.

While cartels typically direct their violence toward rival groups, outside parties often wind up in the crossfire. For example, Los Zetas tried to burn down the Casino Royale in Monterrey, Nuevo Leon state, on Aug. 25, 2011, allegedly to send a message to the casino's owner. The attackers were undeterred by the presence of innocent bystanders, and more than 50 individuals died in the blaze.

Wednesday, March 06, 2013

The Single Chart That Proves Just How Well Gun Control Works

Which is to say, gun control doesn't work.


And nothing short of traveling back in time a thousand years ago will remove guns from the world, in spite of all the Statist Utopians' wet dreams.


Tuesday, March 05, 2013

Europe, Unemployment and Instability [Friedman]

Guest post by George Friedman, Founder and Chairman, Stratfor Research

The global financial crisis of 2008 has slowly yielded to a global unemployment crisis. This unemployment crisis will, fairly quickly, give way to a political crisis. The crisis involves all three of the major pillars of the global system -- Europe, China and the United States. The level of intensity differs, the political response differs and the relationship to the financial crisis differs. But there is a common element, which is that unemployment is increasingly replacing finance as the central problem of the financial system.

Europe is the focal point of this crisis. Last week Italy held elections, and the party that won the most votes -- with about a quarter of the total -- was a brand-new group called the Five Star Movement that is led by a professional comedian. Two things are of interest about this movement. First, one of its central pillars is the call for defaulting on a part of Italy's debt as the lesser of evils. The second is that Italy, with 11.2 percent unemployment, is far from the worst case of unemployment in the European Union. Nevertheless, Italy is breeding radical parties deeply opposed to the austerity policies currently in place.

The core debate in Europe has been how to solve the sovereign debt crisis and the resulting threat to Europe's banks. The issue was who would bear the burden of stabilizing the system. The argument that won the day, particularly among Europe's elites, was that what Europe needed was austerity, that government spending had to be dramatically restrained so that sovereign debt -- however restructured it might be -- would not default.

One of the consequences of austerity is recession. The economies of many European countries, especially those in the eurozone, are now contracting, since austerity obviously means that less money will be available to purchase goods and services. If the primary goal is to stabilize the financial system, it makes sense. But whether financial stability can remain the primary goal depends on a consensus involving broad sectors of society. When unemployment emerges, that consensus shifts and the focus shifts with it. When unemployment becomes intense, then the entire political system can shift. From my point of view, the Italian election was the first, but expected, tremor.

Tuesday, February 26, 2013

Crunchy on the Outside, Tender on the Insider

Palo Alto Networks, the very successful "next-generation firewall" vendor, just published its 10th edition of "The Application Usage and Threat Report". Its findings point to a threat landscape moving from outside the firewall to inside.

[Our findings imply] that perimeter security efforts are “crunchy on the outside” effectively stopping some of the threats. Shifting the focus to internal applications, the findings show that security is “tender on the inside”, with 97% of the vulnerability exploit logs found in only 10 applications (out of 1,395 found). Nine of these applications are considered high-value assets; they are internal or infrastructure related applications that are integral to many business functions. This data indicates that the strategy of attacking critical resources from inside the network continues to become the rule and not the exception, and will force enterprises to monitor their internal traffic for threats in addition to the perimeter.


...attackers will ... heavily modify and customize their communications not only to confuse traditional security, but also for more functional purposes. Malware will regularly modify peer-to-peer protocols in order to create their own resilient commandand-control communications. For example, the Zero Access botnet (and its rootkit) is one of the most popular pieces of malware in the wild, and likewise was the leading malware observed in our data. This particular malware uses customized peer-to-peer traffic as well as other customized UDP and TCP traffic for communicating with its command and control infrastructure. This traffic is critically important to the reliability and survivability of the botnet in the wild. The malware, having delivered its payload, is sacrificed and the botnet survives to execute the next phase of the attack.

...However while this traffic works perfectly well from the attacker’s point of view, it does not match any known applications, and was thus classified as being custom or unknown traffic ... The analysis clearly shows that customized or modified traffic is highly correlated with threats. This indicates that proactively controlling or blocking “unknown” traffic could easily provide a powerful and untapped strategy for controlling modern threats.

For large organizations concerned with Advanced Persistent Threats (APTs), especially those launched by malevolent nation-states, internal network monitoring appears to be a must-do.


Saturday, February 23, 2013

The Endgame for Currency Debasement: Exter's Pyramid

Where will the global race to debase currencies end? A diagram known as "Exter's Pyramid" offers us a hint:

...Before we delve into why backwardation in gold has some very unique and stark implications, let’s first take a moment to understand exactly what backwardation is.

...Backwardation is the condition where the spot price is higher than the forward price. Backwardation often exists in perishable commodities, right before the harvest. This happens because even though demand is constant throughout the year for a commodity like wheat, the harvest only happens once a year. If you demand delivery right before the harvest, it will be more expensive than taking delivery one month later, after all the grain silos are full. Backwardation is usually a fleeting phenomenon, occurring only when a particular commodity is in short supply and there is great demand for immediate delivery, not in the future.


...[But] gold is a unique commodity in that it is not consumed... it’s hoarded. Estimates of world gold supplies are north of 170,000 tons. So what would backwardation mean in the gold market? ...if and when we see gold in backwardation, it should be considered something like a fire alarm for the system. Something serious is happening. Investors would be rejecting what should be a “risk free” profit opportunity. We would like to suggest two (not mutually exclusive) causes: 1) the threat of counterparty failure and/or 2) loss of confidence in the $US Dollar.

The first implication of gold in backwardation is straightforward and easy to understand. The market is pricing in significant counterparty risk of failure to deliver gold in the future... [We] believe the second implication for gold backwardation is a collapse in confidence in the $US Dollar itself.

...So what would extended or permanent backwardation imply? According to Prof Antal Fekete, “gold going into permanent backwardation means that gold is no longer for sale at any price, whether it is quoted in dollars, yens, euros, or Swiss francs. The situation is exactly the same as is has been for years: gold is not for sale at any price quoted in Zimbabwe currency, however high the quote is. To put it differently, all offers to sell gold are being withdrawn, whether it concerns newly mined gold, scrap gold, bullion or coined gold.”

...For physical gold owners searching for clues to tightness and demand in the physical market, they would be wise to keep a sharp eye on these metrics. It is our belief that this is happening, right now. Money is moving down Exter’s pyramid and while the final denouement may be days, weeks, months or years off, we are certain it would be preferable to be years early as opposed to a day late.

But don't worry, folks. Ben Bernanke's got this.


Friday, February 22, 2013

MUST-READ: Titan CEO Smashes French Communist Unions

Tyler Durden updates us on the developing -- and fascinating -- war of words between an avowed Capitalist and the Marxist French government, which is now in:

...Round 3, following round 1 in which the "Titan CEO Crushes Socialist "Work Ethic", Tells France "You Can Keep Your So-Called Workers" and round 2 in which "Socialist France Responds To Titan CEO, Hilarity Ensues."

...Excerpted from Titan CEO Maurice Taylor's follow up letter in response to Arnaud Montebourg's letter responding to Maurice Taylor.

Your letter shows the extent to which your political class is out of touch with real world problems.

You call me an extremist, but most businessmen would agree that I must be nuts to have the idea to spend millions of US dollars to buy a tyre factory in France paying some of the highest wages in the world.

Your letter did not mention why the French government has not stepped in to rescue this Goodyear tyre factory.

The extremist, Mr Minister, is your government and the lack of knowledge about how to build a business.

Your government let the wackos of the communist union destroy the highest paying jobs.

At no time did Titan ask for lower wages; we asked only if you want seven hours pay, you work at least six.

France does have beautiful women and great wine.

PS: My grandmother named my father after French entertainer Maurice Chevalier, and I inherited the name.

I have visited Normandy with my wife. I know what we did for France.

And down goes Montebourg! Down goes Montebourg!


NEW POLL: Guess Which Religion Published a Handy Guide to Stoning Adulterers to Death?

Rising multimedia star SooperMexican asks:

Buzzfeed just posted this pretty [Ed.: "pretty"?] evil guide to stoning people... Can you guess what religion’s adherents posted it?


I guessed Radical Episcopalians, but I don't think that's right.

You can vote in the poll by clicking here.


Hat tip: BadBlue News.

Thursday, February 21, 2013

Reason #3,906 to support the Sequester: DHS to see major budget cuts

According to the Heritage Foundation, the Budget Sequester "cuts the DHS off at the knees."

They say it like that's a bad thing.

... the DHS will be hit hard if the sequestration is allowed to proceed as planned. Some of the areas highlighted are:

• The TSA would have to furlough front-line screening personnel at airports, likely causing significant delays at major airports throughout the U.S.

• The Coast Guard would have to reduce air and surface operations by 25 percent, put off maintenance of its aging fleet, and delay moving into its new headquarters.

• Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) would need to downsize its workforces of both CBP officers and Border Patrol Agents.

• The Department’s Science and Technology Directorate would be forced to cut major projects entirely, including research on protecting the U.S. electrical grid, and drastically slash others.

• Funding to the National Cybersecurity Protection System would be significantly reduced.

Hey! I've got an idea!

Maybe DHS could sell the couple billion of rounds of ammo it's stockpiled into the private market which so desperately needs it.

That way all of the airport crotch-grabbing and Southern border non-enforcing can continue apace!


Obama says that he can't cut spending by 2%, but just hiked payroll taxes on every American by more than that in January.

It would seem that the federal government can't diet by even 2 percent, but the president just hiked payroll taxes on every American -- the poor, the rich and the middle class -- by that exact amount in January. With new Obamacare taxes (on medical devices, capital gains, and higher health care premiums), the average American has had to tighten their belt by far more than 2 percent.

And what is the president's first priority to cut if the dreaded two percent "sequester" hits?

Barack Obama, who says he cares deeply about jobs, has now caused 800,000 civilian workers for the Pentagon to face as many as 22 days off without pay as a result of sequestration cuts.

That's correct: Obama's first tendency when it comes to cutting government is Defense. Not HUD. Not the EPA. Not the Department of Education or the Interior or the myraid of other paper-pushing agencies. He goes right after the Defense Department.

According to Roll Call, Obama's executive branch wastes more than "$400 billion to $450 billion [which is] lost in improper payments plus duplication".

It's actually more than that if you account for fraud and crime.

But, no, the Defense Department is Obama's target. Not the hundreds of billions in waste, fraud and duplicate spending in the federal government.

His ostensible Defense Secretary, the brilliant Chuck Hagel, wants to unilaterally disarm the United States while China, Russia, and terror states build their atomic arsenals.

And Obama gives -- not sells, gives -- F-16 fighters to the Muslim Brotherhood-controlled Egyptian government. Which happens to be the same government that just today refused the U.S. access to a suspect in slaying of a U.S. Ambassador in Benghazi.

Historian Trevor Loudon was right all along: Barack Obama's true goal is to disarm America, to bring it to its knees on the global stage, and to see it humbled.


Wednesday, February 20, 2013

HEH: Marco Rubio, Benjamin Netanyahu poke progressive Democrat media right in the eye

My interpretation of this photo is Marco Rubio and Benjamin Netanyahu telling Democrat media to stick it.


For Democrat media, Sen. Bob Menendez's (D-ominican) hookers-for-favors scandal ain't a story, but Marco Rubio sipping water is. Which summarizes why their ratings are plummeting faster than Michael Moore in a giant vat of Hershey's chocolate.


AT LAST: DHS finally getting serious about the "pregnant women and kids with guns" threat

I refer, of course, to the vendor of shooting targets for the Department of Homeland Security and other federal agencies that has created a line of “non-traditional threat” targets that include pregnant women, children, mothers in playgrounds and elderly Americans. Seriously.

Finally, the DHS will put an end to the epidemic of seven-year olds and pregnant women shooting cops. The company says it's all about, uhm, realism.

The subjects in NMH targets were chosen in order to give officers the experience of dealing with deadly force shooting scenarios with subjects that are not the norm during training. I found while speaking with officers and trainers in the law enforcement community that there is a hesitation on the part of cops when deadly force is required on subjects with atypical age, frailty or condition (one officer explaining that he enlarged photos of his own kids to use as targets so that he would not be caught off guard with such a drastically new experience while on duty).


This hesitation time may be only seconds but that is not acceptable when officers are losing their lives in these same situations.


The goal of NMH is to break that stereotype on the range, regardless of how slim the chances are of encountering a real life scenario that involves a child, pregnant woman, etc. If that initial hesitation time can be cut down due to range experience, the officer and community are better served.

Because over and over again, history is replete with incidents of law enforcement officials being shot at by 7-year old kids and pregnant ladies.

With that as context, please consider the following news reports:

1. The Department of Homeland Security recently acquired 2 billion rounds of ammunition, which represents thousands of rounds per DHS employee.

2. Newly released drone records have revealed extensive military flights inside the U.S.; police departments and federal agencies plan to have as many as 30,000 drones monitoring Americans within the next seven years.

3. When Can the U.S. Kill Americans? The White House Won't Say -- and Won't Even Tell Congress; President Obama's successful efforts to renew and strengthen The Patriot Act under the NDAA means, according to the ACLU, American citizens may be subject to "indefinite military detention without charge or trial... for the first time in American history."

4. The FBI director said in March he'd have to check whether the president can assassinate citizens inside the U.S.. When questioned by Congress regarding a speech by Attorney General Holder, who offered his "legal justification for assassination", FBI Director Mueller was unable to say whether the president could unilaterally decide to assassinate U.S. citizens inside the borders of this country.

5. The DHS has specifically listed Americans who believe in "individual liberty" as potential terrorists. These "right-wing extremists" who insist in fidelity to the Constitution are, according to multiple studies funded by DHS, among the country's most dire terrorist threats. Not Al Qaeda, Hezbollah, Ansar al-Islam, Hamas, or Iran's Revolutionary Guards -- together responsible for tens of thousands of murders -- but "violent right-wing extremists" who believe in the principles of the nation's founding.

6. The military recently deployed gunships over Miami, executing training exercises with local police departments. A few days later, similar exercises were conducted in Houston. Last year the military deployed ground forces, armored personnel carriers and tanks on the streets of St. Louis for "training exercises". Military exercises in domestic urban environments of this scale are "unprecedented".

7. Police departments throughout the country are receiving tanks, humvees and drones from the Department of Defense, according to a WLS-TV (Chicago) I-Team investigation. "Short of a weapon of mass destruction, you can get any kind of military gear that's out there," the police chief of Benedectine University told WLS. "We chose firearms and a vehicle." WLS also reported rampant theft of military equipment, including body armor and night-vision goggles issued to the Chicago Police Department.

And now we can add:

8. The purchase of "non-traditional" shooting practice targets by the DHS, which include realistic images of kids, pregnant women and seniors.

You progressives starting to get the picture?


Tuesday, February 19, 2013

MANDIANT REPORT: How Red China Engages in Open Warfare Against America's Critical Industries

Mandiant has published a lengthy, must-read report (PDF) on a Red Chinese cyber-war unit [APT1] that is openly attacking American firms.

One of the primary methods the PLA gains a beachhead inside the target firm is through spear-phishing, which uses a personalized email that entices the victim into clicking on a malicious link.

The Initial Compromise represents the methods intruders use to first penetrate a target organization’s network. As with most other APT groups, spear phishing is APT1’s most commonly used technique. The spear phishing emails contain either a malicious attachment or a hyperlink to a malicious file. The subject line and the text in the email body are usually relevant to the recipient. APT1 also creates webmail accounts using real peoples’ names — names that are familiar to the recipient, such as a colleague, a company executive, an IT department employee, or company counsel — and uses these accounts to send the emails. As a real-world example, this is an email that APT1 sent to Mandiant employees:


At first glance, the email appeared to be from Mandiant’s CEO, Kevin Mandia. However, further scrutiny shows that the email was not sent from a Mandiant email account, but from “kevin.mandia@rocketmail.com”. Rocketmail is a free webmail service. The account “kevin.mandia@rocketmail.com” does not belong to Mr. Mandia. Rather, an APT1 actor likely signed up for the account specifically for this spear phishing event. If anyone had clicked on the link that day (which no one did, thankfully), their computer would have downloaded a malicious ZIP file named “Internal_Discussion_Press_Release_In_Next_Week8.zip”. This file contained a malicious executable that installs a custom APT1 backdoor that we call WEBC2-TABLE.

Although the files that APT1 actors attach or link to spear phishing emails are not always in ZIP format, this is the predominant trend we have observed in the last several years. Below is a sampling of file names that APT1 has used with their malicious ZIP files:

2012ChinaUSAviationSymposium.zip
Employee-Benefit-and-Overhead-Adjustment-Keys.zip
MARKET-COMMENT-Europe-Ends-Sharply-Lower-On-Data-Yields-Jump.zip
Negative_Reports_Of_Turkey.zip
New_Technology_For_FPGA_And_Its_Developing_Trend.zip
North_Korean_launch.zip
Oil-Field-Services-Analysis-And-Outlook.zip
POWER_GEN_2012.zip
Proactive_Investors_One2One_Energy_Investor_Forum.zip
Social-Security-Reform.zip
South_China_Sea_Security_Assessment_Report.zip
Telephonics_Supplier_Manual_v3.zip
The_Latest_Syria_Security_Assessment_Report.zip
Updated_Office_Contact_v1.zip
Updated_Office_Contact_v2.zip
Welfare_Reform_and_Benefits_Development_Plan.zip

The example file names include military, economic, and diplomatic themes, suggesting the wide range of industries that APT1 targets. Some names are also generic (e.g., “updated_office_contact_v1.zip”) and could be used for targets in any industry.


On some occasions, unsuspecting email recipients have replied to the spear phishing messages, believing they were communicating with their acquaintances. In one case a person replied, “I’m not sure if this is legit, so I didn’t open it.” Within 20 minutes, someone in APT1 responded with a terse email back: “It’s legit.”


Bottom line: trust no one.


Monday, February 18, 2013

The Most Serious Threat to Our Right to Keep and Bear Arms [Gary Marbut]

By Gary Marbut, President of the Montana Shooting Sports Association

I want to inform you about what I think is the most serious threat to our right to Keep and Bear Arms in the U.S. today, much more serious and real than anything Obama or Senator Dianne Feinstein can hope to get through Congress...

Without ammunition, ammunition components, and especially smokeless powder, our firearms are just awkward and expensive clubs – of no real use.

You may not know that there are only two facilities in the U.S. today that manufacture smokeless powder. All the rest is imported, from Canada, from Australia, from Scandinavia, from Israel, and elsewhere.

The sole two facilities in the U.S. are the General Dynamics plant in St. Marks, Florida, and the Alliant/ATK plant in Connecticut. Both General Dynamics and Alliant/ATK are giant government contractors. They make aircraft carriers, space vehicles and other very high-dollar stuff for the U.S. government.

If Obama were to lean on the Secretary of Defense to float the concern to General Dynamics and Alliant that their next aircraft carrier, submarine or space vehicle contract might be disapproved as long as they are supplying smokeless powder for civilian consumption and use, those sources would dry up overnight.

Tomorrow, the Secretary of State could sign a letter declaring a moratorium on the import of smokeless powder while the federal government studies the possible connections to “terrorism” or such. That supply would end immediately.

These two strokes could be accomplished without any bill ever being introduced in or passed by Congress, and without even an Executive Order – just simple administrative action.

Some people thought I was prescient when I wrote the Nation's first shooting range protection act for Montana in 1990 (passed in 1991), and when I wrote the Firearms Freedom Act for Montana in 2004 (passed in 2009).

I'm warning you now that our RKBA could be sunk administratively if we don't do something about it, now. I'm sounding the alarm!