How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[Seminole]

11 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

However, we have full access to our forum (including stuff you guys can not see) and the IT guys *DO NOT*.  What is not viewable to you guys here is not viewable to them by default.  When there is a need for their IT guys to do something with our forum (troubleshooting an update or something else that went wrong) then we grant them access.  When their task is done, the access goes away and we go back to the default state.  There is absolutely no reason why secured government software needs to be less secure than an f'n BBS environment..

You just described the type of window he could have accessed this information in.

So your method isn’t preventing anything, just creating windows.

Edited April 16, 2023 by Seminole

[Letter from Prague]

New Perun has landed.

[sburke]

4 hours ago, The_Capt said:

What planet do you live on where “gay drag Queen groomers” is going to get a security clearance blocked? - 1950 called and they want their “Commie Deviants” back.  

eeer what?  The response was your assumption that somehow "good clean Christian" implies anything at all these days.

Full List of Texas Pastors Charged With Abusing Children This Year (newsweek.com)  have fun

all I am saying is their church going activities should not be a + sign on the check list no more than whether they are a member of the local softball team.

4 hours ago, The_Capt said:

old people brains are as slow and dumb as rocks. 

oh yeah well I'll have you know... umm wait, what were we talking about?

[The_Capt]

2 hours ago, sburke said:

eeer what?  The response was your assumption that somehow "good clean Christian" implies anything at all these days.

Full List of Texas Pastors Charged With Abusing Children This Year (newsweek.com)  have fun

all I am saying is their church going activities should not be a + sign on the check list no more than whether they are a member of the local softball team.

oh yeah well I'll have you know... umm wait, what were we talking about?

Peace on the hollow back moral history of organized religion, no need to convince me.  My point being that a good Christian boy who goes to church on Sunday is not going to hurt a 19 year old looking for a TS clearance.  They are going to do the background sweep (and clearly nothing came up) but he is not going to get the gears compared to a Muslim etc.  Or do you think the entire US security apparatus shares your no doubt well earned cynicism?  

The other part is that a "gay drag queen groomer" is likely a box for self-identification that is more likely  to get a young person hired these days - I think the term is LGBTQ+.  Newsflash: they are swearing and smoking too!!

The days where that was a "sexual deviancy" died about 20 years ago, depending which sexually repressed society you found yourself within. My point is that your start point definition is about as current as "Reafer Madness" in the contemporary environment....now go eat your pudding.

[danfrodo]

53 minutes ago, sburke said:

all I am saying is their church going activities should not be a + sign on the check list no more than whether they are a member of the local softball team.

So you have heard the news items from the US Air Force Academy, I presume?  It's been smacked a gazillion times for officers forcing christianity on subordinates.  Turns out the US constitution has items other than 'guns' -- who knew?

Meanwhile we are seeing the first signs of Putler pivoting to the defensive.  I've been wondering whether he'd have time to redeploy & reorganize before the ground dries.  Looks like he might be trying that.  But who knows whether what is reported to him and what is real on the ground match up.  And for us another month of watching soil get soaked, over & over again. 

The Texiera kid stole and disseminated classified documents that have damaged US interests.  He must be punished.  He's young and stupid and racist.  He's in that stage of young enough to be really unwise but old enough to be held accountable for it.  He's being called a truth-teller and whistleblower by Tucker & MTGreene -- I still wish I knew how much Putin pays them.

Edit:  forgot to add that I think his youth should be taken into account in sentencing.  I throw the book at someone doing this after ~25-30 yrs old.  I'd punish this kid but less so.

 

Edited April 16, 2023 by danfrodo
add

[sburke]

6 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

The days where that was a "sexual deviancy" died about 20 years ago, depending which sexually repressed society you found yourself within. My point is that your start point definition is about as current as "Reafer Madness" in the contemporary environment....now go eat your pudding.

geez you young people, it was "reefer madness" and good sound scientific medical advice!  Now excuse me while I go buy a case of bud light to shoot at.

[danfrodo]

52 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

Peace on the hollow back moral history of organized religion, no need to convince me.  My point being that a good Christian boy who goes to church on Sunday is not going to hurt a 19 year old looking for a TS clearance.  They are going to do the background sweep (and clearly nothing came up) but he is not going to get the gears compared to a Muslim etc.  Or do you think the entire US security apparatus shares your no doubt well earned cynicism?  

The other part is that a "gay drag queen groomer" is likely a box for self-identification that is more likely  to get a young person hired these days - I think the term is LGBTQ+.  Newsflash: they are swearing and smoking too!!

The days where that was a "sexual deviancy" died about 20 years ago, depending which sexually repressed society you found yourself within. My point is that your start point definition is about as current as "Reafer Madness" in the contemporary environment....now go eat your pudding.

I agree w you TheCapt that this is sometimes the case but I think it's often not the case.  Lots of hiring managers will have both conscious & unconscious bias against various forms of LGBTQ+.  Or colored hair.  Or tatoos.  If you are biased against tatoos it might be hard to find young employees these days!   I keep wondering when tatoos will no longer be cool -- probably kids growing up now who see tatoos on their parents and it becomes like a matching nike outfit w stripes down the legs which kids wouldn't be caught dead wearing.  I am aware of some of my biases and have to consciously choose to ignore them when I interview people.  All of this gets into what we think someone in some role 'should' look like and how we need to see past that when considering someone for a job.

Meanwhile, the right in the US is currently running its entire world, entire political campaigns, on anti-LGBTQ+ outrage.  Will it work?  We'll find out next year.

But then we look at UKR.  Where pink-haired young women are fighting (remember that post-ambush video early in the war?).   Long bearded metro-hipsters, tattoo covered gamers, multi-pierced medics, etc.  All of these kids that were considered weak and soft are fighting & dying for their country and their freedom.  And I bet the new UKR military graves have plenty of gays in them too.

edit: Having biases can be bad.  Thinking you don't have any is always bad -- because we all do.

Edited April 16, 2023 by danfrodo

[chrisl]

5 hours ago, The_Capt said:

See my points on the age problem above.  And we truly are showing our Grey if we think there is a leap of maturity between 21 and 25 in this day and age.  The age thing is going to go nowhere for a lot of good reasons.  Finally before this fossil club gets too far into our own supply, just gonna leave this one here (he was 35 when it started by the way, and again a good Christian)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Hanssen

As to the IT/access problem. That is likely where the most heat and light will be placed.  Now what was this kids actual job?  Was he sweeping up the server room floor or was he an admin?  If he was running an entire secure server architecture or on the team who does, then his access was probably pretty wide, hence the clearance.  I suspect they will be looking hard at this but they may run into unworkable solutions based on whatever we bought 10 years ago with respect to IT.

Everyone is looking for a reason right now because, uncertainty.  But the reality is entirely certain, the kid was human and no human system is going to be error free.  Only way to keep a secret between three people is if two of them are dead.  It is an embarrassment to be sure but this is really more good news than bad.  The kid blew up and out really fast, so tied off quickly. The kids was not an insider so really did not understand what he was looking at nor what to really look for.  He loudspeakered as opposed to running silent whispers which could have lasted years.  And he was not being managed as a foreign asset who again could have been a slow bleedout of critical info until his retirement.

In many ways it was better he was a dumb kid and not some disgruntled 50 year old who actually knew where the bodies are buried and how to really hurt us.  While at the same time working around the procedures he likely helped write back in the day.

That's mostly true, but having tried to teach technical things (both ancient, like physics, and modern, like image processing) to college age kids, a lot of them just have holes in their brains.  Take the same people in their mid 20s after they've been out of their parents' house a while and their hormones have settled down and stick them in the same courses and their brains work way better.  (Though there are certain subset who are basically high speed logic machines as adolescents).  The problem is really you don't know who a kid is going to be at 18 and that time between 18 and 25 is when you and they are finding out.  Closer continuous review based on clearance level and role would have probably made a big difference in this case.  If someone were watching this kids social media activity they'd have caught it when he was posting his own summaries that nobody paid attention to and either adjust his access or his behavior, or both.

Part of the network problem is that encrypting and putting different levels of access controls on data at rest makes it much harder (if not impossible) to do effective cross-agency/department/etc data fusion for finding the kind of patterns that were missed in 2000-2001.

[chrisl]

double post

Edited April 16, 2023 by chrisl

[The_Capt]

2 hours ago, danfrodo said:

I agree w you TheCapt that this is sometimes the case but I think it's often not the case.  Lots of hiring managers will have both conscious & unconscious bias against various forms of LGBTQ+.  Or colored hair.  Or tatoos.  If you are biased against tatoos it might be hard to find young employees these days!   I keep wondering when tatoos will no longer be cool -- probably kids growing up now who see tatoos on their parents and it becomes like a matching nike outfit w stripes down the legs which kids wouldn't be caught dead wearing.  I am aware of some of my biases and have to consciously choose to ignore them when I interview people.  All of this gets into what we think someone in some role 'should' look like and how we need to see past that when considering someone for a job.

Meanwhile, the right in the US is currently running its entire world, entire political campaigns, on anti-LGBTQ+ outrage.  Will it work?  We'll find out next year.

But then we look at UKR.  Where pink-haired young women are fighting (remember that post-ambush video early in the war?).   Long bearded metro-hipsters, tattoo covered gamers, multi-pierced medics, etc.  All of these kids that were considered weak and soft are fighting & dying for their country and their freedom.  And I bet the new UKR military graves have plenty of gays in them too.

edit: Having biases can be bad.  Thinking you don't have any is always bad -- because we all do.

Sure but we are talking about the US Government here.  A denial of employment by the US Government based on LGBTQ+ is a fast track to lawsuits.  Does it happen, sure.  Is it institutionalized like it was back in the 80s, not a freakin chance.  This is right next to prayer in public schools...boom. 

You wanna see the West crack like an egg?  Have the US vote in some anti-LGBTQ+ twit with the weight to actually change the laws back to the 60s.  Electorates in Europe and Canada are going to explode.  Keep going on resurrecting Jim Crow laws and it could go that way as well.

Bias is one thing.  Laws are another matter.  We are off topic here, so dragging it back to the young fella in question.  On paper the kid was likely spotless and clean as they come.  I mean so far we have "he loved guns", which is just like saying "he loved freedom" in large swaths of the US.  The guy got his clearance because he was clean.  Weird ideas about restrictions below a certain age and treating security clearances like they are access to alcohol are not 1) sensible, 2) proven by history - it is old disgruntled guys that know what they are doing one has to watch out for, 3) or sustainable from a legal or realistic capacity stand point.

We can talk access and compartmentalization all day - this is entirely a different headache and do not think for a second that more layers and controls is going to make things all better.  but wide swath policies based on the demographic profile of a single sad dumb young offender is a non-starter.

Edited April 16, 2023 by The_Capt

[The_Capt]

2 hours ago, chrisl said:

Part of the network problem is that encrypting and putting different levels of access controls on data at rest makes it much harder (if not impossible) to do effective cross-agency/department/etc data fusion for finding the kind of patterns that were missed in 2000-2001.

This.  Right?!  

Again, the prime target for any government agency or department are young, smart, and clean.  By definition they are going to lack experience - that is what years on the job are for.  

2 hours ago, chrisl said:

The problem is really you don't know who a kid is going to be at 18 and that time between 18 and 25 is when you and they are finding out.  Closer continuous review based on clearance level and role would have probably made a big difference in this case.  If someone were watching this kids social media activity they'd have caught it when he was posting his own summaries that nobody paid attention to and either adjust his access or his behavior, or both.

Ya, guys c'mon.  Does anyone know what it takes to put a full team on someone?  "If someone" is an entire team with legal top cover, oversight and authorities.  Those teams are smaller in the 21st century thanks to things like AI but it is still not one guy following this kid around on Tik Tok or pretending to be a 14 year old on a Discord channel.

But let's say you get greenlit for a counter-intelligence op (that is what this is btw), now you have to do it for thousands of kids in the system.

The kids are kids.  We put guns in there hands and send them out all the time.  We are going to give them clearances and let them loose in cyber space as well.

Now if some people were smart, and I would not be surprised if they were, they have already flipped this thing into a IO win by poisoning the leak.  How does the Russia know what was real and what was BS.  Is the US AD system really about to buckle are was that a honeypot to pull in and make this war more expensive, for example?

  

[danfrodo]

2 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

Now if some people were smart, and I would not be surprised if they were, they have already flipped this thing into a IO win by poisoning the leak.  How does the Russia know what was real and what was BS.  Is the US AD system really about to buckle are was that a honeypot to pull in and make this war more expensive, for example?

From your keyboard to Gawd's ears.  I am really hoping this leak plus some clever intel ops actually puts more indecision into Putler and friends.  I just keep thinking "Pas de Calais". 

[The_Capt]

3 hours ago, sburke said:

geez you young people, it was "reefer madness" and good sound scientific medical advice!  Now excuse me while I go buy a case of bud light to shoot at.

Damn, critique accepted by the old crone in the back.  Regardless, the stuff is legal all over now and you can pick up a bag or two when you go get your beer.  Probably should not operate a weapon with either of these two substances - ya know, because kids are the only humans to ever do something stupid.

[The_Capt]

2 hours ago, danfrodo said:

From your keyboard to Gawd's ears.  I am really hoping this leak plus some clever intel ops actually puts more indecision into Putler and friends.  I just keep thinking "Pas de Calais". 

I doubt it was that deliberate, but I also would not be surprised.  Russia is probably driving itself nuts trying to figure out was real and what was polluted.  They are going to spin their end (already have) but the actual payoff is probably pretty limited.  Hell your president pretty much already said so.

[kevinkin]

Need to find out how our allies are handling IT support and deep access to state secrets. If they let us in on it fine, if not what are they hiding? Although it's their prerogative, would to nice to know one way or the other.  Now forget the kid, the focus should be on his reporting chain. Someone got lazy or laziness is now part of the culture. "This guy has to be OK, I will grant him unlimited access so I don't have to go through hoops each time." - yeesh. 

So this is scary:

"Those workers can log onto the Joint Worldwide Intelligence Communications System — essentially a highly classified version of Google — and in milliseconds pull up briefings on Ukraine, China or nearly any other sensitive subject that the U.S. government collects intelligence on."

Data hanging around especially without interpretation is dangerous. So where did you learn how to install those new F35 sensors?  Google? Really?  

[Kraft]

18 hours ago, akd said:

Is this only on Telegram?

It was also uploaded to the combatfootage subreddit

Obvious NSFW warning, corpses etc

https://v.redd.it/8us6jmd22nta1

https://v.redd.it/xeyn7jqo0ota1

 

Edited April 16, 2023 by Kraft

[Sojourner]

One comparison to the Teixera case I haven't seen mentioned yet is Boyce and Lee, much more relevant in terms of the laxity of the security apparatus. Boyce took out classified documents because "it was easy", turned out selling them to the Soviets was more difficult. They even kept a potted marijuana plant in the secure vault, how's that for audacity in the shadow of the reefer madness mindset.

 

In terms of damage done, does it rise to the level of Snowden or Hansen? We probably won't know that for some time, if ever.

[danfrodo]

6 minutes ago, Sojourner said:

One comparison to the Teixera case I haven't seen mentioned yet is Boyce and Lee, much more relevant in terms of the laxity of the security apparatus. Boyce took out classified documents because "it was easy", turned out selling them to the Soviets was more difficult. They even kept a potted marijuana plant in the secure vault, how's that for audacity in the shadow of the reefer madness mindset.

 

In terms of damage done, does it rise to the level of Snowden or Hansen? We probably won't know that for some time, if ever.

I wonder how much intent will matter.  Showing off to his discord friends is different than trying to sell to enemies.  Same outcome of course, for US.

 

[Battlefront.com]

3 hours ago, Seminole said:

You just described the type of window he could have accessed this information in.

He was leaking documents for possibly 2 years.  That's not a window, that's what I'd call a "pole barn":

3 hours ago, Seminole said:

So your method isn’t preventing anything, just creating windows.

It limits the windows.  And when you have a smaller number an size of windows, you can supervise better.  Risk mitigation is all about reducing risk, not eliminating it.

As has been said by the people that have worked within this system, the "need-to-know" is going to come out as a key factor here.  I can not see any reason why a 19 year old IT guy in an ANG unit needs to see the same thing the President of the United States sees.  If he needed to get into the system to do some sort of maintenance, then it should have been brief and he should not have been effectively unsupervised.  He certainly shouldn't have been able to print stuff out and also been able to get it out of the facility.

Steve

[mosuri]

I didn't see this being discussed yet, claims that JDAMs are vulnerable to Russian GPS jamming?

https://www.politico.com/news/2023/04/12/russia-jamming-u-s-smart-bombs-in-ukraine-leaked-docs-say-00091600

I have no real knowledge on the topic but AIUI JDAM has inertial + GPS and Wikipedia claims 30m CEP with inertial only when GPS is not available, doesn't sound super awful given the long reach, but of course depends on the target and number of munitions used in the strike... All the more reason to target Russian EW units then.

[Battlefront.com]

21 minutes ago, Sojourner said:

In terms of damage done, does it rise to the level of Snowden or Hansen? We probably won't know that for some time, if ever.

I doubt it.  From the analysis I've seen none of it was very sensitive in the sense of telling our enemies something they couldn't have either guessed or known for themselves.  I heard an interview with a retired senior CIA officer and he said that our allies all know that we're spying on them and that we know they are spying on us.  AFAIK the unwritten rule is that passive information collecting is OK, weaponizing it (blackmail, selling it to the highest bidder, etc.) or using it to interfere in domestic affairs is not acceptable.  So the CIA guy said that countries might make a little "harrumph" noises for domestic audiences, but it won't affect our relationships.

Back in the earlier days there was a lot less known about what the other guy knew or was thinking.  That's really not the case any more.  The bigger the something is, the more sure one should be that the US (at a minimum) knows about it.

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

15 minutes ago, mosuri said:

I didn't see this being discussed yet, claims that JDAMs are vulnerable to Russian GPS jamming?

https://www.politico.com/news/2023/04/12/russia-jamming-u-s-smart-bombs-in-ukraine-leaked-docs-say-00091600

I have no real knowledge on the topic but AIUI JDAM has inertial + GPS and Wikipedia claims 30m CEP with inertial only when GPS is not available, doesn't sound super awful given the long reach, but of course depends on the target and number of munitions used in the strike... All the more reason to target Russian EW units then.

A while back I saw some discussion about JDAMs and it didn't appear they were particularly vulnerable to jamming due to the way they work.  By the time the bomb gets within the EW envelope it should already be roughly on target and not making more than micro adjustments.  Now, if the error handling within the bomb's "brains" is susceptible to confusion, then it could micro adjust itself in ways that are harmful to accuracy.  If that's the case, then hopefully they'll upgrade the logic used to handle corrupted/blocked GPS information.

Steve

[Letter from Prague]

15 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

A while back I saw some discussion about JDAMs and it didn't appear they were particularly vulnerable to jamming due to the way they work.  By the time the bomb gets within the EW envelope it should already be roughly on target and not making more than micro adjustments.  Now, if the error handling within the bomb's "brains" is susceptible to confusion, then it could micro adjust itself in ways that are harmful to accuracy.  If that's the case, then hopefully they'll upgrade the logic used to handle corrupted/blocked GPS information.

Steve

Russia and Iran had shows not just GPS jamming but also GPS spoofing capabilities decades ago. So I would hope someone looked into that, before whole western arsenal of PGMs becomes as precise as Kalibr.

[NamEndedAllen]

7 hours ago, The_Capt said:

Ok, well you are not wrong, but you really are.  Lemme try and illuminate without straying too far into it.

Older people have baggage.  It is called life.  And as such they have a lot more possible security clearance issues than someone who has only been alive for 19 years.  So, yes, the your friends should be “sweating” because they have the things that trip up a clearance…like debt.  A 19 year old kid, not so much.  They are clean slates in many ways.  Beyond the whole constitutional and legal implications of age discrimination, if we filtered them out based on age and experience we are seriously cutting into recruiting…we need them, you might even have noticed a tv ad or two to that effect?

As to brain development.  Again, totally accurate assessment…and also why we recruit them.  That partially developed mind can be constructed and shaped for warfare…tale as old as time.  We can wring hands about security clearances but in reality we recruit them to kill.  We put a lot of firepower in their hands and expect them to be ready to employ deep judgement under fire on the use of lethal force.  “But what about the chain o command”?!  Well trust me when I say that adult supervision is probably the second casualty of war.  These kids survive a few months and they are the adult supervision.  These are the kids who fight and die in your nations wars…exactly how did you think the entire thing was getting done?

So when we are talking technology, here is a crazy truth you missed on brain development - old people brains are as slow and dumb as rocks.  So we purposefully recruit sharp (money on the bar this kid had a high IQ) kids who grew up with this stuff to run networks and all that “computer stuff”.  Cyber operators, the guys who are actually conducting ops in the main are in the same age category.  This is good because they can relate to the rifleman who they graduated schools with.  Anyway, these kids can collapse a national economy so they too are cleared just as high, and likely much easier than their 40 year old boss who is on his third marriage and has a bunch of traffic tickets.

Finally as to religion, c’mon seriously?  Tell me how you think a devout Muslim would have faired in comparison?  The kid likely came up entirely clean with no extremist linkages - “oh look he is a middle class white kid who used racial slurs online”.  If that was a showstopper we may as well close shop right now.  Here is a shocker…he probably told a few dirty jokes too, heavens no!  From what we have seen on the news the kid is a poster child for a quick and easy clearance.  And how do we screen for “young, lonely and insecure” particularly after a pandemic?  I mean basically stop at “young”, and as I explained that would be a major problem.

You are terrific in so much that you offer. But here…just general speculation and broad opinion. Steve already laid out the case well -  chrisl and others have added much to the question. It’s about mitigating specific risks in a specific context, not your broad picture. It isn’t positing a 100% guarantee. Nothing is. Age related job requirements are throughout society, and this episode suggests the military examine it in the intelligence security context. Your defense boils down to, “We’ve always done it this way.” Which is why so much keeps going amuck. Ironically, reminiscent of your critiques about war fighting doctrine.

 

[NamEndedAllen]

40 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

From the analysis I've seen none of it was very sensitive in the sense of telling our enemies something they couldn't have either guessed or known for themselves.

Weren’t there widely reported concerns that the penetration of Russian intelligence had them scrambling? That their search for our sources and methods is aided by the specificity of the published leaks? Hoping that isn’t actually the case.