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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsSlate: Was a Trump Server Communicating With Russia?
This story is from the end of October. It takes on new light in light of recent revelations. I suspect the FBI and CIA may well have a smoking gun on Trump's collaboration. This is also mentioned in a New York Times article, but hardly anywhere else, it seem.
Hunting for malware requires highly specialized knowledge of the intricacies of the domain name systemthe protocol that allows us to type email addresses and website names to initiate communication. DNS enables our words to set in motion a chain of connections between servers, which in turn delivers the results we desire. Before a mail server can deliver a message to another mail server, it has to look up its IP address using the DNS. Computer scientists have built a set of massive DNS databases, which provide fragmentary histories of communications flows, in part to create an archive of malware: a kind of catalog of the tricks bad actors have tried to pull, which often involve masquerading as legitimate actors. These databases can give a useful, though far from comprehensive, snapshot of traffic across the internet. Some of the most trusted DNS specialistsan elite group of malware hunters, who work for private contractorshave access to nearly comprehensive logs of communication between servers. They work in close concert with internet service providers, the networks through which most of us connect to the internet, and the ones that are most vulnerable to massive attacks. To extend the traffic metaphor, these scientists have cameras posted on the internets stoplights and overpasses. They are entrusted with something close to a complete record of all the servers of the world connecting with one another.
In late July, one of these scientistswho asked to be referred to as Tea Leaves, a pseudonym that would protect his relationship with the networks and banks that employ him to sift their datafound what looked like malware emanating from Russia. The destination domain had Trump in its name, which of course attracted Tea Leaves attention. But his discovery of the data was pure happenstancea surprising needle in a large haystack of DNS lookups on his screen. I have an outlier here that connects to Russia in a strange way, he wrote in his notes. He couldnt quite figure it out at first. But what he saw was a bank in Moscow that kept irregularly pinging a server registered to the Trump Organization on Fifth Avenue.
More data was needed, so he began carefully keeping logs of the Trump servers DNS activity. As he collected the logs, he would circulate them in periodic batches to colleagues in the cybersecurity world. Six of them began scrutinizing them for clues.
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/cover_story/2016/10/was_a_server_registered_to_the_trump_organization_communicating_with_russia.html
Snarkoleptic
(6,001 posts)This is important for a few reasons. The first, Jeewa said, was that the trump-email.com was configured to reject a certain type of query from another server. Since its job was simply to push out thousands of enticements to come stay at Trump Soho (or whatever) it didn't need to receive many incoming requests (like incoming email). The second is that the conspiracy theory hinges on Trump's team using an offsite server hosted by someone else for its quiet communications with its Russian allies. Instead of, say, their own server, under their own control. Or an encrypted chat app. Or a phone call.
So why were the Alfa Bank servers communicating with trump-email.com in a rhythm that both seems to mirror human communication patterns and seems to have increased over the course of the campaign? To the latter point, the researchers looking at the traffic only began tracking communications in July, so everything's been within the context of the campaign. A graph created by the researchers seems "to follow the contours of political happenings in the United States," in Foer's words.
kennetha
(3,666 posts)at one point.... but then in a subsequent article they seemed to backtrack.
The FBI spent the entire summer chasing this lead, apparently.
Then thought maybe not.
Here's an excerpt from their 10/31 article about the bank:
F.B.I. officials spent weeks examining computer data showing an odd stream of activity to a Trump Organization server and Alfa Bank. Computer logs obtained by The New York Times show that two servers at Alfa Bank sent more than 2,700 look-up messages a first step for one systems computers to talk to another to a Trump-connected server beginning in the spring. But the F.B.I. ultimately concluded that there could be an innocuous explanation, like a marketing email or spam, for the computer contacts.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/01/us/politics/fbi-russia-election-donald-trump.html
But subsequently the FBI seem to have changed their tune. Here's what the Time's 12/11 article says about the bank.
At the height of its investigation before the election, the F.B.I. saw some indications that the Russians might be explicitly seeking to get Mr. Trump elected, officials said, and investigators collected online evidence and conducted interviews overseas and inside the United States to test that theory.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/11/us/politics/cia-judgment-intelligence-russia-hacking-evidence.html
In the subsequent article the activity is characterized as "mysterious and unexplained" (I assume by their sources). That is not a dismissal at all. That is not a debunking.
We know that the FBI and the CIA are now on the same page about the Russians and their goals.
Snarkoleptic
(6,001 posts)n/t
This story "broke" earlier the same day that Comey released his letter (if I remember correctly). I was watching the news diligently all day waiting for it to filter up to TV, but then the Comey story broke and this one died an instant death.
That, I say, is ample evidence that not only was the Trump campaign colluding with Russia, but Comey was also in on it.
I think Trump, Gulianni, Comey, McConnel et al should be arrested for TREASON. NOW!
(OK, actually, a few months ago, but now would be good too)
That's just my thoughts.
spanone
(135,871 posts)AmericanActivist
(1,019 posts)world wide wally
(21,754 posts)Keep this up there.
malaise
(269,157 posts)remember now he knows more than anyone else on this topic