Issue 57: Part 2 - City on a Hill
'Deplorable' Technology
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON 10/8/21: The content has been refreshed and converted to Substack format.
History sure has a way of catching up with the future and we’re going to learn a whole lot about that in this issue. But I remain mystified how a staggering amount of people continue to cling to the obvious false hope coming from the cast of characters that make up what I refer to as “Cyberpalooza Gang.” Don’t get me wrong, this is a well intended gang with all the hope that the cyberholes they are travelling down will produce results. For all I know, some of them may be in on the plan and they’re merely playing the role in which they have been cast. But for the large majority they’re pawns being sacrificed as part of a broader strategy on a more complex chessboard. Lindell, Fann, Rogers, Waldron, Pulitzer…and the list goes on.
Although previously stated in some of my other issues I want to restate the following one last time:
You will never see actual audit results that amount to anything consequential.
The PCAPs are real but nobody on either side will do anything to address them.
Nothing of any actionable significance will happen prior to the 2022 midterm elections…nothing. The election will move forward as planned.
I have no problem being wrong.
I’m hoping light bulbs are coming on but with that in mind, let’s dive in…
The number of gears in motion at this moment are too many to count but believe it or not, many of those gears are working in our favor. It’s just one surreal story line after another and trying to keep up is tasking to say the least. I know issue 56 was somewhat dark, but hopefully it also gave us a sense of not only the enemy, but of our own perseverance and patience. In this issue we are going to tackle 3 big topics that require getting under the hood quite a bit in order to make it crystallize. And then in issue 58 we’ll tackle the last two in addition to understanding how the victory parade gets formed and who’s invited.
Ready, set, go…
Topic 1: The Internet
There as really no way of knowing that a smooth-talking Senator from Illinois who became President would forever be linked with the ultimate computer nerd that through sheer happenstance would be one of 7 people on the planet with a key to all of cyberspace. Yet, that is where we are. Back at the beginning of October 2016, President Obama did what many considered at the time to be an act of complete surrender when he decided to cede control of the entire internet to a non-profit global entity referred to has ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers).
ICANN is comprised of 21 “Trusted Community Representatives.” Of those, 14 are Cryptographic Officers and 7 are Recovery Key Share Holders. When vacancies become available (which is rare) anyone can be nominated but being a member of either one of these groups is an extremely high bar to meet in terms of accomplishment and recommendation. Essentially, you would need to make a name for yourself in the field of web infrastructure and/or DNS root key management. If in the very unlikely event you happen to become one of 7 Recovery Key Share Holders, you immediately are afforded tremendous influence as it pertains to key decisions that impact the entire web universe. In the case of Dan Kaminsky, his key accomplishment is matched by nobody, as he is personally responsible for uncovering the DNS cache poisoning that was occurring at Sony and it had infected over 568,000 computers.
Dan Kaminsky wasn’t necessarily a fan of Donald Trump but based on my research, he was probably more neutral than anything when it came to politics. However, Paul Vixie is a different story altogether, which we shall learn later. But more importantly, Kaminsky is the only representative of the United States to sit as one of the Recover Key Share Holders.
The other countries represented are Great Britain, China, Burkina Faso, Trinidad and Tobago, the Czech Republic, and Canada. Now, there really isn’t any rhyme or reason behind which countries are represented because membership is largely based on personal and professional achievement, because ICANN governs based on technical principles (security, safety, etc), of which Kaminsky most certainly is the brainchild…or was.
On April 23, 2021, a 42-year-old Dan Kaminsky died suddenly. Cause of death? At best unknown, at worst… well…
What is not in question is he died 13 days before the worst cyberattack in history on US energy infrastructure. Of course, it should come as no surprise that one of the key takeaways (see below) for preventing this type of an attack is to enforce security at the DNS layer and to use a DNS analyzing tool to block these very attacks. Dan Kaminsky (former Cisco employee) would have been a huge voice of truth as it relates to reverse-engineering the root cause and fix for the Colonial attack.
Dan Kaminsky has passed away and I offer his family my prayers and deepest condolences. But I would be a fool not to wonder around the circumstances, especially considering we were not even given a cause of death for a man that is literally 1 of 7 people on planet earth with 100% governance over the entirety of the internet.
The presence, extreme knowledge, and passion of Dan Kaminsky offers a huge problem for any persons or entities that wish to operate with autonomy as it pertains to cyberspace. It doesn’t matter if you’re part of a Russia hacker team, China hacker team, the CIA, or the US DOD… Dan Kaminsky possessed the ability to make any of those groups sitting ducks. His knowledge afforded him the know how and his position afforded him the power to act.
This made him the ultimate threat. More on this later…
Topic 2: Facebook
On October 4th, we all experienced a 5+ hour global Facebook/Instagram/WhatsApp outage of the magnitude that multiple technology executives would lose their jobs the next day. Also, the outage was competing with knowing that the very next day (Oct 5th) the vaunted whistleblower was going to take stage. The prevailing thought (which I never agreed with) was that the outage was designed to take the attention away from the coming whistleblower the very next day. As it turns out, I was right…and wrong. I was correct in that the whistleblower was everything we thought she would be and more, which was a tool used by Facebook and the federal government to create even more censorship. Where I was wrong was my assessment of October 5th, which is also the day the VP of Infrastructure issued a post-mortem on what happened on October 4th.
Mission accomplished because while the entire world was watching the deep state bimbo, this was subtly published to Facebooks website. This is long and absurdly detailed to read live, so I will give you the highlights on the next page, but the full document is here if you want to go back and read. Let’s discuss the key points….
No data center on the planet has millions of machines. He deliberately left out the words virtual machines to make FB seem so gigantic that stupid people just wouldn’t understand.
A mess up on a routine maintenance job brought down the entire global network backbone?
The audit tool bug we’re lying about in number 3 should have caught lie number 2.
A routine maintenance change caused every Facebook server worldwide to lose connectivity.
And if you’re not feeling bad enough for us, here’s more.
Even though we were alive something made us completely disappear for over 5 hours.
We hired an outside firm to fix a problem we couldn’t fix ourselves.
We were so safe we almost prevented ourselves from gaining access to our own equipment.
Gee golly we’ll do better next time.
During the heart of the outage there were several different domain registration companies such as GoDaddy that listed the domain Facebook.com as up for sale. This happened thanks to automated systems that look for registered domains which appear to be expired, abandoned or recently vacated.
The Facebook Point of View: We were just the victims of a massive hack of our global web infrastructure, and not only can we not tell you who did it, but we can’t really tell what they did because quite frankly, we are just not sure. We considered hiring one of those crisis actors but a global loss of “likes” didn’t seem to raise to the level of an Orlando Pulse night club or Parkland event… plus, most of the good ones are rehearsing for the upcoming UFO invasion.
But the story is a routine maintenance issue on a single server at a single location caused Facebook (the entire entity) to disappear for 5 hours and it also caused our entire global network to come to its knees so much so that in order to even troubleshoot the problem we had to send specialized network engineers to all of our data centers worldwide.
Honestly, based on the information we have, we are down to two options on what occurred…
Option 1: Hacked By a Foreign Enemy
Nothing about this outage feels like China. Facebook and China need each other because they are on the same team (at least for the time being). Zuckerberg understands the landscape and his job is to push the control narrative which is precisely what China wants. As far as Russia, this whole idea of Russian hackers in dark rooms infiltrating massive web infrastructure is completely absurd. It was a lie during the Colonial hack and it’s a lie now.
Option 2: Hacked By a Domestic Enemy
Facebook has more domestic enemies than you can imagine. The bias… the censorship… the monitoring. But beyond all that, Facebook targeted both candidate and President Trump. They did everything in their power to destroy him, his family, his fortune, and his reputation. And then they turned to his supporters. They have done nothing but attack… but someone or something is putting the shoe on the other foot. That is what we are seeing.
Topic 3: All Those IPs
It seems like just yesterday that one Thomas Wictor was assuring us all that within no time CISA was going to take care of this whole rotten mess and restore things to order. It seemed so very right and there was no doubt that was the answer. That was on YouTube back in early December of 2020. Even I, with 30 years of IT under my belt, remember at about 1 o’clock in the morning watching that Wictor video with his black sweater on a black background. He was like the fraud whisperer or something with his scalpel analysis and every video that ended with that signature… “Click.”
As it turns out his knowledge of cybersecurity (at least at the DNS or web infrastructure level) was limited (by his own admission). With that understanding, I will be sleeping with one eye open tonight. Let’s get into the details of what is likely happening in the IP space these days.
Right out of the gate we need to understand that we have key members of the DOD cybersecurity resigning left and right. Here are two examples of many that are getting out of town before sundown.
A few decades back, the DOD was allocated huge ranges of IPv4 address space. Over the years, only a portion of that address space was announced as usable by the DoD. As the internet grew, the pool of available IPv4 dwindled until a private market emerged to facilitate the sale of what was no longer just a simple router setting, but an increasingly precious commodity. As other countries began purchasing, the DOD still sat on much of their unused supply of address space. In 2019, members of Congress attempted to force the sale of all of the DoD’s IPv4 address space by proposing a provision be added to the National Defense Authorization Act for 2020 but this died on the vine because there was no chance Trump was selling. That brings us to the morning of Joe Biden’s inauguration on January 20th. You’ve heard this before, but I will repeat one time for clarity sake… it was 11:57 am EST or 16:57 UTC…
AS8003 was now broadcast for all the world to see. In issue 20, I quoted the Washington Post Article…
Remember, AS (asymmetrical paths) describes a range of IP addresses, in this case 175 million IP addresses (6% of all available). Why would an outgoing administration do this with 3 minutes left on the clock and then give control to a no-name Global Resource Systems LLC with 1 employee?
Now remember, there were two main propaganda pieces to this story. One from the WAPO to open this story on April 24th, and then one from the AP to close it out less than 24hrs later, on April 25th. The “mystery now partially solved” piece was complete garbage saying this was all part of some DDS (Digital Defense Service) training exercise.
As a general rule, taking less than 24hrs to solve the riddle of why 6% of all IPs were given to a single-person company that doesn’t do global web infrastructure… is a pretty big red flag.
But drop all that for a second because we’ll come back to that in a big way. I want to focus on a few things here. First the who and when. So, GRS was registered on October 13th, 2020 with offices in Plantation, FL and Ray Saulino as the managing officer. That in and of itself would be a little suspect considering the circumstances… if it were true. So, which isn’t true? The who or the when?
The answer of course… is neither.
Pick a door, any door because we’ve got the goods potentially as far back as 1980 related to man named Yannick Tessier.
Same Bat Name: Global Resource Systems.
Same Bat Channel: Plantation, FL.
Let’s take a look……
But wait. What about the current owner, Ray Saulino? Well, Mr. Saulino has proven himself to be someone that has no issue placing himself in multiple controversies. It all started back in 1988 when he was one of the founding members of PRWT Services where he was an advocate for minority and women-owned enterprises until he left sometime in the mid-90s.
Then it was time to move to being the “spokesman” for a company called Packet Forensics in Tempe, AZ who I wrote about in one of my daily articles on September 27th. Packet forensics was the subject of that March 2010 controversy where they were selling appliances specifically designed to forge electronic network certificates. And then there is the “other” Packet Forensics International LLC located in Sterling, VA which as you might expect, RaySaulino is the President. Ray Saulino… a player both in Spygate and now in IPgate.
As you may be aware both Packet Forensics and Ray Saulino have been issued subpoenas from Alfa Bank presumably for their respective roles in SpyGate as it pertains to their associations with one Rodney Joffe (presumed to be “Tech Executive-1.”) This is all in addition to Ray Saulino also being the President, CEO, and probably janitor for the current Global Resources Systems, LLC.
Doug Madory (similar credentials to Dan Kaminsky) gave about a 30-minute audio interview on this whole story, and it was fascinating to hear his take, and he also made a comment in a WAPO interview back on September 12 that really threw me for a loop. Below is the address to the audio interview if you ever want to listen. Let’s take a look at one of his blog posts and then the WAPO excerpt. Keep in mind, this is AFTER the DOD supposedly took back control from GRS.
http://securityconversations.com/episode/doug-madory-on-the-mysterious-as8003-global-routing-story/
Did you hear what he just said? He said the traffic is still routing to the exact same place as it was since January 20th, even though the Pentagon claimed they had taken back control? Madory wasn’t sharing a “tantalizing fact” …he was telling us they lied… they do not have control. Madory had “come to believe” this was intelligence collection and all of AS8003 was routing to Ashburn, VA?
Take a quick look at this LinkedIN profile of Doug Madory. Obviously, the fact that he worked for Oracle for nearly 7 years is hugely important but what is more important is who he used to work for, a company called Dyn.
So Dyn and Madory were likely hand-picked by Oracle because of not only their mastery of DNS management but also their real-world experience in dealing with and potentially initiating a massive global outage. So now I am especially interested in not only the how… but the where.
Ashburn, VA? Why does that sound familiar to me? Wait, isn’t that a location of an Oracle Cloud Infrastructure data center? Hang on a second. What about Reston, VA just 20 minute down the road? Why does that also sound familiar to me? Wait, that’s the main Oracle office in DC. Isn’t that where our favorite Under Secretary of Defense went to work?
I was checking out GRS on the Better Business Bureau website and noticed Dan G and Saint Richie may be speaking the same language.
Tech Insider quoted Morgan Wright from SentineOne:
Ray Saulino spokesman for Packet Forensics.
Ray Saulino President of Packet Forensics International, LLC.
Ray Saulino Managing Officer of Global Resource Systems, LLC.
Global Resource Systems, LLC – October, 2020….Plantation, FL
Global Resource Systems, LLC – May, 2002….Plantation, FL
AS8003 routes to Ashburn, VA – January 2021.
AS8003 still routes to Ashburn, VA – October 2021.
*And I will refrain from other definitive statements, but I have a contact deep on the inside of a certain company doing some trace routing and once we start talking actual IP addresses in issue 57 you may lose your mind.
Topic 4: So, What Now?
We still have a host of characters to cover in issue 57. I’m sure you can figure out the subject matter but remember, I cover the technology angle. Trying to rehash the geo-political aspects of SpyGate after the likes of Brian and Duane Cates? I would only embarrass myself. However, the way the technology bridges the gap between these various stories is truly amazing. And yes, yes, yes… Carter Page is a big player in this even on the technical side. We’ll speak to the brilliance of Kash Patel who is very good at hiding his other skill sets.
But mostly we will untangle the technological weave that is SpyGate. Should be fascinating.
After a fake investigation, 2 fake impeachments, a fraudulent election, a fake pandemic, a fake insurrection, a fake inauguration, and now a fake presidency, who would have ever thought that Donald J. Trump would still be holding a royal flush… but he is.
The day is coming when his enemies will fall into his hands.
As Kash Patel so eloquently stated it, “Most investigations of this type can take 5 years or more. It’s been 2 years; we need to exercise patience because this will have a very happy ending, unless of course you’re on the other side.”
Durham is doing his job. This feels safe in his hands.
The right hand may not always know what the left hand is doing… but the enemies of all that is good and all that is righteous should know this…
Masterful thesis.
My sense about Lindell has always been that he is the carnival barker deliberately placed to convince the enemy that Trump has nothing.
Constantly announcing he has the goods, and then inevitably failing to deliver, is a wonderful anesthetic to Satan’s minions.
That is Sun Tzu-level counter intelligence work.
As a 76 year-old computer illiterate, I have to intuit the tech-based information here into something else, so I can begin to understand it, so here's how I'm trying to do that: Wheels within wheels within wheels. turning at different speeds, a bit like the ultimate watch. Us ordinary folk(that's me, and a couple of other people I know who are awake enough to be with me so far), We're looking at the face of the watch, and hoping that the hands keep moving, bringing us closer to a place we could never have arrived at without the watch's help. RtS just explained that the complexity of the mechanism is ensuring that we're going to get there. We don't have to understand how it works, we just have to believe that others with good intentions, do. I'm right on board!