Tag Archives: Bezos

February 18, 2020 · 14:33

Some small bits

We all see them, we all face them and even as there is no overwhelming story out there, I think it was time to set up a look at the small bits, the parts I have already given view to and now I am adding to them. 

Huawei

The first part is ‘Huawei row: Trump chief of staff to meet Dominic Cummings‘, here we see another media driven attempt to ban Huawei from the UK, the UK is now as much a bitch as the Australian government. So far the US has not given any evidence that the Huawei hardware can be used to spy on people by the Chinese government, so far the US is not even sending that person with a really bad haircut, so that he could compare barbers with Boris Johnson, no he is sending his acting White House chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney. Even after Richard Grenell gives us “to make clear that any nation who chooses to use an untrustworthy 5G vendor will jeopardize our ability to share intelligence and information at the highest level“, in my response ‘what intelligence?’ at present the CIA is regarded as one of the least trustworthy intelligence providers, we could argue that Facebook has better intelligence than the CIA does (hurts doesn’t it?)

Now, if the US had provided intelligence on Huawei several Cyber experts would nitpick that intel, yet the setting is out there, there is no evidence whatsoever, the US is fearing for its life and its economy. The backdraft is also there, any nation will get an advantage over whatever paperback spinal cord is supporting the US without evidence. All because the US cannot control its national corporations, we all must pay.

We can treat “A group of backbench Conservatives also wants Johnson to commit to remove all Huawei kit from British phone networks over time” with optional disgust as well, even as there is no stage set on ‘over time‘, as I personally see it these acts are profit driven, not national security driven, even as some will make a claim in that direction. 

Jeff Bezos

You know the man, the intelligent man with the really long forehead (read: bald), was hacked, it happened in 2018 and the media keeps on blaming the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, yet there is no evidence. In light of all that had happened, the idea that any Crown Prince is THAT hands on with an issue is overlooked on several levels. The FTI report reads like a joke and personally, if Mr. Bezos pays THAT much for what I personally see as trash, than I have optionally 4 IP stages, one unfinished book and over a 1000 articles for same for the mere price of $50,000,000 post taxation (50% for the IP and the rest is a gimmick), you see at least I am willing to say that upfront. In addition, his own paper gives us on January 28th “Indeed, in October 2018, Michael Sanchez and AMI entered into a nondisclosure agreement “concerning certain information, photographs and text messages documenting an affair between Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sanchez,” according to three people who have reviewed the agreement. The existence of the contract was first reported by the New York Times. One of those people also confirmed a Wall Street Journal report that federal prosecutors who are investigating whether the Enquirer tried to extort Bezos have reviewed the text messages that Lauren Sanchez allegedly gave to her brother and that he then provided to the tabloid.” as I personally see it several parties owe Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud a few apologies and all kinds of Saudi catering hoping that it will appease his royal highness. On a personal note, I reckon he will be jealous of my yacht by the CRN ship wharves, so as we see the wealth of Jeff Bezos, he might just want to say ‘Sorry!’ to his royal highness and spend 0.5% of his wealth to appease that rather rich party with a yacht (so that mine will remain optionally safe, when it is completed). And no matter how it all get spinned, the UN report needs to be nitpicked and rather quickly, too many questions remain and even as we see that a person with knowledge of the investigation who was not authorized to speak publicly about its progress, or as the Washington Post is skating around the trandsetting term ‘anonymous source‘, which would place them on the same scale as the Enquirer, they give us “It’s possible that the Saudis hacked Bezos’s phone and Michael Sanchez independently got the photos from his sister and some people were trying to get paid and some people were trying to get Bezos,” all whilst there is no actual evidence that the hacker was Saudi, I did away with that quite nicely in ‘6 Simple questions‘ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2020/02/03/6-simple-questions/), whilst the 6th question ‘Why on earth is the UN involved in an alleged Criminal investigation where so much information is missing?‘ was never answered by any media EVER! (OK, as far as I know).

Yet there is a reason why we bring this all, it is seen (at https://www.inc.com/jason-aten/facebook-says-apple-is-to-blame-for-hacking-of-jeff-bezos-phone.html) where we get introduced to ‘Facebook Says Apple Is to Blame for the Hacking of Jeff Bezos’s Phone‘, with the optional part “Nick Clegg, said that the hacking of Jeff Bezos’s phone wasn’t the fault of WhatsApp, pointing instead to the Apple iOS that powers the iPhone X Bezos was using. Or, at least, that’s presumably what he was trying to say, though his answer when asked by the BBC was largely incomprehensible“, as well as “he argued, “It sounds like something on the, you know, what they call the operate, operated on the phone itself.” To be clear, he didn’t specifically mention Apple by name, however it had been previously known that Bezos was using an iPhone X at the time he was hacked“, I find it debatable, but it takes the court away from the Saudi Crown Prince and a few others, if that hack is not one that NSO Group’s Pegasus or Hacking Team’s Galileo uses, then we have a much larger issue, one that is not identified and even as it takes the Saudi players off the board, it does not take the issue away. The NSO group has loudly denied the entire issue and this gives them the option to do that, so far the FTI report is too shabby, it does not seem to warrant or deny the optional allegations. So as we see: “someone actually took advantage of a vulnerability that WhatsApp itself has already acknowledged was an issue and issued a fix. It’s even more confusing that he attempted to pass the blame to Apple“, I personally feel in agreement with the writer, the entire WhatsApp feels like to comfortable solution, yet that vulnerability was out in the open and there is still no evidence that it was done by Saudi hands, even now, the list of perpetrators is growing, pushing the optionally (and alleged) Saudi players to the bottom of that list. I would advise Brainy Smurf Jeff Bezos that he pays up as fast as possible (and sizeable) before it becomes a behemoth of an issue that a mere sorry and a box of chocolates will not solve. 

Yemen

You might have heard of that place, apparently there are a few humanitarian issues playing and even as we now see ‘UN Condemns ‘Shocking’ and ‘Terrible’ US-Backed Saudi Coalition Bombing That Killed 31 Yemeni Civilians‘, we are given “Those who continue to sell arms to the warring parties must realize that by supplying weapons for this war, they contribute to making atrocities like today’s all too common“, yet the EU and the US are happy that this all continues. My evidence? Well consider that we see today ‘The EU has agreed to deploy warships to stop the flow of weapons into Libya‘, all whilst a similar action in Yemen would have diminished the dangers over two years ago, so how many ships had the EU to set up a blockade to stop weapons going into Yemen? As far as I can tell, there is an unwritten consensus to give as much freedom to Iran as possible. I gave that part in ‘Media, call it as it is!‘ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2018/11/03/media-call-it-as-it-is/) almost 18 months ago, so why exactly is Yemen not an issue and Libya is? It is oil and everyone is dancing around the stage hoping for a barrel full of the substance. Yet the Yemeni don’t matter, if you doubt that you merely have to read the articles, all about complaints and condemning, not about action packed events, are they? And in all this Xavier Joubert, director of aid group Save the Children Yemen is equally to blame, does he give the stage in a proper setting? Does he give any information on the actions that Houthi forces have been eager to take forward (including those on children)? Nope! So when we see “after Houthi rebels claimed to have shot down a Saudi Tornado jet Friday in Al-Jawf province“, as well as ““possibility of collateral damage”—a common euphemism for civilian deaths“, yet how many enemy troops were there? that part is not given as it takes the power away from their own story, yet the story they give us is out of whack. So whilst people like Lise Grande come up with “it’s a tragedy and it’s unjustified“, all whilst for well over two years a blockade could have optionally limited the damage that could have occurred, yet no one is willing to skate that track, are they?

All whilst we see (at https://www.timesofisrael.com/pompeo-calls-for-action-against-iran-after-us-navy-seizes-weapons-sent-to-yemen/) ‘Pompeo calls for action against Iran after US Navy seizes weapons sent to Yemen‘, a stage that was set this week, we see the laughingly entertaining ‘World’s silence has emboldened Saudi-led war crimes in Yemen: Iran‘, all whilst we see Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Abbas Mousavi giving a speech on what he calls War Crimes, at the same stage where they send hundreds of missiles into Yemen, there is only so much hypocrisy I can stomach and Iran is handing us way too much. So whilst the Islamic Republic of Iran continues to defy the UN Security Council, we need to start being honest about the Yemen situation, the EU does not care about Yemen, it has nothing to offer, yet the US has on this occasion stopped one of several Iranian supply ships. I wonder how many were missed, the ongoing war clearly gives rise to the fact that this war will not be over soon and as such more civilians will die, it is the clear consequence of a war.

These are three of the small bits that I am adding today, there have been a whole range of issues I touched on in the last few days, yet these small bits are important parts to other information I gave out. 

Have a great day, see you all tomorrow

 

Leave a comment

Filed under Finance, IT, Media, Military, Politics

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

January 31, 2020 · 15:22

The Bully’s henchman

Yes, we saw it before and again we see a new ploy into the bashing by a bully. The Guardian (at https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/jan/29/uk-chance-relook-huawei-5g-decision-mike-pompeo) gave us “Britain has a chance to “relook” at its decision to allow Huawei into its 5G phone network in the future, the US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, declared as he flew to London for a two-day visit to the UK“, the fact that the number one US bully (as some see him) sends out Mike Pompeo warrants more scrutiny. Lets not forget that on a global scale the US has not actually produced ANY evidence that Huawei is a security concern. We see merely that the US firms will lose their data drops on a global scale as Huawei makes a larger impact, and that is a much larger fear for the US than anything else. Even as we see news with senators with privacy concerns, we see an absolute lack of actions towards Google and Facebook to amend its protocols and data capture activities, all set in some loophole, flaws which are still legal and legally set in stone (of a sort mind you). Yet the undocumented claimed fear of Huawei and the Chinese government has still not been shown to actual cyber specialists and to actual independent hardware experts. 

So as senior (read: ancient) advisors of the Trump administration give: “insisted that sensitive American information should travel only through “trusted networks”” we see a lack of evidence by them. We also see that the US is changing its tune, the claim “But our view is that we should have western systems with western rules, and American information only should pass through trusted networks, and we’ll make sure we do that,” is it the changing claim of the bully that has changed evidence for ‘we should have western systems with western rules‘ is evidence of that. In addition to that its weak and waning “The secretary of state emphasised that work was being done between the two countries “to make sure that there are true competitors to Huawei” so that “we can deliver true commercial outcomes across real secure networks that aren’t subject to the Chinese Communist party’s control”“, where we need to valuate ‘work was being done between the two countries “to make sure that there are true competitors to Huawei”‘ reads more like a flaccid 90’s software sales agent with a concept to sell than an actual commitment. This situation merely exists because governments stopped seeing infrastructure as a priority and as US commercial people saw ‘gains’ elsewhere (read: cheaper/easier way to make commission), hardware needs lagged and the US is almost 3 years behind in the 5G circuit. Like in the BBC article yesterday, we see “The US says Huawei could be used by China for spying, via its 5G equipment” hiding behind the word ‘could‘ whilst not producing any evidence. All whilst presurring on “Mr Ren’s military background and Huawei’s role in comms networks to argue it represents a security risk” that is all slanted on a time when Mr Ren actually looked young and served for 9 years, he left the army in 1983, which was when Mike Pompeo was in High School optionally hoping to fondle a local cheerleaders boobies (we can presume), oh and by the way this was all 37 years ago, as such the lack of evidence on the equipment apart from an almost 10 year old case that was settled, the evidence presently seen is a joke.

This is all about the US losing its data collecting position and it is willing to sell anyother nation down the drain, all becasue the US became lacks, stupid and flaccid. Is that the legacy that the EU and the UK have to look forward to? Lets not forget that no matter how happy Nokia and Ericsson become, they are a little over 5 years in the running and well over 3 years too later to adapt to the high-tech that Huawei is currently releasing, that is the price of iterative technology.

The fact that my personal IP surpasses the US tech stream is further evidence still, in 1992 I was really behind the curve, it makes for the difference of innovative thinking and as the world relied on the US, its flaccid actions are now a real issue. 

In addition to all this, Wednesday also gave us “A group of anti-Huawei Tories want an assurance that the government will work towards reducing the Chinese company’s influence in UK infrastructure to zero, ultimately stripping it out of the 4G network as well” which is linked to “any provider deemed high-risk by the intelligence services should be phased out of the supply chain” and the problem here is not that Huawei is a claimed spy tool for the Chinese government, it is the fact that (as Alex Younger) stated that no infrastructure should be in the hands of non-UK corporations, which is acceptable. Yet they will hand the hardware over to EU and the US government, which is slicing the meat on the other side and almost as pointless. Let’s be clear, Alex (big boss MI6) gave a clear and understandable point of view. UK infrastructure needs to be in UK hands and as such we can accept that. Yet British Telecom is nowhere near this situation and as such we see a failing of policy on more than one shore.

So as we get to “Unhappy MPs held a series of meetings in Westminster, although they are keen to operate behind the scenes to push for a concession, several senior Tories believe they have a chance of getting the 45 rebels needed for a successful backbench revolt on legislation relating to regulation of Huawei” which would boil down to a conservative mutiny on a few fronts, the question that I am currently posing is: “If I investigate these 45 ‘proclaimed rebel’ members, how many will reveal a carefully denied personal link and gain from a non Chinese Telecom market?” Is that not an interesting side either?

And the intentional limitation of 35% would that be to keep American commerce happy, or is there an actual security setting here?

There is too much on the surface that we should investigate and it is not. Even as the article makes a reference to American diplomat Plus One, whose wife Anne Saccolas is accused of causing the death of 19-year-old motorcyclist Harry Dunn. They still insist on their bully tactics and they will refuse to make public any evidence of the Chinese government links to Huawei hardware, all whilst the massive bugs in the Cisco routers are ignored by all.

So whilst we all cry over non existent hacks on Huawei equipment, we are faced by Cisco insecurity, and whilst some will not get this, the fact that the bulk of all servers in the world rely on Cisco Switches. so when we get (source: Cisco) “2020 January 29. A vulnerability in the web UI of Cisco Small Business Switches could allow an unauthenticated, remote attacker to cause a denial of service (DoS) condition on an affected device. The vulnerability is due to improper validation of requests sent to the web interface. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by sending a malicious request to the web interface of an affected device. A successful exploit could allow the attacker to cause an unexpected reload of the device, resulting in a DoS condition.” Now apart from the local need to fix this, there is no real blame at Cisco, this happens and whilst we see

Vulnerable Products

  • 200 Series Smart Switches
  • 300 Series Managed Switches
  • 500 Series Stackable Managed Switches

So whilst everyone is crying over non proven proclaimed weaknesses, there are actual weaknesses in the hardware leading to the internet and that gets my goat up, the entire Hawei matter is about the US losing too much revenue and the US being out of the data loop, and we support that….why?

When we wonder how we care on who gets our data, we seem to forget that someone gets it, yet the US wants to be the only runner in this race, based on decades of feigned superiority and now that they are in the race and moving from first to 4th position we seem to grant them all the leeway they need, whilst on the other side we see no improvement on personal data intelligence security, why do we need to continue this situation?

That issue becomes larger when we see the Financial Times (at https://www.ft.com/content/96c79040-40ea-11ea-bdb5-169ba7be433d). Here we see “Wealthy individuals are scrambling to lock down their privacy in the wake of the alleged hack of Jeff Bezos’ iPhone, as personal cyber security experts warn that the rich and famous are increasingly becoming the target of sophisticated cyber criminals“, which makes sense and the supported ‘a report last week alleged that Amazon founder Mr Bezos was hacked by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in 2018‘ in all this there are (at least) two sides

  1. We see a proven part where ‘sophisticated cyber criminals‘ are getting onto more and more mobiles (an issue that will continue faster and more intense in 5G. 
  2. The world is realising that corporations are not lucrative targets, the softer market and larger market of one million mobiles might be worth a lot more, and the collected information could lead to a switch in ‘criminal economies’, that part is optionally seen in “Rubica, a company that provides more affordable digital protection for families, added that had he received “lots of inbound” inquiries last week from clients about how to better protect themselves from adversaries“, and as we see “According to data compiled by RSA Security, 70 per cent of fraudulent transactions in 2019 originated on mobiles“
  3. (Optional) The guilt of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman was never clearly established and is by some experts in the field regarded as a strange choice of actor to incriminate in the first place, as such it implies that there is a larger concern that the ‘vested’ parties cannot make clear statements on guilt and providing proof on who did it. Making the cyber setting a lot more dangerous, especially as insurers will try to seek more ways on options to not having to pay out (making more stringent contracts), this setting could hurt millions of people whilst the actual criminals go on without prosecution.

We see a shift in the market and this shift becomes a much larger issue in 5G, as such do you want your 5G infrastructure to be 3 years behind the latest technology? It will go faster and faster as I saw what the direction was and my IP would (hopefully) lessening the impact by almost 30% whilst 400 million starters (globally) will get a much larger slice of their marketing pie for their small businesses, whilst keeping more control of their information. All because some people forgot to look in one direction, that too is the effect of flaccid American innovation. I would never be a contender if they upped their game, so when my ship does come in, I will have to thank them for that.

Marc Rogers, vice-president of cyber security at Okta is right when we see “The cache of data on these devices is just growing, We’ve seen a massive escalation of theft [from] mobile devices because criminals are realising that people are storing immense amounts of personal and financial information,” is part of that crux and the US whilst bullying their Huawei part are basically not ready to deal with this, because they will claim that is up to you and your insurance. Which is an interesting ploy to give out in the near future as Cyber crime will spike and all whilst most global governments still do not have a clear and well documented Common Cyber Sense setting in play, many are hiding it in some HR document and using that to sack people when the damage becomes a little too pronounced, or the transgression becomes a ‘politically correct’ consideration. 

I see a much larger problem and the US is merely adding fuel to the fire and whomever they send will merely be the spokesboard of US data collection groups (as I personally see it) that need their data to maintain existence. 

So who is ready to play catch with the next henchman that the US sends?

 

 

1 Comment

Filed under Finance, IT, Media, Politics

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

January 28, 2020 · 11:17

The incompetent view

I’ll admit, there are other things to write about, yet this is a larger issue than anyone thinks it is. The previous writers did not ponder the questions that were adamant, and Stephanie Kirchgaessner follows suit (at https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jan/27/nsa-faces-questions-over-security-of-trump-officials-after-alleged-bezos-hack) when we consider that the focus here is the NSA in ‘NSA faces questions over security of Trump officials after alleged Bezos hack‘. You see, it is not merely the fact that they got the stage wrong, it is the fact that everyone is looking at the stage, whilst the orchestra is missing, so how about that part of the equation and that leads to very uncomfortable question towards WHY the US is tailing on 5G and why it is trying to tailgate into the 5G room. They forgot what real innovation is and Saudi Arabia is seemingly passing them by, a nation that has forever been seen as a technological third world is surpassing the US and it is upsetting more and more people.

“The US National Security Agency is facing questions about the security of top Trump administration officials’ communications following last week’s allegations that the Saudi crown prince may have had a hand in the alleged hack of Jeff Bezos“, with this the article opens and basically nothing wrong is stated here, yet when seen in the light of the byline which was “Democratic lawmaker asks agency if it is confident the Saudi government has not sought to hack US officials“, as such it becomes an issue. first off, the question is not wrong, because the US administration has a duty to seek the safety of communications for its coworkers (senators and such), yet in all this, it does become a little more clear when we see “Ron Wyden, a senior Democratic lawmaker, asked the director of the NSA whether he was confident that the Saudi government had not also sought to hack senior US government officials“. You see in the first, Saudi intentional involvement was NEVER established, moreover, the report (I looked at that last week) has several hiatus of a rather large kind, as such the formulation by this 70 year old person is quite the other issue. 

It is my personal conviction that a Fortune 100 company should consider the danger they open themselves up to when letting cyber issues be investigated by FTI Consulting. The entire matter of how infection was obtained (if it was infection), and that the entire matter was instigated by any third party who had gained access to the phone of Jeff Bezos, and in all this enough doubt was raised who got access and more importantly that there was no evidence that this was ANY Saudi official, as such the short sighted “whether he was confident that the Saudi government had not also sought to hack senior US government officials” by a 70 year old who shows issues of lack of critical thinking, no matter what which school he went to when he was half a century younger.

And again we see the reference towards “The senator from Oregon is separately seeking to force the Trump administration to officially release the intelligence it collected on the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, the Washington Post journalist who was killed in a state-sponsored murder in October 2018“, which is another flaw as there was never any clear evidence that anyone in Turkey was “killed in a state-sponsored murder in October 2018“, more importantly, the French UN Essay writer who was seemingly involved in both reports is showing a lack of critical thinking all by herself.

All this whilst Paul Nakasone (director NSA) is confronted with “was believed to have been the victim of a hack that was instigated after he allegedly received a WhatsApp message from the account of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman“, the problem is twofold, in the first I personally see the report by FTI Consulting as a hack job, not a job on a hack. There are several sides that give doubt on infection source and moreover there is additional lack of evidence that the source was a Saudi one. More importantly other sources gave away issues on WhatsApp some time overlapping the event, exploits that made it into the press from all sides giving the weakness that any unnamed party could have played to be a Saudi delivery whilst the file was not from that delivery point. Issues that were out in the open and the report gives that FTI Consulting ignored them. It could read that a certain French Essay writer stated ‘I Have a Saudi official and an American phone, find me a link, any link‘, I am not stating that this happened, but it feels like that was the FTI Consulting case. When was the last time you saw an intentional perversion of justice and truth?

And when we see: “The issue is now the subject of an investigation by two independent UN investigators“, we see an almost completed path. When we see all this lets take a step back and consider. 

  1. An American Civilian had his mobile allegedly (and optionally proven) hacked.
  2. The hacker is not found, the one accused cannot be proven (at present) to be the hacker.
  3. This ends up with the UN?

And I am not alone here. Three days ago (after my initial findings) I see (at https://edition.cnn.com/2020/01/24/tech/bezos-hacking-report-analysts/index.html) the headline ‘Bezos hacking report leaves cybersecurity experts with doubts‘, there we see “independent security experts, some of whom say the evidence isn’t strong enough to reach a firm conclusion” as well as “several high-profile and respected researchers, highlights the limits of a report produced by FTI Consulting, the company Bezos hired to investigate the matter“, so basically, the hair lacking CEO, who owns the Washington Post (where Khashoggi used to work) is allegedly hacked, he seemingly hires FTI Consulting on what I personally believe to be a hack job on hacking phones and the UN is using that biased piece of work to slam Saudi Arabia? Did I miss anything?

Yes, I did, the quote “The report suggested the incident bore hallmarks of sophisticated hacking software“, the problem here is that there is no way to see WHERE IT CAME FROM. Yet other sources give out several pieces on WhatsApp and how other sources could have a free go at infesting people. All whilst we also see “the paper revealed a lack of sophistication that could have been addressed by specialized mobile forensics experts, or law enforcement officials with access to premium tools“, all this whilst the entire setting went around the existence of cyber divisions. There is a link Jeff Bezos – Amazon – FTI Consulting – United Nations. At no point in this do we see any police department, or the FBI, why is that?

As such when we see “A key shortcoming of the analysis, Edwards said, was that it relied on a restricted set of content obtained from Bezos’s iTunes backup. A deeper analysis, she said, would have collected detailed records from the iPhone’s underlying operating and file systems. Other security experts characterized the evidence in the report as inconclusive“, I would state that this is merely the beginning.

Rob Graham (CEO Errata security) gives us “It contains much that says ‘anomalies we don’t understand,’ but lack of explanations point to incomplete forensics, not malicious APT actors” and Alex Stamos, the former chief information security officer at Facebook and a Stanford University professor gives us “Lots of odd circumstantial evidence, for sure, but no smoking gun“, in all this the extreme geriatric Ron Wyden (Oregon) is asking questions from the NSA with the text “asked the director of the NSA whether he was confident that the Saudi government had not also sought to hack senior US government officials” with the emphasis on ‘also‘, a stage that is not proven, and more importantly is almost redundant in the hack job we got to read about. As such I am not surprised to see “FTI Consulting declined to comment“, I wonder why?

It is even more fun to see the CNN article have the stage where we see “a research group at the University of Toronto, offered a suggestion that could allow investigators to gain access to encrypted information that FTI said it could not unlock“, as such we see that there are skill levels missing in FTI, for the simple reason that this report was allowed to leave the hands of FTI Consulting, a Firm that is proudly advertising that they have 49 of the Global 100 companies that are clients. If I had anything to say about it, those 49 companies might have more issues down the road than they are ready for, especially as they have over 530 senior managing directors and none of them stopeed that flimsy report making it to the outside world. I would personally set a question mark to the claim of them being advisor to 96 of the world’s top 100 law firms. I would not be surprised if I could punch holes in more cases that FTI Consulting set advice to, in light of the Bezos report, it might not be too hard a stage to do.

CNN also has a few critical points that cannot be ignored. With “The report’s limited results are a reminder that it can be extremely challenging to reconstruct the activities of a determined, well-resourced hacker, said Kenneth White, a security engineer and former adviser to the Defense Department and Department of Homeland Security“, I do not disagree with that, but the stage where WhatsApp had a much larger problem, is a given, and the report does not bring that up for one moment, that report was all about painting one party whilst the reality of the stage was that there was an open floor on how it was done, yet the report silenced all avenues there. In addition, Chris Vickery (Director UpGuard) gives us “other evidence provided by FTI increased his confidence that Bezos was being digitally surveilled“. that is not in question, core information directs that way, yet the fact that it was a Saudi event cannot be proven, not whilst Jeff Bezos is around hundreds of people in most moments of the day, that part is the larger setting and FTI Consulting knowingly skated around the subject, almost as it was instructed to do so.

One expert who wanted to remain anonymous gave us all “There’s an absurd amount of Monday morning quarterbacking going on” as well as “This isn’t a movie — things don’t proceed in a perfect, clean way. It’s messy, and decisions are made the way they’re made“, that expert is not wrong, and he/she has a point, yet the foundation of the report shows a massive lack in critical thinking whilst the report relies in its text on footnotes (as one would) yet on page 3, the text is “Al Qahtani eventually purchased 20 percent ownership in Hacking Team, apparantly acquired on behalf of the Saudi government. 8“

all whilst footnote 8 gives us “https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/8xvzyp/hacking-team-investor-saudi-arabia” so not only does the FTI Consulting Job rely on ‘apparantly‘, the article gives in the first paragraph “Hacking Team was thoroughly owned, with its once-secret list of customers, internal emails, and spyware source code leaked online for anyone to see” as such we see ‘spyware source code leaked online for anyone to see‘, how did FTI Consulting miss this? That and the WhatsApp issue in that same year opens up the optional pool of transgressors to all non state hackers with considerable knowledge, as such the amount of transgressors ups to thousands of hackers (globally speaking). 

FTI Consulting missed that! and it missed a lot more. The article also sets a link to David Vincenzetti and for some reason he is not even looked at, there is no stage in the FTI report that his input was sought out, which in light of all this is equally puzzling. He might not have had anything to report, or perhaps he had enough to report taking the focal point away from Saudi players, we will never know, the joke (read: report) is out in the open in all its glory on limitation. 

In light of all this, did the question by Ron Wyden to the NSA make sense? As far as I can see, I see several points of incompetance and that has nothing to do with the one expert stating that this is a messy, the entire setting was optionally incompetent and for certain massively incomplete. 

More importantly, the last paragraphs has more funny parts than a two hour show by Jimmy Carr. The quote is “Anyone who has had communication with either MBS or his brother Khaled should assume their phone is hacked. Congress needs to get answers from NSA on what it knew about the hack of Bezos phone, when it knew it, and what it has done to stop Saudi criminal hacking behavior” and it comes from CIA analyst Bruce Riedel. Now, the quote is fine, but the hilarious part is how it was phrased (expertly done). Lets go over it in my (super subtle) way: “Anyone who has had communication with either MBS or his brother Khaled should assume their phone is hacked by Saudi, US or Iranian officials. Congress needs to get answers from NSA for a change on a matter that they were never consulted on whilst the report ended up with the UN on what it knew about the hack of Bezos phone, a person who has a few billion and a lack of hair but beyond that has no meaning to the US economy, he keeps all his gotten gains, when it knew when the phone of a civilian was allegedly hacked and, and what it has done to stop Saudi criminal hacking behavior which is not proven at present other than by people who have something to gain from seeing the Saudi’s as the bad party (like Iran), all in a report that is lacking all levels of clarity and proper investigation“, this is an important setting here. Just like the disappearance of a Saudi columnist writing for the Washington Post (another Jeff Bezos affiliate), we do not proclaim Saudi Arabia being innocent, merely that the lack of evidence does not make them guilty, in the present the hacking issue does not make Saudi Arabia guilty, the irresponsible version of the FTI Consulting report shows a massive lack of evidence that makes any Saudi Arabian party more likely than not innocent of all this and as both reports have one UN Female French Essay writer in common, it is more and more like a smear campaign than an actual event to find out what actually happened. Who signed up for that? I wonder if the NSA did, I feel decently certain that until they get all the actual evidence that they do not want to get involved with political painting, their left foot is busy keeping them standing up in a world of hunkered and crouched idiots.

Yet that is just my simple personal view on the matter.

 

2 Comments

Filed under IT, Media, Military, Politics

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,