Month: October 2016

Putin us on. (credit: Presidential Press and Information Office)

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the Department of Homeland Security today jointly charged that the Russian government was responsible for directing a series of intrusions into the networks of US political organizations and state election boards. In a “joint security statement,” officials from the two agencies declared they were “confident” that the government of President Vladimir Putin was behind the hacks and the publication of data obtained from them—some of it doctored—specifically to impact the results of the upcoming US elections.

In a joint statement, agency officials asserted the following:

The U.S. Intelligence Community (USIC) is confident that the Russian Government directed the recent compromises of e-mails from US persons and institutions, including from US political organizations. The recent disclosures of alleged hacked e-mails on sites like DCLeaks.com and WikiLeaks and by the Guccifer 2.0 online persona are consistent with the methods and motivations of Russian-directed efforts. These thefts and disclosures are intended to interfere with the US election process.

The officials also accused Russia of being behind attacks on some state election board systems.

(credit: Photograph by Randy Stewart)

Another former Yahoo employee has filed a lawsuit claiming that management running the company's "Media Org" was biased against men.

The complaint (PDF) filed by Scott Ard says that Yahoo's "stack ranking" system was "without oversight or accountability" and was "more arbitrary and discriminatory" than stack ranking used by other companies.

The lawsuit claims that Yahoo's Media Org employees were ranked from 0.0 to 5.0 before being subject to a "calibration" process by higher-level management. Ard claims employees weren't told their numeric ranking but were only informed of their "Bucket" ranking, labeled "Greatly Exceeds, "Exceeds," "Achieves," "Occasionally Misses," or "Misses."

Investigators have little doubt that a National Security Agency contractor arrested in August hoarded mountains of classified material, but so far they've found no evidence that he leaked anything to anyone, The New York Times reported Friday.

Still, even if Harold T. Martin III didn't intentionally leak anything, federal officials remain highly concerned. Martin's home computer's had "minimal security protection," leaving open the possibility, however remote, that hackers broke in and stole data that could compromise vital national security programs. As the NYT reported:

"Let’s just say he’s only a psycho hoarder and he keeps this stuff with his old copies of National Geographic and his collection of lunchboxes," said an administration official, who also asked not to be named. "That’s still extremely troubling to anyone in national security, because people like that don’t keep track of where things are or with whom they are talking."

In Mr. Martin’s case, the official said, the sloppy handling "is particularly worrisome—we are talking sources and methods, tactics, techniques and procedures. Those are the things we guard most closely."

On seven occasions in the last three years, top-secret information has leaked from the NSA, raising concerns that leakers remain at large in a post-Edward Snowden agency. Martin's former wife portrayed her ex-husband, a former Navy officer, as a loyal US patriot who probably took the material so he could work on it at home. The hoarding occurred over years. At first, material was snuck out on paper, then on CDs, and eventually on thumb drives.

Enlarge / K-219 on the surface, missile tubes open after an explosion caused by leaking fuel threatened to cause a nuclear disaster. Three days after the fire, the ship sank in 18,000 feet of water. (credit: US Navy)

Thirty years ago, on October 4, 1986, a Soviet ballistic missile submarine of the 667-project class (NATO designator Yankee) caught fire while on patrol north of Bermuda, just a few hundred miles off the Eastern Seaboard of the United States. With 30 nuclear warheads aboard as well as a nuclear reactor, there were fears that the sub (the K-219) would cause a Chernobyl-style nuclear accident in close proximity to the US. Naturally, this all happened just days before a scheduled summit between Secretary General Mikhail Gorbachev and President Ronald Reagan.

But with Chernobyl only six months behind them, Gorbachev and the Soviet leadership opted for something no one might have expected—transparency. A translated document of the minutes of the Politburo published by the National Security Archives today shows Gorbachev ordered the immediate notification of the US and the International Atomic Energy Agency about the accident. As the rescue attempt was mounted, the Russian leader also called for a public release acknowledging what happened by the TASS news service.

The accident aboard K-219—which would later be made into a BBC TV movie starring Rutger Hauer as the doomed sub's captain and Martin Sheen as the captain of a nearby American sub—did not trigger a nuclear disaster largely due to the work of the sub crew. One sailor, Seaman Sergei Preminin, died after successfully shutting down the reactor, but the rest of the crew safely evacuated. The captain, Submarine Commander Captain Second rank Igor Britanov, stayed with the sub and a tow crew, but he was ordered off the sub after a tow line broke and the submarine began to sink. On October 6, it went down, surpassing its crush depth in waters over 18,000 feet deep in the North Atlantic.

Microsoft has confirmed when its anticipated New York City event is going to take place—on October 26 at 10am Eastern, the company is going to deliver some kind of announcement.

It appears this may not be the event we were expecting or hoping for. The invitation puts the focus on Windows 10—it shows a very literal picture of a window—and we're hearing from sources familiar with the company's plans that the main thrust of the event will be Windows 10 and the next evolutions of the operating system. We'll likely learn what Microsoft is bringing to both OEM hardware and to the HoloLens and Xbox One, but we do not anticipate a wide array of new hardware.

As such, anyone hoping to see the next iteration of the Surface Pro, Surface Book, or Band later this month is probably going to be disappointed. We expect it's still too early to see more of Project Scorpio, the next generation Xbox that will be released next year. Anyone hoping to see a Surface Phone is also going to be disappointed (not just at this event, but in general). But an all-in-one Surface PC is still a possibility.