Don’t look there – look at the fattest of fat squirrels instead
I’ve become inured to the deflections presented by the Westminster MSM, thus it takes something truly outrageous to make me hopping mad. Today’s reports on a security breach did just that. Instead of asking why it took nearly two years to inform us, the MSM prefer to push their anti-Russia narrative. Firstly, here’s the daily compilation: “Newspaper headlines: ‘Double data breach’ and ‘Jabs could beat obesity’” (link).
This is about the database of the Electoral Commission having been hacked while in a separate incident the name of every NI police officer also has been published. Firstly, see this: emphases are all mine):
“The commission disclosed on Tuesday that hackers had managed to gain access to copies of the electoral registers from August 2021 but it only discovered the security breach over a year later, in October 2022. The commission called in cybersecurity chiefs from GCHQ to investigate and secure its systems but the identity of what it described as “hostile actors” have yet to be identified.” (link, paywalled)
I am speechless and furious, not least because none of the authors in yon reports asks how it is possible that this hack remained undetected for a whole year. What the fluffing fluff were the ElCom IT security people doing? Why did it take the GCHQ experts another year to try and sort out this hack? Why is nobody in the MSM making a song and dance about these questions? It’s ridiculous to publish excuses as the DM does:
“The commission said the attack had ‘used a sophisticated infiltration method, intended to evade our checks’, which was why it had taken so long to detect. Officials decided to delay informing the public while they removed the hackers and put additional security in place.” (link)
This is why I’m so furious: it took our wonderful government cyber security people nearly another year to ‘remove the hackers’: nearly one year! Where are the questions from intrepid reporters about what damage this hack did to our, the peasants’ private data during this time
Furthermore: why is it that we’re now being asked to confirm we are who we are every time we go online while government institutions such as ElCom and GCHQ not only let our data be hacked but don’t even notice for one whole year!
Moreover, not only were we told nothing until now, we’re also being given the ‘Russia did it’ narrative. For example, while The Times states that the ‘hostile actors’ haven’t been identified yet, and while the DM quotes an expert saying that “Given the scale and complexity of this, […] the usual suspects would be Russia, China, Iran and North Korea.” (link), good old DT already knows:
“The Telegraph can reveal that the UK intelligence services have found evidence that links the hack of the Electoral Commission to Russians.” (paywalled link)
I had to pinch my nose and read the whole thing to find out about this evidence, but there was none. None! The only one who points his finger at Russia seems to be a former GCHQ director who is being quoted in all reports. Also, the outcry in all reports about this hack being aimed at influencing our electoral processes is being refuted, as the DM reports right at the bottom of their article:
“Shaun McNally, the chief executive of the Electoral Commission, apologised, saying: ‘The UK’s democratic process is significantly dispersed and key aspects of it remain based on paper documentation and counting. ‘This means it would be very hard to use a cyber-attack to influence the process.” (link)
Of course, the ‘headline-only’ reading public won’t have seen this, nor will they have seen a further quote by this ElCom CEO, reported in the Times:
“While the commission knows which systems were accessible to the hostile actors, it is not able to know “conclusively” what files may or may not have been accessed. McNally […] insisted that much of the information accessed by the hackers was already in the public domain.” (link, paywalled)
Good Lord! How, after two years, are ElCom and their IT security services still ignorant about what all has been hacked? Why the uproar if the information was ‘in the public domain’ anyway? And if they don’t know and if it doesn’t matter: why pointing fingers at Russia? I seem to remember that there’s an ally across the Big Pond which isn’t a slouch when it comes to skimming off data from their allies …
Finally, given the concerted outcry about Russia ‘meddling’ in our elections – refuted by ElCom – are we to believe that Russia would not be happy with a Labour GE victory? Or is this meant to sow doubt should the Tories manage to scrape back in at that GE? After all, yon ally across the Big Pond has been using this ploy in one of their presidential elections ….
And finally, angrily, I ask: why is nobody questioning how ‘secure’ we are if such hack remained undetected for a whole year, with another year spent on trying to sort it out while the hackers are unidentified, except for the usual suspects pointing at Russia? Did similar, unidentified hacks occur in the MoD, the FO, perhaps even in GCHQ and MI5 and MI6? After all, they don’t seem to have detected the ElCom security breach when it happened. Did they all WFH?
That’s all I have for today. I’m fluffing angry about the concerted deflection from the true scandal: how secure are we if it takes a year (!) for institutions to find out that they’ve been hacked. And we are supposed to trust them? Fluff off! Have a good day.
Publishing addresses of NI police. Afd politicians private addresses published by Antifa too.
https://rmx.news/article/antifa-publishes-private-addresses-of-afd-politicians-tells-members-to-challenge-them-where-they-feel-safe/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=russian_drone_attacks_block_grain_ships_on_danube_antifa_gets_aggressive_against_afd_politicians_and_one_hungarian_think_tank_takes_on_the_left&utm_term=2023-08-09
Britain gives away data on all it citizens to europeen and Merican organisations for free – to name but two. It sells or gives away data e.g. health data, on the whole of GB population, to the likes of Gates and co – for the ”Grater Good?” (correct spelling).
So why get so agitat . . . oh, look a hang glider.
That genie is already out of the bottle. Who has *not* got all our data is more the question – Sudan?, maybe want it to contact all their relatives now in GB, or to organise a coup against the govmt?
As i understand it the Electoral commission is a Blair project that any true conservative government would have shut down. It sees no electoral fraud in postal voting, sees no problem in foreign money funding political parties and has shown itself far from impartial in dealing with brexit supporters. Now we find its not only bias but incompetent. Close it down.
About six years ago I attended a talk by the then director of GCHQ. He told of a post graduate course at Cambridge in cyber security that had been set up at the urging of GCHQ to improve skill levels in the UK. The director had visited Cambridge to see how things were going and consider possible recruits and was horrified to discover most of the students were Chinese or Russian. The UK had been exporting cyber security knowledge.
The puzzle is why the data breach stories have been given to the press now. We are being set up for something or perhaps the National Cyber Security Centre had had a budget increase request turned down by the Treasury. Six months ago or six months hence there would have been or will be other examples. The digital world has been insecure from the beginning.
U.K security staff were probably all working from home and didn’t notice the problem. I wonder what else they missed during the same period although to be fair they did manage to find out where the channel dinghies are being manufactured , something that the guy in the street probably knew years ago , I’m surprised that we’ve not yet set up a government quango to return the boats to their ‘owners’ .