2500 communications between Alpha Bank and Trump Tower. Collusion!

[sarcasmo]

Snip < Examining records for the Trump domain, Max’s group discovered D.N.S. lookups from a pair of servers owned by Alfa Bank, one of the largest banks in Russia. Alfa Bank’s computers were looking up the address of the Trump server nearly every day.







https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/10/15/was-there-a-connection-between-a-russian-bank-and-the-trump-campaign

[Maven]

1. The digital operation is where the rubber hits the road on the Trump/Russia conspiracy

I believe that they were trading stolen voter data (stolen from state election boards and the DNC) and using it to microtarget voters in key states with fake news and other propaganda. Of course, that is in addition to the media coordination around the stolen DNC emails.

[Roland99]

2. More threads with more detail

Nov 2017
Twitter thread on Trump org subdomains routing to Russia. Sharing servers with Wikileaks??
https://www.democraticunderground.com/10029782683

July 2018
Putin's daughter, Trump Tower internet traffic, Spectrum Health, Betsy DeVos
https://www.democraticunderground.com/100210915778


And then this one too:

Feb 2018
CNN: Inside a Russian Troll Farm in St. Petersburg
https://www.democraticunderground.com/100210260153

[Stuart G]

3. Question, Do you think Muller has a "digital expert" on his team?....Wait, I take that one back,

because, I know he does. How do I know? Mueller is very smart. And he wouldn't leave out any kind of information or sources that could help in getting Trump and his crew....

I believe ......MUELLER WILL GET HIM AND HIS FILTHY CROWD. ALL OF THEM

[lagomorph777]

4. Mueller has the top investigator in each relevant field.

And he's already indicted a bunch of Russians with an incredibly detailed document describing name, rank, street address, and duties for each one. I think he's got this.

[Stuart G]

6. Yes, I think you are correct...."I think he's got this."

and I think Mueller will get Trump and his gang too. Mueller has been after gangs of crooks longer than Ivanka has been alive.
.......... I get the feeling that Mueller wants to get Trump and his gang..Do you think the same?

Ivanka is 36 years old....Mueller started serving the United States of America in the Marine Corp in 1968..that was 50 years ago..is that correct? Much of his legal career has been work with the U.S. Attorney's Office. Yes, a couple of times he went into private practice as a lawyer. But If you look at his career, you will see he has served the United States of America more years than Ivanka has been alive......

And I do believe that his expertise and commitment to the job will help him to get Trump and his gang. Further, if there is an area of expertise that Mueller is lacking, he has hired on someone who will fill that void....So, in the end, ...........whenever that is..... , MUELLER WILL GET TRUMP AND HIS GANG OF CROOKS........

....in fact, he has already gotten some of the gang, and the ones he has gotten, Mueller will use to get the rest..

.............Is that correct???

[lagomorph777]

21. That is correct! nt

[lapfog_1]

5. unless the alpha bank server/laptop/pc was rebooted all the time

the number of communications was probably much much larger.

What this report shows is the number of times the alpha bank computer did a DNS (domain name service - created by a brilliant guy I knew slightly before he passed away - Jon Postel) lookup. DNS take a name like nas.nasa.gov and translates that to a 32 bit IP address (IPV4) like 198.9.3.30 (nasa's IP address). These numbers are usually CACHED by the requesting host in memory so until the next reboot or the cache fills and something has to be replaced... the requesting computer doesn't have to do a lookup again.

There are some time outs on the cache as well to ensure that the IP address doesn't become state (as in the address associated with the name has changed since the time of the last lookup).

Think of this as the white pages (if anyone remembers those)... you look up the phone number of your friend and probably either commit it to memory or write it on a piece of paper... you only go back to look it up again if you loose the paper... or maybe the number has changed so you have to consult the most recent white pages.

What this doesn't tell you is how long each conversation was between alpha bank and Trump org... it doesn't tell us if the data was texting, voice, private email, messaging, or even something like a database sync or automated file transfer (like, oh, I don't know, updating the contents of various BANK ACCOUNTS where Russian money was moving to Trump accounts... for example).

By the way... movies always get this wrong... whenever they display what they think of as a "legal IP" address, often using the standard "decimal dot" notation that I just used... the numbers between the dots HAVE to be between 0 and 255... and quite a few of the FIRST number are reserved.... like 192 or 10 or 0 to indicate something special is happening in the IP address.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

17. They could be fake lookups that code a message; server software doesn't have to use it as a DNS

If the server gets a request to respond with an address for a domain "marble.fakecompanyname.com", the server can lookup in a pre-arranged codebook or a one-time pad for the words that correspond to "marble" and "fakecompanyname". String together enough of those and you have a message. In the meantime, the server can respond with a coded address that doesn't match the requested domain or even any real address but a 32 bit number that can be looked up / decoded by the receiver. String together enough of those and you have a message. It can be a message replying to the last message. Or just empty bits until a reply message is ready.

[lapfog_1]

18. sure, but that means that the DNS server (which can be statically set)

would be compromised.

I am assuming that the people that noticed these lookup did so by examining the records for the trump domain as known to so called public DNS servers. Those would be unlikely to be compromised by such a "hidden" communication scheme.

If you really want a hidden communication scheme... go out and take pictures with with cell phone of whatever... hundreds of them... and post them all to a picture storage web site. Before posting them, encrypt your message into those pictures using Steganography

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steganography

This process uses the LSB (least significant bits) of each color that makes up a pixel. By not using "stock photos" there is no way for listening services to even detect that there IS a secret message so encoded (such a message should also be encrypted as well before encoding it into your photos).

All the receiver of such secret communication needs to do is grab the photo off the web and decode it.

Anyone looking at the photos posted would not even notice that the colors are very slightly off.

But that's just if I was doing it... I would also post these photos in a place where they would likely be viewed by thousands of people (not just the people you are trying to communicate with). That reduces the ability of sigint people of detecting traffic analysis.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

23. Yes, if the Alfa Bank server was part of collusion, then it was undoubtedly compromised.

I think the key point is that there was a ton of DNS queries and not much other traffic if any (as I understand it). So little opportunity for steganography in images or such.

Of course if all the DNS queries were seeking the address of the same domain name, then we'd have to look elsewhere for codes. Could be in fake time stamps or even real time stamps but carefully staged intervals that carry the code. Hard to know without seeing some actual packets.

[moondust]

7. Why didn't the NYT do much about it?

On Inauguration Day, Liz Spayd, the Times’ ombudsman, published a column criticizing the paper’s handling of stories related to Trump and Russia, including the Alfa Bank connection. “The Times was too timid in its decisions not to publish the material it had,” she wrote.
~
That June, Spayd’s job was eliminated, as the paper’s publisher said that the position of ombudsman had become outdated in the digital age.

Last night Rachel covered it and my suspicion was aroused. Is there some kind of symbiotic connection between tRump and his hometown paper, possibly related to serving Wall Street and other NY business interests?

Lately some people have been canceling their subscriptions to the Times complaining that some reporters like Michael Schmidt and Maggie Haberman seem to be covering for the tRump family.

[BigmanPigman]

10. I thought of that last night too while watching Rachel.

I think Mike Schmidt wrote the story about Rosenstein saying that he would wear a wire/listening device to prove trump is unfit and they could use the 25th amend to get rid of him. As soon as I heard that I said out loud, "Shit, why did the NY Times print that? Now Mueller will be shut down!". Now I really think that the NY Times isn't too trustworthy.

[pnwmom]

14. Given the recent report on the financials of the Trump family, I doubt there is a "symbiotic

connection."

[lagomorph777]

22. More like parasitic. Trump is a big bloated tick.

[moondust]

24. Maybe a couple years late.

All through the 2016 primaries and then the general I expected some of this stuff to emerge and maybe even knock tRump out of the race. Didn't happen. Who would have known better about this stuff than NY banks, business interests, city hall, state AG, etc., and the hometown paper that supposedly covers all the local scoops?

[WhiteTara]

8. I wrote about this last September

Here's my column.
http://eureka.news/free-parking-9/

As the tale of betrayal and treason inundating the Trump White House spiral in an ever widening gyre, we add more names in this saga: DeVos and Zuckerberg.

In a November 22, 2016 Forbes article, Jared Kushner bragged about his “Stealth Data Machine” that won the White House for Donald Trump. In an article dated October 31, 2016, Slate magazine reported on the connections in Kushner’s “Machine.”

For months during the election cycle, reporters noted constant Internet data traffic between Trump Towers servers and Russian Alfa Bank’s servers. Now we learn of a third leg in those data transmissions.

Spectrum Health, a DeVos family (of Amway pyramid-scheme wealth) company’s computer servers appear to have been receiving, replicating and updating hacked voter records with more complete data gleaned from their voluminous patient records. Then after being updated and replicated, that data was transmitted to Trump Tower servers, Alfa Bank servers, and finally to the Kremlin for weaponization based on targeted voter information.

Please click on the article -- I get little click rewards and you get the balance of my thoughts

[benld74]

9. How many between Alph Bank and Devos Server in upper midwest?

[Recursion]

11. Jesus, does nobody cache anymore? (nt)

[3Hotdogs]

12. Not colllusion, they're just friends.

[Achilleaze]

13. republicans sold-out America to the freaking Evil Empire* of russia

* per ronald freaking reagan

[iluvtennis]

15. Rachel Maddow covered this in depth last night. Quite interesting that NYT

Had this info in October 2016 before the election and never released it

[suegeo]

16. Not Trump tower

But the organization.

The physical T org server was in Pennsylvania?

[Rene]

19. They should check online traffic between these

servers at Bank and Trump Towers...with Secretary of States' url's......vote tallying servers.

[iluvtennis]

20. Rachel Maddow is rightfully ripping the NYTimes a new one

Rachel Maddow is rightfully ripping the NYTimes a new one.
"The Times knew the trump campaign was under an FBI counterintelligence investigation before the election and didn't publish it"

Link to tweet

[gratuitous]

25. The Times has a history

Back in 2004, they sat on the story about the Bush administration's warrantless wiretapping until the election was safely over and Bush had won re-election. Their excuse was they didn't want to publish such an explosive story because it might affect the outcome of the election. Of course, by sitting on the story, they may have affected the outcome of the election just in the other direction. But that was apparently all right with the Times.

[Bluepinky]

29. Yes, Judith Miller worked for the NYT and was instrumental in getting us to invade Iraq.

She supported Bush administration’s contention that Iraq had WMD.

[kentuck]

26. This is a great graphic at your link:

https://media.newyorker.com/photos/5bb7f58172b4842cd2182af9/master/w_727,c_limit/181015_r32937web_rd.gif

[d_r]

27. I'm telling you

there was a central voter database at trump tower server, that was synching database entries between aetna in Russia and Spectrum Health in Michigan. They could make entries and once a day synch it.

[Botany]

28. But really what about HRC's emails?

“And we thought, Why the hell is a Russian bank communicating with a server that
belongs to the Trump Organization, and at such a rate?”

Only one other entity seemed to be reaching out to the Trump Organization’s domain with
any frequency: Spectrum Health, of Grand Rapids, Michigan. Spectrum Health is closely linked
to the DeVos family; Richard DeVos, Jr., is the chairman of the board, and one of its hospitals
is named after his mother. His wife, Betsy DeVos, was appointed Secretary of Education by Donald
Trump. Her brother, Erik Prince, is a Trump associate who has attracted the scrutiny of Robert
Mueller, the special counsel investigating Trump’s ties to Russia. Mueller has been looking into
Prince’s meeting, following the election, with a Russian official in the Seychelles, at which he
reportedly discussed setting up a back channel between Trump and the Russian President, Vladimir
Putin. (Prince maintains that the meeting was “incidental.”) In the summer of 2016, Max and the
others weren’t aware of any of this. “We didn’t know who DeVos was,” Max said.