Digital Forensics: By Philip Maina 1 day agoMon Nov 18 2024 11:43:37 Reading Time: 2 minutes DeFi platform Thala has recovered more than $25 million it had lost to a hacker Thala recovered the funds after working with law enforcement agencies The hacker agreed to take $300,000 as a bounty [...]
Digital Forensics:
A potential key adviser in Donald Trump’s second administration may be compromised before he even sets foot in the White House.
In the run-up to election night, Chinese cyber-spies hacked into the main cell phone used by Todd Blanche, the MAGA leader’s primary defense attorney, reported ABC News. Blanche is currently being considered for Trump’s next White House counsel or a senior law enforcement–related role, apparently qualified by his work for Trump on the soon-to-be forty-seventh president’s January 6 criminal case and his Stormy Daniels hush-money conviction.
The extent of the data breach is unclear, but the FBI determined that Blanche’s communications with his family and friends had been compromised, according to unidentified sources that spoke with ABC. Investigators are reportedly still working to assess whether Blanche’s communications with Trump or other sensitive contacts had been affected by the hack.
But regardless of what else was compromised in the digital attack, Blanche’s exposure could still pose a national security risk should the suddenly vulnerable Trump ally continue his path toward the executive branch.
The Chinese hackers, working on behalf of Beijing’s intelligence services, reportedly first broke into Blanche’s phone several months ago, gaining access to his text messages and capturing audio recordings of his phone calls, ABC reported.
The hackers then proceeded to target private companies and individuals via Blanche’s compromised line, according to an FBI statement issued two weeks ago.
“After the FBI identified specific malicious activity targeting the sector, the FBI and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) immediately notified affected companies, rendered technical assistance, and rapidly shared information to assist other potential victims,” the statement read. “Agencies across the U.S. Government are collaborating to aggressively mitigate this threat and are coordinating with our industry partners to strengthen cyber defenses across the commercial communications sector.”
Read more about Trump’s relationship with China:
The Kremlin is already shutting down Trump’s claim of military genius.
During the 2024 presidential campaign, the president-elect said repeatedly that he could end Russia’s two-year-long invasion of Ukraine in just 24 hours. Dmitri Peskov, the Kremlin’s press secretary, provided a more realistic assessment on Thursday.
“Of course, it was a bit of an exaggeration when he said he would do it overnight,” Peskov said. However, the press secretary also admitted what we all already know: that Moscow is happy with a Trump presidency.
“If the new administration seeks peace rather than continued conflict, it will be better than the previous one,” Peskov added.
On Thursday, Russian President Vladimir Putin commented directly on Trump’s wild claim in his first comments following the election results. Speaking at a discussion club in Sochi, Putin first praised Trump for surviving his assassination attempt in July, calling him a “real man,” and then congratulated the president-elect. But the Russian president did not commit to anything regarding the war in Ukraine or ending it quickly, stating, “I do not know what is going to happen now. I have no clue.”
More on the 2024 election fallout:
Democratic Pennsylvania Senator Bob Casey has been unseated by Republican challenger David McCormick in one of the country’s tightest and most expensive Senate races, the Associated Press reported Thursday.
McCormick won 48.9 percent of the vote, with 99 percent reporting, compared to Casey’s 48.5 percent.
Republicans have already secured control of the Senate, seizing 53 seats for a majority. Three races have yet to be called.
Pennsylvania’s Senate race was extremely tight, and hours after the Senate had been called Wednesday morning, the race was still too close to call, with McCormick leading by less than 1 percent, or approximately 52,000 votes.
As mail-in voting drew to a close late last month, McCormick joined Donald Trump in a lawsuit against Bucks County over long lines at polling stations as people tried to register for mail-in voting. A judge extended the deadline to sign up for mail-in voting in the county—a win for voting rights, but due to a request based on totally exaggerated claims. Bucks County supported President Joe Biden in 2020, topping Trump by more than 17,000 votes.
Ahead of Election Day, McCormick campaigned with failed presidential candidate Nikki Haley in the hopes of attracting the support of moderate voters.
Meanwhile, during a late-October rally for Kamala Harris in Philadelphia, former President Barack Obama lauded Casey. “All that guy cares about is doing the job and looking after the people he was elected to serve. That’s the kind of person we need to send back to Washington,” Obama said.
Last month, McCormick’s campaign was flooded with more than $108 million in donations from outside groups, absolutely dwarfing his own campaign’s previous $22.2 million in spending. McCormick has received $45.3 million from Keystone Renewal, a GOP-funding Pennsylvania-based super PAC underwritten by about 70 megadonors.
Casey’s campaign, including PAC donations, spent $110 million by the middle of October. Casey polled ahead of McCormick throughout the race, drawing stronger support from Democrats than McCormick drew from Republicans.
Read more about Senate races:
Donald Trump’s worthless stock just plunged again, all but wiping out the president-elect’s victory gains.
Shares of Trump Media & Technology Group, or DJT, sank on Thursday, after briefly spiking in the hours following the announcement that he’d won the presidency.
The stock gained nearly 6 percent Wednesday but dropped more than 20 percent in afternoon trading the following day, according to CNBC. This is likely due to profit-taking from investors looking to cash in on Trump’s postelection bump and well aware that without the election to drive Trump’s stock prices, there isn’t much more DJT has to offer.
Trump Media is a particularly volatile stock because it is tied to a service that no one really uses: Truth Social, currently the epicenter of Trump’s online ravings and not much else. As such, DJT functioned as a meme stock, rising and falling in tandem with Trump’s election prospects. It seems that since the presidential race has finally come to an end, the stock has been rendered useless for now.
In a surprise filing Tuesday, Trump Media reported that it lost more than $19 million in its third quarter this year. The company had only $2.6 million in revenue, while racking up a net loss of $363 million for the first nine months of 2024.
The same day, DJT’s stock value plummeted as investors furiously traded shares, and trading was temporarily halted five times.
Trading had previously been frozen in mid-October after a wild trading session caused the stock price to plummet. Frenzied trading in October indicated that investors were looking to ride the stock to some easy gains following Trump’s election victory, and now they have. Any gains the stock saw with Trump’s victory have now been reduced back to nothing.
Read more about Truth Social:
California Governor Gavin Newsom has called a special session in the Golden State’s legislature to protect the state’s liberal policies from a Donald Trump presidency.
In a statement Thursday, Newsom warned, “The freedoms we hold dear in California are under attack—and we won’t sit idle.
“California has faced this challenge before, and we know how to respond. We are prepared to fight in the courts, and we will do everything necessary to ensure Californians have the support and resources they need to thrive,” the statement read. Newsom’s office also told the Associated Press the governor and legislators were ready to “Trump-proof” California’s state laws.
Newsom’s statement asked the legislature to give more funding to the state attorney general’s office to fight any federal challenges when it meets in December. California has a lot to safeguard: The state has many laws in place to protect abortion access, including budgeting $20 million to pay for people in other states to come to California for an abortion. The state has also mandated that every new car, pickup truck, or SUV sold in California be electric, hydrogen-powered, or plug-in hybrid by 2035.
During Trump’s first term, the state filed more than 120 lawsuits, and Newsom is preparing for another four years of legal battles, especially with conservatives eyeing anti-climate and anti-abortion measures. Newsom is not alone: Other leaders in Democratic states are also taking measures to safeguard their laws.
New York Governor Kathy Hochul said she and Attorney General Letitia James will be meeting to discuss how to legally protect “key areas that are most likely to face threats from the Trump administration.” These include “reproductive rights, civil rights, immigration, gun safety, labor rights, LGBTQ rights, and our environmental justice.”
Newsom may have good intentions, but he also has bigger ambitions than California and may have eyes on the presidency after Trump’s term is up. Proving himself as a bulwark against the Trump White House would do a lot to improve his national standing. The question is whether Newsom is taking these actions for real or for show, and whether the state’s measures will be effective.
More on 2024 election fallout:
Independent Senator Bernie Sanders’s scathing take on the Democratic Party’s election night losses seriously irked party leaders already licking their wounds.
In a statement Wednesday, the senator from Vermont offered his two cents on the sweeping defeat:
It should come as no great surprise that a Democratic Party which has abandoned working class people would find that the working class has abandoned them. While the Democratic leadership defends the status quo, the American people are angry and want change. And they’re right.
Sanders cited inflation, historically low wages, artificial intelligence, exorbitant prescription drug prices, billions of dollars toward Israel’s “horrific” war on Palestine, and rampant corporate corruption all as issues that the Democratic Party did not adequately communicate to voters, or address at all.
Democratic National Committee Chair Jaime Harrison—previously an aide to Representative Jim Clyburn of South Carolina and then a corporate lobbyist—called Sanders’s take “straight up BS.”
“Biden was the most-pro worker President of my life time—saved Union pensions, created millions of good paying jobs and even marched in a picket line and some of [Kamala Harris’s] plans would have fundamentally transformed the quality of life and closed the racial wealth gap for working people across this country,” Harrison tweeted Thursday morning.
“From the child tax credits, to 25k for a down payment for a house to Medicare covering the cost of senior health care in their homes. There are a lot of post election takes and this one ain’t a good one.”
Regardless of the merits of Harrison’s defense, there is a clear disconnect between the Democratic Party and the huge swaths of working-class voters who soundly rejected their platform this election cycle. Does it really matter that President Biden stood on one picket line when 67 percent of voters nationwide said the economy has been bad for them under his leadership?
Biden and Harris, even with policies that help working-class people, still had to defend a status quo that, economically, actually wasn’t great for working-class people regardless of race. That’s a difficult position to be in when your opponent is running on upending said status quo.
Members of Team Biden have anonymously spilled that they wish Vice President Kamala Harris had continued to campaign on the dangers of corporate greed and corruption to counteract her weaknesses on inflation and the economy. According to The Atlantic’s Franklin Foer, a Biden aide told him that the vice president “steered away from such hard-edged messaging at the urging of her brother-in-law, Tony West, Uber’s chief legal officer.” Harris mostly abandoned this angle and instead started campaigning more with billionaire Mark Cuban.
Whether you think Sanders is right on this or not, it’s clear that it’s time for the Democratic Party to seriously reevaluate its messaging and win back the voters it used to always have.
The immediate aftermath of Donald Trump’s presidential election win is already a bad omen for women and minorities across the nation, who within less than 48 hours have found themselves the subjects of hate campaigns designed to belittle and marginalize them.
“Your body, my choice. Forever,” posted white supremacist, Hitler fan, and far-right political pundit Nick Fuentes hours before the race had even been called in Trump’s favor.
On X (formerly Twitter), supporters of the “grab ’em by the pussy” rapist, convicted adulterer, Jeffrey Epstein confidant, and proud abortion rights destroyer reveled in their own threats against women, openly celebrating what they described as an onslaught of rape on the horizon.
“Women threatening sex strikes like LMAO as if you have a say,” wrote streamer Jon Miller, who later noted that he had successfully removed a community note from the viral post, allowing him to “profit from it.”
A text campaign—and obvious hate crime—issued a threat to students of color across the nation, claiming the recipients had been “selected” as “house slaves” and were due to appear at plantations.
One message shared online demanded that its recipient appear at Abingdon Plantation.
“This is mandatory,” the message read. “Sincerely, Trump administration.”
Another iteration of the campaign reportedly targeted Black public school students at South Western High School in Pennsylvania, which the principal described in a notice to parents as part of a “nationwide spread of AI generated text messages.”
But not all of the vitriol took place online. Activists celebrating Trump’s win overtook Texas State University at the school’s San Marcos campus, raising signs that read, “Women are property,” “Homo sex is sin,” and lists that designated women and slaves under “Types of Property.”
Meanwhile, American women in digital spaces spent the hours since Trump’s win musing about joining South Korea’s 4B movement as a counterprotest to the developing infringements on their personal autonomy. The guidelines of the voluntary movement involve saying “no” to dating or marrying men, having sex with them, and giving birth.
Read more about Trump’s supporters:
Rudy Giuliani tried out a new legal defense on Thursday, arguing in a Manhattan courthouse that he couldn’t possibly hand over his assets to Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, a pair of 2020 Georgia poll workers whom he had repeatedly defamed, because he simply didn’t know where they were.
At a hearing, U.S. District Judge Lewis Liman said that the idea that neither Giuliani nor anyone else in the world has knowledge about where his assets are was “farcical,” reported Reuters.
“If he doesn’t comply, then I’m sure that I’m going to get a motion for contempt,” Liman said. “He’s not going to be in contempt if he’s made efforts and it’s impossible to comply with the order, but that’s the standard that he’s going to be held to.”
Aaron Nathan, an attorney for Freeman and Moss, also noted that it appeared Giuliani had been shuffling his assets around, opening new bank accounts and creating limited liability companies.
“It’s troubling that we learned about it on Monday for the first time,” Nathan said.
Those assets would include Giuliani’s Mercedes convertible, which he was seen driving in Florida on Election Day, making it a little difficult to argue he doesn’t know where it is.
Another asset is his Manhattan penthouse, a famously immovable object, which Giuliani was ordered to hand over within seven days to the mother-daughter duo. The lofty apartment would have partially satisfied the nearly $150 million in damages that the disbarred attorney was supposed to cough up after losing his defamation case.
Giuliani’s attorneys also argued that Freeman and Moss were being “vindictive” in repossessing certain kinds of assets, including a watch that was once owned by Giuliani’s grandfather.
“Oh come on, that’s ridiculous,” Liman said, adding that it didn’t matter if the former mayor of New York considered the watch an heirloom. “The law is the law.”
Amazingly, the $148 million debt is just the tip of the iceberg for Giuliani’s legal woes. Over the past year, the former Trump attorney unsuccessfully filed for bankruptcy, lost his accountant over his insurmountable debts, begged Donald Trump for help settling his seven-figure legal fees (he refused), had his WABC radio show canceled for spewing 2020 election lies, and miserably started his own coffee brand, “Rudy Coffee,” in an effort to funnel in some extra cash. He ultimately lost his bankruptcy case due to his outlandish spending habits, with the presiding New York judge branding the former city mayor a “recalcitrant debtor.”
Giuliani is also under the gun for a lawsuit from his former legal representation, who accused him of failing to pay his bill and allegedly only dishing out $214,000 of nearly $1.6 million in legal expenses. Giuliani, meanwhile, claimed he was stiffed by his favorite client, Trump, to the tune of millions of dollars.
But wait, there’s more: The MAGA henchman is also one of 19 co-defendants in the Georgia election interference case and was named in April in an Arizona indictment charging another slew of Republican officials and Trump allies for their alleged involvement in a scheme to overturn the state’s 2020 presidential election results. In October, an Arizona judge torched a legal filing Giuliani made in the case, ruling that the ex–Trump aide had “not one scintilla” of evidence to question the legitimacy of a grand jury assigned to his lawsuit.
But if the ex–Trump attorney can drag out his legal woes for long enough to obtain a pardon from Trump during the MAGA leader’s forthcoming second administration, he may not have to pay up at all.
Read more about Giuliani:
House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer may finally get his greatest wish: to weaponize the federal government against Donald Trump’s political enemies.
In an interview on Newsmax’s National Report Thursday, Comer was asked whether he planned to pursue further charges against Hunter Biden in the wake of Trump’s election victory.
“We’re gonna see what the new Trump Department of Justice wants to do. I fully expect Joe Biden to pardon his son,” Comer said. “I think the most important thing for me, honestly, is that we hold people in the government accountable.”
“And I’m pretty optimistic that with this new administration that we can finally start holding some Deep State actors accountable for bad behavior,” he added.
Comer has alleged that his investigations into the Bidens uncovered that the president’s family had been “selling access” to foreign adversaries of the United States.
After conducting a disastrous impeachment inquiry that failed to scrounge up even the slightest bit of evidence that Joe Biden had committed any wrongdoing, Comer, alongside other GOP House committee chairs, made criminal referrals to the Justice Department in June for Hunter Biden and Jim Biden, the president’s brother.
After Hunter was found guilty on three felony gun charges that same month in a separate case, Comer said it was only a “step toward accountability.”
“Until the Department of Justice investigates everyone involved in the Bidens’ corrupt influence peddling schemes that generated over $18 million in foreign payments to the Biden family, it will be clear department officials continue to cover for the Big Guy, Joe Biden,” Comer said.
At the time, even GOP lawmakers were saying that Comer had yet to dig up any evidence the president had committed a crime or impeachable offense.
In August, several GOP-led House committees published a lengthy report claiming that Hunter and James Biden, and their associates, had raked in more than $27 million from foreign individuals or entities since 2014. It also alleged that Joe Biden had used his position as vice president to leverage more than $8 million in loans from Democratic donors.
Oversight Committee Democrats responded, saying that the report was based on “vague, unsubstantiated, and thoroughly debunked allegations.”
Notably missing from the nearly 300 pages of the report was any evidence that Joe Biden himself had benefited from business dealings, or participated in any foreign business deals.
Now that Trump is headed back to the White House and is set to install his own attorney general, it looks like Comer may get the shot at Hunter Biden he’s been dreaming of for months.
Read more about James Comer:
New York’s Democrats have finally made a comeback, two years after their disastrous performances in the 2022 midterm elections that helped cost their party the House of Representatives.
Democrats flipped three Republican seats, and no Democrats lost their seats, leaving the split at 19 Democrats and seven Republicans.
Democrat Josh Riley beat Republican Representative Marc Molinaro, who recently pivoted from a pragmatic brand of conservatism to full-on MAGA, with 51.8 percent of the vote at 96 percent reporting in a rematch from the 2022 midterms.
Democratic State Senator John Mannion beat Representative Brandon Williams with 53.9 percent of the vote at 84 percent reporting, flipping New York’s 22nd congressional district from red to blue. Williams took the seat in 2022, after after former Representative John Katko, a more moderate Republican, announced his retirement.
Laura Gillen beat Representative Anthony D’Esposito Thursday, with 50.9 percent of the vote at 98 percent reporting. D’Esposito’s campaign was marred by a damning report that he gave jobs in his office to his former lover and his fiancée’s daughter.
Cook Political Report had updated its rating of D’Esposito’s race just four days ahead of the election, shifting its prediction from “toss up” to “lean Democrat,” signaling that D’Esposito would likely lose his seat.
At the same time, Democratic lawmakers were able to defend their House seats in races against strong Republican challengers. Democratic Representative Tom Suozzi held his ground against GOP challenger Mike LiPetri, leading him by 51.3 percent to 48.7 percent with 97 percent reporting. Suozzi won the special House election in New York’s 3rd congressional district after the ouster of George Santos, flipping the Long Island and Queens–based district from red to blue.
Still, many Republicans were able to fend off challenges from Democrats.
In New York’s 17th congressional district, Representative Mike Lawler crushed a challenge from former Representative Mondaire Jones, earning a whopping 57 percent of the vote with 94 percent reporting. Jones’s already struggling campaign was further weakened by a spoiler candidate that left the Working Families Party campaigning against itself.
In Long Island, Republican Representative Nick LaLota defeated former CNN commentator John Avalon with 55.7 percent of the vote with 88 percent reporting.
Republican Representatives Nicole Malliotakis, Elise Stefanik, Andrew Garabino, Nicholas Langworthy, and Claudia Tenney were also able to maintain their seats.
With Republicans winning both the presidency and the Senate, it’s become clear that every Democratic House seat matters. Even with many House races yet to be called, it currently looks like there will be a Republican majority in the House.
In 2022, the ascensions of Molinaro and Lawler in the Hudson Valley, D’Esposito and LaLota on Long Island, and Williams in central New York were credited with losing the Democratic Party’s slim majority in the House.
That widespread failure came as an unhappy surprise for Democrats, especially considering that in New York state, there are nearly twice as many active registered Democrats as Republicans, indicating a significantly depressed turnout among Democratic voters for the 2022 midterm elections. In 2023, there were roughly 5.9 million active Democrats and only 2.7 million Republicans.
Read more about New York:
Computer Forensics Company: UK’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) has published an analysis of a Linux malware named “Pigmy Goat” created to backdoor Sophos XG firewall devices as part of recently ...
Digital Forensics: By Philip Maina 1 day agoMon Nov 18 2024 11:43:37 Reading Time: 2 minutes DeFi platform Thala has recovered more than $25 million it had lost to a [...]
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