Linky Friday: Crawling to the Finish Edition

Photo by Architect of the US Capitol, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

[LF1]

The “Solarwinds” hack just keeps getting worse:

Thursday’s CISA alert provided an unusually bleak assessment of the hack; the threat it poses to government agencies at the national, state, and local levels; and the skill, persistence, and time that will be required to expel the attackers from networks they had penetrated for months undetected.

“This APT actor has demonstrated patience, operational security, and complex tradecraft in these intrusions,” officials wrote in Thursday’s alert. “CISA expects that removing this threat actor from compromised environments will be highly complex and challenging for organizations.”

The officials went on to provide another bleak assessment: “CISA has evidence of additional initial access vectors, other than the SolarWinds Orion platform; however, these are still being investigated. CISA will update this Alert as new information becomes available.”

The advisory didn’t say what the additional vectors might be, but the officials went on to note the skill required to infect the SolarWinds software build platform, distribute backdoors to 18,000 customers, and then remain undetected in infected networks for months.

“This adversary has demonstrated an ability to exploit software supply chains and shown significant knowledge of Windows networks,” they wrote. “It is likely that the adversary has additional initial access vectors and tactics, techniques, and procedures that have not yet been discovered.”

Among the many federal agencies that used SolarWinds Orion, reportedly, was the Internal Revenue Service. On Thursday, Senate Finance Committee Ranking Member Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Senate Finance Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) sent a letter to IRS Commissioner Chuck Rettig asking that he provide a briefing on whether taxpayer data was compromised.

[LF2]

In non-covid CDC news:

The US has seen a substantial increase in fatal drug overdoses and set a record for deaths from overdoses in the year that ended in May, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported Thursday.

The worst of the deaths coincide with closures and other measures taken to control the pandemic, the CDC said in a health alert.
Data from the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) indicates that approximately 81,230 drug overdose deaths occurred in the US in that period. “This represents a worsening of the drug overdose epidemic in the United States and is the largest number of drug overdoses for a 12-month period ever recorded,” the CDC alert said.

The most common are overdoses from synthetic opioids such as illicitly manufactured fentanyl. But there’s also an increase in deaths from drugs such as methamphetamine and cocaine, the CDC added. And the numbers look grim. “The 12-month count of synthetic opioid deaths increased 38.4% from the 12 months ending in June 2019 compared with the 12 months ending in May 2020,” the CDC said. It noted a 98% increase in synthetic opioid deaths in 10 Western states, coinciding with greater availability of these drugs in that region. “After declining 4.1% from 2017 to 2018, the number of overdose deaths increased 18.2% from the 12 months ending in June 2019 to the 12 months ending in May 2020,” it added.

[LF3]

Not Dems in DISARRRAY, just usual jockeying for committee assignments, but nothing involving AOC these days passes without elevated commentary. Rep. Kathleen Rice beat out fellow New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for a seat on the House Energy and Commerce Committee both had been vying for 46-13:

Pelosi, though, stepped in and convinced the panel to adopt the leadership picks, while taking a separate vote on the seat Rice and Ocasio-Cortez sought. The jockeying between the two New Yorkers has been the most closely watched contest within the Democratic caucus in recent weeks, carrying big implications for both policy and power in the next Congress.

Rice, who had been expected to get the seat, attempted to block Pelosi from leading House Democrats in the 116th Congress and is now seen as a crucial vote for the speaker this time around since Democrats have a slimmer majority. It’s a big turnaround for the Long Island Democrat and former prosecutor: after she spoke out against Pelosi’s speakership, Rice was denied a seat on her preferred committee — Judiciary — just two years ago.

But Ocasio-Cortez also made a hard push, and was the first member to ask the New York delegation for its backing. Multiple New Yorkers, including Rep.-elect Mondaire Jones, spoke up in her favor during the Steering meeting. Progressives both inside and outside of the Capitol said it would be critical to have Ocasio-Cortez on the Energy and Commerce Committee to help influence critical policies in the early days of the Biden administration.

But some senior Democrats, including on the Energy and Commerce panel, had privately voiced concerns about Ocasio-Cortez landing the seat. Some feared that the firebrand Democrat, who backs progressive priorities like the “Green New Deal” and “Medicare for All,” could cause issues as Congress attempts to draft bipartisan health and climate policies next year.

[LF4]

The New York Times has issued plenty of retractions over the years, but retracting a podcast is new:

The New York Times has retracted the core of its hit 2018 podcast series Caliphate after an internal review found the paper failed to heed red flags indicating that the man it relied upon for its narrative about the allure of terrorism could not be trusted to tell the truth. The newspaper has reassigned its star terrorism reporter, Rukmini Callimachi, who hosted the series.

Caliphate relayed the tale about the radicalization of a young Canadian who went to Syria, joined the Islamic State and became an executioner for the extremist group before escaping its hold. Canadian authorities this fall accused the man, Shehroze Chaudhry, of lying about those activities. He currently faces criminal charges in a federal court in Ontario of perpetrating a terrorism hoax.

“We fell in love with the fact that we had gotten a member of ISIS who would describe his life in the caliphate and would describe his crimes,” New York Times executive editor Dean Baquet tells NPR in an interview on Thursday. “I think we were so in love with it that when we saw evidence that maybe he was a fabulist, when we saw evidence that he was making some of it up, we didn’t listen hard enough.”

[LF5]

From Russia with Love…for Iceland Trolls? Planted reporters and questions at press conferences are not knew, but still this was bizarre at Vladimir Putin’s annual end-of-year holding of court:

One of the odder moments of the spectacle came toward the end of the event when Peskov called on a foreign reporter. At that point, a BBC correspondent had been the only other international reporter to get a chance to question Putin. He asked a punchy question of Putin that elicited a punchy Putin response. But the second question went to a man who identified himself as Haukur Hauksson from Iceland and proceeded to not ask a question at all.

“This is a unique event anywhere in the world, when journalists are able to ask leaders questions,” he said. “This is direct democracy.”

He then wished Putin and his family a happy upcoming New Year, and told Putin that people love him in the West.

“We sincerely love Russia. It’s only the media of power — BBC, CNN, and others — that blame you for bad things, and also media in Iceland, our channels…. But there is a big war ongoing against you directly. They’re afraid of you. But to say that there is hatred in the West for you, there’s nothing of the sort,” he said.

It wasn’t immediately clear what media outlet Hauksson represented. Hauksson did not immediately respond to a request for comment sent via his Facebook page. He has printed columns for a news outlet owned by the St. Petersburg businessman behind the notorious Russian troll factory. In 2018, Hauksson produced a first-person video feature about his long experience living in Russia that was shown on Moscow municipal TV channel Moskva 24.

Putin responded by saying: “Thank you, I rarely hear such warm words.” He then went on to discuss the United Nations, Russia’s relations with Iceland, and the potential for developing hydroelectric projects.

Putin then concluded, “The secret of a happy family is love. But it’s no secret. Everyone knows it; this is a universal thing. It must be the basis of all family relations, and, as you’ve mentioned, also international relations, in ties between nations.”

[LF6]

The “First 100 Days” list for the Biden Administration just keeps getting longer, this time with talk of schools:

Biden said he’d call for all Americans to wear masks for 100 days and would distribute at least 100 million vaccines during his first 100 days in the White House, in addition to seeking to reopen most of the nation’s schools over the same period.

“It should be a national priority to get our kids back into school and keep them in school,” Biden said. “If Congress provides the funding, we need to protect students, educators and staff. If states and cities put strong public health measures in place that we all follow, then my team will work to see that the majority of our schools can be open by the end of my first 100 days.”

There were 130,930 K-12 schools in the U.S. in the 2017-18 school year, according to the latest data from the Education Department. At least half of those would have to resume in-person learning by the end of April for Biden to make good on his pledge, assuming sufficient funding is approved.

Biden provided few details on how he will achieve that goal except to say that officials will prioritize getting vaccines to educators “as soon as possible” after health care personnel and people in long-term care facilities have gotten them.

[LF7]

Things are bleak in Ethiopia:

The preliminary victory over the provincial government in Tigray could ultimately prove hazardous for Abiy Ahmed. Many regions have long had a deeply antagonistic relationship with the Tigray, who were heavy handed during their decades in power. Now, though, because the Tigray are fighting against the increasingly hated government in Addis Ababa, not a few ethnicities have begun seeing the Tigray as the enemy of their enemy. As a possible friend. Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s power is partly dependent on whether the mutually hostile groups can form an alliance against him and overthrow his government. Or whether his army will wear down in a multi-front conflict.

Falma, the activist from Oromia, doesn’t necessarily think that is a bad thing. “The war is a gift from God,” he says over the phone. “The troops should go ahead and kill themselves, Abiy’s troops and the Tigrayans.” Both, he says, are enemies of the Oromo. “They should all die.”

[LF8]

Reminder not all Christmas traditions are the same:

He was covered in dark, full-body fur, horns curling out of his head, rattling his heavy chains at my sweet little boys. The Devil.

And I brought my sons straight to him, dressed in their best sweaters, their hair combed with perfect, sharp side parts, their usually rosy cheeks ashen in terror.

All common sense had left me, apparently.

It was supposed to be a sweet outing with their grandparents, an ode to generations of tradition and heritage.

In Czech culture, on Dec. 5, the eve of the Feast of Saint Nicholas, the holy trinity of Saint Nicholas, an angel and the Devil — known by some as Krampus — walk the streets of cities and villages, visiting children.

Children try to avoid the wrath of Krampus on Saint Nicholas Day eve in Prague.
Children try to avoid the wrath of Krampus on Saint Nicholas Day eve in Prague. (David W Cerny/Reuters)
Saint Nicholas — usually with a long beard, a bishop’s miter and a staff — tells the children they are about to be judged.

If they were good, the angel will give them sweets, traditionally chocolates, nuts and oranges.

If they were bad, the Devil will toss them in his sack and carry them to hell. They can avoid the trip, Saint Nicholas explains, by confessing their sins, enduring a terrifying display of Mr. Demon’s growls and chain-rattling, then offering him a song or poem.

[LF9]

The despicable Michael Flynn is a menace to America:

Donald Trump’s short-lived former national security adviser Michael Flynn has suggested the outgoing US president should use military force to “rerun” the election in the key swing states he lost in November.

Speaking to Newsmax, a right-wing broadcaster Mr. Trump has promoted as an alternative to Fox News since last month’s vote, General Flynn pushed a conspiracy theory popular among Republican voters suggesting that voting machines were hacked to flip ballots in favour of Democrat Joe Biden, now president-elect after winning both the Electoral College and popular vote by comfortable margins.

“There is no way in the world we are going to be able to move forward as a nation,” General Flynn said. “[The president] could immediately, on his order, seize every single one of these machines.”

“Within the swing states,” he continued, “if he wanted to, he could take military capabilities, and he could place those in states and basically rerun an election in each of those states.

“I mean, it’s not unprecedented. These people are out there talking about martial law like it’s something that we’ve never done. Martial law has been instituted 64 times.”

He added: ”We have a constitutional process. We clearly have a constitutional process. That has to be followed.”

General Flynn proposed the same idea on Twitter on 1 December on behalf of a collective calling itself the We The People Convention, only for it to be labelled “preposterous” by Bill Banks, a national security law expert at Syracuse University.

“Apart from the fact that state and now federal investigators have found no evidence of election fraud that would change the election outcome, martial law has no place in the United States absent a complete breakdown of civil governing mechanisms,” Mr. Banks told Military Times.

[LF10]

At least for today, President-Elect Biden has other things on his mind than politics:

President-elect Joe Biden has marked the 48th anniversary of the accident that killed his first wife and baby daughter by attending Mass at the church where they are buried.

Neilia Biden and the couple’s 13-month-old daughter, Naomi, were killed when their car was struck by a tractor-trailer as she took the kids to pick out a Christmas tree.

Sons Hunter and Beau were seriously injured. They were a year and a day apart in age, at 3 and 4.

Joe Biden had just been elected to the Senate and was in Washington setting up his new office at the time of the accident.

Biden and his wife, Jill Biden, attended the Friday morning service in Delaware at St. Joseph on the Brandywine, a Roman Catholic church. The campus of the church contains a large parish cemetery. After Mass, the Bidens walked to the gravesite markers to pay their respects.