The 2020 election season was interesting for me on a different level than most. This little blog site started six years ago while I was still working for Lockheed on the SBIRS program. I’d previously done Systems Security there before flying Ikonos almost nine years with them and DG-Geoeye. Knowledge of Facebook foibles and other shared social media platforms gave me pause. So with the tools and skills to go it on my own, that’s exactly what I did. What I did not realize was it gave me a telling clandestine cyberspace POV, as t’were.
The Blogs are just sort of an online personal journal. Retirement was approaching, the girls were growing up with lots of changes to keep track of appearing on the horizon. I’ve never been much for talking on the phone, introverted, so it’s also a good way for family and friends to stay in touch with minimal intervention on anyone’s part. One of the really cool things for me tho, was exercising enterprise-class network security – sort of a pro-to-hobby transition thing.
Going back even further in my professional history to the early 2000 time-frame, I helped operate a little system called ASIM for HQ AF Space Command at Peterson, along with another box called “the honeypot.” At that time we were tracking the Russians in Moonlight Maze. Twenty years later, I have a new pot sitting on the shelf above my desk here at home in Frederick, Colorado. Things on the CyberSec front were mundane and boring for the most part, with normal background scanning and generic ‘sploit noise. But the email bots increased dramatically in 2016, along with an alarming number of Russian subscribers!
It was pretty obvious what was going on, with reports starting to pop up in the mainstream media, so I just ignored it with normal user maintenance. Then Mueller, and the rest is history. Fast forward to 2020, and it’s time for another go. I kept close tabs on them this time around and the results were conclusive. At least one abuse report I submitted pointed to the Microsoft Azure gang of electioneering hackers, taken down just weeks before the election. Somebody in Russia downloaded my entire site the day after Trump went to Walter Reed. APTs (Advanced Persistent Threats) based in France, Romania, Hong Kong and others made repeated attempts to compromise my WordPress site – a site hosting demonstrably anti-Trump content.
So what? It almost completely stopped on 3 November 2020. I guess the money ran out, maybe? Or the contract only ran until election day? Today the Orange Fuckwit will be seen on National TV once again decrying election meddling and fraud. Donny Boy, the biggest liar of them all – Emperor Trump – wears no clothes.
Yep – my word against his. Not alot of links and supporting evidence. Actual forensically-preserved relevant data could be released to the appropriate authorities upon request, but I imagine they probably know way more about it than I do by now. People been having a hard time re-writing authentic digitally-recorded history of accounts for things that actually happened lately – eh Rudy? Who you gonna believe?
EPILOGUE – Don’t ever forget how this election transpired remains in evidence painting a large swath of people living in the USA today being fine with White Supremacy, Racism, Corruption, Treason and other GOP-hosted niceties, regardless of the veracity of the information they so irresponsibly consume. That’s just the unwitting supporters. I’ll always wonder what percentage of ALL voters realized just how close we came to losing this thing – not the election.