The Rose Garden and White House happenings: Listening to voters’ concerns
Those “dumber than a rock” folks on social media just pulled this off…. (note, only partial story follows)
The Audacious MGM Hack That Brought Chaos to Las Vegas
A gang of young criminals. A more than $30 million ransom. Casinos in disarray. Six days inside the cyberattack that put corporate America on notice.
By Robert McMillanFollow and Katherine SayreFollowMarch 29, 2024 at 12:01
The break-in began on an otherwise typical Las Vegas Friday night.
Step one was a phone call to MGM Resorts’ tech support. The person on the line said they were an employee, but had forgotten their password and were locked out of their account.
They gave some personal information over the phone. It all checked out.
What tech support didn’t realize was that the caller was a hacker.
A few minutes later, the real MGM employee received a notification that his password had been reset and reported this to the IT department.
By then, it was too late. The hackers were in.
Over the next five days, a brash group of cybercriminals would try to take more than $30 million from MGM. For the hackers, it was the ultimate game, and a shot at defying the oldest rule in Vegas: The house always wins.
MGM fought back, throwing its hotels and casinos into chaos in the process.
The hack, in early September, put corporate America on notice. The gang had broken into an industry that prides itself on vigilance—where security teams watch over every dice roll and slot pull. Now the world knew a group of elusive young hackers was on the prowl and capable of doing grave damage.
The gang behind the MGM hack call themselves Star Fraud, and investigators say they sprung out of a sprawling online community called the Com. Virtually unheard of five years ago, the Com has become one of the top cybersecurity problems facing the U.S.
Com hackers have stolen millions of dollars in cryptocurrency heists. They have driven teenagers to despair with sextortion schemes. They have successfully masqueraded as FBI agents to trick
Apple and Meta into revealing the home addresses and phone numbers of their users. They have hired criminals to throw Molotov cocktails or even fire guns at the homes of rivals. They’ve hacked into Microsoft, Nvidia, Uber and Samsung. They’ve stolen the source code to an unreleased version of the videogame “Grand Theft Auto,” and tried to extort millions from dozens of companies around the world.
They’re videogamers and braggarts and con artists and criminals. And they’re often teenagers from English-speaking countries including the U.S., Canada and the U.K. “They’re basically children who grew up in online communities that groom children to do cybercrime,” said Allison Nixon, a researcher with the cybersecurity firm Unit 221B, who has tracked the Com since its inception.
Unlike previous generations of young hackers, who relished breaking into computer systems to show off their prowess, she said, Com kids are primarily motivated by status and money. “They are not driven by a love of technology,” she said.
This account is based on court filings on cases related to the Com, interviews with cybersecurity analysts, law enforcement officers and MGM executives, and an online chat with an anonymous person identified as an associate of the hackers.
Saturday: Whac-A-Mole
On the surface, it was business as usual at MGM Resorts the morning after the hack, Saturday, Sept. 9.
Star Fraud had targeted a widely overlooked and hard-to-fix weakness in technology—the tech support systems that help people get into their online accounts when they’re locked out.
Like many gangs plotting a casino heist, they had cased the joint in advance—this time, digitally. The anonymous associate of the gang later told The Wall Street Journal the group had obtained information on the MGM employee they impersonated by mining the vast troves of stolen and illegally available data on the internet.
MGM declined to release communications from the hackers.
nohero said:
mtierney said:
So, the next time you scratch your head and wonder how/why DJT retains his hold on so many voters across America, remember today.
I don't wonder. Lots of people are full of hate and dumber than a rock.
mtierney said:
Those “dumber than a rock” folks on social media just pulled this off….
The Audacious MGM Hack That Brought Chaos to Las Vegas
A gang of young criminals. A more than $30 million ransom. Casinos in disarray. Six days inside the cyberattack that put corporate America on notice.
Well, your article is about a bunch of con artists who are committing massive fraud that damages the foundation of American life.
While Donald Trump shares similar characteristics, nothing in your article suggests that they're Trump supporters.
Meanwhile, waiting her turn in the Green Room, the Veep once again proves she doesn’t have a clue…
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/28/opinion/kamala-harris-puerto-rico.html
ridski said:
“Twenty-one times arrested,” Mr. Trump said outside the wake. “They don’t learn because they don’t respect.”
Says man who has been arrested four times in one year.
Well, there's apparently a long history of frauds who sell Bibles.
Talk about respect - if there's violence against police - T**** will tweet out a call to end it after 2 hours.
In the meantime - he will watch the abuse of officers on TV and ask that metal detectors not be required for his followers.
Little timeline of that:
1:45pm - officers are overtaken
2:24pm - T**** tweets that Pence "didn't have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our country and our Constitution."
4:17pm - T**** posts video ""We had an election that was stolen from us. It was a landslide election and everyone knows it, especially the other side. But you have to go home now ... We have to have peace. We have to have law and order. ... So go home. We love you, you're very special. ... I know how you feel. But go home and go home in peace," he says.
The past is the past — what has been happening over the past year to an American journalist is the here and now..
| |||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||
|
mtierney said:
The past is the past — what has been happening over the past year to an American journalist is the here and now..
------
The world has changed dramatically in the past year. During that time, the world for our colleague Evan Gershkovich has been the inside of a tiny cell in a notorious Moscow prison, where he sits awaiting trial on a false charge.
Trump stays silent on detained U.S. reporter as he avoids criticizing Putin (WaPo)
nohero said:
So much for "Back the Blue" ...
This is an extremely petty twist of my remarks, nohero. Comparing the (apparently) poor defense plan of our Capitol Building by the police in charge there, who faced, that day, a huge and growing crowd of angry Americans —while the majority were peaceful, some behaved very badly, and chaos produces violence. Perhaps, the incoming President Biden could have grabbed a bullhorn and demanded the crowd disperse?
As far your comment that my concern over the year-long incarceration of the WSJ reporter by Russia is somehow connected to the January 6th events is convoluted, even for you.
President Biden, as well as former Presidents Clinton and Obama, attended a jam-packed Radio City Music Hall fund raiser Thursday evening, raising an astounding $25million, on Thursday evening — just 30 miles away from the funeral home where the wake for the murdered NYC police officer was underway. President Trump attended the wake Thursday — and we all know how crowded his calendar is of late!
mtierney said:
President Biden, as well as former Presidents Clinton and Obama, attended a jam-packed Radio City Music Hall fund raiser Thursday evening, raising an astounding $25million, on Thursday evening — just 30 miles away from the funeral home where the wake for the murdered NYC police officer was underway. President Trump attended the wake Thursday — and we all know how crowded his calendar is of late!
I don't have a MAGA mind, so you're going to have to explain what the point is of making this observation. I'm not confident that there is any real point, since Biden was at a prescheduled fundraiser and Trump has to be in the NYC area a lot of time since he's on trial here.
mtierney said:
nohero said:
So much for "Back the Blue" ...
This is an extremely petty twist of my remarks, nohero. Comparing the (apparently) poor defense plan of our Capitol Building by the police in charge there, who faced, that day, a huge and growing crowd of angry Americans —while the majority were peaceful, some behaved very badly, and chaos produces violence. Perhaps, the incoming President Biden could have grabbed a bullhorn and demanded the crowd disperse?
How can it be a "petty twist" to show your own response ("The past is past") to Jamie's post about the attacks on the Capitol police?
And your scolding included disinformation, blaming the Capitol police.
"Perhaps, the incoming President Biden could have grabbed a bullhorn and demanded the crowd disperse?" That's what Trump was supposed to do, but he thought it would be more fun and exciting to watch the crowd bash the police officers and attack members of Congress and his own Vice President.
mtierney said:
This is an extremely petty twist of my remarks, nohero. Comparing the (apparently) poor defense plan of our Capitol Building by the police in charge there, who faced, that day, a huge and growing crowd of angry Americans —while the majority were peaceful, some behaved very badly, and chaos produces violence. Perhaps, the incoming President Biden could have grabbed a bullhorn and demanded the crowd disperse?
The people who attacked the Capitol were directed there by Trump. Once the attack started, he refrained from taking action to stop it. Trump attacked our country and our constitution. The one trying to "twist" things here is you.
PVW said:
The people who attacked the Capitol were directed there by Trump. Once the attack started, he refrained from taking action to stop it. Trump attacked our country and our constitution. The one trying to "twist" things here is you.
That is the your story, and you are sticking to it. Somehow or other, a growing percentage of Americans see what passes for politicking over the last three plus years as corrupt — nothing else explains Trump’s poll numbers.
Don’t know if you caught the scene that took place at that Long Island wake on Thursday — The NY governor was prevented from “paying her respects” at the funeral home parking lot by grieving police officers.
mtierney said:
That is the your story, and you are sticking to it.
Let me remind you of what you said just a few pages ago:
mtierney said:
Wrong about me yet again, PVW. This self-described “little old lady” is a quite “grown” up one. And to be honest, I have been a news junkie for, let’s see, probably some 80+ years — recall, I am the child of a decorated WW1 veteran, who grew up near an army base in Brooklyn during WW2, and learned what was happening from the multiple editions of many daily newspapers, newsreels, and FDR fireside chats on the radio!
So you are not someone who can hide behind claims of ignorance -- you are, supposedly, someone who follows the news and is willing and able to take responsibility for her opinions. And on this thread, you've been given plenty of opportunities to read about Trump's actions on Jan. 6. Recall I even posted his federal indictment for your reading convenience.
So when you try spin away Trump's responsibility -- and your own support for his shocking and ongoing attacks on our country -- that's not going to fly. Your party is led by a greedy narcissist who would overthrow our democracy, who despises American voters so much he sought to violently nullify their votes. Spin as you may, you know this for the truth.
mtierney said:
...Don’t know if you caught the scene that took place at that Long Island wake on Thursday — The NY governor was prevented from “paying her respects” at the funeral home parking lot by grieving police officers.
and I bet you think the police were being classy I bet.
mtierney said:
Don’t know if you caught the scene that took place at that Long Island wake on Thursday — The NY governor was prevented from “paying her respects” at the funeral home parking lot by grieving police officers.
In regard to your earlier comments about Biden, can you clarify why you’d encourage an unwelcome visitor to attend a wake?
DaveSchmidt said:
In regard to your earlier comments about Biden, can you clarify why you’d encourage an unwelcome visitor to attend a wake?
I am in no position to “encourage” or discourage a governor to do anything, and perhaps, at this moment of high emotion, discretion was the best choice. However, the governor should be able to perform the duties of her office (funeral visitations) and use the tragic event to show she has the strength, composure and political awareness to deal with the personnel she oversees as governor. Slings and arrows, etc…
drummerboy said:
mtierney said:
...Don’t know if you caught the scene that took place at that Long Island wake on Thursday — The NY governor was prevented from “paying her respects” at the funeral home parking lot by grieving police officers.
and I bet you think the police were being classy I bet.
I cannot even imagine the wailing and crying if a bunch of libs denied a Republican entry to a wake.
Actually I can.
RCP offers this article from the latest New Yorker ….
“Alarmed members of the Party, some of whom openly criticized Biden for failing to do more. (Other Democratic city and state officials have privately told the White House that they’re worried Abbott might target them next.) In response, Biden announced that he was perfectly willing to “shut down” the border and to curtail asylum. When a bipartisan deal emerged in the Senate, in February, Trump assailed it anyway. Predictably, the Republicans fell in line, abandoning their own lead negotiator. The asylum restrictions in the bill were unlikely to alter the over-all dynamic at the border, but the funding attached to them would have helped substantially with triage. Its failure gave the White House an opportunity to present Biden as a pragmatist thwarted by Republican cynicism. “Instead of playing politics with the issue, why don’t we just get together and get it done,” Biden said in Texas last month. “Join me,” he told Trump. “Or I’ll join you.”
“An appeals court will hear arguments on the legal merits of the SB-4 law in early April. However the judges rule, the case seems bound for the Supreme Court, which was apparently Abbott’s goal all along. In 2012, the Court invalidated multiple provisions of a more modest Arizona law that gave local and state police the authority to ask for someone’s immigration papers.
“On March 20th of this year, the solicitor general of Texas claimed, before an appeals court, that SB-4 did not violate the precedent set by the majority in 2012, and should therefore go into immediate effect. But, later that day, Abbott shared an ulterior motive with a crowd at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, in Austin. “We found ways to try to craft that law to be consistent with the dissent that was wrote [sic] in the Arizona case by Justice Scalia,” Abbott said. His plain hope is that the current Court will be sympathetic to Scalia’s reasoning.
“It’s easy to write off Abbott’s legal thinking as colossally flawed. But he clearly knows that court losses can often serve as political victories. The case will last through the election season, as designed. ♦
Published in the print edition of the April 8, 2024, issue, with the headline “Border Control.”
mtierney said:
Biden announced that he was perfectly willing to “shut down” the border and to curtail asylum. When a bipartisan deal emerged in the Senate, in February, Trump assailed it anyway. Predictably, the Republicans fell in line, abandoning their own lead negotiator.
So, come November, will you support the man who championed meaningful immigration reform or the man who torpedoed it?
Assuming you actually read the text you posted, your way seems clear.
All we heard out of the White House for the last few years was the refrain that “the border is closed” while on our TV screens we watched some 800,000 folks from around the world enter the United States illegally. There were occasional appearances of Mayorkas, most often looking like a deer in the headlights…how does he keep his job? Don’t get me started about our immigration czar!
It is pathetic to hear the president attempt to change his first, second, and third acts, and play hero at the final curtain call. Too little, too late…
So, you favor doing nothing until after the election?
Given all your itching and moaning, that surprises me. I thought this was a crisis that demanded immediate action. If it can just wait until after November, could it really have been that urgent?
mtierney said:
All we heard out of the White House for the last few years was the refrain that “the border is closed”
there was no refrain for the last few years. the phrase was used once by Mayorkas.
once.
as far as I can find out, it was never repeated by anyone in the administration. nor should they have. it was a stupid remark.
the only refrain was from the Republicans, who have pretended that this was the official attitude towards the border.
and from you, of course.
Mayorkas coined the ridiculous comment back in ‘21 and has repeated the phase on multiple occasions since then, even as the country watched as folks began arriving from Central and South America, and from as far away as China, in staggering numbers. Americans watched a very open, porous border on TV daily and asked themselves what would happen if Mayorkas had actually tried to close it?
Hell Freezes Over, Pigs Fly, and Democrats Demand Closed Border
Deroy Murdock / October 07, 2023
“There is presently an acute and immediate need to construct physical barriers and roads in the vicinity of the border of the United States in order to prevent unlawful entries into the United States.”
Who said that? Donald Trump? Rep. Matt Gaetz, R- Fla.? Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga.?
Nope. These are the words of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.
The comment landed Wednesday 180 degrees opposite Mayorkas’ oft-stated lie: “The border is closed.”
Regardless, Mayorkas is just the latest Democrat to acknowledge basic reality. Regarding the U.S.-Mexico border, Democrats are beginning to look a lot like mega-MAGA Republicans.
- “We want them to have a limit on who can come across the border,” Gov. Kathy Hochul, D-N.Y., told CBS News’ “Face the Nation” on Oct. 1. “It is too open right now.”
- “This issue will destroy New York City,” warned Democratic Mayor Eric Adams. Some 110,000 illegal aliens have swamped Gotham since spring 2022. Adams expects to spend $12 billion to babysit them. Consequently, he’s slashing the budgets for police, fire, sanitation, and other services by 15% through fiscal 2025.
- Ingrid Lewis-Martin, Adams’ chief adviser, told WPIX-TV: “We need the federal government, the Congress members, the Senate, and the president to do its job: Close the borders.”
- “Massachusetts is in a state of emergency, and we need all hands on deck,” Gov. Maura Healey, D-Mass., declared in August. She deployed the National Guard to fix her state’s illegal-alien crisis.
- Gov. J.B. Pritzker, D-Ill., complained to President Joe Biden that “the federal government’s lack of intervention and coordination at the border has created an untenable situation for Illinois.” Pritzker’s constituents, particularly blacks, are enraged in Chicago, a Democrat fortress that backed Biden over Trump in 2020, 74% to 24%.
- “We are in the community of black people, where we already get the low scraps. And then you want to take the little scraps, the resources, that we have and put us at the bottom of the barrel?” a woman seethed at a Windy City town hall Tuesday. “That’s not fair. And I won’t have it.”
- A man there said: “That’s the simple solution. ‘No!’ Turn the buses around.”
- “We have a hard ‘No’ for immigrants coming here. A very hard ‘no,'” one man said at a protest that day. “You cannot keep bringing immigrants in. The city does not have the money.”
- “You cannot track them,” a furious lady stated. “You ain’t tracking them through the police stations. You don’t know [their] names, but you want to spread them all over the city?” Another peeved woman declared: “It is unsanitary. It’s unsafe. And it’s just not right.”
Fueling this anger, an estimated record 11,000 illegal aliens from 152 nations lately have invaded the southern frontier daily.
U.S. students are being booted from gymnasia and dormitories to house illegals.
Military veterans heading to December’s Army-Navy game in Massachusetts have seen their hotel rooms canceled to shelter illegal aliens.
Far from the Mexican border, in Bemidji, Minnesota, illegal alien Oscar Luna, 22, allegedly got an 11-year-old girl drunk and then raped her in a house with 11 other illegals.
This catastrophe has devolved from the unthinkable to the indecipherable. Mayorkas on Thursday totally contradicted his statement Wednesday, which already had T-boned into his previous remarks.
“There is no new administration policy with respect to the border wall,” Mayorkas said in Mexico City. Sweating like a jittery bomb maker, he added: “From Day One, this administration has made clear that a border wall is not the answer. That remains our position, and our position has never wavered.”
“Construct physical barriers” or “a border wall is not the answer?” Which is it?
As usual, Biden amplified the confusion. On Thursday, he rebuffed his new policy from Wednesday that “never wavered.”
“Do you believe the border wall works?” a journalist asked in the Oval Office.
Biden replied: “No.”
Will Biden side with Wednesday’s Mayorkas and these other Democrat neo-hawks on the border? Or will he stick with Thursday’s Mayorkas and his own campaign pledge? As Biden told Yahoo News on Aug. 5, 2020: “There will not be another foot of wall constructed in my administration.”
Who knows?
When guessing what next will tumble from Biden’s mouth, remember Scarlett O’Hara’s immortal words: “Tomorrow is another day.”
Biden and Mayorkas might build 20 miles of wall in Texas—far short of Trump’s 450—and then straddle it. If this makes them comfortable, who are we to judge?
While the Biden administration juggles its own contradictions, enjoy the man-bites-dog spectacle of Democrats demanding a closed border. This is even more astonishing than Republicans screaming for higher taxes.
Why are you posting about an issue that you evidently care nothing about?
mtierney said:
Mayorkas coined the ridiculous comment back in ‘21 and has repeated the phase on multiple occasions since then, ...
you are just outright lying right here. I do understand you're just repeating the lie that has been pumped into your bloodstream, but you're lying nonetheless.
I also understand that each lie that you hold dear feeds the irrational dread you feel towards the "border", and you apparently need that dread to enjoy life,so you must keep lying to yourself.
A sad state of affairs.
(p.s. I have obviously googled this to make sure that the phrase was only said once. Every reference I find is to March 2021 . Nothing after. Maybe it's there, but I can't find it.)
drummerboy said:
you are just outright lying right here. I do understand you're just repeating the lie that has been pumped into your bloodstream, but you're lying nonetheless.
I also understand that each lie that you hold dear feeds the irrational dread you feel towards the "border", and you apparently need that dread to enjoy life,so you must keep lying to yourself.
A sad state of affairs.
(p.s. I have obviously googled this to make sure that the phrase was only said once. Every reference I find is to March 2021 . Nothing after. Maybe it's there, but I can't find it.)
If Mayorkas only uttered it once, it was enough for the refrain to be picked up by liberals and progressives and, also, disputed by those who watched the immigration stampede across our southern border on TV. What was happening? Plain, ordinary citizens had difficulty hearing that what they were seeing was a “closed” border. American property owners living along the border had to put up or shut up and turn the other cheek.
My question to you, DB, is a simple one: Is Mayorkas nuts, connected, or totally incompetent?
Oh, if I wanted, or needed psychoanalysis, I would go to a professional.
mtierney said:
If Mayorkas only uttered it once, it was enough for the refrain to be picked up by liberals and progressives and, also, disputed by those who watched the immigration stampede across our southern border on TV. What was happening? Plain, ordinary citizens had difficulty hearing that what they were seeing was a “closed” border. American property owners living along the border had to put up or shut up and turn the other cheek.
My question to you, DB, is a simple one: Is Mayorkas nuts, connected, or totally incompetent?
Oh, if I wanted, or needed psychoanalysis, I would go to a professional.
I read through your post, but I didn't see your apology for lying to us.
Did you forget?
As for Mayorkas, he made a single dumb statement, which didn't even make any sense. I mean, what could he possibly have meant with the word closed? It was nothing more than a stupid word choice.
Anyway,Republicans, like you, then proceeded to demagogue the **** out of it, as is their habit.
For Sale
Rentals
-
Huge Brand New construction Apartment in 2 family home with 4 bedrooms 3 bathrooms
4 Bd | 3Full Ba
$4,500
I don't wonder. Lots of people are full of hate and dumber than a rock.