The 5 Best Goddamn John Wayne Movies

John Wayne is one of my favorite actors and he made so many fine, entertaining and memorable films that picking five of his best is hard to do.

But Calum Marsch at Esquire.com did just that.

You can read his piece and view video clips of his picks via the below link:

http://www.esquire.com/blogs/culture/john-wayne-best-movies?src=nl&mag=esq&list=nl_enl_mtv_non_060414_john-wayne-movies

These are good choices, as I too am a great fan of The Searchers, They Were Expendable, and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. I've watched these films again and again over the years.  

But I would substitute Fort Apache for Flying Leathernecks and The Shootist for Rio Bravo.      

Layers Of An Onion Define Multi-Million Dollar FirstPlus Fraud

Veteran organized crime reporter George Anastasia is covering the organized crime business takeover fraud case in New Jersey for Bigtrial.net.

A federal prosecutor used mobster Nicodemo S. Scarfo's own words today to describe the alleged  takeover and looting of a Texas-based mortgage company that is at the heart of what authorities charge was a $12 million scam orchestrated by Scarfo and his business partner Salvatore Pelullo.

"Layers upon layers, like an onion," Scarfo, 48, said in a secretly recorded telephone conversation with Pelullo, 46, that was picked up on an FBI wiretap back in 2007 as authorities contend the takeover of FirstPlus Financial was unfolding.

For nearly three hours today, Assistant U.S. Attorney Stephen D'Aguanno, the lead prosecutor, detailed the allegations in the racketeering conspiracy case against Scarfo, Pelullo and five co-defendants. D'Aguanno said underneath those layers of the onion -- false SEC filings, phony stockholder reports, bogus consulting contracts and fraudulent business purchases and expenses -- was the financial scam that poured millions into the pockets of the two lead defendants.

"They're joined at the hip, from their criminal activities to their alleged business activities," D'Aguanno said of Scarfo and Pelullo, who frequently referred to each other as cousins even though there was no blood relationship.

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://www.bigtrial.net/2014/06/layers-of-onion-define-multi-million.html

Before Snowden: A Look Back At NSA Spy Robert Lipka - My Q & A With Former FBI Special Agent John W. Whiteside III

The Journal of Counterterrorism & Homeland Security International published my interview with former FBI Special Agent John W. Whiteside III (seen in the bottom photo), the author of Fool's Mate: A True Story of Espionage at the National Security Agency.

John Whiteside wrote about the investigation, arrest and conviction of NSA spy Robert Lipka (seen in the below photo), who looked (and acted) like the creepy Newman character on the TV show Seinfeld.    

You can read my interview below links:

Note: You can click on the above to enlarge. 

A Secretary At War: Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates Looks Back On the Wars In Iraq And Afghanistan, And the War On Terrorism

The Journal of Counterterrorism & Homeland Security International published my piece on former Defense Secretary Robert Gates speaking at the National Constitiution Center in Philadelphia.

Gates, the author of Duty: The Memoirs of a Secretary at War, began his book tour here and I covered the event as he spoke about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the war on terrorism.

You can read my piece below:

Note: You can click on the above to enlarge.

U.S. Leads Multi-National Action Against GameOver Zeus Botnet and Cryptolocker Ransomware, Charges Botnet Administrator

The U.S. Justice Department released the below information on June 2nd:

WASHINGTON, D.C.—The Justice Department today announced a multi-national effort to disrupt the GameOver Zeus botnet—a global network of infected victim computers used by cyber criminals to steal millions of dollars from businesses and consumers—and unsealed criminal charges in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and Omaha, Nebraska, against an administrator of the botnet. In a separate action, U.S. and foreign law enforcement officials worked together to seize computer servers central to the malicious software, or malware, known as Cryptolocker, a form of ransomware that encrypts the files on victims’ computers until they pay a ransom.

Deputy Attorney General James M. Cole, Assistant Attorney General Leslie R. Caldwell of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division, FBI Executive Assistant Director Robert Anderson, Jr., U.S. Attorney David J. Hickton of the Western District of Pennsylvania, U.S. Attorney Deborah R. Gilg of the District of Nebraska, and Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Deputy Under Secretary Dr. Phyllis Schneck made the announcement.

Victims of GameOver Zeus may use the following website created by DHS’s Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT) for assistance in removing the malware: https://www.us-cert.gov/gameoverzeus.

“This operation disrupted a global botnet that had stolen millions from businesses and consumers as well as a complex ransomware scheme that secretly encrypted hard drives and then demanded payments for giving users access to their own files and data,” said Deputy Attorney General Cole. “We succeeded in disabling GameOver Zeus and Cryptolocker only because we blended innovative legal and technical tactics with traditional law enforcement tools and developed strong working relationships with private industry experts and law enforcement counterparts in more than 10 countries around the world.”

“These schemes were highly sophisticated and immensely lucrative, and the cyber criminals did not make them easy to reach or disrupt,” said Assistant Attorney General Caldwell. “But under the leadership of the Justice Department, U.S. law enforcement, foreign partners in more than 10 different countries, and numerous private sector partners joined together to disrupt both these schemes. Through these court-authorized operations, we have started to repair the damage the cyber criminals have caused over the past few years, we are helping victims regain control of their own computers, and we are protecting future potential victims from attack.”

“GameOver Zeus is the most sophisticated botnet the FBI and our allies have ever attempted to disrupt,” said FBI Executive Assistant Director Anderson. “The efforts announced today are a direct result of the effective relationships we have with our partners in the private sector, international law enforcement, and within the U.S. government.”

“The borderless, insidious nature of computer hacking and cybertheft requires us to be bold and imaginative,” said U.S. Attorney Hickton. “We take this action on behalf of hundreds of thousands of computer users who were unwittingly infected and victimized.”

“The sophisticated computer malware targeting of U.S. victims by a global criminal enterprise demonstrates the grave threat of cybercrime to our citizens,” said U.S. Attorney Gilg. “We are grateful for the outstanding collaboration of our international and U.S. law enforcement partners in this successful investigation.”

“The FBI has demonstrated great leadership in continuing to help combat cyber crime, and our international and private sector partners have made enormous contributions as well,” said Deputy Under Secretary Schneck. “This collective effort reflects our ‘whole-of-government’ approach to cybersecurity. DHS is proud to support our partners in helping to identify compromised computers, sharing that information rapidly, and developing useful information and mitigation strategies to help the owners of hacked systems.”

GameOver Zeus Administrator Charged

A federal grand jury in Pittsburgh unsealed a 14-count indictment against Evgeniy Mikhailovich Bogachev, 30, of Anapa, Russian Federation, charging him with conspiracy, computer hacking, wire fraud, bank fraud, and money laundering in connection with his alleged role as an administrator of the GameOver Zeus botnet. Bogachev was also charged by criminal complaint in Omaha with conspiracy to commit bank fraud related to his alleged involvement in the operation of a prior variant of Zeus malware known as Jabber Zeus.

In a separate civil injunction application filed by the United States in federal court in Pittsburgh, Bogachev is identified as a leader of a tightly knit gang of cyber criminals based in Russia and Ukraine that is responsible for the development and operation of both the GameOver Zeus and Cryptolocker schemes. An investigation led in Washington, D.C., identified the GameOver Zeus network as a common distribution mechanism for Cryptolocker. Unsolicited e-mails containing an infected file purporting to be a voice-mail or shipping confirmation are also widely used to distribute Cryptolocker. When opened, those attachments infect victims’ computers. Bogachev is alleged in the civil filing to be an administrator of both GameOver Zeus and Cryptolocker. The injunction filing further alleges that Bogachev is linked to the well-known online nicknames “Slavik” and “Pollingsoon,” among others. The criminal complaint filed in Omaha alleges that Bogachev also used “Lucky12345,” a well-known online moniker previously the subject of criminal charges in September 2012 that were unsealed in Omaha on April 11, 2014.

Disruption of GameOver Zeus Botnet

GameOver Zeus, also known as Peer-to-Peer Zeus, is an extremely sophisticated type of malware designed to steal banking and other credentials from the computers it infects. Unknown to their rightful owners, the infected computers also secretly become part of a global network of compromised computers known as a botnet, a powerful online tool that cyber criminals can use for numerous criminal purposes besides stealing confidential information from the infected machines themselves. GameOver Zeus, which first emerged around September 2011, is the latest version of Zeus malware that began appearing at least as early as 2007. GameOver Zeus’ decentralized, peer-to-peer structure differentiates it from earlier Zeus variants. Security researchers estimate that between 500,000 and one million computers worldwide are infected with Gameover Zeus and that approximately 25 percent of the infected computers are located in the United States. The principal purpose of the botnet is to capture banking credentials from infected computers. Those credentials are then used to initiate or re-direct wire transfers to accounts overseas that are controlled by cyber criminals. The FBI estimates that GameOver Zeus is responsible for more than $100 million in losses.

The GameOver Zeus botnet operates silently on victim computers by directing those computers to reach out to receive commands from other computers in the botnet and to funnel stolen banking credentials back to the criminals who control the botnet. For this reason, in addition to the criminal charges announced today, the United States obtained civil and criminal court orders in federal court in Pittsburgh authorizing measures to redirect the automated requests by victim computers for additional instructions away from the criminal operators to substitute servers established pursuant to court order. The order authorizes the FBI to obtain the Internet protocol addresses of the victim computers reaching out to the substitute servers and to provide that information to US-CERT to distribute to other countries’ CERTS and private industry to assist victims in removing the   GameOver Zeus malware from their computers. At no point during the operation did the FBI or law enforcement access the content of any of the victims’ computers or electronic communications.

Besides the United States, law enforcement from the Australian Federal Police; the National Police of the Netherlands National High Tech Crime Unit; European Cybercrime Centre (EC3); Germany’s Bundeskriminalamt; France’s Police Judiciare; Italy’s Polizia Postale e delle Comunicazioni; Japan’s National Police Agency; Luxembourg’s Police Grand Ducale; New Zealand Police; the Royal Canadian Mounted Police; Ukraine’s Ministry of Internal Affairs-Division for Combating Cyber Crime; and the United Kingdom’s National Crime Agency participated in the operation. The Defense Criminal Investigative Service of the U.S. Department of Defense also participated in the investigation.

Invaluable technical assistance was provided by Dell SecureWorks and CrowdStrike. Numerous other companies also provided assistance, including facilitating efforts by victims to remediate the damage to their computers inflicted by Gameover Zeus. These companies include Microsoft Corporation, Abuse.ch, Afilias, F-Secure, Level 3 Communications, McAfee, Neustar, Shadowserver, Anubis Networks, Symantec, Heimdal Security, Sophos, and Trend Micro.

The DHS National Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center (NCCIC), which houses the US-CERT, plays a key role in triaging and collaboratively responding to the threat by providing technical assistance to information system operators, disseminating timely mitigation strategies to known victims, and sharing actionable information to the broader community to help prevent further infections.

Disruption of Cryptolocker

In addition to the disruption operation against GameOver Zeus, the Justice Department led a separate multi-national action to disrupt the malware known as Cryptolocker (sometimes written as CryptoLocker), which began appearing about September 2013 and is also a highly sophisticated malware that uses cryptographic key pairs to encrypt the computer files of its victims. Victims are forced to pay hundreds of dollars and often as much as $700 or more to receive the key necessary to unlock their files. If the victim does not pay the ransom, it is impossible to recover their files.
Security researchers estimate that, as of April 2014, Cryptolocker had infected more than 234,000 computers, with approximately half of those in the United States. One estimate indicates that more than $27 million in ransom payments were made in just the first two months since Cryptolocker emerged.

The law enforcement actions against Cryptolocker are the result of an ongoing criminal investigation by the FBI’s Washington Field Office, in coordination with law enforcement counterparts from Canada, Germany, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, United Kingdom, and Ukraine.

Companies such as Dell SecureWorks and Deloitte Cyber Risk Services also assisted in the operation against Cryptolocker, as did Carnegie Mellon University and the Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech). The joint effort aided the FBI in identifying and seizing computer servers acting as command and control hubs for the Cryptolocker malware.

The FBI’s Omaha and Pittsburgh Field Offices led both malware disruptions and conducted the investigation of Bogachev. The prosecution in Pittsburgh is being handled by Assistant U.S. Attorney Shardul Desai of the Western District of Pennsylvania and the prosecution in Omaha by Trial Attorney William A. Hall of the Criminal Division’s Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section (CCIPS) and Assistant U.S. Attorney Steven Russell of the District of Nebraska. The civil action to disrupt the Gameover Zeus botnet and Cryptolocker malware is led by Trial Attorneys Ethan Arenson and David Aaron of CCIPS and Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael A. Comber of the Western District of Pennsylvania.

The Criminal Division’s Office of International Affairs provided significant assistance throughout the criminal and civil investigations.

The details contained in the indictment, criminal complaint, and related pleadings are merely accusations, and the defendant is presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty.
Anyone claiming an interest in any of the property seized or actions enjoined pursuant to the court orders described in this release is advised to visit the following website for notice of the full contents of the orders at http://www.justice.gov/opa/gameover-zeus.html.

Changes Coming to Intelligence Communities, Undersecretary of Defense For Intelligence Says

  

Claudette Roulo at the American Forces Press Service offers the below link:

 

WASHINGTON, June 3, 2014 - A tremendous change has taken place in U.S. intelligence capabilities over the past decade, and even bigger changes are underway, Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence Michael G. Vickers (seen in the above photo) said today.

 

Speaking at a Center for Strategic and International Studies forum, Vickers said the nation faces an assortment of national security challenges, including several permutations of al-Qaida and its affiliates, homegrown violent extremists, unrest in the Middle East and North Africa, Russian revanchism, cyber threats and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.

 

"While we've had a lot of success in severely degrading the al-Qaida core in the Pakistan-Afghanistan border region, they continue to pose a threat, in particular a [constitutional] threat down the road," Vickers said.

"But the three biggest threats are al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula -- centered in Yemen -- and the growing al-Qaida threat in Syria and al-Qaida's affiliates, ... who are spread elsewhere and who are taking advantage of what we call metastasization ... across the Middle East and North Africa. ... And so this really remains job one for the intelligence community and our special operations forces," he told the audience.

 

The Syrian civil war is a particularly vexing national security challenge, Vickers said.

 

"It's a horrific civil war, with 150,000 dead," he said. "It's a humanitarian crisis of mind-boggling proportions, with some 9 million internally displaced [persons] or refugees who have fled the country. ... And, of course, it's giving rise to a significant terrorism threat."

 

President Barack Obama has stressed that the United States is committed to supporting the Syrian opposition in their fight against Syrian President Bashar Assad, the undersecretary said. "We'll work with the Congress to ramp up our support for the opposition," he added.

The most concerning aspect of Russia's taking of the Crimean Peninsula and involvement in Ukrainian politics is the destabilizing effect these actions are having on the region, Vickers said. "While Russian forces have pulled back their troops from the border region, they have not ceased their support for pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine, and that threat remains to the government of Ukraine and its territory," he explained.

Cyber threats range from the theft of intellectual property to destructive attacks, the undersecretary said. "Over the past couple of years, we've had destructive attacks against South Korea, against Saudi Arabia, and denial-of-service attacks against the U.S. financial sector," he said, adding that the probability is high that there will be more destructive attacks in the future.

These challenges are broad and enduring, Vickers said. "Taken together, these are highly asymmetric challenges," he said, and solving them will require a series of "offset" strategies -- oblique approaches designed to address a specific aspect of each challenge.

"Also critical to dealing with this set of enduring challenges is the continued economic and technical leadership of the United States, which ... is a national security imperative," he said.

Intelligence is the first line of defense in national security, Vickers said. It informs national security policy, enables intelligence-driven precision operations, provides commanders and the commander in chief with options, and it prevents strategic surprise.

"Intelligence is a significant source of advantage for the United States. ... It's an advantage that's very important to us, but it's also one that has to be used aggressively, but also prudently, to make sure we're helping our leaders solve problems and not adding to their problems," Vickers said.

The United States is making a number of investments to sustain its intelligence advantage well into the future, the undersecretary told the audience.

"There are big changes ahead in the way we use our overhead space architecture -- some of the biggest changes that we've seen in several decades," he said. "It will be possible ... to have persistence we've never had before."

Through the Defense Clandestine Service, the Defense Department will strengthen its human intelligence and cryptanalytic capabilities, the undersecretary said.

The Predator and Reaper unmanned aerial vehicles have become the "signature weapon" of counterterrorism operations over the past decade, Vickers said.

"It has enabled the most precise counterterrorism campaign in the history of warfare, and it is our most effective instrument," he added. "We are very healthy in this area, but we are looking to make advancements in some advanced sensors as well as extending the range of our second-generation platform considerably."

The Defense Department is making significant progress as it seeks to develop a cyber force and its associated support structures, the undersecretary said. "The key to making that cyber force effective ... has really been our partnerships with industry, ... particularly in the area of information sharing," he said.

Separately, the sharing of information within and between agencies has vastly improved in the years since 9/11, Vickers said. "Our intelligence agencies work much closer together," he added. "It's hard to find a case where a single intelligence agency has been responsible for a significant intelligence breakthrough or operation."

Vickers said he and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper have made it their top priority to ensure that the national and defense intelligence apparatuses are integrated and transparent to one another.

In addition, the national security strategy depends on enabling partners, he said. "To make the national security apparatus effective across the interagency -- both domestic and foreign -- also requires a high degree of intelligence sharing," he added.

In that vein, Vickers said, DOD and the intelligence community are modernizing their information technology systems to strike a balance between the need to protect information while also distributing it.

Senator Graham On Bergdahl Prisoner Swap: US Released the "Taliban Dream Team"

FoxNews.com offers the below piece on Bowie Bergdahl.

Moments ago, Senator Lindsey Graham sent a letter to Chairman Carl Levin (D-MI) and Jim Inhofe (R-OK), ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, requesting an immediate hearing on the transfer of U.S. soldier Bowe Bergdahl.

 

The Obama administration has come under fire for negotiating with terrorists and in essence, putting a price on American soldiers’ heads.

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://foxnewsinsider.com/2014/06/02/hegseth-bergdahl-prisoner-swap-obama-admin-put-price-american-soldiers