[Daily Mail, where America gets its news] A hacker behind the LockBit ransomware site has boasted that its shutdown was because he got 'very lazy after five years swimming in money' as the gang claimed to be operating again a week after being taken down by 'Britain's FBI'.
The shadowy Russian-linked outfit was the target of an unprecedented international law enforcement operation last week which saw some of its members arrested and charged.
But after being taken down by an international coalition led by the National Crime Agency the cybercrime gang says it has restored its services and is back in business.
In a post on the dark web, Lockbit claimed it started to notice problems early in the morning of February 19, but things went back to normal. 'I didn't pay much attention to it, because for 5 years [sic] of swimming in money I became very lazy,' they wrote.
Lockbit, which accounts for up to a quarter of ransomware attacks, has been causing havoc by hacking into computer systems and stealing sensitive data which it then threatens to release unless the victims pay an extortionate ransom.
The Russian-speaking hackers make money by selling their services to fellow crime gangs, with targets including Royal Mail, the NHS, Porton Down and hundreds of companies in the UK and abroad.
Last week, the NCA, FBI, Europol and other policing agencies announced it had seized some of the group's servers, stolen data and cryptocurrency addresses.
Seven suspects have been arrested so far and five people have been charged, including two Russians, Mikhail Vasiliev, who is being held in Canada, and Ruslan Magomedovich Astamirov, who is in the US.
The remaining three - Artur Sungatov, Ivan Kondratyev and Mikhail Pavlovich Matveev - remain at large. The FBI is offering a $10million reward for information leading to the arrest of Matveev, who goes by the alias 'Wazawaka''.
But the cybercriminals have refused to bow down to the authorities and have set up a new website on the dark web.
Releasing a lengthy statement, a member of the group said the FBI was able to seize its servers 'due to my personal negligence and irresponsibility'.
The statement, posted in English and Russian, also said: 'I relaxed and did not update PHP [website software] in time.
'All other servers with backup blogs that did not have PHP installed are unaffected and will continue to give out data stolen from the attacked companies.'
The latest website also posted what it claimed was new hacked data.
A spokesperson for the NCA, which led the international effort to seize Lockbit's operations, said the group 'remains completely compromised'.
'We recognised Lockbit would likely attempt to regroup and rebuild their systems. However, we have gathered a huge amount of intelligence about them and those associated to them, and our work to target and disrupt them continues,' the NCA said on Monday.
The new Lockbit darkweb site showed a gallery of company names, each attached to a countdown clock marking the deadline within which that company was required to pay ransom.
ConsumerAffairs reported that Pennsylvania saw highest grocery store inflation in 2023
[Fox News] As the Keystone State saw inflation last year dig deeper into residents’ wallets than any other state, one Philly-based food supplier is warning that the fight may not be over yet.
"The volume may tighten up a little bit. It's what we see as our customers are buying more often, [but] less at each purchase," he continued.
The Philadelphia-based produce supplier has been caught between higher input costs and consumers struggling to pay for inflationary prices. According to ConsumerAffairs, Pennsylvania saw the highest grocery inflation rate of any state in 2023, at an 8.2% increase year-over-year.
ConsumerAffairs’ analysis also comparatively noted that a family of four in Colorado who would have spent an average of $750 per month on groceries paid $21.75 more last year, while the same family in Pennsylvania forked up $61.50 more per month.
Inflation may be gradually cooling, but the average American is still shelling out a lot more money for everyday necessities. The rate of inflation growth may be cooling. Maybe.
The typical U.S. household needed to pay $213 more a month in January to purchase the same goods and services it did one year ago because of still-high inflation, according to new calculations from Moody's Analytics chief economist Mark Zandi. Average wages are up, taxes are up, so maybe it all balances out?
The regime viewpoint -
"Inflation is coming down. It’s now lower in America than any other major economy in the world," Biden said during a speech at South Carolina’s First in the Nation Dinner. "The cost of eggs, milk, chicken, gas, and so many other essential items have come down."
"But for all we’ve done to bring prices down, there are still too many corporations in America ripping people off," the president continued, "price gouging, junk fees, greedflation, shrinkflation."
Posted by: Bobby ||
02/28/2024 10:29 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[11133 views]
Top|| File under: Commies
#2
While the Fed's and their MSM cohorts outright lie and claim a 3.2% inflation rate. We have watched consumables & perishables (Gas, Meats, eggs, milk and etc..) jump 25 to 50++% and shrink in container size.
Hell most of what we now eat & drink does not taste like it did in pre-2020.
#6
all those home economic classes that the 'educators' did away with.
Lots of blogs and influencers among the Trad Wives know all that and more. The information is free and readily available — at least so long as there is electricity and the internet.
#7
I was a high school guys athletic team trailblazer @ taking Home Econ class:
"Idiots! You get to hang out with chicks, make each other food. Eat. And CHICKS!"
Posted by: Frank G ||
02/28/2024 18:35 Comments ||
Top||
#8
Eat. And CHICKS!"
A trailblazer, indeed. Cooking is, as my chemist father demonstrated regularly, merely a particular branch of applied chemistry, so it probably helped with your engineering studies later. ;-)
My little sister (now a computer prof.) was the first girl to take shop. She figured she learned plenty of cooking at home, so she went to hang out with the guys and use very sharp implements of destruction.
#9
Shop class might be more important than AP, given the current state of Higher "ED"
Posted by: Frank G ||
02/28/2024 19:13 Comments ||
Top||
#10
Just FYI - The next semester there was like 35 guys in Home Econ.
Posted by: Frank G ||
02/28/2024 19:15 Comments ||
Top||
#11
GenZers are going to miss all those home economic classes that the 'educators' did away with.
The next semester there was like 35 guys in Home Econ.
They don't know what to know, so they don't know what to look up. In the other ear, Corporate is telling them to look up Sumdood to come fix their blinds. It creates an atrophy of mind and body.
Got an assemble-it-youself drafting table, made it a point to assemble it in front of the kids and sure enough, especially with the decline of decent instructions over the last 10 years, and they at least see not only how to use the tools, but how to power through a blunt turn the screwdriver which fits into the space, plus 'gee wish I had this particular tool'.
[Allsides.com] Immigration has propelled the U.S. job market further than just about anyone expected, helping cement the country’s economic rebound from the pandemic as the most robust in the world.
That momentum picked up aggressively over the past year. About 50 percent of the labor market’s extraordinary recent growth came from foreign-born workers between January 2023 and January 2024, according to an Economic Policy Institute analysis of federal data. And even before that, by the middle of 2022, the foreign-born labor force had grown so fast that it closed the labor force... The rest is behind the WaPo paywall, but you don't need to read any further, anyway.
Posted by: Bobby ||
02/28/2024 08:56 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[11131 views]
Top|| File under: Tin Hat Dictators, Presidents for Life, & Kleptocrats
#6
They tax the hell out of us so producers cant 'horde' our income for retirement. They then give our tax money, our would be savings, to illegals and the illegals buy stuff. Hence they conclude the economy is roaring.
[IsraelTimes] Far-right holy warrior already serving life sentence for attempt to break into a synagogue on Yom Kippur in 2019 that he broadcast online before killing 2 passersby
A German far-right holy warrior already serving a life sentence following an attempt to attack a synagogue in 2019 was convicted Tuesday of hostage-taking for his actions in a jailbreak attempt.
Stephan Balliet,
…who suffered from symptoms of schizophrenia, paranoia and autism. Life in prison is one way to ensure he can’t harm anyone except criminals and guards — and the guards are paid to be armed and ready…
32, was sentenced to seven years in prison, German news agency dpa reported. He also was ordered to make payments to several people.
The defendant acknowledged during the trial that he took prison officers in the eastern town of Burg hostage with a homemade weapon in December 2022 in an attempt to escape. Other guards overwhelmed him and the hostages were freed unharmed.
Good job, guys!
Balliet was sentenced to life in prison in 2020 for his attack the previous year, in which he killed two people.
I seem to recall that a life sentence in Germany is twenty years, but at any rate, he was to have been behind bars at least fifteen, and now longer…
Armed with multiple firearms and explosives, Balliet attacked the synagogue in Halle on Yom Kippur, Judaism’s holiest day. After failing to break down the synagogue’s door, he killed a passerby and a man inside a nearby fast-food restaurant.
Dressed in military garb, he filmed the attack and broadcast it on the internet, prefacing it with a manifesto espousing his misogynist, neo-fascist ...anybody you disagree with, damn them... ideology.
Just another paranoid nutter, in other words. He could easily have latched onto the same target while imagining himself Moslem.
During his five-month trial, Balliet denied the Holocaust in open court — a crime in Germany — and expressed no remorse to those targeted, many of whom were co-plaintiffs in the case.
He insisted during the hearings that "attacking the synagogue was not a mistake, they are my enemies."
In the hostage-taking case, the Stendal state court moved the proceedings to the larger city of Magdeburg, which has a high security courtroom.
The antisemitic attack deeply rattled the country and fueled alarm about rising right-wing extremism and anti-Jewish violence, almost 80 years after the end of the Nazi era.
#1
A normal life sentence in Germany is life with the possibility of parole after 15 years (not always granted).
A life sentence with "besondere Schwere der Schuld" means parole after 15 years is not possible. You're usually looking at more than 20 years.
In this case the murderer will not be freed after being granted parole (which should be at least 25 years away, if not longer) because he also got "Sicherungsverwahrung" (preventive detention).
Germany's longest imprisonment has been 58 years.
Posted by: European Conservative ||
02/28/2024 7:08 Comments ||
Top||
#2
/\ Are consecutive 58 year sentences permitted ?
[IsraelTimes] Daniela Klette has been on the run for decades with two other members of Marxist faction that previously teamed up with Paleostinian terrorists
A German Red Army Faction terrorist wanted for more than 30 years for attempted murder and other crimes has been arrested in Berlin, a front man for the public prosecution service in the town of Verden said on Tuesday.
Daniela Klette, 65, was part of a notorious runaway trio of members of the Red Army Faction, also known as the Baader Meinhoff Gang, which carried out bombings, kidnappings, and killings in Germany in the 1970s and 1980s.
Authorities said they were attempting to confirm that the person arrested in Berlin on Tuesday was Klette, who has been on the run for decades from armed robbery charges after she and two other members of the group perpetrated a series of robberies to fund their retirement from the group.
The arrest follows a nationwide broadcast in Germany two weeks ago of cold case show "Aktenzeichen XY," in which police appealed for information about the three members of the group who were still on the lam.
"We are working on identifying the person," said an official familiar with the case.
The charges on which the three — Klette, Burkhard Garweg and Ernst-Volker Staub — are sought relate to armed robberies and at least one attempted murder committed between 1999 and 2016, not the stream of political attacks committed by the group from the 1970s onwards.
The RAF emerged in 1970 out of the radical fringe of the Vietnam war protest movement and took up arms, in solidarity with revolutionaries such as Ernesto "Che" Guevara and Ho Chi Minh, against what it saw as US capitalist imperialism and a German state then still riddled with former Nazis.
After training with leftist Paleostinian terrorists, it launched a spate of attacks targeting politicians, police, bankers, business leaders, and US troops.
In October of 1977, the RAF teamed up with holy warriors from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Paleostine who hijacked a German plane, holding the passengers hostage and demanding the release of 11 RAF members from prison.
After a five-day chase in which the holy warriors only landed the plane for refueling and killed the pilot, German commandos were able to launch a rescue operation in Mogadishu, killing all four holy warriors and saving the rest of the passengers and surviving crew members.
The organization killed a total of 34 people and injured hundreds. It declared itself disbanded in 1998.
[Daily Caller] The Army is cutting thousands of empty positions as the ongoing recruiting crisis has robbed the service of enough people to fill those roles, according to an Army document published Tuesday.
After a "rigorous" year-long review of the Army’s existing force structure, service officials determined the number and purpose of positions comprising the force did not match up with the changing security environment, the white paper stated. Officials justified cutting 24,000 roles that have been left empty as the Army deals with its worst-ever recruiting crisis as helping ensure the service only plans to assign and deploy the people it has available, cutting down on strain and allowing for more realistic planning.
The Army is "over-structured, meaning there are not enough soldiers to fill out existing units and organizations," the document stated. It emphasized the cuts are coming to "authorizations (spaces)" not "individual soldiers (faces)."
#1
If you cannot meet your established recruitment, Physical Training (PT), educational (MOS skills testing), or substance abuse goals and standards.... then lower or eliminate your goals and standards.
#7
/\ General Dynamics, Lockheed, or some other mega-contract holder will hire the migrant MAMS and assign them to gov't military contracts. Enlistees from Red States, who needs them. Over time, or when those contracts end, the MAMS will be absorbed into civilian Federal employment positions.
(Some will be discreetly absorbed by the intelligence community to assist with special 'nation building' initiatives.)
There's money to be made and votes to be had here.
#18
I'd suggest doubling down on the Recruitwoment Theory and high brass cross dressers and doggie costumes to show just how serious you take your business with the lives of your soldiers. Threatening to send recruits to die in a Ukrainian nuke war is a bold move.
#4
^ Wasting money her Never-Trumper and Dem supporters would spend in the general election. You go, girrrl!
Posted by: Frank G ||
02/28/2024 7:04 Comments ||
Top||
#5
/\ Some of her mega donors have backed off which creates an additional (but crippling) funding requirement for the RNC. You do see how that works of course.
#8
I figure she is still backed so that in a close keystone state (states?), she could get a 8:59 pm ballet drop so during the primary that loss (losses) could be used as a cudgel by the talking heads and ultimately justify a Brandon (?) win in contested state(s).
[GEO.TV] Nasa's Deep Space Network planetary radar has provided the first comprehensive images of the "stadium-sized" asteroid known as 2008 OS7, Interesting Engineering reported. "It's like 4,538 side-by-side refrigerator/freezers"
This space rock, passing close to Earth on February 2, posed no risk of impact, orbiting at a safe distance of 1.8 million miles (2.9 million km), approximately 7 ½ times the Earth-Moon distance.
Seizing the rare opportunity, Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern Caliphornia, an impregnable bastion of the Democratic Party, utilised the 230-foot (70-meter) Goldstone Solar System Radar antenna dish at the Deep Space Network's Barstow facility to capture detailed images during the asteroid's close approach.
Discovered by the Nasa-funded Catalina Sky Survey in 2008, this marked the first time scientists could gather intricate data about the asteroid due to its proximity.
The collected data allowed JPL scientists to assess the asteroid's size, spin, shape, and surface features. Reflecting light measurements revealed a width ranging from 500 to 650 feet (150 to 200 meters), and the asteroid exhibited a relatively leisurely rotation, completing one full turn in approximately 29 ½ hours.
Nasa's Center for Near Earth Object Studies (CNEOS) leveraged new distance measurements to enhance calculations related to the asteroid's orbital path around the Sun.
Classified as a potentially hazardous asteroid due to its proximity and size, 2008 OS7, despite its classification, posed minimal risk during its closest approach on February 2, the closest it would come to Earth in at least two centuries.
CNEOS, managed by JPL, maintains a focus on identifying and tracking objects larger than 460 feet (140 meters) that could potentially cause severe damage in the event of an impact on Earth.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/28/2024 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[11133 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
We talking about a Dallas Cowboys gonna win the super bowl size stadium, or a WNBA sized stadium which will pass through molecular orbits?
Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.
[REGNUM] A magnetic storm began on Earth after three powerful flares on the Sun.
Powerful flares on the Sun led to an unexpected magnetic storm on Earth, the Phobos weather center reported on its website on February 27.
A magnetic storm began on Earth after three powerful flares on the Sun.
“Three powerful solar flares, among the five most powerful that have occurred since the beginning of the 25th solar cycle, seemingly could not have a significant impact on the Earth’s magnetosphere. However, some of the solar matter still caught our planet,” the report says.
Forecasters noted that model forecasts did not expect magnetic storms to develop.
“Based on this, we can assume that the magnetic storm that has begun will not become more intense and will soon stop. This is the first magnetic storm since the beginning of the year,” Phobos clarified.
As reported by IA Regnum, according to data from the Heliogeophysical Service of the Institute of Applied Geophysics (IPG), on February 9, a flare of the highest class occurred on the Sun - X3.3. Solar flares are divided into five classes depending on the power of X-ray radiation. A Class X flare is the most powerful and can trigger a magnetic storm.
On January 29, a powerful flare of magnitude M6.7 occurred on the Sun. It lasted from 06:54 Moscow time to 08:15 Moscow time, reaching a maximum at 07:38 Moscow time. At the same time, scientists did not predict magnetic storms. After a powerful flare, a storm of radiation hit the Earth.
Corresponding Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Director of the Space Research Institute (SRI) of the Russian Academy of Sciences Anatoly Petrukovich earlier in a conversation with IA Regnum explained that powerful flares on the Sun will continue until 2025, because the star is now going through a period of high activity. According to the scientist, the frequency of flares on the star is associated with the period of its high activity, which repeats approximately every 11 years.
Ah, but does that lead to global warming or global cooling? We need a hint about which way to panic next, you see.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
"The volume may tighten up a little bit. It's what we see as our customers are buying more often, [but] less at each purchase," he continued.
...anybody you disagree with, damn them...
