Frontier Communications, the US connectivity provider that Verizon unloaded most of their copper network to, is moving towards a bankrupcy filing (archived). Frontier carries more than 17 billion USD in debt largely incurred through the purchase of networks being unloaded by other operators on its books.
Monthly Archives: January 2020
Hawaii Man Kills Two Cops – Houses Around Suspect's Suspected Location Burn
A hereto unidentified Hawaii man killed two cops in the Diamond Head neighborhood of Honolulu (archived). A house where the man was suspected to be sheltering after the shooting caught fire, and the fire has spread to numerous surrounding homes. This would not be the first time cops in the US started fires to deal with a cornered suspect without regard for collateral damage, and there is little incentive for them not to burn everything down when USG courts routinely pass the cost of police inflicted property damage to the owner. Nevermind that police pyrotechnics routinely causing fires, the courts routinely buy police assurances that the fires following police pyrotechics are "unintentional" (archived).
USG Sting Apparently Underway In Virginia – Trap Under Cover Of "Pro-Gun" Rally
Tensions are running high in Virginia as at least 6 would-be protesters have been arrested in advance of a rally in support of gun rights (archived). Demographic shifts in Virginia driven by hypertrophy in the USG have lead to a Pantsuitist government voted in by USG bureaucrats colonizing suburbs near DC to advance a whole number of measures objectionable to residents of the rest of the state. This demographic move towards an Illinois like political situation has many longtime Virginia residents very angry. Continue reading
Oracle Appears To Join Microsoft In Re-Keying NSA Backdoors With 334 "Security" Patches In Dump
Oracle has released security 334 patches across 93 products to deal with a variety of issues, and many of the things being patched against are exploitable remotely (archived). Earlier this week Microsoft hyped their release of USG.NSA endorsed changes to crypt32.dll with great urgency.
Pantsuit Nancy Finally Forwards Impeachment To Senate
US Pantsuitist House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is finally forwarding the House's doomed impeachment of democratically elected US President Donald Trump to the Senate for trial. Seven members of her caucus have been assigned to litigate the matter in favor of the proposition that career bureaucrats require absolute supremacy over the elected executive on all matters of foreign policy, retroactive to January 20th, 2017 (archived).
USG.NSA And Microsoft Push "Emergency" Windows Crypto Update While Depreciating Windows 7
Yesterday's "Patch Tuesday" for Microsoft Windows included a "fix" promoted loudly through USG alligned media outlets that allegedly repairs X.509 "PKI" certificate validation in Microsoft's crypt32.dll (archived). The usual suspects are loudly herding Windows users to update in a way that strongly suggests geopolitical considerations may have pushed the USG.NSA to burn a number of their cultivated backdoors as they tend to do from time to time.
Past behavior of the actors involved suggests that as before, the patch is not going to be an actual fix so much as a subtle rekeying of the orfice. Serendipitously this patch was released immediately after Microsoft stopped issuing patches for Windows 7 creating an intense opportunity for Microsoft to collect "upgrade license" revenue with the endorsement of the USG "National Security" apparatus using the pitch that the USG already adopted the upgrade for its machines. The line between USG agency and USG "enterprise" continues become increasingly squishy.
The is the first time the USG.NSA has allowed itself to be explicitly named in Microsoft marketing materials as the contributor to a "fix" suggesting an ongoing marketing partnership between the two may be budding.
AR-15 Design Feature Ends Up Killing Disarmament Cases Brought By Anti-Commerce USG Prosecutors
Numerous cases concerning arms and their trafficking in the US are being decided in favor of defendants who don't roll over and plea due to the disconnect between a popular administrative convention and the actual text of the law (archived). It turns out that when the "weapon" being trafficked is an AR-15 lower receiver, the lower receiver itself doesn't qualify under the law as a "weapon" because too many of the features that the text of the law requires for it to be classes as a weapon are part of the upper receiver which is a completely different part on the AR-15.
Prosecutors and other USG bureaucrats have simply been pursuing cases through administrative convention, deciding the lower receiver itself would be the magic part they would treat as a weapon despite no single AR-15 part on its own qualifying as a weapon under the law. At present some members of the USG judiciary are already dismissing cases over prosecutor objections.
Remember kids, any plea agreement proposed by a USG prosecutor isn't ever any kind of deal.
Rhodium Prices Nearing 2008 Highs
Prices for Rhodium are climbing near 2008 all time highs (archived, archived). The brittle platinum group metal is primarily produced by South African and Russian operations while most trades typically involve producer to industrial user transactions without much of the "paper" market that flattens gold prices. This may be an early indicator that markets aren't inclined to value dollars like they used to. It could also suggest deep Afropessimism is setting in among Asian traders that may be stockpiling the material amid doubts South Africa can continue producing.
Evidence That US Cellular Network Operators Don't Actually Own Their Networks Continues Mounting
Reports continue to pour in documenting many cases where US mobile networks are increasingly controlled by folks other than those that happen to have their names printed on the papers (archived). Employees seem to be happy to take outside money and instructions while sheer organizational bulk makes resolving "Whose line is it anyway?" a very difficult question to answer.
Vulnerabilities Found In Broadcom Spectrum Analyzer Widely Deployed In Cable Modem Chips
Some Danes have documented a number of vulnerabilities present in Broadcom spectrum analyzers deployed in a number of cable modem chips, the most notable of which is a set of "default credentials" leaving modems using the chips open to control by all comers (archived). The placement of this "default credential" backdoor on the component of the modem that most directly interacts with the raw signal coming into customer premises strongly suggests someone requested it be put there.