My wife and I have just launched lechampignon.ca, a coworking enterprise in Hudson, a Quebec town on the highway between Ottawa and Montreal.
LeChampignon.ca’s website (www.lechampignon.ca) was unreachable yesterday, Friday Oct. 21 because Weebly, our host, was one of thousands of sites affected by an unprecedented cyberattack on Dyn, a New Hampshire domain name server (DNS).
The whos, whys and hows of the hack attack are hazy. Alt-right commentators in the U.S. and usually reliable European sources like L’Observateur and the BBC are connecting the Directed denial of service (DDoS) assault with last weekend’s internet silencing of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, still holed up in the Ecuadorean embassy in London.
The theory being bandied about is that the Clinton Democrats pressured the Brits to pressure the Ecuadoreans to shut Assange down because WikiLeaks was doing major damage to Hillary’s campaign with its leakage of her private emails. Ecuador’s socialist government was forced to comply but made the gag order public.
According to this morning’s L’Observateur (http://tempsreel.nouvelobs.com/monde/20161022.OBS0169/attaque-informatique-aux-etats-unis-ce-que-l-on-sait.html) and the Conservative Daily Post (https://conservativedailypost.com/breaking-assange-missing-for-days-announced-dead-embassy-stormed-after-airport-lockdown/ Assange’s internet silence triggered a cascade of events that led to the monster hack attack.
The first was a massive WikiLeaks data dump, unprecedented insofar as it didn’t follow protocol established by previous WikiLeaks releases. Some theorize it’s because the dump was triggered by the literal or virtual death of Assange, enabling a dead man’s switch akin to the failsafe used by suicide bombers.
The second was the revenge attack by Assange’s followers and other renegade hacker organizations like Anonymous. Earlier this year tech sites began reporting probes on internet chokepoints to determine where the worldwide web is most vulnerable. Today’s L’Observateur publishes a WikiLeaks tweet debunking rumours of Assange’s death or its own demise and calls for a truce in the internet assault because ‘you’ve made your point.’
The third factor – actually a prequel – was last year’s release of Mirai, a software virus which allows a hacker access to the Bluetooth-enabled internet of things – home routers, CCTV cameras, baby monitors and smartphone- accessible devices like thermostats, coffeemakers and toasters. Anything connected to the internet without a security key can be turned into a bot, remotely controlled by whomever has the code – without the owner’s knowledge.
There’s growing evidence an Mirai-infected army of everyday home devices crashed DNS provider Dyn’s servers, one of those internet chokepoints. Hypothesis has it Assange’s army and Anonymous led the hack attack. However the U.S. Department of Homeland Security suggested late yesterday they had the help of a major sovereign power. Russia and China weren’t named, but it’s pretty obvious given the escalating tensions between the three.
Simply put, an army of hackers, possibly with the help of Russia and China, brought the North American internet and enterprises who depend on it to their knees for the better part of the workday. Why? Because they’re pissed that their guru was stripped of the ability to influence the outcome of the U.S. Presidential election. Yeah, Don, maybe it is rigged – by your erstwhile allies who want a narcissistic stooge in the Oval Office.
The Conservative Daily Post takes it a step further. If Trump were to offer Assange sanctuary in the U.S., prepare to see Clinton’s deleted emails, including those between the Obamas and herself, made public. Trump’s utterances about Crooked Hillary and election rigging would suddenly find traction with the apathetic majority. Clinton’s lead in the polls – already cut to within the margin of error in today’s Ipsos survey – would be wiped out.
American filmmaker Michael Moore, an avid Clinton supporter and Democrat, has been sounding the alarm since this summer. He’s convinced Trump will win and explains why on his site (www.michaelmoore.com).
All this leads me to conclude Clinton is in far more trouble than anyone would have thought after the three debates and that Catholic charity dinner. All it takes is for Donald Trump to make a deal with the devil to unleash the Furies.
Who would have predicted this U.S. presidential election – and all of us collateral victims – would fall hostage to an army of toasters?
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