Suspected Hack Attack Snagging Cell Phone Data Across D.C.

Posted by Conspiracy Cafe on March 20, 2017

Malicious entity could be tracking phones of domestic, foreign officials

BY: Adam Kredo

March 16, 2017 12:50 pm

An unusual amount of highly suspicious cellphone activity in the Washington, D.C., region is fueling concerns that a rogue entity is surveying the communications of numerous individuals, likely including U.S. government officials and foreign diplomats, according to documents viewed by the Washington Free Beacon and conversations with security insiders.

A large spike in suspicious activity on a major U.S. cellular carrier has raised red flags in the Department of Homeland Security and prompted concerns that cellphones in the region are being tracked. Such activity could allow pernicious actors to clone devices and other mobile equipment used by civilians and government insiders, according to information obtained by the Free Beacon.

It remains unclear who is behind the attacks, but the sophistication and amount of time indicates it could be a foreign nation, sources said.

Mass amounts of location data appear to have been siphoned off by a third party who may have control of entire cell phone towers in the area, according to information obtained by the Free Beacon. This information was compiled by a program that monitors cell towers for anomalies supported by DHS and ESD America and known as ESD Overwatch.

Cell phone information gathered by the program shows major anomalies in the D.C.-area indicating that a third-party is tracking en-masse a large number of cellphones. Such a tactic could be used to clone phones, introduce malware to facilitate spying, and track government phones being used by officials in the area.

"The attack was first seen in D.C. but was later seen on other sensors across the USA," according to one source familiar with the situation. "A sensor located close to the White House and another over near the Pentagon have been part of those that have seen this tracking."

The data gathered by the ESD Overwatch program indicates the U.S. cell carrier has experienced "unlawful access to their network for the purpose of large scale subscriber tracking," according to a report prepared by ESD Overwatch, a contractor working on behalf of DHS, and viewed by the Free Beacon.

Information gathered by the program shows a massive uptick in efforts to identify and track cellphones. The third-party hacker appears to be identifying phones as they connect with local cellphone towers and recording this information.

This method of hacking could permit a malicious actor to track an individual's cellphone and pinpoint phones that may be of importance, such as government entities.

The cellular network involved in the attack is being abused in order to track phones subscribed to the carrier, according to one source familiar with the situation.

DHS's Office of Public Affairs confirmed that the ESD Overwatch program has been operating under a 90-day pilot program that began Jan. 18. Before the surveillance program was initiated the federal government did not have a method to detect intrusions of the nature seen over the past several months.

The attack on this network is still underway, according to sources monitoring the situation.

An official with ESD Overwatch acknowledged the existence of the DHS program, but would not comment further on the matter.

The issue of cellphone vulnerabilities has been a top concern in Congress, where lawmakers petitioned DHS on Wednesday to outline steps the government is taking to prevent foreign governments from performing the type of attacks observed by Overwatch.

"For several years, cyber security experts have repeatedly warned that U.S. cellular communications networks are vulnerable to surveillance by foreign governments, hackers, and criminals exploiting vulnerabilities in Signaling System 7," which is used by cellular phones and text messaging applications, according to a letter set by Sen. Ron Wyden (D., Ore.) and Rep. Ted Lieu (D., Calif.).

"U.S. cellular phones can be tracked, tapped, and hacked—by adversaries thousands of miles away—through SS7-enabled surveillance," the lawmakers write. "We are deeply concerned that the security of America’s telecommunications infrastructure is not getting the attention it deserves."

"We suspect that most Americans simply have no idea how easy it is for a relatively sophisticated adversary to track their movements, tap their calls, and hack their smartphones," the lawmakers write.

Concerns continue to mount that the government is not adequately taking steps to secure cellular networks.

The lawmakers request that DHS outline specific steps being taken to insulate networks from attacks and ensure that U.S. cell carriers are doing the same.

http://freebeacon.com/national-security/hack-attack-cell-phone-data-dc/

ANTARCTIC ATLANTIS: HUMAN SETTLEMENTS UNDER ALL THAT ICE DOWN THERE?

https://gizadeathstar.com/2017/03/antarctic-atlantis-human-settlements-ice/

Just when you thought that Antarctica could not possibly become any stranger, reality comes along and upsets things. And it certainly has been strange. For one thing, temperatures in the southern polar continent have been on average about 20 degrees warmer than normal, and I even read a report that certain places in Antarctica reached a balmy 63.5 degrees Fahrenheit, and that indeed was very convenient, because we were told that the strange visits of former Secretary of State John Kerry and Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin were all about "climate change." Well, indulge my high octane speculation for a moment: if one can manipulate weather systems, then boosting the temperature in Antarctica a bit to "help out the narrative" would not be all that farfetched, if one grants the assumption. And personally, I put nothing past these people. "See? it got up to 63.5 degrees Fahrenheit! So Kerry's visit was about climate change. Nothing to see here, move along."

Except that Kerry isn't the only one to have shown a sudden interest in Antarctica. Readers of this website and of my books will know that he's but the most recent famous visitor and world leader to take an interest in the continent, a list which includes Admiral Richard Byrd, King Juan Carlos of Spain, Prince What's-his-name from Great Britain, Kiril III Patriarch of Moscow, and oh yes, did we mention the Nazi expedition and its sponsors Rudolf Hess - who ended up in Great Britain in May of 1941 for reasons that are still difficult to fathom and then spent the rest of his life in Spandau prison, where his British physician discovered reasons to believe that "Hess" was not Hess, while Frau Hess adamantly maintained he was, &c. - and Hermann Goering. One made add to this list the planned visit of elements of Russia's Baltic Sea Fleet, which, as I pointed out a few weeks ago, was not known for the success of its half-way-round-the-world junkets (see the Russo-Japanese War, Admiral Rozhdestvenski, Admiral Togo, &c.). A strange mix indeed: Orthodox Patriarchs, US diplomats and astronauts, British and Spanish royalty, the Deputy Fuehrer of Nazi Germany (not as a visitor, but as an "interested party") and the founder and head of the Luftwaffe (again, not as a visitor but as an "interested party"), and an American admiral and a few U.S. Marines.

Nothing to see here, move along.

In my previous high octane speculations about all this Antarctimania I've suggested that there might be four basic reasons for all this interest (1) "they" had need to conduct secret negotiations with "someone" and where better to do it than balmy Antarctica, where access is strictly controlled; or (2) "they" had found something down there, of an extraterrestrial nature, either life or technology or both; or (3) "they" had found something relating to humanity's distant past and perhaps to the legend of Atlantis (after all, Antarctica is a continent submerged under lots of water in the form of ice); or (4) some combination of elements, or all, of the above.

With that in mind, consider this article shared by Mr. B.H. (and many others), for it looks like options (3) and (4) might now be the main contenders in our list of high octane speculative options:

Antarctica: NASA Images Reveal Traces of Ancient Human Settlement Underneath 2.3 km of Ice

Note the opening two paragraphs:

WASHINGTON | Recently released remote sensing photography of NASA’s Operation IceBridge mission in Antarctica led to a fascinating discovery when images revealed what some experts believe could be the existence of a possible ancient human settlement lying beneath an impressive 2.3 kilometers of ice.

The intriguing discovery was made during aircraft tests trials of NASA’s Advanced Topographic Laser Altimeter System (ATLAS) lidar technology set to be launched on the Ice, Cloud and land Elevation Satellite-2 (ICESat-2) in 2017, that aims to monitor changes in polar ice.

I don't know about you, but assuming that these photos are genuine, the image on the right clearly looks artificial to me, and an Indian archaeologist, Ashoka Tripathi, as noted in the article, concurs:

“These are clearly features of some sort of human-made structure, resembling some sort of pyramidal structure. The patterns clearly show nothing we should expect from natural geomorphological formations found in nature. We clearly have here evidence of human engineering. The only problem is that these photographs were taken in Antarctica under 2 kilometers of ice. That is clearly the puzzling part, we do not have any explanation for this at the moment,” he admits.

The problem, as noted, is that this is buried under two kilometers - that's about 1.2 miles for those of you still using the more scientific imperial metrology - and that raises the problem of how such a habitation became encrusted with about a mile of ice. Predictably, the explanation runs to the Piri Reis map:

“One of histories most puzzling maps is that of the Turkish admiral Piri Reis in 1513 AD which successfully mapped the coastline of Antarctica over 500 years ago. What is most fascinating about this map is that it shows the coastline of Antarctica without any ice. How is this possible when images of the subglacial coastline of Antarctica were only seen for the first time after the development of ground-penetrating radar in 1958? Is it possible Antarctica has not always been covered under such an ice sheet? This could be evidence that it is a possibility” he acknowledges.

« A slight pole shift or displacement of the axis of rotation of the Earth in historical times is possibly the only rational explanation that comes to mind but we definitely need more research done before we jump to any conclusion.”

What I find so incredible here is that the final two paragraphs are being advanced by Cambridge University cartographer Christopher Adam, who also appears to be accepting of the hypothesis that has been bandied about in alternative research for decades as an explanation for the 16th century Turkish admiral's map and its highly anomalous depiction of the coastline of Antarctica without ice. The topic of axial rotational shift and even crustal displacement was first advanced by science teacher Charles Hapgood who made an extensive study of the Piri Reis map in his classic study, Maps of the Ancient Sea Kings. Hapgood subsequently wrote a book about his theory of crustal displacement, with a foreword by none other than Dr. Albert Einstein. Let it also be noted, as I pointed out in my book The Financial Vipers of Venice, that in the marginalia of the Piri Reis map, the Turkish admiral also states that Christopher Columbus had mediaeval maps of the new world, and undertook a secret journey to the New World prior to his famous "voyage of discovery" in 1492, but that's another story.

What's intriguing of course is to contemplate when such an event might have occurred, and my high octane intuition suggests that this might have been concurrent with some ancient catastrophe, such as blowing up a planet in a war, the shock waves of which might have concussed the Earth, tipping it slightly, and burying an entire continent under lots of water which froze. And let's remember, in Plato's accounting of the Atlantis myth, the "lost continent" was known for its warlike ways.

So if this is human habitation, it certainly would be a significant enough discovery to call forth the attentions of US Secretaries of State, Patriarchs of Moscow, Baltic Sea Fleets, and Apollo 11 moon astronauts, for it would be an attestation of the truthfulness - in some degree - of the Atlantis myth. Recall however, that in that myth, it is strongly suggested that Atlantis was possessed of "technologies of war" that would be of interest as well, which might rationalize the attentions of American Admirals, Nazi Party Reichsleiters and the founder of the Luftwaffe. The problem there of course, is whether they knew of such things, and if so, how, since it is buried under lots of ice, and radar tomography from satellites did not develop until after World War Two.

So if it's a human(or other) habitation, how does one investigate? Well, one way, of course, is to drill down through the ice and carefully excavate a subterranean chamber for conventional archaeological study.

And the other way, of course, is simply to melt the ice, while calling it "climate change."