2016 Postmortem
Related: About this forumWas a Trump Server Communicating with Russia?
This spring, a group of computer scientists set out to determine whether hackers were interfering with the Trump campaign. They found something they werent expecting.
Interesting Excerpt:
"Earlier this month, the group of computer scientists passed the logs to Paul Vixie. In the world of DNS experts, theres no higher authority. Vixie wrote central strands of the DNS code that makes the Internet work. After studying the logs, he concluded, The parties were communicating in a secretive fashion. The operative word is secretive. This is more akin to what criminal syndicates do if they are putting together a project. Put differently, the logs suggested that Trump and Alfa had configured something like a digital hotline connecting the two entities, shutting out the rest of the world, and designed to obscure its own existence. Over the summer, the scientists observed the communications trail from a distance."
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/cover_story/2016/10/was_a_server_registered_to_the_trump_organization_communicating_with_russia.html
This is a very technical type of article, but it's very interesting...
Angry Dragon
(36,693 posts)GeorgeGist
(25,323 posts)Perhaps Comey will redeem himself.
whttevrr
(2,345 posts)
Soon, the New York Times Eric Lichtblau and Steven Lee Myers began chasing the story. (They are still pursuing it.) Lichtblau met with a Washington representative of Alfa Bank on Sept. 21, and the bank denied having any connection to Trump. (Lichtblau told me that Times policy prevents him from commenting on his reporting.)
The Times hadnt yet been in touch with the Trump campaignLichtblau spoke with the campaign a week laterbut shortly after it reached out to Alfa, the Trump domain name in question seemed to suddenly stop working. When the scientists looked up the host, the DNS server returned a fail message, evidence that it no longer functioned. Or as it is technically diagnosed, it had SERVFAILed. (On the timeline above, this is the moment at the end of the chronology when the traffic abruptly spikes, as servers frantically attempt to resend rejected messages.) The computer scientists believe there was one logical conclusion to be drawn: The Trump organization shut down the server after Alfa was told that the Times might expose the connection. Nicholas Weaver told me the Trump domain was very sloppily removed. Or as another of the researchers put it, it looked like the knee was hit in Moscow, the leg kicked in New York.
From:
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/cover_story/2016/10/was_a_server_registered_to_the_trump_organization_communicating_with_russia.html
Four days later, on September 27, the Trump organization created a new host name, trump1.contact-client.com, which enabled communication to the very same server via a different route. When a new host name is created, the first communication with it is never random. To reach the server after the resetting of the host name, the sender of the first inbound mail has to first learn of the name somehow. Its simply impossible to randomly reach a renamed server. That party had to have some kind of outbound message through sms, phone, or some non-internet channel they used to communicate [the new configuration], Paul Vixie told me. The first attempt to look up the revised host name came from Alfa Bank. If this was a public server, we would have seen other traces, Vixie says. The only look-ups came from this particular source.
According to Vixie and others, the new host name may have represented an attempt to establish a new channel of communication. But media inquiries into the nature of Trumps relationship with Alfa Bank, which suggested that their communications were being monitored, may have deterred the parties from using it. Soon after the New York Times began to ask questions, the traffic between the servers stopped cold.
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NoGoodNamesLeft
(2,056 posts)And it is IRRESPONSIBLE for them to keep this secret! Trump or someone in his inner circle appears to be in collusion with Russia.
whttevrr
(2,345 posts)It's kinda lost in the mix.
napkinz
(17,199 posts)I want to hear nothing but Russia, Russia, Russia, Russia, Russia, Russia