US expels Venezuelan diplomat after cyber-attack claims

[alp227]

(AP) The Obama administration is expelling Venezuela's consul general in Miami after allegations that she discussed possible cyber-attacks against the US while she was stationed at her country's embassy in Mexico.

The state department said it had declared the diplomat, Livia Acosta Noguera, persona non grata and given her until Tuesday to leave.

The department would not discuss the reason for the expulsion, and there was no immediate reaction from the Venezuelan government.

The allegations were made in a documentary aired by the Spanish-language broadcaster Univision last month. According to the documentary, Acosta discussed a possible cyber-attack against the US government when she was assigned as a diplomat in the Venezuelan embassy in Mexico.

full: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jan/08/us-expels-venezuelan-diplomat

[PDJane]

1. Thought crimes...........

God only knows, we can't have that.

[boppers]

2. Meh, theater.

"a possible cyber-attack against the US government" only exists in Hollywood.

[DissedByBush]

11. Cyber-attack against the US government is going on constantly

Every second, every minute, every day.

I'm glad to see Obama is taking this seriously.

[boppers]

13. Cyber attack against *everything* is going on constantly.

It's not unique, or special, if it's a '.gov' IP address.

[DissedByBush]

15. .gov, .mil, .edu and .com

This isn't your random DDOS or defacement.

This is targeted attacks by foreign governments in order to steal government and trade secrets.

This is targeted efforts by foreign governments to be able to disrupt our networks in a time of war.

This is, basically, war.

[boppers]

16. Meh.

"This is targeted attacks by foreign governments in order to steal government and trade secrets.

This is targeted efforts by foreign governments to be able to disrupt our networks in a time of war. "

HOLY FUCK THEY MIGHT SEE MY EMAIL KILL THEM!

Uh, yeah... no.

[DissedByBush]

18. Maybe email

At the Department of Defense, or the Department of Homeland Security, or defense contractors.

Maybe some emails of security cleared personnel so they can blackmail them.

They want any information they can get their hands on.

This isn't a joke, it's serious.

China has been serious about it for years. Our government is only recently waking up the seriousness.

[boppers]

22. Oh, maybe we haven't been introduced.

I used to be part of a 24/7 zero-day threat mitigation team. I retired, waaaaay too stressful.

A new attack vector would be found/released, and my job was to be able to identify it on the wire, in transit, within 24 hours, and write pattern detection code for it. Said code would than pass from the "dirty" side, to the "clean" side, where it would be inspected to ensure that no threat was being *inserted* by my code. That code would then be deployed. Widely. Nightly (these were 0-day threats). This was mid 2000's.

Very paranoid environment, but my code still runs in the NSA, DoD, CIA, FBI, AT&T, Verizon, Level 3, our nuke labs, Whitehouse, Congress, DoJ, etc...

So, trust me when I say I have a very real idea of the attack levels, frequency, and intensity, as well as how long this has been in play. * didn't give it much public attention, but that doesn't mean it wasn't there, it meant that press and budgets were lean.

One ambassador talking to one human team about an "attack" is just theater, as there are botnets in the millions trying hundreds of thousands of attacks *every goddamn day*.

"Our government is only recently waking up the seriousness." ... no. They're giving it more publicity now, and using laughable theater to make their point. They've been dealing with it for decades, quietly. I know, because I fought it on the front lines.

[DissedByBush]

31. They were clueless back in the 80s

Cliff Stoll practically had to beg the government to investigate the hacking into Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, which was used as a launching point for attacks against other research and military networks.

But you don't really see this from a programmer point of view. When military network operators have to just block ALL Chinese-based IPs because of constant attacks (not DDOS, actual scans and manual hack attempts), you know there's a real concerted, effort by certain foreign governments.

[boppers]

38. "But you don't really see this from a programmer point of view. " LOL

80's is 30 years ago, FWIW. Totally different.

Shit, they elected Reagan in the 80's.... people were insane.

Blocking all source packets from, oh, China, would not be effective, as it would block information from human sources in China. Unless they laundered packets.

[DissedByBush]

40. It stopped a constant hammering

The people running this network weren't in the business of humint from China, but they were in the business of protecting their network.

About the 80s, proves my point that I'm glad the government is finally taking this seriously.

However, hacking is still pretty much the same as it was back then, probe for systems with a known vulnerability and exploit that.

[AlecBGreen]

27. just ask Iran how that Stuxnet virus turned out

its not all email peeping. Based on your replies to this thread, you should know that.

[boppers]

39. It's a dumb ass chaos virus.

Propagated through a few vectors.

Most folks who work on security don't take such failures seriously, it's only massive media that gave a damn about SCADA.

[dipsydoodle]

3. Actual background to circumstances here

Univision , Venezuela's equivalent of Fox News , made the original claim in a documentary early December.

That was contradicted 16th December :

Dangerous lies: US Media Outlet Falsely Accuses Venezuela of Terrorist Plot.

This week Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez called on friends and allies to “be attentive” after mainstream media outlets in the United States released uncorroborated evidence accusing Venezuela, Cuba, and Iran of holding “secret meetings” in Mexico to plan terrorist attacks against “US interests”.

While President Chavez readily dismissed the “lies” produced by Spanish-language media corporation Univision, a documentary released by the company late last week is now being used by right-wing members of the US Congress to demand Venezuela be formally designated a “State Sponsor of Terrorism”.

UNIVISION: USING A LIE AS AN EXCUSE

Speaking to reporters on Monday, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez referred to Univision´s recently-released documentary “La Amenaza Iraní”, or “The Iranian Threat” in English, and explained that “television shows were broadcast on US networks claiming that Venezuela is scheming terrorist attacks with Iranian terrorists against the United States”.

[msanthrope]

4. Actually, has Acosta denied being on the tapes?

"Univision interviewed a purported Mexican whistle-blower -- a student at the National Autonomous University of Mexico named Juan Carlos Munoz Ledo. The student told Univision he was recruited by a leftist professor who wanted to wage cyber attacks on the United States and its allies.

Munoz told Univision he secretly recorded a meeting in 2008 with Acosta, who was then the cultural attache of the Venezuelan Embassy in Mexico. According to a recording Univision aired as part of its report, Acosta is heard saying that she can send the information gathered by the hackers straight to Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez."

http://www.cnn.com/2012/01/08/us/venezuela-consul/index.html

Or is she just being mis-translated?

[dipsydoodle]

5. No idea.

.

[Judi Lynn]

8. Since when have you ever seen a corporate media reporter actually make contact with a leftist

official and ask for his/her response in person?

This story was sent up the flagpole long ago, as dipsydoodle mentioned, and no one other than the idiot right-wingers ever seemed to attach importance to it. The rest of us are far too familiar with this pattern by now not to recognize it again when we see it.

[stevenleser]

10. I'd really like to see more on this. Everyone is attacking various people and claiming they have

connections to someone or other but is the recording legit or not?

[Zorro]

17. I've not seen nor heard Acosta deny it was her in the video

[joshcryer]

24. She is not being mistranslated. And she has not denied it was her.

She is on video, it is not just audio, she worked with those people for months. It was likely wild-eyed optimism trying to do cyberattacks on the US, trying to win favor with her Venezuelan peers, more than some sort of concerted effort.

[Judi Lynn]

6. Oh, yeah! I thought this crap was settled long ago, didn't you?

You undoubtedly recall that Univision is part owned by Venezuela's biggest media owner, and possibly the wealthiest man in Venezuela, who also participated with the coup plotters in their attempt to seize control of the government long ago, after kidnapping Hugo Chavez at gunpoint, knocking out all independent radio/tv stations in Caracas, the mayor himself sending forces to dismantle a community station in advance.

His name is Gustavo Cisneros, he's known as the old "fishing buddy" of George H. W. Bush, with whom he consulted in a huddle in the Domincan Republic at the resort owned by Cuban "exile" sugar barons, the Fanjul family from Havana/Florida/D.R. immediately after the coup was overthrown by the people on Venezuela, who found out about the coup, in spite of the coup plotters' efforts, filled the streets around Miraflores, and demanded the return of their elected President.

~snip~
On the afternoon of the coup [April 12], the plotters, including Carmona, met at the Venevisión television station. “This government was put together at Gustavo Cisneros’ office,” said opposition legislator Pedro Pablo Alcántara (Democratic Action Party). The person who read Carmona’s decree and who Carmona named as attorney-general was Daniel Romero, who had been a private secretary to former President Carlos Andrés Pérez and a functionary in the Cisneros organization.

http://www.worldpress.org/Americas/581.cfm



George W Bush, Venuela's largest media owner, Gustavo Cisneros, Pepe Fanjul and brother Alfi Fanjul

[center]~ ~ ~ ~ ~[/center]

You may recall the Fanjuls were the target of a massive lawsuit, after years and years of suffering in Florida by the sugar cane workers, and also the subject of a huge documentary on the plight of those poor, poor, exploited men who worked as virtual slaves in the sugar cane fields.

I just saw, looking for a photo of the Fanjuls, this article about the abuse they have heaped upon their sugar cane workers in the Dominican Repulbic fields they own! It certainly follows their pattern. Friends of the U.S. power ghouls in the U.S. reich-wing:

"Sugar Babies", the Fanjuls, Miami International Film Festival, and the Knight Foundation

The controversial film documentary, Sugar Babies, will never play at Casa de Campo-- the resort in the Dominican Republic built by the Fanjuls, Florida's sugar barons.

The subject of the documentary is the miserable working conditions and hopelessness of farm workers on Fanjul plantations in the DR.

The documentary had been scheduled to play at the Miami International Film Festival, but was yanked for some unaccounted for reason by Festival staff just days before the festival commencement.

Last week, the film garnered the award for best documentary by the Delray Beach Film Festival. In a press statement, Festival Director Dr. Michael Posner said, "The audience got to see the ongoing atrocities that still exist in the world today."

http://eyeonmiami.blogspot.com/2008/05/sugar-babies-fanjuls-miami.html

He discusses buying Univision:

June 23, 2011, 5:00PM EST Gustavo A. Cisneros on Buying Univision
The Venezuelan media mogul talks about staking his fortune—and his reputation—on a volatile partnership in Hispanic TV in the U.S. As told to Diane Brady

By 1992, I wanted to be in the U.S. market on a big scale. I thought the telenovelas and programming we'd developed in Venezuela could do very well in the U.S., but no one believed me. People thought Hispanics in the U.S. were different and that you had to make TV productions there to capture the experience. Not only was that an expensive proposition, but I didn't think it was true.

Then Univision came up for sale, which was exciting and risky. I had a deep friendship with Mexican entrepreneur Emilio Azcárraga Milmo, who had failed in the U.S. market and was itching to get back. Neither of us had enough programming to fill a network, so we decided to join forces. But to satisfy the FCC, we needed an American partner. I introduced Emilio to Jerry Perenchio, who owned a Spanish channel in New York. Unfortunately, they just didn't get along. I had to convince Emilio to like Jerry and Jerry to like Emilio. Jerry wanted to work with only me, but I told him it had to be a trio.

There was so much mistrust going into this that I knew something might fall apart. It was a $500 million bet, and a lot of people had lost money in Hispanic TV. To make this work we had to have strong legal documents: Our lawyers outlined everything so that it didn't matter if we liked each other or not. We had to ensure a governance structure to keep the playing field level, and I felt we needed to be very specific about the management of the company. The two of us who had provided programming had to have our additional contributions recognized. Everything was clear, so nobody had to argue or debate.

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/11_27/b4235088443515.htm

He's still on Univision's Board of Directors:

~snip~
Gustavo Cisneros is a member of the Board of Directors of Univision Communications, Inc., Barrick Gold Corporation, and Pueblo International, LLC. He is also a member of the International Advisory Board of Barrick Gold Corporation. He is on the Board of Advisors for the International Advisory Board of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Chairman’s International Advisory Council of The Americas Society, the Board of Overseers of the International Center for Economic Growth, the Chairman’s Council of The Museum of Modern Art, the Board of Trustees and International Museum Council of The Museum of Television & Radio, and the Board of Directors for the International Council of the International Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.

He also serves on advisory boards at some of the most prestigious universities in the United States, including Columbia University, Harvard University, and the University of Pennsylvania.

http://ip6.208-100-19.static.steadfast.net/senior-advisors/gustavo-cisneros

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Of course, a friend of the former President, and head of the CIA and CIA guy for YEARS, close to the Batista Cuban a-holes who have been raiding Cuba, murdering Cuban nationals for years, attacking supporters of Cuba all over the world, a man himself who is associated by birth with the pre-revolutionary Cuba, Cisneros without a doubt would be heavily influential in anything which airs on Univision.

[dipsydoodle]

7. Yes but thanks for providing such a lucid reminder Judi

for some others here.

[Lionessa]

9. Thanks Judi Lynn, everyone should remember ^^^^^^

[hughee99]

21. So * and Cisneros used their immense power and media ownership

to get Livia Acosta Noguera declared persona-non-Grata in the US? That's the theory?

Jeez now Venezuela is going to have to send someone else to the US and Noguera is going to be sent to a different country. Those people really know how to use their tremendous power to create a minor inconvenience for someone. I wonder if they've been the ones hiding my car keys?

[joshcryer]

25. Univision is just reporting on what the students led by Juan Carlos found.

They're the largest Spanish channel on this hemisphere. If you're going to trash the source, trash the students at the university, and professor Juan Carlos.

You can watch the documentary here:

Click the video on YouTube to get the other parts.

[ChangoLoa]

30. You're writing fiction: Cisneros is NOT on the board of directors of Univision*

and Univision is not broadcasted in Venezuela except by satellite. Just like Spanish, British or Italian TV.

*http://investing.businessweek.com/research/stocks/private/board.asp?privcapId=352350
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Univision_Communications,_Inc.


Nowadays, Cisneros and Chavez appear together quite often and the president has praised Cisneros' organization for being "neutral". Immediately after the coup in 2002, the Mogul managed to convince Chavez that he'd change his editorial line, firing most of his political journalists and ending the transmission of half the Tv's political programs.

Here's the billionaire with our former Vice-President Isaias Rodriguez, a year ago:

[Judi Lynn]

32. Didn't say Univision is broadcast in Venezuela. Never discussed that, never considered it.

Don't be so desperate to rip into me that you don't take the time to understand what you read.

As I said, he was a part owner of Univision, and he is on the board.

Gustavo A. Cisneros Appointed to Univision Communications Inc. Board of Directors Los Angeles, CA -- Univision Communications Inc. (NYSE:UVN), the nation's leading Spanish-language media company, today announced that Gustavo A. Cisneros has been appointed the Class V Director to its Board of Directors, as a representative of Venevisión. Mr. Cisneros is the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of the Cisneros Group of Companies, one of the largest privately held media, entertainment, technology, and consumer products organizations in the world. Mr. Cisneros has replaced Alejandro Rivera, who will become the Class V Alternate Director.

"With his strong leadership skills and extensive knowledge of Univision and its industry, Gustavo is a welcome
addition to our Board of Directors," said A. Jerrold Perenchio, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer. "We look forward to Gustavo's counsel and guidance in the years ahead and are delighted to continue our productive, long-standing partnership with Venevisión. We are also pleased that Alejandro Rivera will maintain a close relationship with us as an alternate director."

http://files.shareholder.com/downloads/UVN/0x0x19432/26a7957c-1420-433f-91ca-1f1b11e1cde1/175977.pdf

[ChangoLoa]

34. No, you said Cisneros is still on the board of directors, which is wrong.

And then you reposted the outdated source you had already posted the first time.

Cisneros was on the board until 2009. Get your facts straight. You're presenting misinformation as if it were the incontestable truth.
Try to question your sources.

http://people.forbes.com/profile/gustavo-cisneros/10567

[ChangoLoa]

29. Univision is not Venezuelan nor transmitted in Venezuela outside the satellite or the cable network.

So, not the Venezuelan equivalent of Fox.

You were suggesting that a Venezuelan TV company would release a documentary for the right-wing members of the US Congress to 'demand Venezuela be formally designated a “State Sponsor of Terrorism”'

Not the slightest idea of how things work in today's Venezuela and how it would be impossible to even stay in the country after such an action. They'd immediately be trialed and threatened by para-State groups.

Univision is from Texas.

[Judi Lynn]

33. Clearly I didn't write Univision is broadcast in Venezuela. People are well aware it's domestic. n/t

[ChangoLoa]

35. That reply wasn't addressed to you. nt

[JohnyCanuck]

12. Most likely just more US Gov't propaganda bullshit

As the US newspaper columnist Sydney Schanberg wrote while reflecting on the fake Gulf of Tonkin incident used as a pretext by the Johnson Administration to launch the US military into the meatgrinder that was the war on North Vietnam: "We Americans are the ultimate innocents. We are forever desperate to believe that this time the government is telling us the truth."

http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=2261

[boppers]

14. "We are forever desperate to believe that this time the media is telling us the truth."

FTFY.

[pampango]

19. Juan Cole: This story is not very plausible ... hackers can be anywhere and like anonymity

The US just expelled the Venezuelan consul in Miami over a Univision investigative report alleging a Cuban-Venezuelan-Iranian plot to hack US nuclear facilities. (Note to Cuba and Israel lobbies: This story is not very plausible and you wouldn’t want one of its members to be in the US — hackers can be anywhere and like anonymity.)

http://www.juancole.com/2012/01/ahmadinejad-in-latin-america.html

[vminfla]

28. Juan Cole once again reminds us of why he is an idiot

It's not very plausible because.....?? Because the recordings were denied by the suspect as being her voice?

[vminfla]

20. Audio recordings

Anyone have a link to the actual audio recordings?

From the details that I read, this is a chilling example of anti-US governments (Iran and Venezuala) aligning themselves to commit crimes against America and Americans.

[joshcryer]

23. You can hear them in a Univision report, but Univision is evil here:

Livia Acosta Noguera has not denied that she's speaking in the recording, and it probably is her.

[vminfla]

26. Little bit of woo-wooism on the left

Denying Chavez is an autocratic thug is the equivalent of denying climate change.

[ronnie624]

36. I heard someone speaking Spanish

but I cannot identify them, nor can I understand what they are saying. I don't believe you can either.

[joshcryer]

37. No I cannot identify them and I have trouble understanding it.

But I listened several times and I can attest to the translation. Yes I can understand Spanish. I get messed up with all these dialects, though.

I never proposed that the voice on the recording is her, and I haven't watched past the 2nd part of the Univision Iran documentary (I linked it up thread), I already think it was an O'Keef style setup and don't place much importance on her efforts though.