Many of us suspect that Trump's cozy ties with Vladimir Putin are due to Putin's offering Trump a bailout from his multibillion-dollar debts. It's like a movie. Putin says, "Be President and work for us, and we'll take care of you."
Trump's response to the SolarWinds hack doesn't exactly blow away that narrative. Trump has done nothing -- not even saying "These evildoers are evil!" So yes, we're living in a movie that's miles scarier than The Manchurian Candidate. It's practically unbelievable, yet it seems to be true.
With our federal government getting no orders from the top, it has largely fallen to the private cyberexperts of America to defend the country.
Microsoft, for example. MICROSOFT!
I got my first Mac in 1985, when I was living on the Stanford campus. Like any other sucker, I fell for Apple's marketing. We were the rebels, nimble and cool.
To this day it seems weird that Microsoft could do anything more than walk in a straight line (as long as they weren't chewing a Juicy Fruit). All through Microsoft's existence, when they wanted to stomp on a Bambi, the legal team was Godzilla.
That's why the GeekNews article below is such a surprise. According to this guy, Microsoft is saving America from the Solar Winds hack by unleashing the DEATH STAR. It's the best Christmas present ever.
Microsoft's OS, or an iteration of it, is on practically every computer in government and business. That's why this works.
Starting on December 13, when the hack became public:
Microsoft stripped the digital certificates from the infected files. That means every one of the infected files waves a red flag.
The company updated Windows Defender to create an alert whenever an infected file is used.
Microsoft then went to court (go lawyers!) to take over the domain (address) that the malware makers use. The tactic is called "sinkholing." Apparently, Microsoft does this frequently with malware. When the infected files go back to ask the domain for instructions, they're identified and severed from the malware site.
Finally, the company changed its default action for infected files from "Alert" to "Quarantine." As GeekWire put it, "Microsoft basically changed its phasers from "stun" to "kill."
It's another scene from the same movie. The President, like another virus, stops the government response. There are no government heroes. No military patriots. No unsung saviors (that we know of). It was all private enterprise -- if indeed, Microsoft succeeded.
In Star Wars, the bad guys had the Death Star; and in fact, Microsoft was working the gig economy before anybody else thought of it, so the shoe fits. Presumably Macs are still the rebels.
In this movie, though, the President seems to be working for the enemy.
Do you think that Trump has committed treason in this matter?
Is it possible that American capacities for cyber warfare are really too weak to fight back against Russia, or for that matter, China?
Doesn't the US have its own skunkware factory somewhere? It's not as if China, for instance, was making its cyber warfare a big secret. On the first web host I ever used for my web sites, which was free, there were frequent DOS attacks from China. If I knew that in 2007, the government knew it too.
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