US spy scandal part of election campaign – Russian MPs

Russian parliamentarians say the recent so-called “Russian spy scandal” in the US has suspiciously coincided with the final stage of the US presidential campaign and could cause problems for Barack Obama.

The elections campaign in the United States is in the full swing and as always they use the topic of their ‘love to Russia’, one senior MP has said.

Head of the Duma Security Committee Irina Yarovaya said the presidential poll and the generally uneasy internal political situation caused by the scandal with the infamous movie Innocence of Muslims make it especially suspicious that people with Russian names would suddenly appear and allegedly start to export military-related technology. Jumping to conclusions in this case is hardly recommended, she added.

Upper House member Viktor Ozerov claimed that the US special services were the side that gained the most from the spy scandal as they always seek to remind of their importance and then demand, yet another time, to increase the financing for their activities.

“We remember the previous spy scandal that broke out exactly at the moment when President Dmitry Medvedev was on an official visit to the United States and met with Barack Obama. The new scandal is now on the eve of presidential elections,” the senator said, noting that such timing is never coincidental.

Ozerov claimed that many representatives of the US power structures have negative attitude towards the US-Russia “reset” policy and are criticizing Obama’s administration for it.

“The spy scandal could have a negative effect on Obama’s administration in this case,” he said.

The senator noted that, according to media reports, the Russians and other nationals whose names are mentioned in the scandal were engaged in legal businesses and received products that were freely sold on the market. Thus, he noted that the whole story could be purely about business, adding that “the story with espionage could have been plucked from the air by US special services.”

At the same time the politician said he did not expect the scandal to have a major effect on Russia-US relations.

“There will be a short period of mutual accusations, but later the scandal will calm down and people will forget about it, both in Russia and in the United States,” he forecast.

The official comment of the Russian Foreign Ministry also was that the story had too many unclear points, but the charges against the Russians were of purely criminal character and had no relation to intelligence activities.

Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov also told reporters that Russian diplomats had already met one of the suspects and are planning similar meetings with other persons who are under arrest within this case. He added that the Foreign Ministry “is not simply monitoring the situation, but is thoroughly working it through.”

Senator Ozerov in his press statement also noted that the state must take measures to ensure the release of Russian citizens if they were working for their county’s good.

“It is possible that this will be done through some exchange or through some top level agreements,” he said.

Previously, a US court has charged 11 people with participating in an alleged Russian network that illegally exported high-tech microelectronics and supplied them to Russian military and intelligence agencies. The FBI says the network has been operating through a Texas-based company which pretended to produce traffic lights and other similar equipment, as well as through a Russian-based procurement firm. Eight of the defendants, including at least four Russians, were immediately detained. The other three reside outside the US.

The bureau alleges the US company was not involved in production, but had shipped approximately $50 million worth of microelectronics and other technology to Russia since 2002.

Defendants potentially face over 400 years in jail each.

U.S. man charged with attempt to blow up U.S. Capitol pleads guilty

A scale model of a U.S. Navy F-86 Sabre fighter plane is seen in a handout photo released by the U.S. Justice Department after the photo was submitted to U.S. District Court in Massachusetts as part of a criminal complaint and affidavit filed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation in Boston, September 28, 2011

A Muslim -American has pleaded guilty to plotting to use three remote-controlled airplanes, each packed with five pounds of explosives, to blow up the Pentagon and U.S. Capitol in 2011.

­Rezwan Ferdaus along with his defense team and prosecutors agreed a 17 year sentence on the charges of attempting to destroy government buildings and provide material support to terrorists.  In a plea bargain he admitted two of the six charges against him.

Ferdaus was arrested on September 2011 after undercover FBI agents delivered supplies he had requested. The parcel included grenades, six machine guns and over 10 kilograms of C-4 explosive.

The governments officials emphasized that the general public was never in any danger since the materials were always under their control, writes the Associated Press.

Airplane models about the size of a picnic table were found at a time of his arrest, which Ferdaus had hidden in a storage unit rented under a false name.

According to the prosecution, the physics graduate from Northeastern University, intended to use three remote control planes packed with explosives to blow up bridges and buildings near the Pentagon.

The planes were to be guided by GPS at speeds faster than 160 killometers per hour and were intended to blow the Capitol dome to "smithereens," according to Ferdaus' affidavit, reports the AP.

The man then planned to follow up with an automatic weapons attack with six people divided into two teams.

The government argues that during the course of the investigation Ferdaus told undercover agents of his plans to commit terror acts against the U.S. by decapitating its "military center" and “non-believers”, according to Reuters.

While under surveillance in 2010, he allegedly supplied 12 mobile phones assembled as electrical detonators to undercover federal agents whom he believed to be al Qaeda recruiters.

Earlier, Ferdaus had pleaded innocent of the charges, and his defense team argued that their client had mental health issues and that his plot was a "fantasy."

A change-of-plea hearing has been scheduled for July 20.

Blackout looming: Thousands to lose Internet access as FBI shuts down servers

A Server Not Found error message on the Mozilla Firefox Internet browser.

On July 9, thousands of Internet users worldwide could lose access after the FBI shuts down temporary DNS servers that replaced fraudulent servers operated by hackers.

Major companies and US government agencies are amongst those that could be blocked out, according to the Internet security firm IID.

The blackout will affect systems infected with the DNSChanger Trojan, a malware program that altered user searches and redirected them to pages offering fraudulent and, in some cases, dangerous products.

Last November the FBI arrested and charged six Estonian men behind the malware as part of Operation Ghost Click. These hackers were able to make a fortune off their project, raking in millions for ads placed on their fraudulent websites.

On the eve of the arrests, the FBI hired Paul Vixie, chairman of the Internet Systems Consortium (ISC) to install two temporary Internet servers that would prevent infected users from losing access to the Internet once the DNSChanger botnet was shut down. These users were advised to take steps to get rid of the malware on their computers, and the DNSChanger Working Group was set up by the computer industry and law enforcement to come up with a plan to phase out the surrogate servers. 

The FBI was initially planning to shut down their provisional servers in March, but a US district court ruled the provisional servers were to remain operation until July 9.

Running the temporary servers for eight months has cost the FBI $87,000.    

With the looming deadline approaching, estimates suggest up to 360,000 unique Internet addresses are still using the rogue servers, with most of them based in the US, according to federal authorities. Other countries with over 20,000 each include Italy, Canada, India, the United Kingdom and Germany. This is down from the over half a million addresses registered when the six hackers were arrested, but still enough to paralyze the functioning of important websites. At its peak several years ago, up to six million systems worldwide were infected with the malware.

The DNS system is a network of servers that translates a web address into a numerical IP address used by computers. Computers affected by the DNSChanger worm were reprogrammed to access rogue DNS servers that redirected them to fraudulent websites.