Hunter Biden’s Laptop Contained Defense Department ‘Encryption Keys’
BY ROBERT SPENCER
Old Joe Biden’s chip off the old block, Hunter Biden, has been many things: board member of the Ukrainian natural gas company Burisma; vice chairman of the National Railroad Passenger Corporation; sought-after artist; and international bon vivant, but he has never been known to have served in the Department of Defense. So why does his infamous laptop contain, on top of everything else that is incriminating on it, Defense Department encryption keys that are not available to private citizens
Sam Faddis, a retired CIA Operations Officer who served in the Near East and South Asia, disclosed on Sunday that “the ongoing analysis of the hard drive of Hunter Biden’s laptop” revealed the Defense Department encryption keys, and this was not an insignificant find: “These keys allow access to DOD email accounts and databases.” As is characteristic of Hunter Biden from what we know of him already, he didn’t just dabble; he went all in. “The exact number of these keys is still unknown. There may be dozens.”
But why did Hunter Biden, who is not now and has never been a Defense Department employee, have any of these encryption keys at all?
Since Hunter Biden has so many relatives, friends, and associates at the highest levels of government, we will probably never get the full answer to that question. But this is no innocuous oversight. Faddis explains that “the keys are known more formally as ‘root encryption certificates.’ Some of them appear to have unusually long expiration dates with many lasting twenty years or more. Such keys should not be present on a personal laptop of any kind, and there is no known reason that Hunter Biden would be in possession of them at all.” No known reason. But Hunter Biden is a man with connections.
Those connections are for the most part still in power, and they have demonstrated that they’re more interested in seeing this revelation go away than they are in finding out why Hunter had the encryption keys. Faddis noted that “the keys were discovered only recently by Jack Maxey’s technical team working in Switzerland. Shortly after the discovery of the keys Maxey contacted the U.S. Embassy in Switzerland and reported that he had information that might compromise American national security and would like to talk to someone in the Regional Security Office to report what he had learned. His contact information was taken by the person with whom he spoke, but no one has ever called back to obtain the information in his possession.” Wow, what a surprise! Why not? Could it possibly be that there are powerful people who don’t want the full truth of Hunter and his laptop to come out?
The whole idea seems to have been to keep various information from coming out. Faddis reports that “an IT technical expert advising Maxey’s team has speculated that the keys present on Hunter’s laptop might have allowed Hunter to create throwaway email accounts on DOD servers and thereby route personal and business communications through those servers to escape detection. Such an arrangement would be in effect a much more sophisticated version of Hillary Clinton’s use of her ‘homebrew’ server to evade monitoring of her communications while she was Secretary of State.”
Clinton apparently wanted to keep some of her communications from becoming public. What was Hunter Biden trying to hide?
Faddis points out that the FBI has had Hunter’s laptop “since well before the 2020 election.” Thus “if the information currently in Maxey’s possession from DOD is correct and encryption keys giving access to DOD systems were still active until Maxey and his team discovered their presence and reported them, that would seem to suggest strongly that the FBI has never bothered to investigate what is on the hard drive.” Well, sure. Would that surprise you?
Victor Davis Hanson noted in November 2021 that the FBI “has lost all credibility as a disinterested investigatory agency.” This came after revelations that “the agency was allegedly investigating moms and dads worried about the teaching of critical race theory in their kids’ schools.” Before that, the FBI was active in the plot to frame Trump for Russian collusion: it “submitted inaccurate requests for warrants to a FISA court. Elements of one affidavit to surveil Trump supporter Carter Page were forged by FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith, who later pleaded guilty to a felony. The FBI hired the disreputable ex-British spy Christopher Steele as a contractor, while he was peddling his fantasy — the Clinton-bought dossier — to Obama government officials and the media.” And there is so very much more
Will we ever find out why Hunter Biden had Defense Department encryption keys on his laptop? Probably not, at least anytime soon. The people who should be investigating him impartially are for the most part politically compromised and hyper-partisan themselves. But this revelation is just one more indication of how broad and deep the corruption is in Washington. If this corrupt cabal is swept out in 2022, we may have a chance of finding out just how corrupt it really has been.
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Is Putin/Russia the sham Wizard in Oz?
I enclose a piece I coauthored in The National Interest with a cyber expert about Russia’s lackluster cyberwar against Ukraine. While it is unclear if we have seen the full extent of Russian capabilities, those exhibited are less significant than most analysts expected.
Combined with Russian difficulties on the physical battlefield, this should give us assurance that wealthy Europe can defend itself and the USA can focus on deterring war with China and terrorism-exporting Iran. Leave defending Europe to the Europeans.
I enclose the full article below, followed by our latest edition of Simon & Whiton, in which Mark and I discuss why the woke walkout at Disney failed. We also ponder why the most unproductive workers are usually the ones who want to bring politics to work, and what can be done.
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Is Russia Just Not That Good at Cyberwar?
It is possible that Russia is not as capable as we feared. However, that does not mean we should neglect better preparation and defenses.
by Matt Erickson Christian Whiton
With events developing rapidly in the Ukraine war, some of the more interesting questions revolve around what has not happened. Why did Russia think Ukraine would not seriously resist? Why did Russia not coordinate its forces better? And why did Russia not use its vaunted cyberattack capabilities against Ukraine and its Western backers?
It is possible that Russia is not as capable as we feared. However, that does not mean we should neglect better preparation and defenses.
To date in the war, cyber effects by both sides have been limited. Attackers hit Ukrainian government websites with fairly unsophisticated and short-lived distributed-denial-of-service attacks, which involve overwhelming a website with too many requests for data. Russian propaganda websites have also been on the receiving end of this method. More seriously, some ATMs in Ukraine were unable to dispense cash in the early phase of the conflict.
Beyond those methods, there have been some actions directed at U.S. satellite networks. In early March, hackers successfully targeted Viasat, an American provider of broadband internet service that connects users on the ground in Ukraine with the web by satellite. While Viasat’s CEO declined to finger the Russians specifically, the timing and target are highly suspicious. The
FBI and the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency put out a warning on March 17 urging satellite operators to strengthen network security and lower the threshold for reporting malicious cyber activity to the government.
SpaceX, which scrambled to provide its own satellite-based Starlink internet service to Ukrainians as the war began, announced it was devoting much of its attention to defending its network from cyber-attack. Its CEO, Elon Musk, challenged Russian President Vladimir Putin “to single combat” over the fate of Ukraine. At the onset of the war, someone jammed Starlink terminals near Ukraine, prompting a software update that Musk said defeated the jamming. It may be that this initial interference was not caused by exploiting a software flaw (e.g., hacking) but by jamming a signal the old-fashioned way with an interfering radio transmission.
In the same way that Russia has performed below expectations on the physical battlefield, does the lack of shock and awe in the cyber realm mean it is less digitally threatening than we thought? A line from The Dirty Dozen comes to mind when Donald Sutherland’s character plays a general and inspects the troops: “They’re very pretty Colonel. Very pretty. But can they fight?”
Certainly, Russia has demonstrated cyber-attack capabilities in the past. The 2020 SolarWinds attack, which many experts attribute to Russia, went far beyond mere ransomware or theft of files. That sophisticated attack infiltrated a supply chain of software updates that in turn compromised the networks of tens of thousands of organizations. It took planning, surveillance, technical knowledge, social engineering, and patience.
Russia is consistently ranked among the top cyber-capable actors in the world, alongside China, Israel, North Korea, and the United States. It has developed capabilities within government, but also has a sizable cadre of private citizens with deep technical knowledge of hardware and software. These private keyboard warriors, now cut off by sanctions from high-tech careers and business opportunities in the rest of the world, are a modern form of privateer—freelancers doing damage at government request.
But despite this track record and a cyber army, is Moscow just not that good at cyberwar, whether directed against satellites or terrestrial networks?
The answer is maybe. It is still possible that Russia is holding back. Clearly, the U.S. government is worried about critical infrastructure. On March 18, the FBI warned the energy sector about network scanning activity that suggested Russia is exploring options for attacking the United States directly. If Russia has a major “zero-day” exploit, which is a vulnerability in software or a network that we do not about, but which an adversary does, it may be hesitant to put it to use. Once used, it cannot be used again since organizations will patch vulnerable software. Furthermore, the demonstration effect from a cyberattack is not quite the same as one from a nuclear test. It may actually show the limits of one’s capabilities rather than scare the opposition.
Nonetheless, we should be cautious. Our militaries and economies are highly dependent on satellites, and we are not adequately prepared. Unfortunately, satellites, which can be thought of increasingly as flying computers, have many of the same cyber vulnerabilities as computer networks on Earth—they are just harder to repair. Until we switch to satellite software based on “zero trust” principles—in which each function and data file is off-limits except to clearly known and authorized users—and encrypt every file and function on every satellite and throughout its command and communications chain, we will be at risk.
Matt Erickson is the VP Solutions of SpiderOak, a space cybersecurity company.
Christian Whiton is a senior fellow at the Center for the National Interest.
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I no longer watch The Oscars and last night was no exception but I did watch some of the reporting of the episode in which we saw a version of Hollywood's black on black crime. I have no further comment.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Takes a lot of energy to create energy. Does the Biden Administration have a clue? Probably not but AOC does. She learned while shaking a Martini
How Much Energy Will the World Need? | Prager
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