http://www.liveleak.com/browse?q=BlackHawk Sat, 18 May 2013 16:23:00 -0400 Liveleak http://edge.liveleak.com/80281E/u/u/ll2/logo.gif http://www.liveleak.com/browse?q=BlackHawk Thu, 02 May 2013 02:09:17 -0400 http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=27c_1367474517 plokiju Among defense contractors, QinetiQ North America (QQ/) is known for spy-world connections and an eye- popping product line. Its contributions to national security include secret satellites, drones, and software used by U.S. special forces in Afghanistan and the Middle East. Former CIA Director George Tenet was a director of the company from 2006 to 2008 and former Pentagon spy chief Stephen Cambone heads a major division. Its U.K. parent was created as a spinoff of a government weapons laboratory that inspired Q's lab in Ian Fleming's James Bond thrillers, a connection QinetiQ (pronounced kin-EH-tic) still touts. QinetiQ's espionage expertise didn't keep Chinese cyber- spies from outwitting the company. In a three-year operation, hackers linked to China's military infiltrated QinetiQ's computers and compromised most if not all of the company's research. At one point, they logged into the company's network by taking advantage of a security flaw identified months earlier and never fixed. "We found traces of the intruders in many of their divisions and across most of their product lines," said Christopher Day, until February a senior vice president for Verizon Communications Inc. (VZ)'s Terremark security division, which was hired twice by QinetiQ to investigate the break-ins. "There was virtually no place we looked where we didn't find them." 'Major Embarrassment' The lengthy spying operation on QinetiQ jeopardized the company's sensitive technology involving drones, satellites, the U.S. Army's combat helicopter fleet, and military robotics, both already-deployed systems and those still in development, according to internal investigations. Jennifer Pickett, a spokesman for QinetiQ, declined to comment as part of a general policy not to discuss security measures. "God forbid we get into a conflict with China but if we did we could face a major embarrassment, where we try out all these sophisticated weapons systems and they don't work," said Richard Clarke, former special adviser to President George W. Bush on cyber security. The spies' trail at QinetiQ begins in late 2007, and so do the company's mistakes. QinetiQ's travails are documented in hundreds of unvarnished e-mails and dozens of reports that were never meant to be public, part of a cache that was leaked in 2011 by the group Anonymous after it hacked HBGary Inc., a Sacramento-based computer security firm hired by QinetiQ the previous year. Team Outmaneuvered The e-mails and reports are authentic, according to former HBGary executives and Day. Day agreed to an interview limited to the investigation's findings because the documents had already become public. By reviewing the documents with security experts and interviewing more than a dozen people familiar with the QinetiQ breaches, Bloomberg News reconstructed how the hackers outmaneuvered QinetiQ's internal security team and at least five companies brought in to help salvage the situation. Headquartered in a glass-and-steel office tower in McLean, Virginia, QinetiQ's U.S. subsidiary is a boutique arms maker, less than one-tenth the size of industry giants like Lockheed or Northrop Grumman Corp. (NOC) It has specialized in fields expected to grow as the rest of the Pentagon budget shrinks, including drones, robotics, software and high-speed computing. A 2012 want ad for QinetiQ's Albuquerque facility solicited a programmer to work on a "satellite-based global monitoring system" and limited candidates to those with top secret clearances only. Stolen Data In December 2007, an agent from the Naval Criminal Investigative Service contacted the company's small security team and notified them that two people working in McLean were losing confidential data from their laptop computers, according to an internal report. The agency had stumbled upon the stolen data as part of another investigation and the alert was a courtesy. The San Diego-based agent didn't provide the identity of the hackers, who had been tracked by U.S. intelligence since at least 2002, or the crucial -- but classified -- fact that they were hitting other defense contractors. The company wouldn't find out who its attackers were for two more years. QinetiQ put strict limits on the investigation. "They just felt like it was this limited little thing, like they'd picked up some virus," said Brian Dykstra, a forensics expert based in Columbia, Maryland, which QinetiQ hired to conduct the investigation. Security Holes More investigations uncovered more security holes. In 2008, a security team found that QinetiQ's internal corporate network could be accessed from a Waltham, Massachusetts, parking lot using an unsecured Wi-Fi connection. The same investigation discovered that Russian hackers had been stealing secrets from QinetiQ for more than 2 1/2 years through a secretary's computer, which they had rigged to send the data directly to a server in the Russian Federation, according to an internal investigation. QinetiQ's executives in the meantime fretted about rising costs. "You could spend all your resources chasing such things as this," William Ribich, the former president of QinetiQ's Technology Solutions Group, said in an interview in January. Ribich, who retired in November 2009, shortly after the discovery of a major data theft, said he needed to balance the uncertain risk that the hackers could use what they stole against a growing shopping list of security products and consulting fees. "You finally have to reach a point where you say 'let's move on,"' he said. Vast Control China's hackers in fact zeroed in first on Ribich's division, based in Waltham, and specifically on QinetiQ's drone and robotics technology. Internal reports leaked by Anonymous chronicle a breach at TSG in February 2008, followed by another attempt in March of that year. By 2009, the hackers had almost complete control over TSG's computers, the documents show. Over one stretch in 2009, the spies spent 251 days raiding at least 151 machines, including laptops and servers, cataloging TSG's source code and engineering data. The hackers dribbled data out of the network in small packets to avoid detection, managing to get away with 20 gigabytes before they were finally stopped, according to an internal damage assessment. The stolen cache included highly sensitive military technology and was equivalent in size to 1.3 million pages of documents or more than 3.3 million pages of Microsoft Excel spreadsheets. Secrets 'Gone' "All their code and trade secrets are gone," Phil Wallisch, senior security engineer at HBGary, wrote in an e-mail after being briefed on the loss by the company. It was about to get much worse. While QinetiQ's team tripped from crisis to crisis, the hackers honed their skills. They were next spotted in March 2010, after signing on with the stolen password of a network administrator based in Albuquerque, New Mexico, Darren Back. The hackers logged on through the company's remote access system, just like any employee. It was a trick they were able to use only because QinetiQ didn't employ two-factor authentication, a simple device that generates a unique code employees enter, along with their usual password, anytime they work from home. The problem had been spotted months earlier in a security review. Mandiant, which worked on several TSG breaches and performed the test, recommended a relatively inexpensive fix. The advice was ignored, according to a person familiar with the report. Digital Secrets In four days of furious activity, the hackers rifled at least 14 servers, taking particular interest in the company's Pittsburgh location, which specialized in advanced robotics design. The Comment Group also used Back's password to raid the computer of QinetiQ's Huntsville, Alabama-based technology control officer, which contained an inventory of highly sensitive weapons-systems technology and source code throughout the company. The spies had got their hands on a map to all of QinetiQ's digital secrets. They also had begun to broaden their attack. As evidence mounted that the hackers had moved to divisions beyond TSG, QinetiQ hired two outside firms in April 2010 -- Terremark (TMRK) and a relatively new start up called HBGary, headed by Greg Hoglund, a former hacker turned security expert. HBGary installed specialized software on more than 1,900 computers, then scanned the machines for snippets of malicious code. Glitches surfaced almost immediately. The software wouldn't load on at least a third of the computers, and even where it did, it missed some that the hackers' spyware was known to have infected, according to internal HBGary e-mails. Every Corner The security teams found evidence that the hackers had burrowed into almost every corner of QinetiQ's U.S. operations, including production facilities and engineering labs in St. Louis, Pittsburgh, Long Beach, Mississippi, Huntsville, Alabama and Albuquerque, New Mexico, where QinetiQ engineers work on satellite-based espionage, among other projects. By the middle of June 2010, after weeks of intense work, the investigators believed they had cleaned QinetiQ's networks and began wrapping up. The calm lasted a little more than two months. In early September, the FBI called QinetiQ with evidence that the defense contractor was again losing data, according to e-mails and a person involved in the probe. Anglin messaged both HBGary and Terremark, asking how quickly their teams could return. Within hours of their arrival, the investigators again began finding malicious software, or malware, in computers throughout the company's North American divisions. Some of it had been there since 2009. Software Deleted It began to dawn on the security teams that the hackers had established a near permanent presence in the defense contractor's computers, mining new information almost as soon as it was written onto hard drives. "Oh yeah...they are f'd," Wallisch wrote to Hoglund in September. Investigators also had to contend with frustrated QinetiQ employees. Upset about how much computer power the HBGary detection software was consuming, workers began deleting it from their computers with the approval of the company's information technology staff. As the hunt continued, more clues surfaced about what secrets the spies were after. The hunters' digital footprints were found on the computers of QinetiQ's chief operating officer, a division vice president and dozens of engineers and software architects, including several with classified clearances. Military Robots Among the victims was a specialist in the embedded software on microchips that control the company's military robots, which would help in China's own robot-building program, said Noel Sharkey, a drones and robotics expert at Britain's Sheffield University. The PLA unveiled a bomb disposal robot in April 2012 similar to QinetiQ's Dragon Runner. The chip architecture could also help China test ways to take over or defeat U.S. robots or aerial drones, Sharkey said. "You could set them up in a simulation board and hack into them," he said. "That's standard stuff." The spies also took an interest in engineers working on an innovative maintenance program for the Army's combat helicopter fleet. They targeted at least 17 people working on what's known as Condition Based Maintenance, which uses on-board sensors to collect data on Apache and Blackhawk helicopters deployed around the world, according to experts familiar with the program. The CBM databases contain highly sensitive information including the aircrafts' individual PIN numbers, and could have provided the hackers with a view of the deployment, performance, flight hours, durability and other critical information of every U.S. combat helicopter from Alaska to Afghanistan, according to Abdel Bayoumi, who heads the Condition Based Maintenance Center at the University of South Carolina. Redstone Arsenal The hackers also may have used QinetiQ to break into the Army's Redstone Arsenal through a network shared with QinetiQ's engineers in nearby Huntsville. A breach of the base, home of the Army's Aviation and Missile Command, was linked by military investigators back to QinetiQ, according to a person familiar with the investigation. It wasn't the only time the hackers used the same back-door approach to federal computers. The same person said that as recently as last year, federal agents were looking into a breach at a QinetiQ cyber-security unit, which they suspected Chinese hackers were using in attacks against government targets. The security lapses at QinetiQ led to investigations by several federal agencies, including the FBI, Pentagon, and Naval Criminal Investigative Service, according to two people involved, who didn't know the final outcome of the probes. The State Department, which has the power to revoke QinetiQ's charter to handle restricted military technology if it finds negligence, has yet to take any action against the company. 'Learning Curve' "In this case it looks like years go by without seeing any learning curve and that's what's scary," said Steven Aftergood, who directs the Project on Government Secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists. "The company is responsible for its own failures, but the government is responsible for the inadequacy of its response." QinetiQ's U.S. operations are overseen by a proxy board that includes Riley Mixson, the Navy's former air-warfare chief. The board was briefed several times about the hacking and the investigations. Mixson said that "everything was duly reported" and then hung up the phone. Tenet declined to comment. The investigations didn't affect the company's ability to win government contracts, even to provide cyber-security services to federal agencies. Contract Awarded In May 2012, QinetiQ received a $4.7 million cyber-security contract from the U.S. Transportation Department, which includes protection of the country's critical transport infrastructure. "When it comes to cyber security QinetiQ couldn't grab their ass with both hands, so it cracks me up that they won," Bob Slapnik, vice president at HBGary, wrote after QinetiQ received a grant from the Pentagon in 2010 to advise it on ways to counter cyber espionage. In the fall of 2010, Terremark sent a report to Anglin concluding that QinetiQ had been targeted by the Comment Crew since 2007 and that the hackers had been operating continuously in their networks since at least 2009. The report was part of the trove of documents leaked by Anonymous. In that time, the hackers had gained almost complete control over the company's network. They had operated unhindered for months-long stretches and they had implanted multiple, hidden communications channels to extract data. Privately, the investigators concluded that the spies had gotten everything they wanted from QinetiQ's computers. "My feeling is that if an attacker has been in your environment for years, your data is gone," Wallisch wrote in an e-mail to a colleague in December 2010, a few weeks before HBGary itself was hacked and the record stops. "Everything about your business is known, cataloged, analyzed, by your enemy," Wallisch wrote. "I don't feel a sense of urgency anymore." To contact the reporters on this story: Michael Riley in Washington at michaelriley@bloomberg.net; Ben Elgin in San Francisco at belgin@bloomberg.net To contact the editor responsible for this story: Daniel Golden at dlgolden@bloomberg.net http://www.businessweek.com/news/2013-05-01/china-cyberspies-outwitting-u-dot-s-dot-stealing-vital-military-secrets#p5 http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=27c_1367474517 plokiju China Cyberspies Outwit QinetiQ in a massive theft of US military secrets China, Cyberspies, Outwit, QinetiQ, in, a, massive, theft, of, US, military, secrets Wed, 24 Apr 2013 10:10:29 -0400 http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=9a7_1366812441 ALah007 "Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it." George Santayana We should study history not just to memorize dates and places but to analyze trends. I see our country once again following a particular disturbing trend at a critical time when we should be more prudent. Now, I will be one of the first to say that we can find savings of taxpayer dollars in the Department of Defense budget. Before I was sworn in as a member of Congress, I stated on Meet the Press in the waning months of 2010 that we could find fraud, waste, and abuse in that budget. As a member of the House Armed Services Committee, I backed up that assertion in April 2011 when my first piece of legislation, which identified and eliminated funding for several wasteful programs in the DOD budget, made it to the House floor. It passed 393-0, and the savings to the American taxpayer was $35 million per year. However, what I see occurring now is not judicious cost-cutting but the degradation of our military capability. We are once again forgetting that the preeminent responsibility of the federal government is to "provide for the common defense." Some people have confused this with providing welfare and guaranteeing happiness on the notion of limitless rights. Since World War I, we as a nation have viewed any end of major combat operations as an opportunity to achieve fiscal responsibility through cutting the military budget. When World War II ended, we ramped down, and then we had to ramp back up for the Korean War. After the Vietnam War and the Cold War, we once again gutted our military capability. I was commissioned as a second lieutenant on July 31, 1982, and the following year, after graduating from the University of Tennessee, I went on active duty. I witnessed the transformation of the U.S. military in my early years: Humvees, Bradleys, Abrams tanks, Apache attack helicopters, Blackhawk transport helicopters, and Multiple Launch Rocket System (MLRS) artillery, the A-10 close-air support platform - all this new technology and equipment was instrumental in my first combat tour, Operation Desert Shield/Storm. We were highly trained and ready for action thanks to our soldiers' preparation at places like the National Training Center in the California desert. But after the victory came the reduction in forces, and defense cuts became the source of funds for government spending on other programs, such as midnight basketball. In those days, we did not have enough small-arms ammunition for rifle qualification. We had to carefully budget our annual allocation of artillery rounds, so we did more dry-fire operations. The shortage of spare parts and tools made maintenance operations very intense. But the one thing we could not control was that the world was growing yet more dangerous. The enemy pays attention to our weakness, and they have a vote. Now, I am not a fan of nation-building excursions. I have been there and done that. I believe we must move away from a forward-deployed military and toward one that projects power focusing not on occupation-style warfare but rather on strike-operations-oriented warfare. We must use our greatest asset - strategic and operational mobility - to deny the enemy sanctuary, to interdict his flow of men, materiel, and other means of support, to cordon him off, and to win the information-operations aspect of engagement. Those are the premier strategic imperatives on the 21st-century battlefield. Unfortunately, we are ceding regions where the enemy, after exploiting chaotic situations, find themselves in power. I am concerned about the radical Islamic threat that now extends from the Maghreb to the Middle East and into southwest Asia; the rise of Iran's drive for regional hegemony, which now reaches into our hemisphere; the economic juggernaut of China, which enables the belligerence of North Korea, and those two nations' collusion with Iran on nuclear capability. And we must not lose sight of our dear friend Vladimir Putin in Russia. I hate to burst everyone's bubble, but our world is more Machiavellian than Kantian. There are only two ways to end a combat engagement, an armed conflict, or a war: win it, or lose it. By simply stating the date on which you are going to retreat, you only embolden your enemies. When anyone can see that the major focus of our military is social reengineering, the wolves salivate and prepare to feast. These are indeed times that try men's souls, but let us not forget that the president is commander-in-chief, and that our national security is his primary responsibility. http://www.nationalreview.com/article/346424/lessons-history http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=9a7_1366812441 ALah007 &quot;The lessons of history&quot; by Allen West USA/ global war on terror/conservative/allen west Tue, 08 Jan 2013 00:51:24 -0500 http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=78a_1357624188 bobcarlo http://latest.blackhawk-mines.com/2013/01/07/black-hawk-adventures-tying-the-knot/ This technique although inexperienced campers take this for granted, thinking it is only a deception that this is really necessary to learn and in fact a very essential skill. This is one secret on how to have fun outdoors and at the same time survive in the wilderness. A simple knot can save your life; each knot type fits a certain job. You can tie a solid Square Knot by lapping right over left, and then tying again in the reverse direction - left over right. This is a classic for connecting lines and tying knot, basically most people know how to do a square knot. This is used for making a rope longer by tying two ropes or even tying up a bundle of firewood to carry because this type of knot is stable and secure. Make a loop of rope around the tree to tie a Clove Hitch on it. Make another loop and pass the free end of the rope under the second loop before tightening. To tie this one over a post or stake, just create a loop in the free end of the rope and slide it over the post. Then make another loop the same as the first. Put the second loop over the post (just above the first loop) and tighten the hitch. This knot type secures a line to a tree or post quickly and it is an easy one. But it can also slip if used alone so you need to make other knots as backup. A knot that is often taught with the story of the rabbit coming out of the hole, in front of the tree, going behind the tree, and back down his original hole, the Bowline, to tie this knot you form a loop on top of the long end of the line. And then pass the free end of the line through the loop and around behind the line. While maintaining the secondary loop which becomes your bowline loop bring the free end down in the original loop. Once the "rabbit" is back down his hole, pull the "tree" up and the Bowline is tightened. This Bowline will create a loop at the end of a rope that cannot shrink or expand. Figure 8 also called as Flemish Knot is necessary to use in order to tie several other more complex knots because it makes knot at the end of the line. To tie this knot, you simply pass the free end of a line over itself to form a loop. Continue under and around the line's end, and finish the knot by passing the free end down through the loop. This next knot is essential for tying different types of materials together and joining different thicknesses of rope. Although this come a little weird but the Sheet Bend can even join together lines or materials that normally couldn't be joined together. Form a "j" shape out of the thicker or more slippery rope then pass the other rope through the fish hook from behind, wrap around the entire fishhook once and then tuck the smaller line under itself. Deception charge to those who thinks that tying a knot isn't essential. These are only few of the other knot types but could really help you survive the wilderness. http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=78a_1357624188 bobcarlo <span class="highlight">Blackhawk</span> Mines Corp - Tying the Knot blackhawk mines corp Tue, 24 Jul 2012 23:18:07 -0400 http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=ea7_1343186135 Michael Elrod Flying out of Forward Operating Base Falcon in southern Baghdad, Iraq in A Blackhawk Helicopter 2008 http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=ea7_1343186135 Michael Elrod Flying out of FOB Falcon in Baghdad, Iraq in A <span class="highlight">Blackhawk</span> Helicopter 2008 Forward Operating Base Falcon, Baghdad, Iraq, Blackhawk Tue, 24 Jul 2012 23:14:37 -0400 http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=2cd_1343185977 Michael Elrod Flying out of the Green Zone in Baghdad, Iraq in A Blackhawk Helicopter 2008 http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=2cd_1343185977 Michael Elrod Flying over Baghdad, Iraq in A <span class="highlight">Blackhawk</span> Helicopter 2008 Baghdad, Iraq, Blackhawk, Helicopter Tue, 24 Jul 2012 23:10:26 -0400 http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=e0c_1343185741 Michael Elrod Flying over Baghdad, Iraq in A Blackhawk Helicopter 2008 http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=e0c_1343185741 Michael Elrod Flying over Baghdad, Iraq in A <span class="highlight">Blackhawk</span> Helicopter 2008 Baghdad, Iraq, Blackhawk, Helicopter Tue, 24 Jul 2012 23:07:35 -0400 http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=1cf_1343185464 Michael Elrod Flying over Baghdad, Iraq in A Blackhawk Helicopter 2008 http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=1cf_1343185464 Michael Elrod Flying over Baghdad, Iraq in A <span class="highlight">Blackhawk</span> Helicopter 2008 Baghdad, Iraq, Blackhawk, Helicopter Mon, 25 Jun 2012 01:12:19 -0400 http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=87f_1340600618 bravo61 This video is a unique angle of a Blackhawk helicopter delivering water to a fire using a bambi bucket. When the helicopter is in position, the crew releases the water to extinguish or suppress the fire below. The shots consist of a take off from the staging field, dips from a nearby pond to get water and several drops on two different fire locations. This action takes place in the High Park Fire to try to mitigate spot fires in the area west of Fort Collins, Colorado. video by Senior Master Sgt. John Rohrer http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=87f_1340600618 bravo61 Bambi Bucket Drops on Colorado Fire from a <span class="highlight">Blackhawk</span> Helicopter Colorado, Forest Fires, Colorado National Guard, Blackhawk Helicopter, Bambi Bucket Sun, 11 Mar 2012 13:00:36 -0400 http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=470_1331485045 USFORCESTV 3/9/2012 Soldiers from the SDARNG responded to a brush fire along Mallow Street, Rapid City, S.D. on March 9, 2012. They put out flames using a UH-60 Blackhawk helicopter. They flew over the hillside dumping water over hot spots with a 600 gallon bucket. The pilots drew water from a city pond targeting hot spots to protect homes and businesses from the blaze. http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=470_1331485045 USFORCESTV UH-60 <span class="highlight">BLACKHAWK</span> FIGHTING BRUSH FIRE IN RAPID CITY, SD wild fire, brush fire, UH60 blackhawk, fire fighting, Rapid City SD Tue, 10 Jan 2012 20:39:29 -0500 http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=2da_1326245915 militaryconflicts ISAF Blackhawk helicopter making the journey from Lashkagar to Camp Bastion http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=2da_1326245915 militaryconflicts ISAF <span class="highlight">Blackhawk</span> helicopter making the journey from Lashkagar to Camp Bastion ISAF Blackhawk helicopter making the journey from Lashkagar to Camp Bastion Sun, 10 Jul 2011 14:25:40 -0400 http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=0a0_1310321698 oscare76 Federal police shoot to drugs cartels killers from a blackhawk in Michoacan State the las january when the LA FAMILIA now CABALLEROS TEMPLADOS drugs cartels's members go out to burn cars and bus and stared to shoot to the civilian people to get afraid between the people on the streets, so the federal police star to search and killing those drugs members. in this video you could see how the federal police shoot them. http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=0a0_1310321698 oscare76 FEDERAL POLICE SHOOT TO DRUGS CARTLES MEMBERS FROM <span class="highlight">BLACKHAWK</span> FEDERAL POLICE, DRUGS CARTELS, SHOOTS, BLACKHAWK Wed, 16 Feb 2011 06:45:40 -0500 http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=f8e_1297856436 Fine_Just_Fine In Mogadishu, Somalia Gary Gordon and Randy Shughart from delta force on October 3rd 1993, these two heroes volunteered to secure the blackhawk crash site. They stood there ground for an hour and killed more than a hundred Somalis; they got killed when they ran out of ammo. Rip, they were awarded the medal of honor. http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=f8e_1297856436 Fine_Just_Fine Action Clip from &quot;<span class="highlight">Blackhawk</span> Down&quot; (2001) blackhawk down, somalia, operation restore hope