The Wire GRINTSUM: Cyberattacks, Ships, and the Russians

hello again everyone welcome back to the underground another packed week of news it has been hasn't it however the theme for this week has most certainly been Cyber attack so let's get right to it starting off with probably the more impacting event for most Americans there was another yet another major uh cellular outage throughout the United States that for some people lasted just a few minutes for others it is still impacting uh so for those of you who have not heard about this or are not impacted by bu it a few days ago both Verizon and AT&T and also some US Cellular customers reported that they had service interruptions with their cell phones so all total it seems like around 24 to 28 depending on which report you read uh states were affected so you know a little over half the country uh depending on which report you go by it seems like also there are quite a few AT&T customers still without service or with intermittent service over the past few days a lot L of people I'm I'm seeing on social media are saying atnc says they fixed the issue for them however they haven't uh so that seems to be a very common Trend with with some of these more um questionable uh incidents so far I haven't seen any indications as to why uh this outage uh occurred nor why did it occur on three separate systems all at exactly the same time that is a very very suspicious detail because Verizon AT&T and US Cellular all all maintain uh their separate Towers there's very little crossover between the between the three companies as far as I know uh so they maintain their own kind of infrastructure so when you have three uh companies go down all at once that tends to suggest there's probably something def Furious behind it but again we don't we just don't know there's hasn't been really much information released on that front continuing on with the sort of questionably um possibly nefarious incidents there was another incident involving a cargo ship and a bridge a few days ago the Ravenel Bridge in Charleston South Carolina was shut down for just a few minutes out of an abundance of caution while there was a runaway cargo ship uh so I'll throw the video up for you guys to see uh it looks kind of boring you know from kind of the shore perspective of things however uh The Story So Far again very few details are public but uh the story so far is that this cargo vessel the MC Michigan 7 had a stuck throttle so you know on big cargo ships is kind of hard to explain however uh it seems as though the throttle for the vessel was stuck on you know flank speed or whatever it's called for civilian vessels uh the maximum speed for the vessel and it was not responding to uh engine command so the crew very adeptly it looks like they were able to thread the needle uh to go actually underneath the bridge and uh make sure that you know nothing nothing happened as a result of this incident uh two people were injured uh people who were in small craft near sort of like the the edge of the harbor they got hit with the wake you know obviously a a full speed ship is going to cause a significant wake and you know there were a couple injuries that actually did US send send a couple people to the hospital um but it seems like minor injuries uh as far as what was the cause of the incident nobody knows or if they do know they're not saying so uh the vessel is still at anchor uh outside Charleston Harbor while the US Coast Guard investigates again it's hard to say was this something more nefarious was this kind of an innocent mistake or something like that who who knows um really you just kind of have to understand that you're not going to get the full story a lot of times with this and then be okay with making decisions in that sort of you know contested environment so again not a super great week uh for critical infrastructure moving outside the United States over to Europe this week to keep things kind of short there was another cyber event in the UK so a couple of days ago um it seems like the majority of hospitals in London were actually shut down and or impacted in some way by what has been publicly stated was a deliberate Cyber attack so again most hospitals shut down it seems like the software that they Ed to to manage blood banks was probably hit the most and of course in a hospital that kind of impacts things so people who had uh regular routine surgeries uh that was shut down they had reschedule and I also have seen reports that some emergency services were affected now again this kind of brings up a huge problem within the medical industry and sort of the you know emergency services in general is that when it comes to Trauma Centers I'm not sure how they do things in the UK but in the United States uh what is supposed to happen is basically you know a level one Trauma Center within a hospital is supposed to be kind of like it's own living ecosystem it's supposed to have its own power supply it's supposed to have its own containment facilities it's supposed to basically be a little mini Hospital inside the hospital so when you see reports that a Cyber attack brought something down and it may have included the trauma center that's a little strange um well it's not strange it's just not how it's supposed to be there's supposed to be a level of uh the Trauma Centers in most hospitals are supposed to be hardened facilities against things like this they're supposed to be able to fun F you know even if you've got nothing but a a pad and paper they're supposed to be able to function I'm not saying that didn't happen with this case it just seems like the the vulnerabilities of of uh cyber systems and uh you know computerized systems those vulnerabilities have been creeping in in the name of efficiency and it seems like that may be causing some problems uh because you know if it's connected to the internet if there's some kind of you know non-air Gap system or even for air gap systems right uh it brings vulnerabilities in and things like this can strike at the worst possible time so again for those working in the healthc care field who might be you know watching this or you know seeing these events this is really really really a very important um reminder that for those people working in critical infrastructure and Health Care uh in you know emergency services in any form or fashion your Institution may be obsessed with efficiency they may be obsessed with going with you know the cheapest solution for things but when it comes down to it when you have the Cyber attack affect you when you're standing there and it's the middle of your shift you are the one who's going to have to be dealing with it so you know I I really do think that the majority of solutions for these kinds of cyber events and and other uh critical infrastructure events lie with the single worker with this single employee who says you know what let's let's let's create a little a paper backup for this you know system just in case you know let me let me write some notes down instead of taking notes on my phone let me write them down on a piece of paper you know um that sort of thing now again there's there's probably policies against that you know in some in some career Fields but still man look you don't you don't want to be on the receiving end of a Cyber attack and uh you're the one who has to deal with it so um again just a helpful reminder there's not a whole lot of information with stories like this uh for for obvious reasons uh but again just a reminder to be careful and start planning because the people usually running these institutions uh they couldn't care less they're they're really just trying to to maintain efficiency so again just a reminder and wrapping things up keep things kind of short today uh wrapping things up with the Russian Black Sea Fleet I did want to briefly mention uh that the past few days has been hosting to significant Russian naval activity something that's not entirely uncommon however it does signal something's getting ready to happen uh most of the Russian Black Sea Fleet out of Nova aisk has departed Port uh so again we can tell this from open source satellite imagery which you can see for yourselves um I there was a a shot this morning from Sentinel uh however there's clouds over the Target in typical fashion uh so I have to wait for a sar shot to come over head to actually punch through those clouds and see what's going on um but it looks like from between June 3rd and June 6th the majority of Novis has been emptied out uh you can actually see in some of these images um where the ships were going uh and really I guess the bottom line is what does this mean uh where are these ships going I don't know uh it looks like there were a lot of landing craft though so it's really hard to say what's going to happen they could be just doing a a simple Port transfer to over to Crimea through um sylvesta pole however it seems like um this may be either some pretty substantial Combat Action or an exercise or just something to throw us off or a posturing move so it could be anything uh I guess time will tell to see what the the Russians are up to this time uh sort of on the same front I forgot to mention in the United States uh Russia has planned a naval exercise with Cuba uh to take place this coming week so in case you see any reports freaking out about it it's normal well semi-normal uh they occasionally do exercises with Cuba or down in the Caribbean area they're going to be using three surface vessels probably the same three vessels as last time uh along with a submarine so again people tend to freak out uh when these sorts of things happen but I'm not really worried about it you know the Russians are definitely trying to uh posture and poke and do what they can um due to the events going on around the world so again kind of a busy week uh but not a whole lot to really sink our teeth into as far as analysis goes it's one of those weeks where it's like cool that happened let's you know move on so uh wrapping things up and keeping things kind of short today uh I'll mention the intercepted ghost net reports things that I picked up uh from my station here uh got quite a few uh news reports throughout the week uh however I was only only able to get some pieces of messages on Thursday so uh this is what I was able to pick up from my own uh local station here uh a few people talking about um the weather out in the uh Midwest and the west region especially in Texas and Oklahoma and places like that again just getting hammered with uh storms this this time of year uh also somebody was talking about an explosion in sville New Jersey at the power plant there I that up and I I forgot to mention that that was a couple of weeks ago uh there was an explosion there so hard to say what the source of that was but I I wish I could have gotten more of that report but it was it was really really faint coming in for me so I wasn't able to really really get it that that well um and then also another partial report I picked up somebody was talking about uh sort of international incidents with regards to uh Germany and the United States and Ukraine and whole um Munitions thing where the United States has said that well you know Ukraine can now strike Target Targets in Russia more deliberately with us Munitions and same thing with uh Germany as well so again somebody talking about the international escalations but again I only got just a piece of that report so kind of a quick day I know it's been really uh busy for a lot of people so I thought I would kind of keep this one short this time of year starts getting pretty busy uh however there's there's oftentimes not a whole lot of um analysis to be made for some of these events really we just kind of have to wait and see how these things work out and just be mindful especially with with uh the potential for cyber attacks you know there's an election coming up in the UK there's an election coming up in the United States and every single election season but especially this one it seems like things just start being impacted all over the country and all around the world um you see a lot of stuff kicking up uh and kicking off so again something to be mindful of there's probably not a whole lot that most people can do with regards to these things like this but just just be careful be mindful pay attention try to do better um and recognize that very very small actions on the part of the individual person who who tries to care about bettering their world that's really going to to make a lot of difference so again you know Food For Thought to kind of close on today um but but here are your sources for the week again not a whole lot um just kind of keeping things pretty light this time around and I guess we'll uh call it a day so again thank you all for watching thank you all for contributing this week uh and I guess we will see you next week so I'll uh see you guys again on Monday and uh we'll start yet another week of these crazy times right so thank you all for watching and we will see you next time and as always fight in the shade