Russia preparing for war??

The first story, I would say is 100 per cent  accurate.  I am posting the second, although my instinct tells me it is of doubtful veracity.  

It is one of those stories that cites unnamed and unverifiable sources that often comes from sites like Beforeitsnews.

On the other hand, I often have to make some sort of judgement of material that is often informal. If we were just to rely on RT or Sputnik we would not have the full picture either.

We are acting in the fog of war.

I have to point out that I do not agree with, or stand by every piece I put up on this site. 

Message is - read and make your own judgement.

A network error routed traffic for the UK's nuclear weapons agency through Russian telecom

By Russell Brandom

the Verge,

13 March, 2015

For the past week, something strange has been going on in the European internet. For five days, web traffic from Texas to certain addresses in the UK has been routed through Ukrainian and Russian telecoms, taking a detour thousands of miles out of the way. Network traffic often takes a circuitous route as a result of network congestion or interconnection difficulties, but neither one would be enough to account for these routes. Instead, this was the result of a bad route announced by Ukraine's Vega telecom, inserting itself in between. "At this point, I have to believe this was an innocent mistake by Vega," said Dyn's Doug Madory, who first discovered the redirection, "but it's concerning nonetheless."

This phenomenon is known as "route hijacking," and it's a common security concern for network engineers and security researchers alike. It's particularly disconcerting because of the sensitive nature of many of the sites involved. Among the dozens of sites involved was the UK's Atomic Weapons 

Establishment, which is tasked with managing and delivering the UK's nuclear warheads, as well as the UK's official mail service, the Royal Mail. US defense contractor Lockheed Martin was also running a VPN connection that was caught up in the redirection.

VPN traffic would have been encrypted, as well as almost all email traffic, but anyone listening in on email traffic would have been able to read the IP addresses of the parties involved. Even worse, any site serving data over unencrypted HTTP would have been entirely in the clear, and potentially exposed to injection attacks by a malicious third party with access to an intermediate network. (Both AWE and Royal Mail serve their sites over unencrypted HTTP.) Because of the public nature of the routing table, it's easy to see exactly when and how the route hijacking occurred, but why is still a mystery, and we can't say for sure whether any data was altered in transit.

It's still likely that the redirection was simply an innocent error, but it underscores the insecure nature of the global routing system. While much of the web has grown more wary of digital attack, routing is still based on trust, with networks freely announcing routes and friendly telecoms adopting them as a matter of habit. As a result, inefficient and potentially insecure routes like this one can linger for days without being corrected, without the parties involved ever being aware of them.

The full traceroute is below, with the Ukrainian telecom visible at line 11 and Russian interconnection at 12 and 13:

Trace from Houston, TX to Atomic Weapons Establishment at 03:22 Mar 12, 2015

1 *
2 173.193.118.140 ae12.dar02.sr02.hou02.networklayer.com 2.948
3 50.97.18.246 ae9.bbr02.sr02.hou02.networklayer.com 0.3
4 173.192.18.220 ae3.bbr02.eq01.dal03.networklayer.com 8.133
5 173.192.18.135 ae1.bbr01.tl01.atl01.networklayer.com 28.524
6 173.192.18.152 ae0.bbr01.eq01.wdc02.networklayer.com 42.033
7 173.192.18.195 ae7.bbr02.eq01.wdc02.networklayer.com 40.167
8 50.97.18.215 ae0.bbr01.eq01.ams02.networklayer.com 118.838
9 50.97.18.217 ae0.bbr02.xn01.fra01.networklayer.com 124.983
10 50.97.18.218 ae7.bbr01.xn01.fra01.networklayer.com 124.133
11 80.81.194.177 edge-3-2-5-231.kiev.ucomline.net 154.988
12 87.245.247.157 ae2-241.RT.NTL.KIV.UA.retn.net 155.174
13 87.245.233.238 ae2-10.RT.TC2.LON.UK.retn.net 158.221
14 195.66.224.10 linx1.ukcore.bt.net 161.442
15 194.72.31.130 (BTnet inter-pop routes, GB) 166.986
16 62.172.103.89 core1-pos1-1.birmingham.ukcore.bt.net 163.205
17 62.6.196.70 vhsaccess1-pos7-0.birmingham.fixed.bt.net 164.139
18 132.153.3.254 (Atomic Weapons Establishment, GB) 177.4

Russia Declares “State Of War” With UK, Nuclear Orders Issued

Your Newswire,

15 March, 2015

The Russian Ministry of Defence (MoD) has declared a “state of war” – activating the “Dead Hand” nuclear order issued to The Strategic Missile Forces (SMF). 

The order came after it was discovered that the UK had nuclear warheads pointed towards Russia and were apparently preparing a first strike against military and civilian targets. 

The source of the intelligence is unknown, but its possible that the accident re-routing of sensitive UK nuclear data through Russia this week could have provided Russia with the necessary intelligence to reach their conc

The intention of the nuclear forces of the UK preparing a first strike against the Federation, this report says, was revealed by Federal Security Services (FSB) electronic intelligence experts working in conjunction with Kaspersky Lab who discovered last month a massive US National Security Agency (NSA) cyber espionage programme targeting not just Russia, but everyone else on Earth.

Both the FSB and Kaspersky Lab experts, the MoD reports, were able to swiftly reverse engineer the computer code(s) involved in this massive NSA spying operation which then enabled them to electronically obtain the launching codes and coordinates of all the UK’s nuclear weapons showing their plan to launch a first strike against the Federation during the week of 15 March.

Though information of this highly successful FSB-Kaspersky Lab intelligence operation has been suppressed in the West, some counter-news of it has been reported by a few technical websites, including The Verge which in their article reported yesterday titled “A Network ErrorRouted Traffic For The UK’s Nuclear Weapons Agency Through RussianTelecom”, in part, says:

“For the past week, something strange has been going on in the European internet. For five days, web traffic from Texas to certain addresses in the UK has been routed through Ukrainian and Russian telecoms, taking a detour thousands of miles out of the way. Network traffic often takes a circuitous route as a result of network congestion or interconnection difficulties, but neither one would be enough to account for these routes. Instead, this was the result of a bad route announced by Ukraine’s Vega telecom, inserting itself in between.

It’s particularly disconcerting because of the sensitive nature of many of the sites involved. Among the dozens of sites involved was the UK’s Atomic Weapons Establishment, which is tasked with managing and delivering the UK’s nuclear warheads, as well as the UK’s official mail service, the Royal Mail. US defense contractor Lockheed Martin was also running a VPN connection that was caught up in the redirection.”

Upon the MoD’s confirmation of the UK’s intention to launch a nuclear first strike against the Federation, this report continues, Russian military forces throughout the country were immediately activated with a special emphasis placed upon massive rocket-artillery maneuvers on the southern borders.

Foreign Minister Lavrov, this report notes, further warned the West this week that Moscow would respond to NATO “in an adequate way” as thousands of Norwegian troops neared the Russian border this week preparing for the influx of a US Marine Expeditionary Brigade, estimated to number between 14-18,000, whose tanks, armored vehicles, artillery, ammunition and battle equipment have flooded into Norway this past year.

The MoD also in this report states that the Ministry for Civil Defence, Emergencies and Elimination of Consequences of Natural Disasters (EMERCOM) and the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD) previously issued an immediate travel ban on firefighters, ambulance drivers rescue troopers, tens of thousands of police officers, prison guards, and other law enforcement agencies who are deemed critically needed during times of war.

Also to be noted, though not contained in this MoD report, are reports from London that Russian personnel and officers have evacuated their embassy and that a mass of activity is now being reported throughout Moscow, especially in and around Red Square.

As President Putin, top political officials and military leaders are now under MoD “protection”, other reports (of unknown quality) state that the Kremlin has also “advised” journalists not to leave Moscow and to prepare for a “major announcement” over the next few days.

Though not specifically stated in this MoD report, but strongly eluded to, are that crisis negotiations between Moscow and the West are currently ongoing and have led within the past few hours to NATO’s Secretary General, Jens Stoltenberg, stating that the alliance does not plan to interfere in the conflict in east Ukraine…”Ukraine is not a member of NATO, so there is a difference between Ukraine and NATO members, because the security guarantee is for NATO allies.”

This NATO “assurance”, however, may do little to calm this crisis and avert nuclear war after the Federation’s Investigative Committee launched a criminal case against Robert Scales, a retired US major general and a Fox News military analyst, who said in a live broadcast this week that the only way for the US to turn the tide in Ukraine is to start killing Russians… “It is Game, Set and Match in Ukraine. The only way the US can have any effect in this region and turn the tide is to start killing Russians. Killing so many Russians that even Putin’s media can’t hide the fact that Russians are returning to the Motherland in body bags.”