How Obama's policies left the US government vulnerable to Russian hackers

The real story with Russia was not the series of stupid meetings between Trump campaign officials and diplomats who were trying to set them up, playing on Trump's admiration of Putin. The story that should have been all over the front pages then, and now, is the complete lack of security infrastructure across our government, Obama's complete inability to protect the country from cybersecurity threats, and the way Russians were able to easily take advantage of all our vulnerabilities throughout the last 8 years to make a series of devastating blows that are only coming out to public awareness now.

Many of these issues came up during the last two years of the administration when he was busy crying "Russian hackers", while Russian hackers were having a ball right under his eye. This combination of lack of situational awareness, recklessness, arrogance, and ignorance of even the basic factors to take into consideration was evident in Debbie Wasserman-Schultz's watch at the DNC, among Democratic Congressmen in the Pakistani IT staffer scandal, with Hillary's various misuses of email, with John Podesta falling easy bait to a phishing trick, and so much more. But all of that turned out to be just the tip of the iceberg, as we are now learning, mere red flags compared to the utter disaster that was taking place behind the close doors, with Edward Snowden being but the first red flag and warning sign of just how unprepared was our counterintelligence for the combination of cybersecurity threats and social engineering from Russians and other actors.

Much of it has come out within this past year, and with regards to cybersecurity, in the last couple of weeks, with the story of the NSA breach and access to Pentagon source code. Meanwhile our own reaction has been belated and laughable. Over two years after Kaspersky was used to retrieve NSA data, the government finally advised its agencies not to use that software. I don't even want to know what happened after the Russians got the source code and whether that software is still in place, but my guess is, not much has changed. The pervasive problem of such proportions should be a national scandal. Obama left the front door open while looking for boogeymen out in the back. Thanks to the atrocious decisionmaking throughout his administration, the country has been vulnerable, basically naked, to Russian hacking. But the press, instead of thoroughly investigating the extent of the damage and excoriating the officials responsible for it, are dripping their findings, while covering up who's really at fault.

The cybersecurity breaches of the past 8 years deserve a thorough, competent investigation. If Mueller is anything other than a political hack with an agenda, he should be looking at this main stage event, while also investigating whatever improprieties came out from last year's election and the financial shenanigans from some of the actors. I am afraid, however, that most people are not interested in the "whole truth". They just want to be fed stories convenient to propping up their preconceptions.

Obama-Era Cybersecurity Protocols Deserve Scrutiny

Under the Obama administration:

* Russians ratcheted up fake news and other types of information warfare

* Attempted to hack voting machines

* Snowden fiasco took place

* Russians stole NSA data using Kaspersky (despite which fact, US government government proceeded to continue using Kaspersky software until very recently)

* Russians got the source code for Pentagon cybersecurity software

* There were many major hacks

* Hillary's security problems

* DNC server security breach and repeated attempted attacks on various Republican presidential candidates and entites

* The Congressional Pakistani IT staffer scandal is set in place with thousands of unauthorized access units to emails and servers, not to mentioned stolen equipment, various frauds, etc etc.

So we get a Russia probe exploring Donald Trump's connections to Russia, but no probe on poor security protocols promoted by the Obama administration, and in place to this day. Why is that? Inquiring minds want to know.

Is Nothing Sacred? Russian hackers get the NSA

Everyone's all upset about the missing DNC server which may or may not have been hacked by the Russians, and possibly the rest of the world; meanwhile, Russian hackers made their way into NSA and got juicy info on US cyber Defense. And that's not counting the epic fail last year, when Hewlett Packard basically gave the Russian cybersecurity firm the source code for Pentagon, if not more.

This proves 2 things: 1. Nothing is unhackable 2. Throwing money at a problem may actually contribute to the problem.

Before allocating any more funding for security to the supposedly secure intelligence agencies, Congress should ask some hard questions about lessons learned from the Edward Snowden fiasco, and the measures they are taking to keep the enemy out. I will not be surprised if, at the end of the instant investigation, it will turn out that it wasn't the superior skills of the Russian hackers, but a combination of indiscretion and various security oversights that did NSA in.

How the Obama Administration Invited Foxes to Guard Chicken Houses While Crying Wolf

In the midst of the Russian hacking scandal in 2016, the HP (Hewlett Packard)  allowed Russian security firm to scrutinize cyberdefense system, which was used as a cybersecurity nerve center for much of the US military. That action may have alerted the Russians to the vulnerabilities in that system. Russians reviewed the source code - and the US intelligence and the Obama administration were aware of that and allowed this move to take place.

They then made lots of noise about DNC and Russian hackers and voting machines. When the real Russian cyberscandal lay elsewhere. The Obama administration was notorious throughout the tech world for its poor implementation of security safeguards across all agencies, and across the homeland security world, for allow Russian "diplomats" to covert near US infrastructure in various states they clearly shouldn't have been.

Now we learn that US just let the Russians examine source code for central Pentagon cybersecurity hub, with nary a word about it to the public. That's not only letting fox guard the chicken house, but inviting the fox to be there, opening all doors, and then crying wolf while pointing somewhere at a distance. Metaphorical heads should roll.