Election 2016 Thread

[Brian Peacock]

An interesting and we'll qualified article. Basically, while doing DNS proxy tracking some boffins noticed what they thought was malware on a Trump server that was being pinging at a Trump organisation on 5th Avenue from a Moscow server called Alfa Bank. Deeper traffic analysis discounted bots but indicated pings going back and forth during NY and Moscow office hours, and that the Trump side of the exchange was coming from a single wierdly configured server that was only dealing with particular communications. Pinging that Trump server returned errors, so boffins concluded it wasn't an open server but one set up to receive from a small number of specific addresses only. Some traffic seems to have been routed through at least one other US company whose own security checks said they had made no connections to either the Trump organisation or Alfa Bank other than getting some spam from another marketing firm on behald of Trump properties. The journalist showed the logs to independant experts who confirmed that they appeared to reflect 'human-level communications' between mail servers configured for secrecy. When NYT journalists started asking questions about Trump's relationship with Alfa the Trump mail server was shut down, and a new one configured for secrecy appeared to handle the traffic betwee the 5th Ave office and Alfa. This is telling because it rules out accidental or random communication from Alfa to Trump as Alfa was the first ping to the new server. The Trump campaign says there is no communication between Alfa and Trump.

[Forty Two]

The Community of Concerned Nerds are academics who heard about the suspected Russian involvement in hacking to interfere with the US elections, so they set out to benevolently research whether the Russians were hacking any other participants in the election process, including Donald Trump's organization. So, they searched DNS information, which is the domain name system, and is where one server looks up the IP address of another server in order to send email. There is an "elite group of malware hunters" with access to a "comprehensive logs of communications between servers..." (sic). The article states that this unnamed, but elite, group of scientists have been "entrusted" with a nearly complete record of all servers in the world communicating with each other. i.e., this group is benevolent (wants only to protect the integrity of the elections) and has the most comprehensive information available.

One of these malware hunters, by the code name "Tea Leaves," by happenstance, found that a Moscow bank "kept irregularly pinging a Trump-registered server on Fifth Avenue." Pinging means asking for the IP information in advance of sending an email. This Tea Leaves said that the irregular pinging "resembled a pattern of human conversation" during New York Business hours (which would be about 8am to 7pm Eastern US time and Moscow business hours (which would be about 3pm to 1am, Eastern US time) -- Moscow is 7 hours ahead of NY, so business hours combined for both cities would be pretty much a continuous 16+hour time frame.

The author then explains that the Trump server "seemed weird." It was originally set up in 2009 to handle large volume marketing and emails related to Trump's businesses. However, 7 years later, in 2016, the use was almost nonexistent - with one individually himself saying he got more mail in a day (himself alone) than this server appeared to handle. They also "pinged" the server, but received error messages back.

The article notes that the logs showed communication between the Trump server and Spectrum Health, a company in Miichigan. They contacted Spectrum Health, which said they looked at the information and found that a marketing company for Trump hotels had been sending out spam which went to Spectrum, but otherwise there were no emails, chat, texts, or other communications between the servers.

87% of the traffic from the Trump server, and the the malware "Concerned Nerds" found that the Trump server was not an open mail server. The author claims that this looked like a "hotline" where the Trump Server and Alpha Bank could communicate without anyone else also being able to communicate on the server, and without anyone else being able to see the details of the communications. This is, according to one of the author's sources, what crime syndicates do.

The author then notes that accusations were leveled (by the Clinton Campaign) that Trump was backed by Putin, and that Trump denied that categorically, saying "I have nothing to do with Russia." The author noted that this may be sincere and correct. However, the denial spurred the "Concerned Nerds" who just want to protect the integrity of the election, to dig deeper and deeper to find something that they were sure would contradict that sweeping statement.

The author noted, "We can see a trail of transmissions, but we can’t see the actual substance of the communications. And we can’t even say with complete certitude that the servers exchanged email." So, Trump may be sincere and correct, and as far as they know, they can't show that any emails were actually exchanged, and this was a 7 year old server that had formerly been used to send mass-email marketing, but which appears almost unused in 2016, but the Concerned Nerds were certain they'd find something to contradict the statement made by Trump that he had nothing to do with Russia.

The article then discusses Alpha Bank, which was a post-Soviet banking creation which was formed in some kind of a rush after communism fell in order to create a private economy. They refer to the founder of the bank as having risen pretty fast, in about a decade after the Soviet Union disintegrated, the founder of AlphaBank took advantage of the new system and built a window washing company, and then a food company, and then he helped form Alpha Bank as part of a group. There is a quote from him where he admits benefitting from the new system and that the distribution of money after the fall of the Soviet Union was "not objective." To build up the bank, the founder referred to in the article -- Fridman - recruited a "skilled and shrewd operator" named Pyotr Aven, who, in the early 90s, "worked with Putin the St. Petersburg government" (author does not specify what capacity, but says that Aven apparently helped Putin get out of some corruption allegations, again no specifics). A quick reference to Wikipedia reveals that in the 1980s, Aven was also an adviser to the Michael Gorbachev administration, and then moved to Austria to work in the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis. In 1991 he was appointed Minister of Foreign Economic Relations in Russia for then acting Prime Minister of Russia, Yegor Gaida. He was a representative to the G-7 in 1992, and he worked in Russia to make the ruble convertible currency and to liberalize foreign trade with Russia. After that, he joined Alfa Bank in Russia in about 1993 and spent the next decade or so building it from a smaller Russian bank to a larger Russian bank.

The way the author words the artilcle's reference to Putin is a bit vague. Looking at Wikipedia, in 1990 to 1994, Putin worked for the Mayor of St. Petersburg, whereas Aven worked for the Prime Minister of Russia. The "corruption" referred to was actually a fuck-up, not a corruption allegation. Apparently, the allegation was the Putin allowed about $93 million worth of metals to be shipped overseas with understated pricing, which was in exchange for foreign food aid which never arrived.

There is no reference that I can find to (a) Aven "working with" Putin in the "St. Petersburg government" -- Aven worked for the Russian government (in St. Petersburg), and Putin worked for the city government, or (b) that Aven did anything to get Putin out of his hot water on the metals for food aid deal.

The article then refers to "Alpha's Oligarchs" who "occupied an unusual position in Putin's firmament." That's rather colorful, but it's unclear how the people running Alfa Bank were "oligarchs." It was a bank that had shareholders, and the shareholders ran the company, just as "oligarchical" as any other private company. The unusual position is described as "insiders but not the closest ring of power" and "like Putin's judo pals." But, up until 1996 Putin was in the St. Petersburg City government, not the Russian government. In 1996 to 1997, he was Deputy Chief of the Presidential Property Management Department in Moscow, which was for the Russian government. Putin was responsible for the foreign property of the state and organized transfer of the former assets of the Soviet Union and Communist Party to the Russian Federation, according to wikipedia. In 1997, President Boris Yeltsin appointed Putin to his presidential staff. In 1998-1999, he rose to a premiership, and in 1999 to 2000 he became President of the Russian Federation.

The article goes on to discuss how good Alfa Bank has done in the west, never being sanctioned and having basically an unblemished business record with a reputation for philanthropy, created fellowships, and won awards for citizenship in the US. Alfa claims to have significant business interests in the West, and even appeared on the logs of White House visitors in the Obama Administration.

Tea Leaves is described as having plotted the data of DNS lookups, which he said peaked during the Democratic National Convention. As noted above, this isn't much traffic (looks like fewer emails than one guy got in a day), and there is no telling that these are emails (they're just pings).

Representatives of Alfa Bank were contacted, but they denied having any relationship with Trump. The article then implies that after that question was asked, Trump shut down the server, and opened a new host name, which allowed traffic to the same Alfa Bank server. They say this must have been deliberate. But, there is no reference that this new host name was, or was not, also communicating with many other servers around the world. The article points out that it's a private server, so they can't get as much information as if it were a public server.

The article goes on to say that traffic between the Trump server and the bank never continued after the new host name was set up. It "stopped cold" they say, after people started asking questions. The article speculates that the people asking questions "may" have deterred people from continuing the communications on the server ,which communications were never established to be taking place in the first instance (other than the pinging, which does not mean anyone is communicating substantively).

When asked the Alfa Bank folks said, neither "Alfa Bank nor its principals, including Mikhail Fridman and Petr Aven, have or have had any contact with Mr. Trump or his organizations. Fridman and Aven have never met Mr. Trump nor have they or Alfa Bank had any business dealings with him. Neither Alfa nor its officers have sent Mr. Trump or his organizations any emails, information or money." So, that's a pretty clear and concise response there. No hedges and no wiggle room. They never sent Trump (or his organization) ANY emails, ANY information or ANY money.

When asked about the pinging, Alfa responded - they are still doing a "deep dive into the Alfa Bank systems. Its leading theory is that Alfa Bank's servers may have been responding with common DNS look ups to spam sent to it by a marketing server." So, Alfa is saying what the article said in the beginning was completely plausible. An 2009 Trump organization server used for marketing emails was still around and was sending out pings for DNS lookup, but not actually sending emails.

When asked, the Trump organization said "The email server, set up for marketing purposes and operated by a third-party, has not been used since 2010. The current traffic on the server from Alphabank's [sic] IP address is regular DNS server traffic—not email traffic. To be clear, The Trump Organization is not sending or receiving any communications from this email server. The Trump Organization has no communication or relationship with this entity or any Russian entity."

In conclusion, the article says "What the scientists amassed wasn’t a smoking gun. It’s a suggestive body of evidence that doesn’t absolutely preclude alternative explanations..."

Well, right, it wasn't a "smoking gun", but also the article doesn't even say what the "body of evidence" suggests. Whatever the author thinks the "body of evidence" suggests (a server created in 2009 which everyone, even the author, notes was used for sending out spam/marketing emails, and which was still around 7 years later sending out a very small amount of pings for DNS server IPs, which does not mean that any emails or other communications were ever sent, and which both Alfa Bank and Trump's organization say were never sent, and that other entities, not just Alfa Bank (e.g. Spectrum Health mentioned above) also were pinged in the same way...).

Does the author think there is a secret line of email communication from Trump to Alfa Bank where secret email communications are sent back and forth? And, does the author think that this is a connection between the Trump organization and Vladimir Putin, such that they are coordinating relative to the US election? The author doesn't say, but what else would be relevant?

So, back to the headline and subheadline. A group of computer scientists were out to determine if the Russians were interfering with the Trump campaign, but they found something they didn't expect! No, it wasn't the Spanish inquisition, it was an old server used for spam/marketing which was sitting there pinging a small number of DNS addresses. Nobody knows if the Russians were involved in hacking or interfering in the election or the DNC, but some people suggest that it was the Russians, and these guys wanted to make sure that Trump wasn't also being effected, or bring it to light if he too was being hacked by the Russians, if indeed the Russians were doing any hacking at all. What they found was that there is a server which might constitute a means of the Trump organization to communicate with a Russian bank, but it is also plausible that it was just an old server pinging a small number of DNS addresses of the bank and others.

No way! The lack of smoke really means that there is a dire need to look for fire.

[Forty Two]

An interesting and we'll qualified article. Basically, while doing DNS proxy tracking some boffins noticed what they thought was malware on a Trump server that was being pinging at a Trump organisation on 5th Avenue from a Moscow server called Alfa Bank. Deeper traffic analysis discounted bots but indicated pings going back and forth during NY and Moscow office hours, and that the Trump side of the exchange was coming from a single wierdly configured server that was only dealing with particular communications. Pinging that Trump server returned errors, so boffins concluded it wasn't an open server but one set up to receive from a small number of specific addresses only. Some traffic seems to have been routed through at least one other US company whose own security checks said they had made no connections to either the Trump organisation or Alfa Bank other than getting some spam from another marketing firm on behald of Trump properties. The journalist showed the logs to independant experts who confirmed that they appeared to reflect 'human-level communications' between mail servers configured for secrecy. When NYT journalists started asking questions about Trump's relationship with Alfa the Trump mail server was shut down, and a new one configured for secrecy appeared to handle the traffic betwee the 5th Ave office and Alfa. This is telling because it rules out accidental or random communication from Alfa to Trump as Alfa was the first ping to the new server. The Trump campaign says there is no communication between Alfa and Trump.

And Alfa states there is no communication between Alfa and Trump or Trump's organization.

If it is found that there was even one email between the Trump organization and Alfa, the concrete denials of both Trump and Alfa will be blown out of the water. The denials of communications are not weasel words and they provide no wiggle room that I can see. If that server was used for communications, and someone finds it out, then Trump can't get out of it.

The question becomes, of course, what would be the import of the Trump organization communicating, as many other organizations do, with a large Russian bank. The article tries to paint a connection between two main players in Alfa Bank and Vladimir Putin, but other than the fact that they were, in the early 1990s, "insiders but not in the closest inner circle" of the then head of the St. Petersburg City foreign trade committee and who were more "like" his "judo buddies" at the time, what is the connection painted by the article?

But, the article ends up concluding that there is no evidence of any communications at all between the organizations, that the pinging did not mean that people were emailing or communicating, and that the server was an old 2009 marketing/spam server whose traffic in pings had dwindled to less than the number of emails received by one of the Concerned Nerds received in a day, and some of which were to entities like Spectrum Health, which also denied any communications with the Trump organization but said that the pings seemed to them like spam-type pings. Alfa also said basically the same thing - no communications of any kind with the Trump organization.

So...... ?

[Brian Peacock]

Yeah, it raises more questions than it answers. However, the article does point out that after the server was renamed Alfa couldn't and wouldn't have pinged it at random or by accident.

[Forty Two]

Yeah, it raises more questions than it answers. However, the article does point out that after the server was renamed Alfa couldn't and wouldn't have pinged it at random or by accident.

The article doesn't say Alfa pinged it at all. They said when the new "host name" was made, a ping went out to Alfa (which was one of the servers that the Trump server had been pinging for DNS address previously). The article does not say that pings did not go out to other servers. That bit, which might be relevant if Alfa was the ONLY server to be pinged, was left out.

Changing the host name, incidentally, doesn't mean the server was taken down. A server's host name is easily changed. Change the host name doesn't mean the server will act differently after the name change. It can still send out the ping.

If this was an old marketing/spam server used up until 2010, and which was just left there for several years unused, and then it was brought to the attention of the organization that it's sending out these pings, there is nothing suspicious about an organization having its IT department stop it from doing that, and nothing suspicious in changing the host name. Changing the host name would mean that pings to the old host name would not work anymore. So, create the new host name, and enter code to stop the outgoing pinging after you do that. That would make sense.

The article is not specific about what "questions" are still raised. It ends with the note that further explanation is needed, but hasn't Alfa and Trump organization, and Spectrum Health, all given very clear explanations without any sort of weasel words? The article is not clear what else can be provided or should be provided.

[Tyrannical]

650 thousand emails lol. That's about 600 thousand more than hillary turned over while under subpoena. Jail time lol
Trump I think will be the first president with a daughter as a cabinet member. Unless she's secretary of state.

[Brian Peacock]

Yeah, it raises more questions than it answers. However, the article does point out that after the server was renamed Alfa couldn't and wouldn't have pinged it at random or by accident.

The article doesn't say Alfa pinged it at all. They said when the new "host name" was made, a ping went out to Alfa (which was one of the servers that the Trump server had been pinging for DNS address previously). The article does not say that pings did not go out to other servers. That bit, which might be relevant if Alfa was the ONLY server to be pinged, was left out.

Changing the host name, incidentally, doesn't mean the server was taken down. A server's host name is easily changed. Change the host name doesn't mean the server will act differently after the name change. It can still send out the ping.

If this was an old marketing/spam server used up until 2010, and which was just left there for several years unused, and then it was brought to the attention of the organization that it's sending out these pings, there is nothing suspicious about an organization having its IT department stop it from doing that, and nothing suspicious in changing the host name. Changing the host name would mean that pings to the old host name would not work anymore. So, create the new host name, and enter code to stop the outgoing pinging after you do that. That would make sense.

The article is not specific about what "questions" are still raised. It ends with the note that further explanation is needed, but hasn't Alfa and Trump organization, and Spectrum Health, all given very clear explanations without any sort of weasel words? The article is not clear what else can be provided or should be provided.

From the article.

Four days later, on Sept. 27, the Trump Organization created a new host name, trump1.contact-client.com, which enabled communication to the very same server via a different route. When a new host name is created, the first communication with it is never random. To reach the server after the resetting of the host name, the sender of the first inbound mail has to first learn of the name somehow. It’s simply impossible to randomly reach a renamed server. “That party had to have some kind of outbound message through SMS, phone, or some noninternet channel they used to communicate [the new configuration],” Paul Vixie told me. The first attempt to look up the revised host name came from Alfa Bank. “If this was a public server, we would have seen other traces,” Vixie says. “The only look-ups came from this particular source.”

[pErvinalia]

An interesting and we'll qualified article. Basically, while doing DNS proxy tracking some boffins noticed what they thought was malware on a Trump server that was being pinging at a Trump organisation on 5th Avenue from a Moscow server called Alfa Bank. Deeper traffic analysis discounted bots but indicated pings going back and forth during NY and Moscow office hours, and that the Trump side of the exchange was coming from a single wierdly configured server that was only dealing with particular communications. Pinging that Trump server returned errors, so boffins concluded it wasn't an open server but one set up to receive from a small number of specific addresses only. Some traffic seems to have been routed through at least one other US company whose own security checks said they had made no connections to either the Trump organisation or Alfa Bank other than getting some spam from another marketing firm on behald of Trump properties. The journalist showed the logs to independant experts who confirmed that they appeared to reflect 'human-level communications' between mail servers configured for secrecy. When NYT journalists started asking questions about Trump's relationship with Alfa the Trump mail server was shut down, and a new one configured for secrecy appeared to handle the traffic betwee the 5th Ave office and Alfa. This is telling because it rules out accidental or random communication from Alfa to Trump as Alfa was the first ping to the new server. The Trump campaign says there is no communication between Alfa and Trump.

Ok. That's certainly a mystery. So a mail server offering emails services to a russian bank?? If they wanted to communicate secretly, then there would be better ways. But having said that, Trump is fucking stupid after all.

Here's a theory: It was hosting a bitcoin wallet that Trump uses to pay off the blackmail for the 14 year old Russian girl he shagged back in the 90's.

[Forty Two]

650 thousand emails lol. That's about 600 thousand more than hillary turned over while under subpoena. Jail time lol
Trump I think will be the first president with a daughter as a cabinet member. Unless she's secretary of state.

If they find work-related emails which were not turned over previously, and which would have been found had there been no deleting and bleaching and hammering, well, then Hillary will have an issue with lying to the FBI. That is what usually gets these folks in trouble. Like Martha Stewart -- she really only did jail time because she lied to the FBI and SEC. Petraeus too, wasn't truthful when investigators asked him about his notebooks.

[pErvinalia]

An interesting and we'll qualified article. Basically, while doing DNS proxy tracking some boffins noticed what they thought was malware on a Trump server that was being pinging at a Trump organisation on 5th Avenue from a Moscow server called Alfa Bank. Deeper traffic analysis discounted bots but indicated pings going back and forth during NY and Moscow office hours, and that the Trump side of the exchange was coming from a single wierdly configured server that was only dealing with particular communications. Pinging that Trump server returned errors, so boffins concluded it wasn't an open server but one set up to receive from a small number of specific addresses only. Some traffic seems to have been routed through at least one other US company whose own security checks said they had made no connections to either the Trump organisation or Alfa Bank other than getting some spam from another marketing firm on behald of Trump properties. The journalist showed the logs to independant experts who confirmed that they appeared to reflect 'human-level communications' between mail servers configured for secrecy. When NYT journalists started asking questions about Trump's relationship with Alfa the Trump mail server was shut down, and a new one configured for secrecy appeared to handle the traffic betwee the 5th Ave office and Alfa. This is telling because it rules out accidental or random communication from Alfa to Trump as Alfa was the first ping to the new server. The Trump campaign says there is no communication between Alfa and Trump.

And Alfa states there is no communication between Alfa and Trump or Trump's organization.

And of course Alfa wouldn't lie. And we certainly know that Trump never lies. No one has more beautiful respect for the truth than Trump.

[Forty Two]

Donna Brazile "resigned" from CNN because it was revealed that she definitely shared at least two debate questions ahead of time with Clinton.

The issue is largely being ignored by the mainstream media. But, I wonder why Clinton is not being asked to explain why she did not decline Brazile's offer of the information, or once she was given the information, why didn't she inform the debate committee?

Hillary accepted the advance notice of the questions, and continued to claim that she was winning fair and square.

She's a piece of shit.

[Forty Two]

An interesting and we'll qualified article. Basically, while doing DNS proxy tracking some boffins noticed what they thought was malware on a Trump server that was being pinging at a Trump organisation on 5th Avenue from a Moscow server called Alfa Bank. Deeper traffic analysis discounted bots but indicated pings going back and forth during NY and Moscow office hours, and that the Trump side of the exchange was coming from a single wierdly configured server that was only dealing with particular communications. Pinging that Trump server returned errors, so boffins concluded it wasn't an open server but one set up to receive from a small number of specific addresses only. Some traffic seems to have been routed through at least one other US company whose own security checks said they had made no connections to either the Trump organisation or Alfa Bank other than getting some spam from another marketing firm on behald of Trump properties. The journalist showed the logs to independant experts who confirmed that they appeared to reflect 'human-level communications' between mail servers configured for secrecy. When NYT journalists started asking questions about Trump's relationship with Alfa the Trump mail server was shut down, and a new one configured for secrecy appeared to handle the traffic betwee the 5th Ave office and Alfa. This is telling because it rules out accidental or random communication from Alfa to Trump as Alfa was the first ping to the new server. The Trump campaign says there is no communication between Alfa and Trump.

And Alfa states there is no communication between Alfa and Trump or Trump's organization.

And of course Alfa wouldn't lie. And we certainly know that Trump never lies. No one has more beautiful respect for the truth than Trump.

Anyone might lie. However, Alfa has made a very clear statement without wiggle room. They weren't like Donna Brazile, who tried to lie her way out of providing the debate questions when she used weasel language like "Nobody at CNN provided me with any questions," even though it was someone else who did provide her with the debate question ahead of time. Alfa, on the other hand, left no logical room for plausible denial.

Are they lying? I don't know. But, is there any evidence they're lying? Does the explanation not make sense?

Hillary lies all the time, and her supporters don't seem to care.

[pErvinalia]

Stop changing to Hillary when we are talking about the Donald.

A Russian bank would have almost zero compunction to tell the truth (if the truth was bad). If it was an American bank, then I would expect the pressure to tell the truth would be greater.

[Tyrannical]

650 thousand emails lol. That's about 600 thousand more than hillary turned over while under subpoena. Jail time lol
Trump I think will be the first president with a daughter as a cabinet member. Unless she's secretary of state.

If they find work-related emails which were not turned over previously, and which would have been found had there been no deleting and bleaching and hammering, well, then Hillary will have an issue with lying to the FBI. That is what usually gets these folks in trouble. Like Martha Stewart -- she really only did jail time because she lied to the FBI and SEC. Petraeus too, wasn't truthful when investigators asked him about his notebooks.

Weiner probe
That term will become so mundane that I won't be able to giggle about it anymore. Oh, and Martha Stewart was a stockbroker, that's why she went to jail. I think she did try to feign ignorance of the law at first. Podesta will be jailed over insider trading too thanks to wikileaks.

[Forty Two]

Stop changing to Hillary when we are talking about the Donald.

I gave an example of weasel language, which by its own terms gives reason to doubt the "denial." A denial which allows for the substance of an allegation to be true, and also the denial to be technically true, is wiggle room. What I was saying is that the Alfa Bank denial left no wiggle room. They said flat out that they had no communications, no emails, no dealings, no money transfers, nothing -- with either Trump OR the Trump organization.

If they're lying, then a single email from Alfa Bank to someone in the Trump organization, or vice versa, will prove the lie.

A Russian bank would have almost zero compunction to tell the truth (if the truth was bad). If it was an American bank, then I would expect the pressure to tell the truth would be greater.

Sure, and American banks lie all the time.

The question is, is there any proof or reason to think Alfa Bank is lying? They didn't need to say anything at all.

The "allegation" here isn't even an allegation. The article is not specific as to what is the bad conduct here. Both the Trump org and Alfa are saying there was no business dealing, no emails, no communications, no money transfers - nothing. But, what if there were? Would that be improper? Not in and of itself, certainly. The article even points out that Alfa Bank is a large Russian bank with lots of business dealings in the US, and has a reputation for being a good corporate citizen in the US, including philanthropy, and it has an unblemished regulatory history. That's not what I'm saying. That's what the article said.

So, would there be anything wrong with the Trump organization having business dealings with Alfa Bank? What would be wrong?

Now, if Trump or Alfa are lying about NOT having those business dealings, then that would certainly raise eyebrows. But, why would they be lying? And, is there evidence that they are lying? If so, what?

The article even says that it is plausible that this was an old server that was not being used anymore -- which originally was sending out spam/marketing emails - and which was no longer doing so but was still active to the extent of a small number of DNS address pings.

So? What is the contention against Trump here? Against Alfa?

The article tried to imply that there was some kind of connection between Vladimir Putin and the two main guys involved in Alfa Bank, but the connection was 25 years old and flat out said that they were not in some inner circle. The article said that the founder of Alfa bank was "like" a judo buddy to Putin, even though they provided zero detail as to what involvement Putin and the Alfa founder had together. The article tried to say that the Alfa founder "worked with Putin in St. Petersburg Administration..." but that wasn't exactly true -- they both worked in St. Petersburg, but at the time Putin was in a foreign trade office working for the MAYOR of the city of St. Petersburg, while the founder of Alfa was in St. Petersburg working for the then Prime Minister of the Russian Federation's foreign ministry - in other words, it's like a guy working for Mayor DeBlasio's administration in New York, as compared to a guy working in the US Department of Trade's New York office. The article fails to connect them up in any way beyond that. It just throws out the "suggestion" that there is some close relationship between them. And, the author doesn't even try to connect that "suggested" relationship with Donald Trump. So what if the founder of Alfa was "like a judo buddy" with Putin in 1992? What is the import of that?