Month: March 2018

Russians released anti-Clinton video game weeks before election

Markozen.com Politics

CNN

Russians created an anti-Hillary Clinton video game called “Hilltendo” and tried to make it go viral in the weeks before the 2016 U.S. presidential election, CNN has determined through a review of internet records and computer code.

It’s one of the strangest ways yet discovered that Russians tried to influence the American election. But it’s indicative of just how creative Russian internet trolls were willing to be.

 On the surface, it looks like a silly, Flash-based game of the sort that populated the internet for years. Yet Hilltendo appears to be more sophisticated than that. In fact, it may indicate an intent to zero in on the people who played the game, track their behavior on social media, and hit them later with micro-targeted advertisements, according to several website programmers and cybersecurity experts who viewed the code at CNN’s request.

The evidence is embedded in the website’s code, internet records, the methodical campaign to make Hilltendo gain popularity online, and a Russian software developer’s ties to the Kremlin-linked Internet Research Agency.

Jonathon Morgan, whose company New Knowledge tracks the spread of misinformation online, said the game is an example of how sophisticated and expansive Russian propaganda is and why it’s difficult for any one social media platform to solve the problem.

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The game consisted of three levels, starting with this one: “Help Hillary delete as many classified emails as possible before she is caught.” Players controlled a Hillary Clinton character who sits on a missile and eliminates emails, all while avoiding FBI agents.

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The next level asked: “How much money can Hillary get from the Arab states?” At the top of the screen, nations’ flags drop money. At the bottom, the Clinton character holds a basket to collect the cash as it falls.

The final level challenged users to “Help Hillary throw the Constitution as far as possible,” and it included caricatures of then-President Barack Obama and former President Bill Clinton.

The game’s website had Facebook and Google tracking software embedded on it. This software would have made it possible for the game’s creators to identify people who played the game and later target them with advertising elsewhere on the Web, including on Facebook, potentially to direct them to disinformation campaigns.

Hilltendo would have been a relatively simple game to build, said Brian Moore, a New York-based developer who built the viral anti-Republican video game “GOP Arcade.”

“You could get this out in as quickly as 12 hours. It’s a very simple game. They could have found a template to build the game on. The animations are pretty stock. It’s not anything too insane,” he told CNN. “The art is the hardest part. It’s pretty polished.”

How CNN made the Russian connection

Hilltendo.com, like any website, is kept online by a computer network with an Internet Protocol address. Many websites can be randomly grouped together on the same IP address — 17 different websites that have nothing to do with anti-American Russian activity once had the IP address eventually used by Hilltendo.

But records examined by cybersecurity expert Paul Vixie and CNN appear to show that, beginning in May 2016, the hosting company dedicated this IP address to a single client. From that point on, the only new websites assigned to that address were Hilltendo.com, PlayWithHillary.com, and BlackFist.pro. BlackFist.pro has previously been shown to have been run by the Internet Research Agency, the Kremlin-linked corporation indicted by U.S. Justice Department Special Counsel Robert Mueller last month.

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Smoking Orangutan

Markozen.com Animals, Offbeat

BBC

Indonesia zoo condemned over smoking orangutan

smoke

Animal rights activists have condemned staff at a zoo where an orangutan was filmed smoking.

A visitor flicked a cigarette into the enclosure at Bandung zoo, and Odon, 22, picked it up and started puffing. Footage of the incident has gone viral.

Zoo staff said the incident was regrettable, and that the guard may have been taking a break at the time.

Indonesia has one of the highest smoking rates in the world and a bad record of animal protection.

“There’s actually a sign”

A zoo spokesperson said there are measures in place to prevent exactly this from happening.

“There’s actually a sign at the location which says visitors are not allowed to give food and cigarettes to the animals,” said spokesperson Sulhan.

Penguin ‘Supercolony’ Found in Antarctica

Markozen.com Nature

Time

Scientists have discovered a previously unknown “supercolony” of more than 1.5 million rare penguins on an island located off the Antarctic Peninsula. The researchers from Stony Brook University discovered the enormous colony of Adelie Penguins after analyzing satellite imagery of the island. The population of Adelie Penguins had been previously thought to be in decline.

I Think Spaced Based Aliens Are Checking On Us

Markozen.com Paranormal

A morning news team in Milwaukee were left almost speechless when a live shot of the city skyline showed a strange collection of odd flying objects.

The weird scene occurred on Tuesday morning before dawn as the anchors for WITI in Wisconsin were transitioning between segments and the program showed the usually-standard live look over the city.

However, in this particular instance, one of the newscasters noticed something amiss, asking “are those fireworks” as a series of anomalies swirled around in the sky.

The live broadcast then went silent as the anchors attempted to decipher what they were watching with the same newscaster wondering if they were seeing aliens.

“It’s getting weirder by the second,” exclaimed another anchor who asked aloud, “are we rolling on that?”

As one can imagine, the clip generated a considerable amount of interest among UFO enthusiasts both for the strange nature of the anomalies as well as the venue in which the video was filmed.

Fortunately, though, a subsequent investigation into the matter by the TV station turned up what appears to be the source for the ‘flying saucers.’

It appears that the objects were, in fact, just seagulls that appeared to be illuminated by light reflecting off of their white feathers.

While further video evidence suggests that the ‘bird theory’ is correct, the remarkable moment for the morning team is a good indication that, should an alien invasion ever actually occur, they’d be just as mystified as the rest of us.