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US Intel Officially Blames the Russian Government For Hacking DNC (theverge.com) 287

It's official, the Director of National Intelligence and Department of Homeland Security has blamed Russia for stealing and publishing archived emails from the Democratic National Committee in July. Wikileaks released over 19,000 emails and more than 8,000 attachments from the DNC in what was "part one of [their] new Hillary Leaks series." The Verge reports: "The recent disclosures of alleged hacked e-mails on sites like DCLeaks.com and WikiLeaks and by the Guccifer 2.0 online persona are consistent with the methods and motivations of Russian-directed efforts," the statement reads. "We believe, based on the scope and sensitivity of these efforts, that only Russia's senior-most officials could have authorized these activities." The release also mentions recent reports of attempted intrusions into voting systems in 20 different states, but says there is not yet enough evidence to attribute those attacks to the Russian government. Despite the acknowledged threat, the DNI says digital attacks are unlikely to directly alter election results. "It would be extremely difficult for someone, including a nation-state actor, to alter actual ballot counts or election results by cyber attack or intrusion," the statement reads. "This assessment is based on the decentralized nature of our election system in this country and the number of protections state and local election officials have in place." "Nevertheless," it continues, "DHS continues to urge state and local election officials to be vigilant."
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US Intel Officially Blames the Russian Government For Hacking DNC

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  • When I'm president, the Russians won't hack us any more. They won't have to.

    • But weren't we going to build a wall and have them pay for it?

      No, wait, that was for the other evil invaders...

    • by sycodon ( 149926 ) on Friday October 07, 2016 @04:08PM (#53034469)

      Wait...so Obama and the Dems havetheir panties in a bunch because Russia (supposedly) just did pretty much what Yahoo just did at the behest of the Obama and the Dems.

      WTF?

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by PopeRatzo ( 965947 )

        Wait...so Obama and the Dems havetheir panties in a bunch because Russia (supposedly) just did pretty much what Yahoo just did at the behest of the Obama and the Dems.

        Are you really that stupid? Do you understand the qualitative difference between the American government operating on American soil and the Russian government operating on American soil? You believe there is a moral equivalence?

        Let's put it this way: If a cop kills a guy in the US, there might well be a discussion about excessive force, ove

        • by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 07, 2016 @04:47PM (#53034687)

          Yeah there is a difference, our own government spying on us is far more offensive than a foreign government. I have no problem with our government spying on Russia, in fact I expect it.

          • Wait what?

            So we find that the Republicans have effectively collaborated with Putin's efforts to poison the democratic process in the US, happy to trade away US global influence in return for Putin's help to elect Trump. The same Republicans who instigated the practice of spying on Americans (under false pretenses) , who encouraged it, and who have every intention to keep on doing it more and more if they ever get back into power.

            You aren't outraged?

            • by meta-monkey ( 321000 ) on Saturday October 08, 2016 @12:48PM (#53037947) Journal

              You aren't outraged?

              Because the Republicans haven't collaborated with Putin's efforts to poison the democratic process in the US?

              The left is bizarre to me. They're incensed about the leaks, about something naughty Trump said, but read Hillary's emails that she funded the moderate beheaders in Syria so Israel would be happy with a nuclear Iran and now we've got 400k dead, ISIS, and the migrant crisis threatening to destabalize Europe and they're totally cool with that. I do not get it. I mean, I get why the media and the political classes do it: money. But I have no idea what your average left-leaning voter gets out of this.

          • by poity ( 465672 ) on Saturday October 08, 2016 @02:30AM (#53036533)

            Also witness the conflating of DNC's behavior with democracy itself. These leaks exposed anti-democratic machinations from the upper echelons of a major political party, and politicians along with everyone who has a microphone or a press credential are trying to convince us that this constitutes "interference" in our democratic process.

            INTERFERENCE

            Think about that for a moment. We are actually being told that those who expose anti-democratic behavior are a threat to our democracy, rather than those who carry out that anti-democratic behavior. It boggles the mind.

            What's truly offensive is the press is unwilling to show even a speck of skepticism, and in fact is very enthusiastically repeating this to all of us as if we're dumb.

        • by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 07, 2016 @04:54PM (#53034715)

          Wait a minute. The story was EXACTLY THAT when people were complaining about spying. Government stooges on this site would respond with "well, it's okay to spy on other nations. They do it all time. It's their job."

          But when it's USA being spied on (hypothetically, these russia claims are complete bullshit).. whoa ho ho, now it's "act of war", "rally the troops" time.

          Fucking hypocrites.

          • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

            Wait a minute. The story was EXACTLY THAT when people were complaining about spying. Government stooges on this site would respond with "well, it's okay to spy on other nations. They do it all time. It's their job."

            But when it's USA being spied on (hypothetically, these russia claims are complete bullshit).. whoa ho ho, now it's "act of war", "rally the troops" time.

            Fucking hypocrites.

            You missed part of the Pope's argument. It is a serious violation, because the Russians (or others) made the Democrats look bad.

            If someone did this same thing against the Republicans, or against a Republican administration, poperatzo would support it.

    • B'cos we'll be friends w/ them, they'll be friends w/ us, and together, we'll hack the rest of the world
  • Whatever happened to "Blame Canada"?

    I feel slighted!

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by elrous0 ( 869638 )

      Canada is much less of a threat now that they've elected a dumb himbo Prime Minister who seems intent of leading them towards a giant mass cultural suicide. Besides, a lot of us kind of like their funny square-wheeled cars and the fact that they rid us of the Baldwin scourge.

  • This is part of why things like Stuxnet are potentially bad. Even if you use a weapon for a cause that is just or good, each new introduction ups the ante. It is pretty clear that the US and its allies use of hacking and similar tools (I refuse to say "cyberweapons" because we're not yet in a dystopian scifi novel) has emboldened other actors to use them also. If the US instead put in nearly as much resources into making things secure as it does into breaking into things, the situation would look very different, and everyone would benefit.
    • by Tailhook ( 98486 )

      If only the US hadn't ever used stuxnet et al. no one would hack the US... Are you naturally that naive or do you have to do a lot of painful mental contortions to get there?

      • The argument is not that "one would hack the US" but that fewer such events would occur if the US spent less resources on hacking others and more resources on security.
    • by Rakarra ( 112805 )

      Even if you use a weapon for a cause that is just or good, each new introduction ups the ante

      The ante will ALWAYS be upped. The question is whether you can get ahead.

  • by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 07, 2016 @03:20PM (#53034173)

    What if it's just people inside the DNC who are sick of the corruption? What if there are people inside the DNC who wanted Bernie to win and were angry when the DNC conspired to steal the primary election from him?

    What if the Russians aren't hacking the FBI, the NSA the DNC etc and it's all just people who are disgusted with the corruption? If the Russians were stealing secrets from these groups, you'd expect them to keep quiet rather than causing a ruckus that would result in increased scrutiny and heightened security.

    Knowing Hillary's dirty secrets and holding them would be terrific for blackmail. Leaking them to the public weakens her as a candidate and removes the material from future usefulness. My guess is that it's good samaritans rather than foreign spies.

    • by BradMajors ( 995624 ) on Friday October 07, 2016 @03:30PM (#53034253)

      Seth Rich a DNC staffer was murdered soon after the leak. Seth is a more likely person responsible for the leak. The Obama regime is not likely to blame a Democrat for the leak.

      • Seth Rich a DNC staffer was murdered soon after the leak. Seth is a more likely person responsible for the leak. The Obama regime is not likely to blame a Democrat for the leak.

        Who needs evidence when you have wild speculation?

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by Anonymous Coward

          You mean like when blaming the Russians? LOL!

  • by ArtemaOne ( 1300025 ) on Friday October 07, 2016 @03:21PM (#53034177)
    If it weren't for the Russians, the DNC and the Clinton camp would have gotten away with voter fraud in the primary! Oh, no one cares. Nevermind.
    • Ok, say I care. What can I do?

      See? So why care?

      • by ArtemaOne ( 1300025 ) on Friday October 07, 2016 @03:34PM (#53034281)
        You can send your vote to 3rd party. Obviously if you supported Sanders you're not likely to support Trump. There's Jill Stein and Gary Johnson, who aren't even on the same plane of evil and corrupt as the top party nominees.
        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          This exactly. We already know that Hillary has lied to congress (said she turned over all her emails while holding thousands of classified, work emails back; that's a felony), lied to the American people numerous times, and now, a disenfranchised DNC member (Seth Rich) leaked information to Wikileaks showing how Hillary stole the primary from Bernie Sanders and when Hillary found out about it she or someone else at the DNC had him murdered. So you can vote for a lying, murderous career politician lawyer (

          • This exactly. We already know that Hillary has lied to congress (said she turned over all her emails while holding thousands of classified, work emails back; that's a felony)

            a) I don't know where you get thousands of classified work emails, there were thousands of deleted work related emails, but there's no reason to believe they were classified.

            b) It's only a lie if she deliberately held them back, I see no reason to assume so. In fact I'm not even certain she meant for them to be deleted [factcheck.org]. The contractor who carried out the deletion did so because the retention policy was changed to 60 days (and those emails were older than 60 days). But they were previously told to preserve t

        • Well, there are two kinds of "fuck you" possible for the democrat who refuses Hillary's corrupt presidency. There's the minor "fuck you" in which they vote third party or write in someone such as Vermin Supreme, and there's the major "fuck you", in which they vote for Trump, because when their own party is that corrupt they might as well watch it all burn. Personally, I'm going with the major version. I've had it with both parties, and Trump seems like a wrench in the gears of government to me. I can go li
          • You wrongly assume that I consider Trump the lesser evil.

            If you ask me, they're BOTH unfit to rule a clowder of cats, let alone a country.

    • by Anonymous Coward

      Just like no one cares we are loosing billions of billions of dollars to tax evasion. We have the proof, Panama papers anyone?.. Only thing that matters in the US anymore is corruption.

      • Panama papers were 99% eurotaxevaders. American law requires an additional 'cutoff' (corporate shell), very few Americans were using that evasion method.

    • by JoshuaZ ( 1134087 ) on Friday October 07, 2016 @04:11PM (#53034489) Homepage
      Talking crap about a candidate is not voter fraud. Coordinating with one's own front runner when it is clear they are going to win is not voter fraud. You and I may object to some or all of these things, but that doesn't make it voter fraud. Moreover, part of the hacking here isn't just DNC emails but is actual attempts at hacking *election systems* which should bother you in any event.
      • You've been desensitized to corruption. Please never act in any form of authority over another person.
        • Voter fraud has a specific meaning https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_fraud [wikipedia.org]. This is not it. Again, you can be unhappy about it, or even vocally object, but mislabeling this is about as unhelpful as when someone people use words like "assault" and "violence" to describe bullying speech. The problem is the same: if you keep using the more serious words to describe *everything* the end result is people won't take the more serious case as seriously and just won't listen to you. Precision is important not jus
          • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

            by ArtemaOne ( 1300025 )
            I suppose you never followed the allegations of voter fraud that meet that definition in the primary locations. It happened all across the USA. The incidents that stood out most in my mind were the ones where they would vote, the Sanders supporters would leave (after the vote) and then for some weird reason the Clinton supporters would stick around, they'd throw out the vote and revote hours later. Somehow the vote would swing drastically from a clear Sanders win to a major Clinton victory.
            • by JoshuaZ ( 1134087 ) on Friday October 07, 2016 @06:06PM (#53035125) Homepage
              So, you are now conflating two wildly different things. We were discussing the emails. In fact, you explicitly brought up the emails. You are now bringing up issues with caucuses. So let's discuss that issue (which we should keep in mind has nothing to do with DNC emails). Caucuses are very complicated (and frankly terrible as a system) and multiple votes are a standard aspect. For example, in Maine (where I caucused) there were multiple stages between the first count and the actual vote. This is a standard thing, and people who leave early are a standard factor. The other issue that came up was Sanders people failing to go to state conventions even after the local conventions were done, and in fact, in at least some occasions similar issues took place in reverse where they benefited Sanders. See e.g. http://www.politifact.com/nevada/statements/2016/apr/07/blog-posting/no-bernie-sanders-didnt-retroactively-win-nevada/ [politifact.com]. Caucus obnoxious rules is not voter fraud, and none of this is relevant to the emails being discussed.
  • by elrous0 ( 869638 ) on Friday October 07, 2016 @03:23PM (#53034191)

    ...said pretty much every country in South America and the middle east that have had the U.S. government interfering in their elections for decades.

  • by bazmail ( 764941 ) on Friday October 07, 2016 @03:25PM (#53034215)
    In front of a PC coding in C?
  • This assessment is a trememdous disaster. I'm pretty sure it was somebody sitting on their bed that weighs 400 pounds.

  • Blame (Score:3, Insightful)

    by blackomegax ( 807080 ) on Friday October 07, 2016 @03:35PM (#53034285) Journal
    I don't care if they blame bigfoot. The information released was still damning of the corruption inside the DNC. Fuck the DNC. They don't deserve any votes for burning Bernie.
    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      If you think the RNC is significantly better just because you haven't seen their emails, you're naive.

      Sanders had a chance. Under the circumstances, he had to do considerably better than Clinton to get the nomination, and that's pretty much as it should be. He's less electable than Clinton, would be less effective in office, and isn't actually a Democrat. I supported him primarily to try to push the party to the left. It was reasonable to want him to perform a lot better than Clinton in order to get

  • by mveloso ( 325617 ) on Friday October 07, 2016 @03:43PM (#53034347)

    Wait, the US Government is accusing another government of attempting to influence an election by exposing wrongdoing?

    That's bizarre.

    I suppose if the press was doing its job instead of being Democratic spear-carriers we wouldn't need some other country to do the press' work for them.

  • All the evidence (Score:4, Interesting)

    by phantomfive ( 622387 ) on Friday October 07, 2016 @03:46PM (#53034367) Journal
    Here is the relevant text from the government's release [amazonaws.com] (ps what kind of url is that? files.scribblelive.com?):

    The recent disclosures of alleged hacked e-mails on sites like DCLeaks.com and WikiLeaks and by the Guccifer 2.0 online persona are consistent with the methods and motivations of Russian-directed efforts. These thefts and disclosures are intended to interfere with the US election process. Such activity is not new to Moscow—the Russians have used similar tactics and techniques across Europe and Eurasia, for example, to influence public opinion there. We believe, based on the scope and sensitivity of these efforts, that only Russia's senior-most officials could have authorized these activities.

    There's not a whole lot of evidence there. It would be interesting to know what sort of things Russia has done in Europe and Asia.

    • Is this hoax? There wasn't a press conference or anything, was someone spoofing the government's email address to send it out to the press?
    • by AHuxley ( 892839 )
      At best all the US has is:
      ip range, easy to produce by other actors or a staging server.
      Time zone, stay up late or early.
      Very easy to find code litter of method understood by private security contractors left all after server after event.
      No detection on entry, no detection during gathering of data, no detection on data movement.
      After event, easy to find logs, trail and well understood method by private sector experts.
      Experts who then talk to waiting media about what was found...
      If this was another
  • by rworne ( 538610 ) on Friday October 07, 2016 @04:14PM (#53034495) Homepage

    "It would be extremely difficult for someone, including a nation-state actor, to alter actual ballot counts or election results by cyber attack or intrusion,"

    That's rich. With all the whining and hand-wringing about not trusting electronic voting machines since the Bush administration, we already know many cannot be audited and leave no paper trail of ballots cast by voters.

    Yeah, they can't because we simply won't know if they did.

  • ...investigations will continue to the exact degree Trump either makes it close or leads the race...

  • Loyal Democrats are urged to not read them and deny their authenticity to Republicans.

  • by Crashmarik ( 635988 ) on Friday October 07, 2016 @05:20PM (#53034867)

    Just makes the Democrats look like whiners on top of being idiots. They should never have put what leaked in writing let alone email. Now they are complaining Russia took advantage of their incompetence.

    Having a corrupt administration is bad
    Having an incompetent corrupt administration is worse
    Having an incompetent corrupt administration that that blames everyone else is Venezuela

  • If there are any voting machines running on PCs, it is essential that they disconnect public-facing USB ports from the motherboard. Because if your goal is to shut down or slow down a polling place, then you don't need a sophisticated hacking device, just a power spike that disables one of your machines.

    If we had time, we could design a USB port with an alarm in it so that we could catch tamperers in the act.

  • They've dumped more money and evidence into shifting attention to the Russians over this than the crimes and deceit unearthed by the hacks. And there's still no definitive proof the hack was state-sponsored. In the end they are just butt-hurt and want to distract you from the real problem.

    While I'm not comfortable with them hacking US organizations, I'm not comfortable with the fact we've been hacking Russian systems for ages and influencing politics in their puppet states either. In the end, I'm more in

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