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Snowden Doc Shows NSA Blamed Russia For Hack of Murdered Journalist (thehill.com) 110

The National Security Agency (NSA) knew that the Russian government hacked the email account of a prominent journalist the year before she was killed in Moscow, documents published by The Intercept show. The 2006 murder of longtime Kremlin critic Anna Politkovskaya -- who was gunned down in the elevator of her apartment complex -- is widely believed to have been a contract killing. Politkovskaya was a noted critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin, and it has long been suspected that the murder was carried out on his orders. From a report: The NSA compiled an internal file on Politkovskaya, which was exposed as part of the Edward Snowden leaks. Much of the document is unclassified and public, except for one top-secret segment: "Russian Federal Intelligence Services (probably FSB) are known to have targeted the webmail account of the murdered Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya," the passage reads. "On 5 December 2005, RFIS initiated an attack against the account annapolitkovskaia@US Provider1, deploying malicious software which is not available in the public domain. It is not known whether this attack is in any way associated with the death of the journalist."
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Snowden Doc Shows NSA Blamed Russia For Hack of Murdered Journalist

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  • by Anonymous Coward
    seems Obama wants to stir as much anti Russian sentiment as he can before he joins the trash heap and make it as difficult as possible for Trump. I am very much anti trump but what Obama and Co are doing at the moment is fucking appalling.
    • by GrumpySteen ( 1250194 ) on Thursday December 29, 2016 @06:51PM (#53575223)

      Seems you've confused Edward Snowden with Obama. This is not information that Obama released.

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • by Anonymous Coward
        you could replace Russians with Americans and be just as accurate.
        • Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)

          by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Thursday December 29, 2016 @08:20PM (#53575749)
          Comment removed based on user account deletion
          • When was the last time the US actually annexed land? It's been centuries.

            1898 (Puerto Rico, Hawaii, Guam, etc.) was barely more than one century ago. And then there's the Philippines: annexed 1902, sovereignty restored in 1946. And while the US never formally annexed Okinawa, we held complete control over the archipelago from 1945 until 1972.

            And we've had plenty of nasty proxy wars, not to mention those we've been directly involved in.

            Of course the sins of the US have little bearing on those of Russia (or the USSR before it, or Czarist Russia before that). But trying to claim th

      • The motherfucking RUSSIANS are stirring up anti-Russian sentiment.

        Don't want people to hate you? Stop stealing land, stop murdering people, and stop fucking lying about it.

        To his credit [wordpress.com], Putin stopped murders of journalists that started well before him at much greater rate than anything that happened during his terms in power.

  • by Anonymous Coward

    https://theintercept.com/2016/12/29/top-secret-snowden-document-reveals-what-the-nsa-knew-about-previous-russian-hacking/
    https://prod01-cdn07.cdn.firstlook.org/wp-uploads/sites/1/2016/12/Polit1.png

    (TS//SI//REL TO USA, AUS, CAN, GBR, NZL) Russian Federal Intelligence Services (probably FSB) are known to have targeted the webmail account of the murdered Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya. On 5 December 2005, RFIS initiated an attack against the account annapolitkovskaia@US Provider1, by deploying malicious software which is not available in the public domain. It is not known whether this attack is in any way associated with the death of the journalist. [1]

    What the NSA appears to know is that the Russians targeted the journalist's email account using malware that it believed was not in the public domain.

    But teh internal wiki itself is a little problematic:

    Unfortunately, in the case of this wiki there’s no indication of exactly what sort of SIGINT was collected with regard to Politkovskaya, or how it incriminated Russian intelligence — all we have is the allusion to the evidence, not the evidence. The NSA declined to comment.

    TheHill article is terrible because it draws from alleged and unproven information produced by private security

    • People should indeed follow the link to the original intercept article because the article in Thehill is just bad.

    • by AHuxley ( 892839 )
      Once people read theintercept and get away from all the US suggestive comments and news, what remains?
      More code not seen in the wild and the NSA telling other 5 eye nations that it knows the code has not been seen in the wild.. with the word probably.
  • wow! (Score:2, Insightful)

    by gravewax ( 4772409 )
    Seriously Obama you are starting to make Trump look sane. The last thing the world needs is a new cold war, never thought I would say it but Trump can't come soon enough before you do any more damage, I can only assume you or your party has big financial interests that are not supported by friendly relations with Russia.
    • Re:wow! (Score:5, Informative)

      by Carewolf ( 581105 ) on Thursday December 29, 2016 @07:00PM (#53575285) Homepage

      Seriously Obama you are starting to make Trump look sane. The last thing the world needs is a new cold war, never thought I would say it but Trump can't come soon enough before you do any more damage, I can only assume you or your party has big financial interests that are not supported by friendly relations with Russia.

      Where did you shills see Obama's name in any of this?

      Please get your own head of your own ass before you shill on.

      • by Anonymous Coward

        Come to thing about it, I've never seen Snowden and Obama in a room together...

    • So a release by Snowden that was made more than 2 years ago and publicized as part of the ongoing review of those documents about a murder that occurred during the Bush administration is somehow Obama's fault?

      Get over it, Trump will be president in less than a month. You have an unnatural obsession with blaming Obama for everything.

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward

        No the timing of the finding and publishing of it is almost certainly Obama work though. unless you believe in amazing coincidences then it is near impossible to believe this wasn't published without some backdoor support from the whitehouse. comes immediately after Obama expels diplomats and states he is going to embarrass Russia in the press. If it was coincidence then Obama truly is blessed with incredible fortune and luck having the press respond to swifty in his favour a few hours after making his stat

        • Re:wow! (Score:5, Informative)

          by rahvin112 ( 446269 ) on Thursday December 29, 2016 @08:41PM (#53575871)

          So now you're claiming the evil Obama mastermind is in control of what stories from the Snowden leaks are published even though Obama's government has gone to great length to prevent the publication of ANYTHING Snowden provided to the journalists?

          Yea, Obama is such an evil mastermind. :roll eyes:

          Just like my inlaws that blamed Obama for the $10K cash transaction limits that were put in place 30 years ago during the Regan administration. Everything is his fault and everything will be better under Trump. You're lying to yourself and you probably don't even realize it.

    • by mmell ( 832646 )

      Seriously Obama you are starting to make Trump look sane.

      Not all the acid in Berkeley could make Trump look sane. Just sayin'.

    • Seriously Obama you are starting to make Trump look sane. The last thing the world needs is a new cold war, never thought I would say it but Trump can't come soon enough before you do any more damage, I can only assume you or your party has big financial interests that are not supported by friendly relations with Russia.

      Unfortunately, cold war seems to be exactly what Russia wants. They've always had a chip on their shoulder as far as Europe goes and can be seen as the Abusive drunk uncle of Eastern Europe. Once the Union was broken up, they found themselves now surrounded by their former union mates who immediately tried to shield themselves from Russia. Their post break treaties with the Ukraine were broken once Russia had their nukes back. Rather than try to join the EU themselves, they are instead trying to create a ne

  • by quax ( 19371 ) on Thursday December 29, 2016 @07:00PM (#53575289)

    ... that now owns the White House.

    We are truly living in interesting times.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • I don't think that a citizen of a country that was ruled by Dubya and his goons has a moral right to call any other head of state a savage.

        • Comment removed based on user account deletion
          • ORLY? So, what is the bodycount of Putin? More or less than the bodycount of Dubya? Because the Iraq war killed about half a million Iraqis and I don't count Afghanistan yet. If you add up the second Chechen war (about 25k), the war in Georgia (a few hundred people), the current conflict in the Ukraine (10k) and Russian bombing in Syria (8000 in worst case), Putin won't even come into proximity. Nixon is responsible for even more deaths.
            So if Dubya isn't in your living memory then you are just a bloody kid

            • Get some perspective. Putin murders and steals far more indiscriminately than any Western leader in living memory.

              ORLY? So, what is the bodycount of Putin? More or less than the bodycount of Dubya?

              Kudos, lol. I agreed then immediately agreed with the counter-argument.

              But this shows the real problem is party not country here. In the last several decades, Reps have caused so much death and waste, I've been turned into a one-party person. Philosophically I'd be against that, but cmon I have no choice.

          • by mmell ( 832646 )

            Putin murders and steals far more indiscriminately than any Western leader in living memory.

            Except maybe Hitler, or over six centuries worth of Roman Catholic Popes.

  • Offtopic (Score:3, Insightful)

    by codepigeon ( 1202896 ) on Thursday December 29, 2016 @07:29PM (#53575461)
    Well, after being a daily user of this website for almost 15 years I have to give it up. I took a break during the heat of the election season because the comment sections had gotten over heated and partisan. ... came back today to give it another chance and see the first comment in this thread...Oh well.

    Thanks for the memories slashdot. Truely.

    The intelligent discussions seem to have disappeared. Best wishes.
    • by bug1 ( 96678 )

      The intelligent discussions seem to have disappeared

      If you only look in convenient places you will never find it.

      (grow some skin)

    • This story is new and the comments are fresh. You need to wait a day before more comments pour in and they get moderated so you don't see all the bullshit and smart comments make it out. I do feel your pain though, Slashdot comments have gone down in quality overall. If you find a website with tech news and smart people commenting, come back and let us all know! And consider staying and contributing to the intelligent conversation!

    • Can you honestly expect to not see extreme comments on a political article?
  • I gotta say that the level of anti-Russian xenophobia is continuing hitting ever higher levels of stupid. NSA alleges that somebody hacked into some journalists account.... 11 years ago. Shocking stuff.

  • No real news here: as in many countries, domestic intelligence monitors opponents, and there is nothing more, as the classified stuff says:

    It is not known whether this attack is in any way associated with the death of the journalist.

  • "deploying malicious software which is not available in the public domain"

    What the heck does that mean? Does this mean the hacking tools don't have a GPL or similar license that grants free use? Or not commonly used by hackers? If these tools have been deployed to machines, I am sure someone has picked them up and modified them. It's like the "I Love You" worm. It was quickly modified by many.

    But how many individuals has our government hacked, listened in on, and killed?

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