FBI and Homeland Security Detail Russian Hacking Campaign In New Report (theguardian.com) 404
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and FBI have released an analysis of the allegedly Russian government-sponsored hacking groups blamed for breaching several different parts of the Democratic party during the 2016 elections. The 13-page document, released on Thursday and meant for information technology professionals, came as Barack Obama announced sanctions against Russia for interfering in the 2016 elections. The report was criticized by security experts, who said it lacked depth and came too late. "The activity by [Russian intelligence services] is part of an ongoing campaign of cyber-enabled operations directed at the U.S. government and its citizens," wrote the authors of the government report. "This [joint analysis report] provides technical indicators related to many of these operations, recommended mitigations, suggested actions to take in response to the indicators provided, and information on how to report such incidents to the U.S. government." The government report follows several from the private sector, notably a lengthy section in a Microsoft report from 2015 on a hacking team referred to as "advanced persistent threat 28" (APT 28), which the company's internal nomenclature calls Strontium and others have called Fancy Bear. Also mentioned in the government document is another group called APT 29 or Cozy Bear. The Microsoft report contains a history of the groups' operation; a report by security analysts ThreatConnect describes the team's modus operandi; and competing firm CrowdStrike detailed the attack on the Democratic National Committee shortly before subsequent breaches of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and the Hillary Clinton campaign were discovered.
This Calls for Swift Retribution (Score:4, Insightful)
Bigoted much? (Score:5, Informative)
This report was ripped to shreds [ycombinator.com] yesterday.
It's mostly OWASP copypasta with recommended mitigations and a few interesting tidbits.
I'm also not clear on why this submission linked to a copy of the report. Best compare it with the original report [us-cert.gov] in case there are any differences..
Re:Bigoted much? (Score:4, Informative)
I guess you don't want to read past the first comment in your link. I don't see anything "ripped to shreds".
Re:Bigoted much? (Score:5, Interesting)
A lot of the technical comments got hit by a downvote brigade last night.
Read down to look at the people actually talking about tools & methods.
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I did and don't see any credible rebuttal. My personal opinion is somewhere in-between. I neither trust the intelligence report nor the conspiracy pundits. Both latch onto an enemy and attach vague attributes to justify their position. I don't think the report is grasping at straws but I personally feel that they didn't drive the nail in the coffin.
Re:Bigoted much? (Score:5, Insightful)
The burden of proof is on the one making allegations of Russian hacking. We know what nation state level hacking looks like thanks, ironically, to Snowden. We know the NSA can intercept your new router in the mail and install a durable backdoor on it that will survive everything you do to it. We know the NSA has TEMPEST vans that can snoop on your screen and keyboard.
The idea that a nation state is left to rely upon low level phishing scams seems laughable at best. Just look to past examples to see that they had better stuff than this.
Here are a few past examples of real hacking. Note how much more sophisticated these attacks were:
* Theremin's bug [hackaday.com]
* MI6 spies on Russia with fake rock [theguardian.com]
Please tell me again why Russia has fallen back to kiddie level phishing scams? Remember, the burden of proof is on the people saying "it's Russia" and I'm not going to let anyone shift that.
When some people tell me that Russel's teapot [wikipedia.org] is in orbit and others say it's not, I'm going to wait for evidence. I can't just average them out and conclude that a teacup or possibly a saucer is up there flying around, if not a whole teapot.
Re:Bigoted much? (Score:5, Informative)
At the end of the day, you don't get style points in the spy game. If script kiddie level efforts give you the results you want and you don't really care about not being caught, script kiddie level stuff it is.
Governments have engaged in similar script kiddie level attacks in the past, both before and after the digitial age ("You've won a contest, come collect your prize here!", criminal shows up to collect prize, gets a pair of handcuffs)
This stuff is low-risk, high reward. Attackers only need to get lucky once, defense has to be good every time.
Min
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Your example is one used by police against low level idiot criminals, not against nation states.
The real examples from the long history of actual spying, both by Russians and Americans is significantly more sophisticated, as is clearly evident to anyone with even a passing familiarity regarding the known methods. They have no reason to resort to a pathetic attack like this and it's exactly the kind of noisy thing that gets caught. They don't want temporary access before getting shut out, they want durable
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Why spend the effort to bug a room or compromise someone's computer when your adversaries are willing to type their passwords into anything that looks even remotely like a password dialog box? I'm sure a lot of nation-state-level hacking happens using such trivial means, but we don't hear about it because the victims are too embarrassed b
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fake edit:
Not to mention the fact that the Kremlin backed down on their immediate reaction of promising to expel US diplomats as retaliation. It's just about as solid an admission of guilt you could ever expect from official sources like that. Expelling diplomats and seizing property is outrageous behavior if it's believed that it was done for no reason.
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There's not much else less severe that could have been done.
A sternly written letter?
Because phishing & spear phishing work (& (Score:2)
> Please tell me again why Russia has fallen back to kiddie level phishing scams?
Because it works. We know that Podesta got phished, phishing worked on him EVEN THOUGH HE DOUBLED CHECKED WITH HELPDESK. Someone might have been trying Tempest too, but phishing actually worked. I work for a security company, we're all security professionals. Corporate security regularly sends out test "phishing" emails to employees and lets them know if they fell for it - we fall for it all too often.
I would expect Russi
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The point is that you wouldn't normally even try something like that first because it's big and obvious and noisy. It tips them off to the fact that you're in their network. The real spies are using sophisticated tools that give them long-lived access that are custom tailored to specific targets, not email blasts reminiscent of a 419 scammer.
But of course you believe that these unsophisticated, low level attacks are a sign of a nation state because a big scary enemy gives you someone to rally against, les
When you get a phishing email you think govt? (Score:3)
> But of course you believe that these unsophisticated, low level attacks are a sign of a nation state
Pretty sure I just said the exact fucking opposite. I said I've seen no evidence that the Russian government was responsible, and my guess is that most likely it was a non-government group who is friendly with some politicians.
> It tips them off to the fact that you're in their network.
Really? When you receive a phishing email saying "click here to reset your Gmail password", your first thought is "O
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It does discount some of the early things we were told, like that this could ONLY have come from the top levels of the Kremlin. The lack of sophistication means that is an outright lie, and we should be suspect of any claims from the same and similar sources.
I'd basically say that it COULD be the Russian government, but the degree of overselling the evidence comes of as suggesting that they probably didn't. The lady doth protest too much, methinks.
Re:Bigoted much? (Score:5, Interesting)
Simple solutions suggested - easy to harden (Score:3, Insightful)
If the degree of "russian hacking" can be so easily foiled, it doesn't sound much like they were using master criminals or IT experts - just script-kiddie stuff that follows people around the internet every day. One would hope that if they have solid evidence that this originated ONLY from the russian intelligence services that they
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Putin, you do realize you are little sawed off runt. Now go back to drinking with your old KGB buddies.
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Where's the picture of you, bare chested on a horse?
On my main drive but my photo editing software free license just expired. I can assure you I look immaculate.
Only fitting I should encounter xenophobia... (Score:3)
Do note the same Guardian had to retract earlier statements [twitter.com].
Oh, they had to edit the ODNI statement [twitter.com] too.
Best keep watching for more revisionist history.
The 80s want their foreign policy back (Score:3, Insightful)
Exactly. Oh, I think there's a list of TOR exit nodes in there, too.
Why do our mighty Russian hackers rely on pathetic phishing scams instead of putting in hardware backdoors by intercepting new hardware in the mail? Why can't they park a TEMPEST van a few miles away and read the passwords from the keyboard? They have Snowden, who revealed the NSA's TAO programs and things like how we're tapping Merkel's phone in Germany.
Are we seriously to believe that these Russian boogeymen are on the same level as yo
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No, I'm saying they use durable means of gaining access. Ones that last more than the 2 days or whatever it was exactly the access to Podesta's email lasted. Sending emails that say "you're hacked!" did get them access, but it got that access cut off immediately after and assuming he followed their directions, he has 2FA on his Gmail now.
This is exactly why pros don't give you big noisy indicators telling you that you have been owned.
Re:Bigoted much? (Score:4)
That was page after page that basically translates to "APT sent spam to a large list of recipients and target fell for it."
The DNC IT guy thought phone calls from the FBI alerting him to the attacks were a hoax. He also told the staff to change their passwords via the phishing email they received. Of course, he had no common sense or InfoSec training whatsoever.
https://transcender.wordpress.com/2016/12/23/politihack-or-how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying-about-russians-influencing-the-us-election-and-learned-to-love-cybersecurity/ [wordpress.com]
Meanwhile, at the RNC, the attacks failed because their IT guy was on the ball. Go figure.
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Funny thing, though, the chemical weapons were actually used by the "rebels." And of course we made things so much better by arming the "moderate" Islamic terrorists who just happen to also work with the Daesh (ISIS).
Now Russia & Turkey are over there trying to actually make peace in the region. The rest of the world is laughing at us regarding this, mind you, because most other countries learn more about the CIA's long history of interfering with elections [c-span.org] and overthrowing governments, even democrati
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Just go back to paper ballots. Problem solved forever.
That's not the issue at hand. The Russian's did the Internet equivalent of the Nixon White House trying to bug the DNC offices in the Watergate building.
the truth hurts (Score:2, Flamebait)
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Somebody hacked/phished a number of targets. It MIGHT have been the same party, or it could just be a bunch of script kiddies using the same or similar tools, which are most likely widely available.
Definitely. Sunshine is a great disinfectant. I want insiders from the DNC, RNC, NSA, CIA, FBI, DEA, major corporations, media conglomerates, etc
Before the election: (Score:2, Insightful)
"What... Trump says the election is rigged? Calm down folks, it's not like anyone could HACK us or anything, sheesh"
-after election-
"the russians!"
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Do you even read the articles you post?
Last week, Baxter told The News 87 optical scanners broke on Election Day. He said many jammed when voters tried repeatedly to stuff single ballots into scanners, which can result in erroneous vote counts if poll workers don’t adjust counters. ...
Detroit’s ballot was two pages because it included dozens of candidates for the local Board of Education. The number of pages can cause machines to jam and lead them to count too many ballots, said Genesee County Clerk John Gleason.
This is what happens when you don't have an effective, reliable, and efficient voting system.
Also, the recount was ended by the Michigan Supreme Court because Stein's recount request wasn't valid.
Put the conspiracy Kool-Aid down, homie.
The problem with lying all the time (Score:4, Insightful)
is that, when you really need folks to believe you, it just doesn't happen.
Maybe if the US Government understood this fact, we might actually care what they have to say.
Its a talking point (Score:4, Insightful)
Please look at what they provided. There is literally no evidence given in the document, not even an attempt. They make up some names, put them in a diagram and say that is proof. They didn't even try.
This document is one of those DNC talking points that isn't valid. Now the DNC supporters will be screaming that the FBI released proof of the attack, but not one of them will even look at it to see that the document doesn't contain anything even attempting to prove it. Its just a placeholder to give DNC supporters talking points to use. Watch over the next week how many of them cite this document is unquestionable proof and will refuse to hear anyone question it.
"The FBI and DHS have shown proof that the Russians did it."
"Are you questioning the integrity of the FBI by saying the document is lying?"
Mark my words, you will hear the above non-stop now.
Re:Its a talking point (Score:5, Insightful)
Please look at what they provided. There is literally no evidence given in the document, not even an attempt. They make up some names, put them in a diagram and say that is proof. They didn't even try.
Yep. It's 13 pages of absolute garbage containing no proof of anything. If people need an example of propaganda and fake news though? That's the bullshit being pumped right there.
And since we're running dry on the news cycles right now, you're likely going to be spot on. The flappy heads in the media will push--and push hard that this is proof. You're also likely going to hear the various progressive groups trying to use it as an attempt that "Trump is illegitimate" or some other steaming pile of BS. The kicker? Part of the source is a 3rd party investigation...from an outside group, that was paid for by the DNC. Not actual intelligence analysis, not actual attributable information.
Re:Its a talking point (Score:5, Informative)
Please look at what they provided. There is literally no evidence given in the document, not even an attempt. They make up some names
That's because you don't have both a security clearance and a need-to-know. Revealing *how* they figured out that different attacks came from the same group, and where that group is based, would allow such groups to figure out how to hide their tracks from the FBI better. That would obviously be injurious to the US and ....
...OH! I see what you are doing now. Nice try, Anonymous Comrade.
Re:Its a talking point (Score:4, Insightful)
Notice the part where they're refusing to disclose any information to the house intelligence committee which has those security clearances? Enjoying that gigantic red flag yet?
Re:Its a talking point (Score:4, Interesting)
Yeah, this feels eerily reminiscent of 2003 and Iraq's supposed WMDs.
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No, I didn't notice that at all. Probably because it doesn't exist. Congress has been briefed about these investigations for months [cnn.com].
I think that "red flag" you are waving around looks more like a herring than a flag.
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Bzzt. You're talking about two distinctly different things now. Sorry, no they haven't been. [usatoday.com] And the intelligence officials are refusing to disclose anything. [foxnews.com]
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Its you who are talking about two completely different things as if they are the same. Not that I blame you overly. Reading through that other Fox link, it looks like some people have gone through a lot of effort to frame things in just that way. This is why good brain hygene demands that you avoid Fox News.
No. You seem to misunderstand that the context is the election -- that this entire premise the article itself, the context of the discussion is based around that. Not going back to 2008. So you of course then caught the part in the article where it stated that they're refusing to offer any information to intelligence committees? Yep, very good. This is why you read more then one source and step outside of your echo chamber, usually more then once every 5-8 years. And it's also why it's so easy when
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Thing is, we already know what nation state level hacking is. Has everyone just forgotten that we have the TAO program revelations from the NSA?
They're not emailing crappy ass phishing links to idiots or writing powershell scripts, they're using powerful signals intelligence tools like TEMPEST and custom, subverted hardware.
The fact that we fell for this just makes me wonder how much money the DNC has sent to 419 scammers.
Re: Its a talking point (Score:2)
NSA is a bunch of lamers, having built such an espionage infrastructure and having a near zero exhaust from it is beyond simply something shameful and embarassing.
Russians can make a so much fuzz with a simple sql injection, and americans can only creep after merkel sexts to her husband with all those spysats and tapped networks.
Re: Its a talking point (Score:2)
All thanks to PHB dominated critical government agencies, and intellectually inbred waspy culture in USA government.
Wha? (Score:2)
The US intelligence hacking center is documented enough. I understand what it is and I'm not part of that community.
Let me state the publicly unknown... the equivalent of deep blue can diagnose the location of hackers. Yes is is 1% error prone.
Actually it's more proficient that deep blue and it can program it's own viruses in real time. But... just like people it can be wrong.
What people/companies need is meta alerts.. with details!!! for reanalysis.
Difficult when the conclusion is a hunch from a recursi
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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Sanctions have never worked, at any time they have been implemented. Sanctions as a politician's tool to say they did something without actually making a tough decision. Especially with 20 (make that 19 now) days left in his presidency, this move means nothing. It's all getting rolled back anyway. Too little, too late.
All this report does is confirm that the Russians didn't hack the election. They might have released a few E-Mails, but Hillary did her own part to make E-Mail a meaningful factor in the el
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Sanctions have never worked, at any time they have been implemented.
Untrue. It is true that they aren't as quick and viscerally satisfying as dropping bombs on someone, but they have been known to be quite effective. Particularly if they are targeted to the class of people who actually have the power (/money) in the country, and can be universally enforced.
It is true that they *can* be quite ineffective, if improperly targeted or implemented. But the same holds true for a military strike (or really anything).
Re:palpable irony. (Score:4, Insightful)
I've been hearing this argument a lot from Republicans lately. It's interesting that suddenly so many patriotic people on the Right are on a "blame America" tour. [Note: I'm not talking about you here, nimbius, I'm talking about the argument.]
This massive reversal of roles has me thinking that their outrage is less than genuine.
And yet, people on the Right are absolutely certain that sanctions work when it comes to Cuba, Iran, etc, and that Obama is unpatriotic for removing them. The hypocrisy all around is stunning.
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If sanctions didnt work for Ukrane, they wont work here.
Sanctions have hurt Russia, and as a tool they are highly effective for the US, HOWEVER don't expect new sanctions to be a response to hacking. Any new sanction will most likely be a response to US setbacks in Syria that are made in the guise of responding to hacking during the election.
Why do I say this? China has hacked the US many times in the past with few repercussions outside of reprimands. Sanctions in response to hacking would be extraordinarily atypical.
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it's especially ironic considering the USA's CIA destabilized the Ukraine government and precipitated the whole situation. And why are we sad autonomous Russian area of Ukraine voted to rejoin Russia again, I forgot
Hey Obama and friends... (Score:2, Interesting)
Did you borrow your foreign policy from the 80's?
DNC hacks - perks for the rich, perks for the poor, make the working class pay for it all.
This is why you lost the election.
Not that the incoming US President will... (Score:5, Insightful)
I bet the rest of the World can pause and find this amusing, since we Americans probably sought to influence more elections the last century than any nation... looking at you Central & South America.
I'm as bewildered as the next fellow as to how we ended up our newest Commander-in-Chief, but I also believe it's time he and the former administration started working together like big boys.
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Well, it's easier to tip a working system between relatively equally matched candidates than it is an already rigged one.
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If true, this raises the ethical question of America justifying meddling in the next Russian Presidential Election in 2018,
Not really. According to Russia, the US (particularly the State Department) has been meddling in every Russian Presidential election since the USSR dissolved. According to the US, all of Putin's elections since his first have been sham elections, so "meddling" in one of them would be a complete waste of effort. So no matter which side of the Putin-verse you are on, this isn't an issue.
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If true, this raises the ethical question of America justifying meddling in the next Russian Presidential Election in 2018, or the one after that.
That's cute. You think there's going to be another Russian election soon. Don't you know Putin has pretty much assured he will be in power as long as he wants?
talking about Russia but not Soros... (Score:4, Insightful)
An article talking about Russia trying to influence American politics, but not mentioning George Soros or foreign donations to the Clinton Foundation...
That is propaganda.
The 4th estate is now the establishment (Score:2)
Don't worry, I covered Saudi Arabia & Qatar's influence in a comment up here [slashdot.org] with links to some of the relevant emails.
If anyone wants bonus points, start reading the bylines of all these stories and compare them to the reporters who were working for the DNC, coordinating messaging with them, having their articles reviewed and approved, etc. and feel free to tag the relevant authors as #fakenews on Twitter with a link back to Wikileaks.
I suggest starting with Glenn "I have become a hack" Thrush [wikileaks.org].
You know, I remember those Goldman Sach's speeches (Score:3)
Maybe the world is a little more complex than you want it to be? Maybe your anti-Clinton straw men are full of shit instead of straw?
How is this even an issue? (Score:2, Informative)
The DNC is not the US Government. Voting machines weren't hacked. While hacking the DNC might be against the law, influencing elections is not. I just want some one to tell me how the Russians releasing emails is not unlike the Koch brothers buying advertising? At least the emails were truthful. As long as business can set up their super-PACs to influence elections can we really object to a foreign government doing the same?
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As long as business can set up their super-PACs to influence elections can we really object to a foreign government doing the same?
Are you fucking serious? Citizens can influence their own government and own elections all they want, it's an inalienable birthright of their citizenship. It's the very basis of government as enshrined in the Constitution.
Foreign governments leveraging their power to change government policy and elections isn't influence, or someone's opinion, it's espionage and can be punished by deportation or death. How many foreign leaders can you name that came out and said something like "I prefer x candidate over y c
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That's an infinitely more sensible attitude than "why shouldn't foreign entities be allowed to do this?" as the OP was.
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We're being digitally invaded and the hoi polloi, usually so hot to beat someone with a stick, are quite pleased with everything. It's shocking. Can we get back to American ass-kicking mode and fuck these authoritarian rubes? A war is on, brother.
If Trump weren't such a sensitive idiot, he could rally everyone behind him with this. He's been way too caught up in the closeness of the election and the few complaints about the popular vote or the suggestions that he might not have won without interference. I've never seen such a sore loser from someone who won an election before, and it's hurting Americans and American sovereignty at the behest of foreigners.
It's pathetic, especially coming from someone like him and all of his winners rhetoric. Hopeful
Summary of the "report" (Score:4, Informative)
Pages 1-3: overview of recent activities of some hacking groups
Page 4: list of these groups
Pages 5-12: suggested security measures (copied from "Cybersecurity for dummies"?)
Page 13: contacts
Again, no evidence of Russian involvement. Or anything that can be called a detailed analysis.
Clinton Lost. (Score:3, Informative)
Full Stop. This was not "Trump Winning" or "Russia Hacking" it was the DNC being so completely out of touch with parts of the country they knew they would win than they still don't accept that they lost there. Michael Moore nailed it in 5 Reasons Trump Will Win [michaelmoore.com].
The whole election loss can come down to a few swing states. A few extra thousand voters one way or another in a state that is solid Red or Blue isn't what got Trump elected. (Just like Clinton getting massive numbers in California didn't win her the election, that's not how the rules were set before the game)
I'll just point out the 2 states I'm most familiar with, Wisconsin and Michigan. Not coincidentally both of those states they had completely wrong in the Primary as well. Both states were "Sure" Clinton states and Sanders proved them wrong. Clinton didn't visit Wisconsin once for the general election. She sent a bunch of proxies. She did hit Michigan late but more or less completely ignored it prior to their number crunchers going "eh maybe we're wrong". The Russians didn't tell her not to go to Wisconsin. The Russians didn't push Sanders over the top in the Primaries. The Russians didn't collude to keep Sanders out of the nomination. [And even IF they did, I don't think 'Those guys did something illegal to illustrate something I was doing illegal" is a justifiable defense in court]
Stein and Johnson ran in both 2012 and 2016 so you can use them as a 'control' between the candidates. Personally Michigan's Green bump in 2012 and the corresponding Democrat drop should have been an indication 4 years ago that something was up.
Wisconsin's numbers:
Republican Presidential votes:
Democratic Presidential votes:
Libertarian Presidential votes:
Green Presidential votes:
Michigan's numbers look similar.
Republican Presidential votes:
Democratic Presidential votes:
Libertarian Presidential votes:
Green Presidential votes:
What I find rather apalling... (Score:3)
is that people cast votes, and our elections are won or lost, on whether or not a candidate comes to their state and tells them what they want to hear.
It boggles my mind that it still works. We live in an age where information - real, massaged, and fabricated - is available 24/7. Yet politics is still just politics, where you don't have to be a good candidate to win. You just have to be a better shyster.
We should have a "neither" option, and if neither wins, we go back and start over.
I know why that won'
Re:Clinton Lost. (Score:5, Interesting)
Does that make it OK that the DNC was hacked and its private communications were released in an attempt to influence the election?
The oversensitivity with regards to Trump's election win is sad. Anyone calling his win illegitimate or whatever is an idiot and should be treated as such, but for some reason a whole bunch of people want to continue living out their partisan fantasies after the election is over.
The fact that so many people can then use this as an excuse to not even care about espionage conducted against our election process is nothing short of pathetic.
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Does that make it OK that the DNC was hacked and its private communications were released in an attempt to influence the election?
Like I asked, does someone doing something illegal to point out your shady dealings make them the ones at fault? If the leaks happened and they didn't show the DNC colluding to keep out Sanders or CNN spoon feeding questions would she have won? (Likely not). The only thing the e-mails did was validate the opinions most people had, the people that protest voted against Clinton would have "known" she colluded or cheated in the primaries evidence or not.
Most people I knew had their minds made up as soon as the
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Call me an idiot, then. By all rights, Trump lost by more than a 2% margin. The only reason he was declared the "winner" is that the electoral college is fundamentally rigged to be biased in favor of low-population states, so people in rural areas, which have leaned heavily Republican for as long as I've been alive, get more of a vote than urban areas, which means that the entire system is biased in favor of Republicans.
And not just a little,
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Do you think the Senate is a good idea to protect against the flaws of democracy?
If so, why would those some protections not be a good idea for a different branch of government?
POTUS leads a union of states, not a mob.
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More people rejected Trump. He lost. That's how democracy works. Putin voted for him and Trump defends Putin hacks but that just confirms Trumps anti US stance . GOP needs you fix their problem and save us from Russian control.
Quoting this for the blatant grammar errors of someone trying to pose as a progressive libtard or whatever. Thanks for the input buddy, I hope you can buy your girlfriend a nice dinner with all the rubles this earned you before Trump realizes what's been going on and turns your little dacha into a pile of smoldering radioactive ash.
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Clinton lost. Just as all the rest of the US of A. And the western world.
A flimsy excuse for martial law (Score:2)
On Jan 19th, Obama says... Because we wuz hacked, the election results cannot be allowed to stand. And since Russia has shown that it can hack our elections, we can't trust any future American elections. Therefore I am suspending the electoral process, and proclaiming myself president-for-life
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Yes but how did hack lead to Trump win? (Score:5, Interesting)
What happened that we truly know of:
1. In the summer of 2015, someone (evidence points to Russian) spear-phished passwords from unsavvy staffers on the DNC email server
2. Almost a year later, Wikileaks publishes a dump of DNC emails. It is assumed by many to have come from the previous infiltration, though there are other ways Wikileaks could have obtained the data, and no definitive link connecting the two events have so far been presented.
3. Through the email dump, the American public is able to see the DNC's inner workings, including:
- party officials colluding to hinder Bernie Sanders
- party insider helping the Clinton campaign to cheat during debate
- astroturf campaign to create illusion of spontaneous public protest against opponent
- journalists coordinating with party officials to ensure party messaging is on track
4. Some voters may have reconsidered their voting decisions, or even the decision to participate in this cycle, due to the above information.
5. Critical states of Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania which were assumed to be safe states for Clinton (and who as a result did not campaign aggressively there), instead fall to Trump during the general election, ensuring a GOP win.
What the press & defeated party instead want you to think:
1. Russia hacked America
2. Trump is now the President
3. "... we're not saying Trump administration is a creation of the Russian state... *wink wink nudge nudge* but the Trump administration is obviously a creation and stupid dumb puppet of the Russian state... for realz tho... also, don't listen to fake news"
There is an immense effort right now to make us take mental shortcuts, to skip certain events in our memories, to forget that certain misdeeds were done not by Russians but by Americans.
Re:Yes but how did hack lead to Trump win? (Score:4, Interesting)
There is evidence of spear phishing going on (and Podesta falling for it at least once) however you left out one big critical point:
The murder of Seth Rich, his access, and what may have prompted his assassination, along with Assange's specific assertion that an insider had given him information at least once and that it wasn't "the Russians".
If the DNC didn't get hacked because they were just stupid, then they got hacked because someone went sour on their ethics. There is no need for the whole "it's the Russians" loop in any of this... especially when you look for "ok, what did the Russians DO with the information they stole?" "Uhm...well nothing?"
There is no credibility at all in the Russian theory of this.
Incumbent wins (Score:4, Interesting)
An alternate reading of this news produces the following news:
* Government agencies and political parties have continued the discussion without a modicum of doubt on document authenticity.
* Agencies have successfully dominated news cycles on this topic and zero discussion has been made regarding DNC primaries tampering.
* No mass media has mentioned, let alone considered why, Chairperson Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Communications Director Luis Miranda, Chief Financial Officer Brad Marshall and Chief Executive Amy Dacey all resigned from DNC.
That is the real news in my opinion.
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The bigger story is beyond the election, the media, fake news, or the new administration. With or without the influence of foreign actors, a fast increasing majority of Americans are expressing their total lack of faith in all of our institutions and actively propagating this belief. Game over. There is no plan here, no way to recover, this self-destructive behavior, whether it be
APT XSS SQLI == Ruski's did it (Score:3)
13 pages... more like 3 pages followed by nonsense and boiler plate security "advice".
The pages offer only assertions unsupported by any provided evidence and describe techniques that are widely used by everyone. They don't even bother to explain linkages between APT xx and the Russian government.
I don't trust TLA's. They have a long history of being weasels and publically selling lies to support themselves and their masters political agendas. My view the government should either provide actual evidence to support its assertions or STFU.
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Never mind, I'm a fucking idiot and was looking at the wrong article link.
Re:Why should anyone trust the report? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Why should anyone trust the report? (Score:5, Interesting)
I am really appalled at how many people don't take the Russian interference seriously and blame it on some kind of Democrat/Obama conspiracy. This has been happening in eastern European countries for decades and Russia has now been targeting also western Europe since the annexation of Crimea and the war in Ukraine. Russia is funding right-wing populist parties and helping them out with propaganda all across the western hemisphere in an attempt to discredit our democracies and our free press.
Don't believe it? Google "russia populist funding". Here are the top three links:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/new... [telegraph.co.uk]
http://www.independent.co.uk/n... [independent.co.uk]
http://www.economist.com/news/... [economist.com]
It's really scary how much success they are having in sowing distrust in our institutions and our free press. Every time I read someone here decrying some mayor western news outlet as "Fake News" I am reminded of the effectiveness of Putins troll army.
Re:Why should anyone trust the report? (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's be _absolutely_ clear: This isn't about sour grapes because the Democrats lost. This isn't about attacking Trump (though he and his supporters treat it as such, which is disturbing in its own way). This _is_ about what happens next time, because if you establish a precedent that it's basically okay for foreign governments to hack and dox political campaigns in the USA, they're going to keep doing it. Worse, others like China or Iran might just decide to join in. Worse still, candidates might preemptively cozy up to Russia or whomever in hopes of getting assistance against their opponent(s).
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The incoming president has spent weeks making a fool of himself on Twitter. Trump has never needed any help in that department.
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> I am really appalled at how many people don't take the Russian interference seriously and blame it on some kind of Democrat/Obama conspiracy.
Even if we believe the claims being made without any real evidence, at worst they're alleged to have revealed the truth to us, the same way the Pentagon Papers did a generation back. Remember, for all the talk of "election" hacks, there have been no credible allegations that any voting machines were tampered with by anyone.
Inasmuch as we are to worry about foreig
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Re:Why should anyone trust the report? (Score:5, Informative)
The problem is that we're conflating the two. The answer to the first one is pretty much certainly yes. The answer to the second is a lot less clear and, given that the attack didn't require anything like the capabilities of a state-level adversary, the response is a problem. The evidence that we have for the hack shows that a script kiddie, probably in Russia, hacked the DNC. Russia might have done it as a state-sanctioned operation, but so might one of hundreds of individuals (including a load of bored teenagers).
The real story with regard to the emails is that the DNC (and, most likely, the GOP) has really crappy infosec and is basically wide open and many parts of the US government are probably in a similar situation. The NSA has been tasked with a dual mission of attack and defence and has prioritised attack the point that it has completely failed at defence.
Blaming Russia and kicking our Russian diplomats led to retaliation and made the US look stupid. Everyone knows that attribution for cyber attacks is incredibly hard and all that this has done is shown that the relevant agencies in the USA doesn't know how incompetent they are because they don't even understand the problem properly.
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Trump's doing a decent job of making himself look like a thundering idiot. Also, I'm not sure when it happened, but at least when I was a kid, the idea that "the Rooskies" might have interfered with a U.S. election would not be so casually dismissed by the party of Reagan.
Except that they're really not the party of Reagan any more, are they? I mean, I know why McConnell isn't rocking the boat. He got paid with his wife being offered a Cabinet position. And Ryan is too busy thinking of ways to shit on poor p
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> the idea that "the Rooskies" might have interfered with a U.S. election would not be so casually dismissed by the party of Reagan.
The cold war's been over for 20 years [youtube.com]. The 1980s are calling, they want their foreign policy back.
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There is still not one shred of proof the Russian government had anything to do with these typical and script-kiddie tier phishing attacks
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There is still not one shred of proof the Russian government had anything to do with these typical and script-kiddie tier phishing attacks
Maybe, maybe not. But you can't deny the fact that Trump downplays the Putin connection at every opportunity, most of his appointees have some kind of relationship with Putin, and the Republican Party will conveniently look the other way to stay in power.
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Trump has had some connection with several major world leaders, you're just fixated on Putin.
Reminder the USA is the one war mongering and destabilizing countries, and that included the Ukraine
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Why did this only come to light after Clinton the Wildebeest "Hildebeast Clinton lost election, its far more likely likely all Crap!
If you were paying attention, this issue came up in October 2016, a month before the election.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/08/us/politics/us-formally-accuses-russia-of-stealing-dnc-emails.html [nytimes.com]
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[...] NRA, AARP (two very large lobbyist groups) [...]
I don't think any gives a damn about lobbyists being hacked.
[...] the RNC, do you think Obama would have reacted with the same measures?
The RNC was targeted but their IT guy was on the ball. If the RNC was compromised instead of the DNC, I fully expect Obama to do what he has done so far.