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Obama Authorized a Secret Cyber Operation Against Russia, Says Report (engadget.com) 232

Jessica Conditt reports via Engadget: President Barack Obama learned of Russia's attempts to hack U.S. election systems in early August 2016, and as intelligence mounted over the following months, the White House deployed secrecy protocols it hadn't used since the 2011 raid on Osama bin Laden's compound, according to a report by The Washington Post. Apparently, one of the covert programs Obama, the CIA, NSA and other intelligence groups eventually put together was a new kind of cyber operation that places remotely triggered "implants" in critical Russian networks, ready for the U.S. to deploy in the event of a pre-emptive attack. The downed Russian networks "would cause them pain and discomfort," a former U.S. official told The Post. The report says CIA director John Brennan, Obama and other officials had at least four "blunt" conversations with Russian officials about its cyber intrusions beginning August 4th. Obama confronted Vladimir Putin in person during a meeting of world leaders in China this past September, the report says, and his administration even sent Russia a warning through a secure channel originally designed to help the two countries avoid a nuclear strike. Moscow apparently responded one week later -- after the U.S. election -- denying the accusation.
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Obama Authorized a Secret Cyber Operation Against Russia, Says Report

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  • Sabotage (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Seems like Obama tried to start an incident with Russia. Naturally, the Russians aren't too fond of Democrats, so it's entirely possible that this spurred them on to try to ensure Trump won. Seems like Obama may be responsible for the Russians meddling in the election. Obama appears to have sabotaged the Democrats' chances of winning.

    • Obama's action was a response to Russian meddling you dumb fuck.Too stupid to read or just one of those disinformants on Putin's or Trump's payroll?

  • by Anonymous Coward

    our elections could be hacked which is what he said. Was he lying?

    • by unixisc ( 2429386 ) on Saturday June 24, 2017 @12:58PM (#54682751)

      This is the same Obama who gave a painstakingly detailed explanation to Trump on why the elections could not be hacked - from it being the states that run elections to a lot of machines not being on the internet... Yet after the election, all Dems can do is weep 'Russia, Russia, Russia'

      • by Anonymous Coward

        It's not hard to understand. Balloting machines were not hacked, and the actual vote registering and tallying process is different for each state, so there'd need to be 50+ different techniques, not one, to change actual votes. Russia is smarter and apparently can think in layers you can't grasp and instead took it upon themselves to target politicians they didn't like, as well as misinformation campaigns - to include astrotrufing - in support of their preferred candidate.

        Did they "hack" the election; of

        • apparently can think in layers you can't grasp

          Translation: I can't refute you on the point you made, so I'll pull something right out my ass and prove you wrong that way

          The politician they supposedly didn't like was Hilary Clinton, not Russ Feingold or Evan Bayh or any other Dem candidate. And to topple her, they'd have had to rig the results in multiple battleground states - FL, OH, NC, IA, WI, MI and PA. So the Russians would have had to rig at least 6 of them for their supposed stooge.

          Did they hack the election? That's the sob story that we

      • They didn't hack the election in technical terms by hacking voting machines or some such. They hacked the minds of the american people by digging for and releasing dirt on Hillary Clinton. A completely overblown email server affair that pales in comparison to the mountain of lies, conflicts of interest, shenangians and just sheer incompetency of Donald Trump, but what can I say.
        A large portion of the American public are stupid, unfortunately. And conservative media giants like Fox News and their commentator

        • There you go again! Inserting reason into places where reason dare not go!
        • Oh, so 'hacking minds' is now a reason to throw into question the legitimacy of the election? That's something that the Soviets, before the Russians, used to do back in the 80s - call on Americans to vote out leaders like Reagan. Never worked then. Why today are Americans more receptive to Russian influences than they were in the 80s?
  • Fake News (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Why should I believe any of this crap?

    Obama had shown himself to be a lying weasel.

    Trump isn't afraid to tell the truth.

  • The real story is... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Chris Katko ( 2923353 ) on Friday June 23, 2017 @11:21PM (#54680113)

    ...if Russia hacked the election and they knew about it more than 6 months prior...

    WHY DID THEY NOT TELL THE PUBLIC?

    Think about that. If it was such a threat to our elections, why wouldn't you let us know? If this was Trump, the media would be ripping their hearts out and slapping them on the table while screaming "COLLUSION!" for not telling us.

    • by Boronx ( 228853 ) <evonreis@mohr-en ... m minus math_god> on Saturday June 24, 2017 @12:34AM (#54680343) Homepage Journal

      The report is that Obama would not go public unless Republican Senators would back him up, but they refused, warning him that they would attack him for playing politics with foreign affairs.

      Either the evidence didn't convince them, or they didn't care about the attacks. You can decide for yourself which it is.

      • by Anonymous Coward

        So Obama did nothing and its the Republican's fault?
        Nice... Was the GOP's fault that the DNC did questionable fund-raising taking money from down ticket candidates to give it to Hillary?
        Did the GOP force the WaPo and NYT to run stories by Hillary's campaign manager before printing them?
        Did the GOP tell Boston Herald what days to run anti-Sanders stories so Hillary had a better chance of winning a primary?
        Did the GOP feed Hillary debate questions before the debate?

        We have ACTUAL evidence of election fraud,

        • Dont you understand... everything the Democrats both do and don't do is the Republicans fault.

          There arent many things significantly worse than Republicans, but fuck... Democrats are .. way worse.. worst people ever these days. Their behavior is just complete scumbag anti-social shit - they are scorching the earth on their way out of the political scene.
          • by Boronx ( 228853 )

            Obama did respond to the attacks, he just didn't do it publicly. Whether he should have gone public without Republican backing, I don't know. But he didn't turn his back on his own country, like Mitch McConnell did.

      • I think it is also worth considering that if Obama had gone public about the hacking, and Hillary won, there would have been endless complaining by Trump (who was already complaining of rigged elections) about the election results being illegitimate.

        And before I get a "You mean what the Dems are complaining about right now?!?", the hacking that Obama kept hidden didn't help his party.
    • ...if Russia hacked the election and they knew about it more than 6 months prior...

      WHY DID THEY NOT TELL THE PUBLIC?

      Because telling the public would have undermined the democratic process.

      When the election is very close, it's far more important for democracy that people have confidence in the accuracy of the election result than that it actually be accurate. That may seem like a bizarre thing to say, but think about it. If the election is very close, it's because the electorate does not have a clear preference. This isn't to say that individual voters don't have clear preferences, but the electorate as a whole, under t

      • by Gryle ( 933382 )
        Well said! I'd mod you up except 1) I don't have mod-points and 2) I've already commented. I've noticed a trend in the last decade or so to simply disregarding the outcome of legal proceedings or elections simply because we don't like the outcome. By sheer happenstance of timing, I'm currently reading about the run-up to the American Civil War. I'm struck by the loose parallels of the times. We have a president that about half the country hates* prompting the threat of secession [wikipedia.org]**, the rhetorical attacks fr
      • Except in this case, there was zero probability that the election would reflect the will of the people. The will of the people was for both Trump and Clinton to be as far away from power as possible. I also completely disagree that people should have fake belief in the integrity of elections. Of course, even if Russia were behind the Podesta leaks, that doesn't actually undermine the integrity of our elections, as they were only providing transparency towards a de facto part of the government.

        The Americ

    • by mrsam ( 12205 )

      The answer to your question is laughably simple.

      At the time they expected Hillary Clinton to cruise to a landslide victory over the Cheeto Jesus. People have such short memories, and forget that every poll -- and these highly regarded polls have such high reputation and accuracy that nobody ever doubted them -- were forecasting a huge Clinton victory for months. I don't recall a single poll that did not have Clinton on top in the last 3-4 months.

      So, you see, there could not be, ANY DOUBT WHATSOEVER that it

    • by gosand ( 234100 )

      Because they don't have to go public with everything they know, say, or do.
      I am all for transparency, but honestly the government has a job to do. Everyone needs to chill the fuck out.

      I have a very firm belief that when someone becomes President, they learn a whole lot of things that they didn't know before. Things that they cannot divulge. That changes them. They may have promised XYZ during the campaign process, but as soon as they get into office I am sure they learn so much that they realize they ha

  • Holy shit. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Gravis Zero ( 934156 ) on Friday June 23, 2017 @11:22PM (#54680119)

    How many fucking Russian trolls are working this site?! 24 troll posts from anons before anyone gets a word in edgewise has to be a new record.

    • Wait, so are you implying that it's the Russians who hate systemd?

      • Wait, so are you implying that it's the Russians who hate systemd?

        No, it's way more diabolical than that, the Russians wrote systemd ...

      • Wait, so are you implying that it's the Russians who hate systemd?

        And everyone else. Everyone knows Redhat is a corporation and shouldn't have free speech. Debian had an election, but the Germans rigged it. Now we're stuck with an orange-haired init system.

    • by Anonymous Coward

      I don't think its russians.
      I think its those whose grip on reality is so tenuous that they've slipped into the upside-down and fully believe the narrative the russians have been pushing. The russians didn't do it all by themselves, they just capitalized on all the groundwork previously laid by people busily making a fortune by selling conspiracy to those who prefer bias-confirming conspiracies over reality's "well-known bias."

      • I don't think its russians.
        I think its those whose grip on reality is so tenuous that they've slipped into the upside-down and fully believe the narrative the russians have been pushing. The russians didn't do it all by themselves, they just capitalized on all the groundwork previously laid by people busily making a fortune by selling conspiracy to those who prefer bias-confirming conspiracies over reality's "well-known bias."

        Why do you pose this as though it's an either/or proposition, when you cite good reason to think it's a bit of both?

        Would have given you a "+1, Interesting" even so, but I've already posted to this discussion.

        • by Anonymous Coward

          I just don't think slashdot is relevant enough anymore to be worth the cost of sending the troll army here. 15 years ago I would have agreed, maybe even 10 years ago. But the bang-for-buck on social media has got to be sky-high now, and a has-been glorified blog just doesn't rate. Stuff posted here has a really short half-life since there is no automatic way to forward it on to anyone else, it can't "go viral." So the audience is too limited proportional to the effort expended.

          • I'm not so sure. We're talking full-time trolls using software that automates most of the work. Since we can post anonymously they don't even need to maintain accounts. Total time spent posting each message is maybe a minute or two, which would mean posting 30 posts would cost, what, $10? Not much if you have a budget big enough to pay for a full team of people to do the work.

            On the other side, part of the point of all of this FUD is that it needs to be everywhere you look. Social media is certainly the bes

    • What makes it really interesting is that the election was over nearly 9 months ago, and they're still at it.

      (Anything about this sound familiar?)

    • by Subm ( 79417 )

      In America trolls troll trolls.

      In Russia it's the other way around.

  • A nice pair of 380cc silicon overfilled. He's so sexy now.
  • I don't know if this story is true or if it's fake news, but just because a newspaper prints it doesn't mean it's definitely true. In Comey's testimony under oath, he said "There have been many, many stories purportedly based on classified information about — well, about lots of stuff, but especially about Russia, that are just dead wrong."

  • From the story presented in the links.
    "The intelligence captured ... specific instructions on the operation’s audacious objectives"
    Why would anyone interesting risk talking over any insecure network?
    Who talks on the phone or sends interesting orders down a network the USA sold another nation? Or any network that is at risk by the GCHQ, NSA or CIA?
    "Hackers with ties to .... intelligence services"?
    What ties? The data walked out thanks to a domestic staff member.
    "To guard against leaks, subsequ
  • Jesus Christ. How many times does the WaPo have to put up some breathless "Anonymous sources say that Trump is secretly Putin's bitch, we got him this time guys really!" story before we stop believing this crap?

    Podesta. Works. For. The. WaPo. You know, this Podesta? [wikileaks.org] Hillary's Campaign Chair?

    These articles are DNC Cointelpro. The Liberal version of Fox News and Breitbart. Nothing more, nothing less. Stop giving them attention.

    • by slacka ( 713188 ) on Saturday June 24, 2017 @12:45AM (#54680387)

      So the same newspaper that broke Watergate, the same one that has won hundreds of Pulitzer, is somehow now become completely untrustworthy because they hired a columnists who happened to work for the DNC? Sorry but it doesn't work like that. If you really think they are lying about the facts, you need to show a systematic history of them misrepresenting reality. They have been around for over 100 years and you'd be hard pressed to find a dozen articles that are factually incorrect.

      Go ahead, I dare you. Because if attacking a single contributing political columnist, is the best you've got you've only made me trust them more. If you really think they have a poor track record, try and prove it.

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by Xenographic ( 557057 )

        This is the same paper that held a clandestine fund raiser with the DNC after their own lawyers told them not to [wikileaks.org] [1]. It's stories rely heavily on anonymous stories and undisclosed facts, and the people who own it are not the same any more.

        Top Obama officials and intelligence agencies have told me that their sources are nonsense. Who are you to question them?

        [1] To spare you trying to decode the HTML email:

        Great - we were never going to list since the lawyers told us we cannot do it.

        We are waiting

        Jordan K

        • by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 24, 2017 @03:12AM (#54680731)

          You cling to that like its a security blanket. But as was the case with so many other conspiracies built on the wikileaks DNC emails, it doesn't mean what you want it to mean. The Post's lawyers didn't tell them not to give the DNC any freebie tickets, they told them not to sell them any tickets.

            The DNC getting freebie tickets to yet another DC cocktail party and handing them out to VIP donors isn't proof of a "cladestine fundraiser" its proof of the kind of utterly banal schmoozing that goes on all the time. Its the DC equivalent of the swag bags that celebrities get when they go to industry parties in hollywood.

          Not that explaining this will make any difference at all to you. The conspiracy confirms your bias, the pedestrian reality would set you adrift. Much more pleasant to cling to the security blanket of conspiracy, even if its made of whole-cloth.

          • The tickets weren't for the DNC, they were for DNC donors and couldn't be put on a price list because that would be a donation to the DNC.

            Instead, they just do everything with a wink and a nod...

          • I'll give you a little hint: If you are ANYWHERE NEAR a DC cocktail party, you are corrupt. The "schmoozing that goes on all the time" is not utterly banal, it is a cancer destroying this country.
      • You forgot to say the owner changed in 2013. So did NYT in 2009. It's very naive to think a newspaper is identified by his brand.
      • They aren't completely untrustworthy (even the most crooked news sources tend to be reliable on a subject or two, but few are trustworthy all around), but their ownership changed, and they've shown themselves as far from being politically neutral since. They famously ran 16 anti-Sanders articles in 16 hours.

        Yes, WaPo had established a great deal of credibility. That's what makes buying them so useful to a propagandist.

      • At the bottom of the WaPo story, you will find:

        "There were no meltdowns in the United States’ voting infrastructure on Nov. 8, no evidence of hacking-related fraud, crashing of electronic ballots or manipulation of vote counts."

        So for all the angst and hand-wringing of the headline and opening paragraphs AND summary, we find the article itself states there IS NO EVIDENCE. But hey, it's the WaPo, so it has to be correct! But in this case, WHICH statement is correct - the attack-dog headline or the conclusion? They are diametrically opposed, so only one can be correct...

        • by Anonymous Coward

          Or you could consider the third option: you're too dim to understand that a hostile party has other means to swing an election to one candidate other than "hacking" voting machines.

      • by Uberbah ( 647458 )

        So the same newspaper that broke Watergate, the same one that has won hundreds of Pulitzer,

        The same paper that is owned by a guy with a $600 million contract with the CIA, twice what the paper is worth. The paper that never, ever mentions this conflict of interest. Anyone who believes the WaPo or the Russia hysteria is dumber than a person who's lost their life savings to a Nigerian Prince. A dozen separate times.

  • Or are Russians being coy? Not responding to a secure channel meant to prevent a nuclear war for months? And then responding with a denial? This is the kind of thing you do if want to do something that no one would believe you did. Reminds me of the episode of "The Practice" where a drug dealer who was certain he'd get caught came up to a cop and said "officer, I have drugs on me, please, arrest me." The judge didn't believe the cop when he used this as a justification for a search without a warrant. E
  • There is certainly enough evidence out now to conclude that the Russians made a coordinated attempt to influence the outcome of a US election. That included a massive disinformation campaign, that may have involved coordination with one or more right wing news outlets, and infiltration of at least some state, county and local voting systems. There is growing evidence that the Russians may have moved, or at least attempted to move, ground operatives into the country under temporary tech visas. There is a gro

  • I suppose this means what we all have known or at least suspected already - all parties do it.
    It also means that instead of trying to prevent further damage by technical and organisational measures we invest in revenge. The fact that leaks for instance would not be so damaging for Clinton if she were honest and less corrupt is just another thing that is being missed.
    This is OT but if main powers have not been engaged in acts of sabotage or at least espionage yet then the current authorization to do so ag
  • You red sob's are screwed because its been going on since 1996! Just try alaunch, 60 of your cities will go up in smoke!

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