Ask HN: Do you believe the Russia hacking story?
Keep this on-topic for HN: what are the technical arguments being made that attribute these acts to the same attacker, and what are the technical arguments being made that the attacker is related to the Russian government?
I'm surprised that the tech community hasn't been more vocal in demanding evidence for these claims. In 2010, Bruce Schneier was skeptical of claims that Stuxnet was created by the U.S., or even targeted a specific nuclear enrichment facility[0]. Of course, he later agreed that evidence showed it had targeted the Natanz plant[1]. This is the skeptical and scientific approach I expect from the tech community. Am I missing something the rest of the community has seen?
[0] https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2010/10/stuxnet.html
[1] https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2012/02/another_piece_o.html
43 comments
[ 0.28 ms ] story [ 103 ms ] threadStill, I don't think you can draw a direct line from Trump to Putin regarding the hacks themselves; in other words, Trump didn't order the attacks, he just reaped the benefits.
Yep, he did not order it, he only asked kindly for some help
> “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing,”
My guess is Putin has compromised Trump and Trump as POTUS benefits Russia greatly.
My guess is Putin has compromised Trump and Trump as POTUS benefits Russia greatly.
But hey, isn't the private sector the new law enforcement? I recall the FBI not even requesting the DNC server for forensic analysis, we just passed it off to a 3rd party. https://www.buzzfeed.com/alimwatkins/the-fbi-never-asked-for...
What about Iraq? Or MKUltra, or Iran-Contra?
That does not mean they lied this time, but that context makes this question less bizarre than many seem to think
Do I like Donold Trump? Not a chance. Does my dislike of Trump make me more conducive to believe spies and spooks more than I did before November? Not really.
Indeed, I would argue that your point that if one disproves of CIA tactics that everything the CIA says or asserts is now somehow in question is probably more "tribalistic" than viewing data and agreeing on facts. That smacks of conspiracy theory.
Whether or not this makes any of this true is another story, but tribalism is a bad response.
>everything the CIA says or asserts is now somehow in question
The CIA is an agency where everyone is taught to lie. They of course call it something else, tradcecraft, but they are, by profession, liars. A good spy knows to trust no one, especially not other spies.
Wikileaks says the DNC leaks were given to them personally by an insider. This is not a hack either.
Did foreign state intelligence services hack or try to hack servers of political operations in the US? Undoubtedly. That's their job and we've seen that there's not a lot of sense or security awareness by a lot of politicians, so it's likely a lot gets through.
Did foreign states give the info to Wikileaks? There's no evidence of that, and there's evidence from those who are in a position to know, such as Wikileaks, to the contrary.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Seth_Rich
The vector doesn't matter.
The mark of sophistication is not that they use highly technical vectors, but that they know how to use their toolbox, and social engineering remains one of the most powerful tools in there.
Data was still exfiltrated without consent. That's hacking.
What I find more interesting than the origin of the leaks is that almost nobody is talking about their content. Little in the US, almost not at all internationally. The only reporting about the Podesta leaks I noticed was that they occurred, and that some people described as cranks were discussing them on reddit - but at least in Germany no discussion of the contents, and in US media not much more. Same for the DNC leaks. The "pied piper" memo, where Democrats were hoping Trump would win the primaries... And how they tried to undermine Sanders - how did that not cause more outrage?
It seems to me that it would be difficult to get all three agencies to agree that Russia was behind the DNC email hack if that weren't true, so I suspect it's probably true, but not with great certainty.
As a software developer, I can say that this "feels" par for the course for software developed in large organizations. Software that does it's job but obvious things, such as not realizing the developers workstation's locale names are being added to the binary, is forgotten.
Note also that the accusations against Russia hacking the DNC aren't coming out of the blue. The same evidence was there already in July when the emails were published by WikiLeaks. It wasn't until after the election that pundits started to believe something other than Russia was behind the hack.
You'd think that a state-sponsored attack would be a little less careless. This seems like a rookie give-away and makes me wonder if this is made to look like Russia instead of being Russia. When I think of a state-sponsored attack, I automatically envision something in the realm of Stuxnet in terms of quality and the level of sophistication.
Remember how Edward Snowden, a low-level contractor, was able to run away with all the NSA:s big secrets? Government enterprises are characterized by cluelessness, political in-fighting and not sophistication.
The second part, that Russia hacked John Podesta, is summarized mostly in these analyses.[2][3] Basically some actor used a single bitly account to create nearly 10,000 bitly links to sites that were obvious phishing domains for Google logins. Many of these links targeted people who only Russia would be interested in, for example, investigators of the MH17 shootdown, journalists and academics with a Russia focus, and organizations in the former Soviet states and Europe. Some of these domains were also linked to other campaigns known to be linked to APT28 or 29 (i.e., Russia).
Your second contention, that Russia provided exfiltrated data to Wikileaks, seems to rely mostly on classified intelligence. All the public evidence is circumstantial. Up to you to believe it or not.
[1]: https://www.crowdstrike.com/blog/bears-midst-intrusion-democ...
[2]: https://www.secureworks.com/research/threat-group-4127-targe...
[3]: https://www.threatconnect.com/blog/russia-hacks-bellingcat-m...
The second question is one of attribution (i.e. "Who did it?"). That's harder. I believe it was the Russians, but that's based more on faith in the U.S. and British intelligence services getting this one right than a smoking gun linking back to the Kremlin.
1) Russia hacked the election
2) Russia did not hack the election but the intelligence community wrongly believes they did
3) Russia did not hack the election and the intelligence agencies don't believe they did but have decided to lie to the American people for their own reasons.
Some of the reasons to believe they did:
[1] They had the motivation
[2] They have the capability
[3] They have done similar attacks in the past (as has the US)
[4] Russian linked hacking groups like Fancy Bear have been tied to the attacks
[5] The choice of targets and leaked information appeared to benefit Russia.
I think there is enough evidence to point to Russia hacking as the most probable explanation.
The whole report sounds so whiney and political. It reminds me of the evergoing effort by the left to dismiss Fox News (or flip the tables, its the same thing). Its an admission that the news that got out, justly or unjustly, wasn't the news they wanted to get out.
The media still purposely confuses the story. It was never about voter machine/count hacking. It was about narrative and whether or not the leaks changed hearts and minds.