
U.S. government accuses Russia of hacking campaign to influence elections - runesoerensen
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/us-government-officially-accuses-russia-of-hacking-campaign-to-influence-elections/2016/10/07/4e0b9654-8cbf-11e6-875e-2c1bfe943b66_story.html
======
aaron-lebo
This is silly. Check out the two major "targets": Clinton's emails and the
DNC. Read about how the Clinton server was "secured" (hint: comically). Read
about how the DNC has been getting hacked: very simple phishing scams.
Everything about the DNC screams shoddy. Why haven't the Republicans been
hacked? This isn't a question about politics, its that the DNC clearly has
some operational problems.

No, what this really is is an information campaign that both countries are
playing against each other. You've got Crimea, Syria, other hotspots. Check
out Trump's rhetoric: he admires Putin, he clearly doesn't want war. Check out
Clinton's rhetoric: conflict.

Donald Trump being a racist Neville Chamberlain should make no one excited,
but the neoliberal part of the Democratic party (which is clearly ascendant
and has been for some time like the neoconservatives) doesn't like getting
bullied in retaliation for being a bully.

~~~
ak4g
What's silly is saying oh, since I read some stuff online about how crappy the
DNC security is, I should probably chalk it up to some unknown actor for some
vauge hand-wavy reasons instead of taking the statements of the the Director
of National Intelligence and the Department of Homeland Security at face
value.

Why would they lie? What gives you reason to think _they_ (not the DNC!) be
that colossally stupid? Why would you do anything other than take allegations
of _yet another_ Kremlin attempt to interfere in fair elections as seriously
as the people of Europe and Ukraine have learned, the hard way, that they
must?

~~~
Animats
If the announcement came from, say, Major General Mark W. Westergren, USAF,
Deputy Chief NSA/CSS, it would be more credible. He's not a political
appointee, and should know in detail what's going on in this area.

~~~
dnautics
All O7- and above are not apolitical; all flag officers in all services must
be nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate at each promotion
beyond O6. It's often a rubber stamping process, but it is there. Denial of
promotion and individual intervention is relatively frequent.

Technically all officers also have this treatment but Senate oversight and
intervention is much lower, and the batches are much bigger.

------
guelo
It's so annoying how journalists refuse to link to the source documents they
are reporting on. Here it is, [https://www.dni.gov/index.php/newsroom/press-
releases/215-pr...](https://www.dni.gov/index.php/newsroom/press-
releases/215-press-releases-2016/1423-joint-dhs-odni-election-security-
statement)

Not that it contains that much information. I would have liked to see a more
technical breakdown of their reasoning.

~~~
Natsu
It saddens me that this is the meat of the story and it's halfway down the
page right now. Have an upvote.

------
rdtsc
Are news like this a sign everyone is worried Trump might win so they are
pulling all stops?

What's next, Trump is a Russian agent planted years ago and now taking over
the country.

> The denunciation, made by the Office of the Director of National
> Intelligence and the Department of Homeland Security,

Don't know about others, but I don't really have much faith in the "Office of
the Director of National Intelligence and the Department of Homeland
Security". Somehow they let the
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Personnel_Management...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Personnel_Management_data_breach)
hack happen, they are obviously incompetent even to protect our govt's data. I
simply don't trust their "expert" opinion.

It is also funny how there is not much talk about the things discovered in the
email. All attention is drawn to the boogeyman. It mentions how Wasserman-
Schultz was forced to resign. I think it could have gotten a bit more in depth
into what was embarrassing there... but that would not be playing according to
the script probably.

~~~
bsder
> What's next, Trump is a Russian agent planted years ago and now taking over
> the country.

I suspect it's more a warning to Russia that the NSA are now watching the
election systems and stand ready to intervene if they see something strange
going on.

------
mark_l_watson
I like to trust things my government says, but I have doubts about this for
two reasons. The administration is pulling out all the stops to help Clinton
get elected and she is a hawk vs. Russia and Trump is probably less so.

Also, I do't really know for sure, but I think the Russia and China are most
interested in growing the Eurasia economy in the direction they want, and in
the USA we are putting most effort into maintaining our sole super power
status.

Maybe I am not critical enough, but I think that USA, Russia, and China are
all doing the right things to look out for their own self interest. It all
seems to make sense.

~~~
dragonwriter
> I like to trust things my government says, but I have doubts about this for
> two reasons. The administration is pulling out all the stops to help Clinton
> get elected and she is a hawk vs. Russia and Trump is probably less so.

The first of these reasons is arguably a statement of a reason to be skeptical
about this statement, but the second is simply a statement of one plausible
_motivation_ for the Russians to do exactly what the government is alleging
that they have done.

------
jwtadvice
The US itself has become slightly less shy recently about it's efforts to
manipulate elections. With high likelihood, direct criticism back and forth
between these two superpowers is likely to inform those in smaller countries
that their votes are subject - as they have been for a long time - both
domestic and foreign manipulation, some of it very clever and very deniable.

In this case it should be introduced as a concept in civics courses that as an
individual your vote is not 'your own' and an expression of your personal
thoughts, but that your vote is a commodity that other people are trying,
covertly, to convince you to spend certain ways. Civics courses would do well
to train citizens not to believe their own states, not to believe major news
outlets, and to otherwise vote when they feel they've come to be able to
identify the discrete manipulative narratives coming from various political
information warfare centers.

~~~
micaksica
An aside: I've come to the conclusion that 1) we end up in the same threads,
and 2) we almost consistently agree on these issues.

> Civics courses would do well to train citizens not to believe their own
> states, not to believe major news outlets, and to otherwise vote when they
> feel they've come to be able to identify the discrete manipulative
> narratives coming from various political information warfare centers.

Never will this happen in public educational institutions. There is too much
risk, and Civics courses generally glorify American history and then explain
that the current electoral system works just the same as it did with the
founding fathers, and that it has scaled miraculously with the country's
population, demographics and wealth. A "realistic" Civics class would likely
serve to alienate young voters, lead to yet more political apathy, or, in the
case of the really angsty, lead to situations of civil unrest.

~~~
com2kid
> Never will this happen in public educational institutions.

To disagree, this was my experience at HS and college.

A lot of my US history classes involved covering the history of corruption in
the US. As an example, we took a look at the funding sources for the
revolutionary war. That was a very direct and immediate way to deflate belief
in everyone being involved solely for the sake of liberty.

Add on top of that a Philosophy class that had us apply formal logic to the
statements of politicians. One of the most amusing classes I've ever had, I
got to diagram out political speeches and see that they, quite literally,
equaled out to null!

~~~
micaksica
> To disagree, this was my experience at HS and college. A lot of my US
> history classes involved covering the history of corruption in the US. As an
> example, we took a look at the funding sources for the revolutionary war.
> That was a very direct and immediate way to deflate belief in everyone being
> involved solely for the sake of liberty.

If you don't mind me asking: when and where did you graduate from high school
and did you learn this in a Civics course or an American History course? I'm
curious if it's a generational thing, or a geographical thing (ie coastal vs
midwest, rural vs urban).

~~~
com2kid
Seattle WA. Experiences described are from College, my HS courses also
encouraged lots of free thinking, but my most memorable HS courses are from
European history. The often chanted refrain in class was "OLD DEAD WHITE MEN",
in response to "and who did this?" That and "The holy roman empire wasn't
holy, wasn't roman, and wasn't much of an empire."

Then again, part of the class was taught in relationship to Monty Python and
the Holy Grail, so the teacher was a bit eccentric. ;)

------
dogma1138
The US tampers with elections openly all over the world including in the
election of so called allies.

This isn't a jab at the US just a simple fact, swaying the local political
opinions of both your allies and your enemies is a pretty standard practice in
geopolitics and diplomacy.

~~~
empath75
Right. We shouldn't pretend that the US doesn't do this to other countries.
What happened in the Ukraine, for example, almost certainly wasn't an
organically grown domestic insurrection. That was nurtured by NGOs and foreign
intelligence agencies.

Nonetheless-- it's one thing when the superpowers do that to smaller
countries, and another, far more dangerous thing when they start doing it to
_each other_. We're in uncharted territory here. As you saw in the Ukraine
(and Syria, and Egypt, and so on and so forth), when the political system
fails, you have violence, and the US isn't going to stand by and watch Russia
destroy the integrity of our elections. And our means for retaliating are
untested, and the risk of escalation is pretty high.

~~~
xixi77
It was absolutely domestically grown -- had the foreign intelligence and NGO's
been as strong as you suggest, things would have never gotten to that point,
as the money and effort spent on influence by Russia absolutely dwarfed
everything else: Ukraine has never been high on anyone else's radar.

The reason Russians have not been particularly successful is mostly due to
certain widespread delusions in Russian society, that result in people at all
ranks seeing the entire Russia/Ukraine split as unnatural. What I mean is,
when you are coming from a prior that there were no underlying differences in
1991, and Ukraine before then was simply a province of a Russian state
operating under a different name, of course any disagreement could only be
seen as a result of external meddling since that time. Of course, when this
view conflicts with reality, the failures are attributed to foreign meddling
being stronger than unticipated...

~~~
dogma1138
You would be surprised
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Endowment_for_Democra...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Endowment_for_Democracy#Ukraine)

And this is just one NGO.

The "West" forced Ukraine to choose between it and Russia, including the
looming free trade deal with the EU being contingent on that.

There is/was also a plan to bypass the Russian controlled oil and more
importantly natural gas pipelines that are keeping the lights in Europe both
the conflict in the Ukraine and the previous one in Georgia are directly
connected to the proposed caspian pipelines.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-
Caspian_Gas_Pipeline](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-
Caspian_Gas_Pipeline)

While you can make Russia look antagonistic it is just as easy to make the
west look that and even worse, the west effectively violated the non-formal
agreement that maintained peace after the fall of the soviet union and that is
that the former states would effectively be a buffer zone.

The EU and NATO have (and it is very important to note that Russia does not
distinguish between the two, and effectively nor should they) been expanding
into these buffer states and worse they are expanding into the caspian region
and beyond leaving Russia effectively surrounded.

Russia is a landlocked country, it always was, it always was missing a single
important thing and that is a warm water port in an open sea, this is why
Russia invaded Manchuria/Korea multiple times since the 19th century and this
is why Russia would not tolerate any loss of it's ports in the black sea or
syria.

The black sea is enclosed by the bosphorus which controlled by NATO,
Kaliningrad is a tiny enclave surrounded by NATO and any ship sailing out of
it would have to go through the fjords and the northern sea another NATO
controlled territory, on the other side of the globe Vladivostok is not a warm
water port (although global warming might help Russia with that problem soon
enough), effectively Russia has to rely on the "kindness" of NATO to allow
it's ships to get out into the ocean, this puts them at a huge disadvantage.

Another key aspect of Russian geopolitics is their "monopoly" on gas pipelines
into Europe both from their own reserves and those coming from the caspian
region and beyond, this is what keeps Russia relevant and what gives them some
power over what is going on around them.

With NATO effectively being able to shut down all Russian sea travel and make
Russia's only "diplomatic tool" other than it's strategic nuclear arsenal
irrelevant we are not heading into a pleasant direction.

~~~
eternalban
> With NATO effectively being able to shut down all Russian sea travel and
> make Russia's only "diplomatic tool" other than it's strategic nuclear
> arsenal irrelevant we are not heading into a pleasant direction.

Why is Russia entitled to imperial pretenses when they are no longer an
empire?

I get what you are saying and it does make sense up to NATO is making
territorial hay while the unipolar sunshine lasts, but where it stops making
sense is _why_ is Russia entitled to buffer zones etc.

Why isn't Poland entitled to the same, for example. Or should people across
the water from St. Petersburg complain about Russian naval activity so close
to them? We would laugh at all this since (reality check) they are not
"powers".

Russia demands to be treated like a "power", its propaganda sites are entirely
silent as to why every nation that was liberated from USSR's empire is more
than grateful for having their nomnal independence back, etc.

The second thing to note here is that it is Russia, Russian propaganda sites,
and a minority western critical voices that have raised the stakes from
literally some minor local action to threats of "Nuclear War" and "WWIII".

Regardless of how one feels about the clearly aggressive actions of the West
in the past 2 decades, to mistake Russia for some kind of peacenik nation, or
the Russian Yoke as a gentle alternative to bankster international is a gross
error, in my opinion.

~~~
dogma1138
I'm not saying they are entitled to anything; it's just the other side of the
picture.

You are also using an incorrect analogy Poland is already entitled its part of
NATO, Russia isn't.

Real world politics are about interest and power, there are no absolute and
objective right and wrongs at these levels, no one claims Russia is a peacenik
nation, most nations aren't.

As for what and what does not make sense to you; I cannot help you in this
regard mostly because you seem to treat a statement of a condition as a
position.

This is reality we treat entitlement today on different aspects one of which
is ones ability to enforce their claims to what they are entitled too.

Russia due to their limitations tend to do it asymmetrically, hence Russian
nuclear development in response to ABM deployments.

This hack is actually fairly unique because in the manner to which Russia
chose to respond; the US tampers with their local geopolitical situation
Russia tampers with US elections.

Likely it's due to the fact that there aren't any proxies of note that Russia
can currently influence but it's an interesting departure from common
discourse nonetheless.

------
micaksica
I guess I don't see how dumping DNC databases as "Guccifer 2.0" is really
doing much negative influencing if it is actually providing legitimate
information and making the process more transparent to American voters. Isn't
transparency into the political process a core part of what makes a democracy?
The parties should _want_ to be as open as possible, ideally.

This feels like a deflection and a way to point the finger politically. If
they're causing a denial of service on election day by taking out voter
registration databases, rooting those shitty Diebold machines, etc., well,
that's really influencing the election.

If the Obama administration is going to complain to the public about Russia
fucking with American elections, they should be just as willing to retaliate
for it in some public manner; if that's diplomatic, so be it in the realm of
the UN/ICJ. IMO the foreign policy strategy against Russia is spineless, and
Russia/Putin takes advantage of it; see Crimean aggression, the Syrian
"ceasefire", this Guccifer nonsense. I don't personally have a solution, but
showing teeth at Putin doesn't really seem to hinder him. Sometimes you need
to bite so people know you can and will make good on your threats.

~~~
xixi77
Obama administration's approach to conflict has generally been "they are
making threats and can escalate them, if they do, we would not be willing to
respond in kind, therefore let's do nothing and avoid conflict, and hopefully
eventually things will be nice between us again, because somehow magically
history is on our side". This is quite a radical departure from the "peace
through strength" approach that has kept the US safe for the 60 years before
that.

Of course anyone who's ever gotten into a fight in middle school can see the
fatal fault with this line of thinking :(

~~~
bsder
> Of course anyone who's ever gotten into a fight in middle school can see the
> fatal fault with this line of thinking :(

Of course, anyone who has grown up around gangs can see the fault in "We must
retaliate for all insults or they will quit fearing us and take our
territory." Occasionally, you wind up with everybody dead or in the hospital.

Fortunately, our leaders are mostly adults who understand that there is nuance
to diplomacy.

------
woodandsteel
Seem plausible Russia would be doing this. Russian media, which is controlled
by the Kremlin, has made clear it is completely against Clinton, and for
Trump.

We've got some Russian trollers here. Putin would like everyone to think he is
just great, but he knows he can't do that. So he has his trollers tell
everyone that all the Western countries are awful, so people will give up
supporting anyone, and he will be free to go ahead unopposed.

The reality is that the West, for all its many faults, is 10 times better than
Putin's Russia. Anyone who thinks otherwise is nuts.

------
jwtadvice
There are three superpower poles in the world.

1\. The United States, as the primary hegemon.

2\. Russia, which is still powerful but in 'wane' after containment and the
costs of the Cold War.

3\. China, the preliminary rising power on the world stage.

These three powers have found cybertreaties between China and the US and China
and Russia.

But Russia and the United States have not yet found a good framework for
cyberagreement.

Is there a candidate or administration today in the United States that
considers finding a cyber treaty between the US and Russia a priority?

It seems to me, based on the past few decades of cyber war and the
conversations and priorities inside of the beltway that the US considers it's
cyberwar activities against the Russians more important than a cyber arms
armistice.

Given the US's superiority in cyberwarfare, total as it may not be, this
recent surge in Russian modernization and activity looks a little bit like
"complaining" and less like "moral acumen".

The United States should consider drawing up stronger garuntees for Russia
about it's cyberweaponization. Handled correctly, the results from superpower
agreements could percolate down to Middle Powers, regional powers and third
world nations to become a basis for global cyber norms and eventually a basis
for international law.

It seems to me that complaining and upping the ante, while it might
theoretically lead to "peace through conquer", will work to undo any concept
of cyber norms or international law.

~~~
linkregister
Each power has its own norms for network exploitation operations, and thinks
their own model is the only "right" one.

1\. United States, FVEY, Germany model: exfiltrate the maximum amount of
information from foreign governments and an expedient amount of information
from SOEs to satisfy unlimited desire of information by decision makers in
government. Occasionally throw a bone to domestic business but only via
government trade negotiators. Perform offensive actions only in warfare or
warfare-like situations. Leave coups, election manipulation, etc to HUMINT and
military action only.

2\. China (pre-2016) model: exfiltrate the maximum amount of information from
companies and an expedient amount of information from foreign governments, to
provide commercial information to satisfy unlimited desire of information by
domestic businesses and SOEs and to satisfy limited desire of information by
decision makers in government.

3\. China (2016) model (ostensibly with the new treaty): exfiltrate an
expedient amount of information from foreign governments.

4\. France model: exfiltrate an expedient amount of information from companies
and foreign governments to satisfy desire of information by domestic
businesses and decision makers in government.

5\. Russia (pre-2016) model: exfiltrate an expedient amount of information
from foreign governments. Perform offensive actions only in warfare or
warfare-like situations.

6\. Russia (2016) model: exfiltrate an expedient amount of information from
foreign governments. Perform destructive actions only in warfare or warfare-
like situations. _Perform election manipulation via network exploitation in
addition to HUMINT and military action!_

I think the "complaining" is an apt description of what's going on. However,
complaining is a legitimate reaction to having one's elections tampered with.
Iran has a legitimate complaint to the US's meddling in its affairs in the
1950s.

Pres. Obama clearly sees a cyber treaty as a priority, as the US is in the
process of negotiations with China. Russia should follow.

I agree that complaining by itself isn't productive. Escalation would also be
bad. Norms established by treaties appear to be the only effective method. It
mostly put an end to the great powers using chemical weapons.

~~~
jwtadvice
Pretty neat attempt at a summary.

I feel you've understated the US investment in manipulating elections. Sentry
Eagle's feeding information into HUMINT isn't without a commitment within
HUMINT and CIA to work in the psychological and political domains.

I'm not sure I feel that your list is a list of the norms that each have put
forward to establish. The US is closer to a representation of their proposed
norms. The others are closer to a description of operations/dossiers.

It would be very interesting to read a report on proposed norms next to
dossiers and strategic incentives for each country.

We fully agree that norms established by treaties is a nice path forward.

~~~
linkregister
I don't know if I quantified US election manipulation; I think it's fair to
take it for granted that most 20th century Central American elections were
manipulated by the United States. Does this satisfy your requirement?

Your allusion to Sentry Eagle feeding information to HUMINT is pretty
transitive; by that logic, Taco Bell helps HUMINT because they have a
franchise in the CIA food court. (Not to mention, a CNA program has nothing to
do with information gathering)

True, stated vs observed are different. I believe the US and French stated
match the observed, while the new Chinese statement hasn't been definitively
established (detected Chinese intrusions in U.S. companies have sharply
decreased, but maybe they improved tradecraft). Russian statements recently
are bizarre and serve to promote their new "question everything, including
facts" PR push.

Most likely the path forward to deescalate the defensive Russian position is
to limit aggressive NATO maneuvers, e.g. reconsider emplacing the missile
defense installations in peripheral NATO states.

~~~
jwtadvice
Sentry Eagle feeding SIGINT to HUMINT is nothing like Taco Bell.

What an absurd thing to say.

~~~
linkregister
Yeah, it's pretty absurd. I went a little bit too far. BTW, I didn't downvote
your posts; I enjoyed the discussion.

~~~
jwtadvice
I'm with you. I was rushing out for the weekend so didn't get the time to
write anything more comprehensive anyway.

:)

------
andrewla
From the underlying statement:

> 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

I really hope that we have better evidence than this. The US intelligence
community has made errors before, even in circumstances where they released
considerably more information than this.

Given that the attacks have been directed at a particular party, and that
party is the one currently in power in the executive branch, establishing that
the results of the investigation are truly objective should be a critical goal
here, to prevent this press release itself being seen as an attempt to
influence the election.

~~~
dragonwriter
> I really hope that we have better evidence than this.

That's not the evidence, its the conclusion. (And its a conclusion reached by
private attribution firms and made public long before any official government
statement, at least as to the _methods_ part.)

~~~
andrewla
I don't want to bandy words -- what they say is that the attacks "... are
consistent with the methods and motivations of Russian-directed efforts". This
seems to be an extremely weak statement -- that they are "consistent with",
rather than "can be unambiguously traced to".

Assuming good faith in the intelligence community, we can only assume that
these "consistencies" would be difficult or impossible for another actor (a
different state or a rogue agent) to mimic. The statement is phrased so weakly
that it is difficult to say this with confidence. Because of the political
situation, government agencies should be extremely careful to avoid making
statements like this unless there can be concrete assurances that the
conclusions are fully supported by the evidence, without any political agenda
attached.

~~~
dragonwriter
Again the attribution by private security firms, and it's (general, at least,
but more specific than the government statement had specified) basis had been
public for some time.

And, in any case, even if government agencies are as careful as you suggest,
you are unlikely to be able to distinguish that, because the kind of evidence
that works fully support it us not the kind of evidence that could be fully
disclosed without compromising future intelligence activities.

~~~
chatmasta
I've read those reports, and I did not find the evidence particularly
convincing. Much of it was of the type "if you want to make it look like
Russia did this, what metadata should we conveniently leave lying around?"

IIRC the major points of evidence were a Cyrillic character set attached to an
SSH session, and Russian IP addresses connecting to a VPN website.

This is hardly substantial evidence.

And don't fool yourself - these "private firms" have no interest in biting the
hand that feeds them. They want the next contract too.

------
hackuser
An important point in understanding Russia: Russia is not a superpower; it's a
new situation, not the cold war. They are a sinking regional power with
nuclear weapons, trying to find a cost-effective way to have some influence.

In the cold war, the Soviet Union was far larger than Russia today: It
included Ukraine, Belarus, the Central Asian states, Armenia and many others.
And the states it dominated (part of the the Warsaw Pact) were much of Eastern
and Central Europe, including half of Germany, Poland, Hungary, the Czech
Republic, Romania, and more.

Russia no longer controls those countries and many of the largest ones changed
sides to NATO, greatly shifting the balance of power. Power flows from money
and population:

\---

GDP/population 1977 (best I could find in a quick search):[0]

* Warsaw Pact: $1.2 trillion / 366 million

* NATO: $3.4 trillion / 563 million (I think that includes France, which was allied but not part of NATO).

\---

~2016 [1]

* Russia: $1.1 trillion / 144 million (and shrinking, afaik)

* NATO (2014): $37.5 trillion / 906 million (and growing)

* Spain: $1.7 trillion / 46 million

* Germany: $3.8 trillion / 82 million

* Canada: $1.4 trillion / 36 million

* U.S.: $18.5 trillion / 325 million

\---

Russia cannot compete with NATO. Their economy is significantly smaller than
Spain's and than Canada's - those nations could afford more powerful
militaries than Russia's if they chose.

[0] (PDF)
[http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/report/cbo/77...](http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/report/cbo/77doc579.pdf)

[1] Wikipedia

~~~
AnimalMuppet
The size of Russia's military (especially the number of nuclear weapons) says
that Russia is considerably more than a regional power.

Sinking (that is, declining in influence/power)? I can go with that.

Others (Canada/Spain) could have larger militaries than Russia if they choose?
Great, but _they don 't choose to do that_. Russia does. When the shooting
starts, how much you _could have spent_ on our military doesn't matter.

~~~
hackuser
> When the shooting starts, how much you could have spent on our military
> doesn't matter.

Agreed. However, NATO, and the U.S. in particular, still outspend Russia by a
very wide margin.

> The size of Russia's military

From what I've read, they lack the capability or money to deploy more than
small forces beyond their borders. Russia is poor, has serious economic
problems, and wars are very expensive. Iraq cost the U.S. over a trillion
dollars, IIRC.

Everything they do is on the cheap, designed to maximize the appearance of
strength: In Syria Russia sticks to the air, and we don't know how many
missions (or at least I don't), how much it costs or for how long they can
afford it. In Ukraine they used small amounts of special forces to seize
Ukraine's southern peninsula, Crimea, and support insurgents mostly with
equipment.

They hide deaths of the any Russian troops in Ukraine, indicating that there
may not be much public support for foreign deployments.

> especially the number of nuclear weapons

Nuclear weapons make a strong impression but are status symbols; in practice,
they are almost unusable. They do prevent the invasion of Russia, but nobody
was going to do that anyway except, as a long shot, China in the far east.
Probably they do make the U.S. and Russian forces in Syria keep a distance
from each other, to avoid unintentional conflict. Otherwise, they provide no
influence; nobody worries that Russia will nuke them.

~~~
int_19h
> In Syria Russia sticks to the air,

FWIW, it's not entirely correct. There are specs ops and advisor teams on the
ground (and there have already been officially reported casualties). But
beyond that, some people who previously fought for the separatist militias in
Ukraine told me that quite a few of their militia friends have been
unofficially "contracted" to Syria. This appears a convenient arrangement,
since when they get killed, it doesn't get reported as a military casualty,
and doesn't really need to be reported at all.

Similar to the use of contractors by US in Iraq, I guess - but these guys are
actually used at the frontline to support Assad troops in direct engagements,
not just to provide security for civilians etc.

BTW, ironically, they have a very low opinion of the local troops. One guy
over there joked that the war is essentially fought by foreign troops against
each other on either side (Assad and ISIS), whereas local recruits on either
side are really unmotivated to fight, and are easily routed or forced to
surrender. The only locals he considered to be a viable, motivated fighting
force capable of winning without foreign manpower backing them are the Kurds.

(This is unverified Internet rumors, I don't know those people personally, you
don't know me personally, so take it all with a grain of salt.)

~~~
hackuser
I've read in several credible sources report that former anti-Russian
insurgents from the Caucuses (e.g., Chechnya) are also in Syria, and rumors
say Russia facilitated that.

~~~
int_19h
This is likely a conflation of two different facts.

On one hand, the Syrian branch of what later became ISIS has a lot of Chechen
fighters, mostly associated with Doku Umarov and his "Caucasus Emirate";
indeed, one of the groups that united to become ISIS was founded by a group of
Chechen separatist commanders. The aforementioned contractors pegged them as
the best fighting force that ISIS currently possesses, due to both high morale
and experience.

On the other hand, Russia has been kinda sorta reviving the "savage division"
traditions of the Empire, specifically with Chechnya as a source of recruits.
They were used in Ukraine (ironically, sometimes fighting against Chechen
separatists who came to join the Ukrainian National Guard volunteer
battalions), and now also in Syria. But they're usually not former anti-
Russian insurgents from the _most recent_ war (the one that started in 1999).
Many of them were separatists in the first war (1994-96), but switched sides
in the second war, like the current Chechen leader Kadyrov.

~~~
hackuser
Thanks.

OT: Where do you learn all this? I read a lot of foreign policy and I'm always
interested in excellent new sources. The Jamestown Foundation provides in-
depth coverage Russian and Caucuses issues like these, if long-winded a little
partisan, but I haven't found much else.

~~~
int_19h
I'm Russian, so it's easy to follow the local news and social media.

Also, I follow a variety of "interesting" people on LiveJournal. Among them
are some separatist militia fighters from Donbass, so I get a scoop of their
inner news, rumors and propaganda. These guys are actually surprisingly ready
to share with most anyone who's willing to listen - they have a lot of broken
expectations, and many are angry in a very loud way.

------
tptacek
I don't have anything to say about the geopolitical or moral importance of
Russia hacking the US to influence elections.

But I do have something to say about the attribution here:

A very common sentiment on HN is that the US intelligence community has
decided that Russia has a motive to hack the US, and spends money on offensive
security, ergo "it was probably Russia".

That is not how attribution works. Officials (and the firms they hire) are
working with vastly more specific fact patterns than the news stories about
these incidents convey. They are matching Russian means, motive, and
opportunity at a far more precise level of detail than is commonly reported.

The major attribution firms --- FireEye/Mandiant, Crowdstrike, &c --- have for
years prior to these breaches been collecting huge volumes of information from
a pretty significant fraction of the Global 2000, who deploy their tools as
part of their anti-malware strategy. That's the entire idea behind
Crowdstrike†: you deploy their agents, and they hoover up IOCs and malware
samples from around the world and analyze them. These firms have been involved
in thousands of compromises we've never heard of, and have staffed large teams
of experts (both FireEye and Crowdstrike have gold-plated reputations in the
infosec community) to analyze and develop signatures from that information.

The DNC compromise is analyzed in terms of IOCs --- network traces of command
and control channels, captured backdoor and malware samples, vulnerabilities
employed, IP addresses of staging servers --- and those IOCs are matched to
previous compromises. When DHS says they're working with a "high degree of
certainty" about who's behind the compromise, they're saying that they've
matched the compromise to a set of IOCs --- _many of which are not public_
\--- that are tied to previous known Russian compromises.

That doesn't mean everyone involved here --- multiple departments of the US
Government, the executive branch of the government at the very highest level,
and several of the largest security firms in the US --- couldn't be lying. It
could all be a conspiracy. If it was, it would be the largest conspiracy ever
carried out by the US government. But I guess that could be what happened!

† _Crowdstrike, by the way, is run by a conservative Republican._

~~~
alasdair_
>That doesn't mean everyone involved here --- multiple departments of the US
Government, the executive branch of the government at the very highest level,
and several of the largest security firms in the US --- couldn't be lying. It
could all be a conspiracy. If it was, it would be the largest conspiracy ever
carried out by the US government. But I guess that could be what happened!

I don't think it's as simple as that. When the case for war against Iraq was
made, "multiple departments of the US Government, the executive branch of the
government at the very highest level, and several of the largest security
firms in the US" all seemed to be in agreement that Iraq definitely had
weapons of mass destruction.

Clearly, they did not, what happened is that certain facts were overstated and
repeated and certain other facts were ignored or downplayed.

There is no reason to believe that this is any different because, again, there
is a strong political gain for the current administration to have these facts
be so.

I agree completely that Russia may well be behind the attacks but given the
fact that the people making the announcement also have the most to gain from
the announcement, I am happy to remain unconvinced until I see more evidence.

~~~
tptacek
It's not simply the USG reporting the attribution, but also several of the
most reputable forensics firms, independently.

In more depth, see also:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12664172](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12664172)

------
shireboy
Am I the only one who would like to see cold hard evidence for these claims? I
want server logs, ip traces, intercepts, or some proof besides just
"intelligence says".

~~~
X86BSD
You will never see it. The US never provides proof. Only "Intel sources say"
and rumors.

~~~
dragonwriter
> You will never see it. The US never provides proof. Only "Intel sources say"
> and rumors.

That's not entirely true, though the only time the US Executive Branch will
provide the backing for its intelligence conclusions is if it needs to in
order to convince some other entity in order to motivate that entity to take
action; the _public_ is rarely an entity which it must approach this way (and,
when it must approach Congress or US Courts, there are procedures to keep
intelligence material from the public, which are often, but not always, used;
some information may come out this way, though), and occasionally the public
will also receive some of the evidence incidentally to the US government
presentation to some _other_ entity, like the UN Security Council.

------
ConfuciusSay02
If the problem is people getting access to voter databases, it's really much
ado about nothing, since many of those databases are already public, and
besides you can pay a data warehousing company a few bucks and get much more
data about any American than what exists in any election database.

If the problem is actually the voting machines, then maybe we should go back
to all paper ballots like many other western countries like Canada.

Funny how the proven, reliable and simple solutions are never proposed...

~~~
krapp
>If the problem is actually the voting machines, then maybe we should go back
to all paper ballots like many other western countries like Canada.

Problems with paper ballots in the 2000 election are a big reason the US no
longer trusts them. No one wants to go back to the days of scrutinizing
hanging chads and indistinct pencil marks.

Electronic voting has obvious problems but at least you know what a vote is or
isn't.

~~~
ConfuciusSay02
Ahh, right. A few old people misread those poorly designed ballots, therefore
let's use a poorly secured system that is hackable by foreign governments.

Or, we could design the ballots to not be confusing?

It's funny how other western countries using paper ballots don't have these
problems.

------
runesoerensen
Press release (with the joint DHS and ODNI statement referenced in the
article): [https://www.dhs.gov/news/2016/10/07/joint-statement-
departme...](https://www.dhs.gov/news/2016/10/07/joint-statement-department-
homeland-security-and-office-director-national)

------
hackuser
A big question is why government stays on the sidelines of cybercrime (and
espionage). They said something here, but it's not usual, and what have they
done about it? They don't seem to feel responsible for protecting IT assets
like they do for older infrastructure: If someone was blowing up pipelines, it
would be shocking if the U.S. government was so passive about it.

The government needs to step forward and do its job of protecting citizens,
including in cyberspace - hardly a minor consideration at this point. I've
been thinking about it recently after reading this article:

[http://blogs.cfr.org/cyber/2016/10/04/risky-business-when-
go...](http://blogs.cfr.org/cyber/2016/10/04/risky-business-when-governments-
dont-attribute-state-sponsored-cyberattacks/)

------
X86BSD
The US? Seriously is this some kind of joke? The same US that has been
assassinating leaders and overthrowing dictators for over 100 years is
accusing someone else of interfering with an election? That's really a sign of
mental illness on the part of the US.

~~~
ommunist
Quite the contrary. This is superficial sanity, planting necessary ideas into
mass consciousness. You cannot touch China, they are important trading
partners, despite _facts_ that chinese intelligence is writing files at US
defence contractors at speed of hard drives there. You cannot touch Germany,
otherwise this will jeopardise transatlantic treaties. Blame Russia, it cannot
do anything, anyway.

~~~
X86BSD
Russia can do plenty. Like fuckup the US's overthrow of Assad so they can
build their precious nat gas line through Syria that Assad won't allow. Russia
put a stop to that. Now it's down to how much blood is the US willing to spill
in order to ensure Europe gets free of Russia's natgas hold on them.

~~~
ommunist
No one forces the EU to buy gas from Russia. Besides, the US successfully
completed huge liquid gas terminal facility at its EU satellite - Lithuania,
so there is an alternative supply since 2014.

------
knodi
I can't believe i'm read so many commenters here say that the government is
lying that is Russia. Think about it why would Americans officials lie about
this and its not just the US government (now) saying its Russia but
independent security groups have been saying this too.

I know its hard to believe in post Snowden America that everything the
government says is a lie but it just doesn't make sense for use to point the
finger at another country for this.

Depending on the out come of this election Russia could be in a world of hurt.

------
empath75
It's not news that Russia is doing this. It is news that the government is
officially accusing them of it. There are going to be geopolitical and
diplomatic repercussions from this.

~~~
joering2
okay but but whom? geopolitical and diplomatic repercussions by Russians or
Americans?

In case Americans... is there anything America can do to them to make them
feel the heat? I mean you talking about the country that was in a deep poverty
for decades but still praised and loved their dictator...

That mentality won't change.

~~~
empath75
If we're going to move toward open cyberwarfare, we could do a lot to their
network infrastructure.

~~~
rfrank
And they could do a lot with our power grid. Probably not a wise path to move
down.

------
sounds
No Diebold statement? They're still widely used and just as hackable.

No need to sway the public opinion by releasing troves of party emails if you
can just directly hack the vote itself!

------
buckbova
>"We believe, based on the scope and sensitivity of these efforts, that only
Russia's senior-most officials could have authorized these activities

Perhaps.

Russia and China have been "cyber attacking" my servers for years. Last server
I set up for a friend I blocked both countries by IP range.

I can imagine because the intensity of what's going on with this election, it
has drawn out a more concerted effort from your typical misanthrope probing
servers.

------
maxander
> Jason Healey, a senior research scholar on cyber issues at Columbia
> University, said the Pentagon’s Cyber Command should disrupt Russian hacking
> operations. “Go after their command and control,” he said. “
> ‘Counteroffensive’ is the key word here.”

Oh lovely- get back at them with their own medicine, normalizing a continuous
cyberwar in nominal peacetime. Its great- as fun and lucrative as regular
warfare, except without all those issues with _optics_ because no one
understands all this cyberbusiness regardless. Want to be rich in ten years?
Throw a pile of CS grads together to start up a cyberwarfare consulting
company, and you can still carve out your slice of the new military-industrial
complex.

------
agape77
Is there really anyone who isn't trying to influence the U.S. elections? Why
single out Russia for criticism? President Obama himself is trying to sway
voters to vote for Hillary Clinton. The New York Times recently released
Donald Trumps's 1995 Tax returns in an attempt to influence voters to vote for
Hillary Clinton instead of Donald Trump. Then just a few days ago, the
Washington Post released a video of Trump's 2005 crude sexual comments which
provoked outrage among the public and resulted in the plummeting of his poll
numbers. All these media organizations are, in one way or the other,
attempting to influence the U.S. elections. So why blame Russia when others
are doing exactly the same thing?

------
FullMtlAlcoholc
Although I'm a citizen and resident of the US, I can't help but smirk when
government officials are outraged and shocked that another nation state is
trying to influence our electoral process.

Question for someone more informed than I: With the Citizens United ruling,
what's to stop another country from pumping money into US elections?

~~~
int_19h
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Agents_Registration_Ac...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Agents_Registration_Act)

------
binarray2000
Is WaPo still a credible medium after their "no pardon for Snowden"?

Also, when will the US Oligarchy stop blaming everything on Russia. Sloppy
server security? It's Russia. Private e-mail server used for government
business? It's Russia.... Nearly 20 trillion dollar debt? It's Russia.

OK, US Oligarchy needs an enemy for a new war. A war that would hide the fact
that this neoliberal system is about to hit the wall. A war that would fill
the troves of the military industrial complex.

Says a "conspiracy theorist" George F. Kennan, former US ambassador to Moscow
and distinguished Council on Foreign Relations member: "Were the Soviet Union
to sink tomorrow under the waters of the ocean, the American military-
industrial establishment would have to go on, substantially unchanged, until
some other adversary could be invented. Anything else would be an unacceptable
shock to the American economy."

Good Night, and Good Luck.

~~~
Lordarminius
>Is WaPo still a credible medium ...

No but notice how even otherwise highly intelligent Americans collapse under
the spell of 3-lette-agency propsganda. Its amazing!

~~~
binarray2000
This is why I sympathise with regular US American citizens, they are equally a
victim as the rest of the world. Their soldiers are not bringing "freedom,
democracy and human rights" but death and destruction. And they themselves
come back home - some dead, many destroyed. And for what?

Regarding US media being influenced by three-letter-agencies: Operation
Mockingbird

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird)

is alive and well.

------
JumpCrisscross
What's the evidence?

Personally, I think the Russians were involved. But for consequences to
follow, we as a culture need to be certain based the preponderance of the
evidence.

------
no_protocol
> The U.S. Intelligence Community (USIC) is confident that the Russian
> Government directed the recent compromises

Strong claim. What kind of evidence would an investigator need to see to make
such a claim against a foreign nation? Would it be different than what is
needed to make a claim against an individual citizen?

I'm having a hard time taking this entire message seriously. It just feels
like empty reassurance.

~~~
dragonwriter
tptacek addresses this elsewhere in the thread:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12663930](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12663930)

------
skolos
Discussion of any topic that mentions Russia (everywhere, including HN) is,
unfortunately, dominated by Russian propaganda trolls.

~~~
ting_bu_dung
easy, hacker news should block IPs originating from Russia and China. they're
mostly just state sponsored posters anyways

~~~
sctb
Please don't make baseless accusations like this on HN.

------
droithomme
This is as credible and evidence based from reliable sources as the statements
that Iraq had WMDs and was connected to 9/11.

------
doener
Joint DHS and ODNI Election Security Statement

[https://s3.amazonaws.com/files.scribblelive.com/2016/10/7/14...](https://s3.amazonaws.com/files.scribblelive.com/2016/10/7/1416970_3941564435a2d4e5-8e38-47c0-9c21-346a56b59865.pdf)

------
malandrew
What I don't get is how the Obama administration thinks it can point a finger
at Russia and claim interference in the democratic process yet not look
hypocritical for not also pointing the finger at Rep. Debbie Wasserman and
claiming the same.

Do they realize how absurd their position sounds right now?

~~~
akhilcacharya
If you're familiar with the DNC leaks I have no idea how you could claim
equivalence in good faith.

------
api
Russia has a fairly well known "troll brigade" as well. Search a bit about
Russia's army of Internet trolls and propagandists. It's interesting.

Of course I'm sure the USA does a fair bit of this stuff as well. Every major
nation does propaganda.

------
gorbachev
What sort of evidence do they have to back this? I've seen nothing discussed
about that, anywhere.

The only thing they seem to go with is that Guccifer2.0 links to Russia.

To me this whole thing is based on nothing more than an educated guess.

~~~
dragonwriter
> What sort of evidence do they have to back this? I've seen nothing discussed
> about that, anywhere.

The attribution by CrowdStrike was discussed in the news (and on HN)
previously. While the government may have additional evidence from
intelligence sources beyond what CrowdStrike was looking at, it probably
includes the same things at a minimum.

------
whybroke
An even more interesting problem is how HN will deal with 55 Savushkina Street

------
oyebenny
Do you blame them? Russia is only trying to protect themselves from gettimg
dragged into unnecessary aggression and war with Trump as Commander.

------
andriesm
"However, officials said those attempts could not be directly linked to the
Russian government."

Clearly this article is a hit job.

But why?

~~~
adventured
They're upping the accusations now for at least two reasons that are
convenient. The growing conflict between the US and Russia in Syria and the
embarrassingly weak, flailing campaign of Hillary Clinton.

~~~
empath75
I'm not remotely a fan of hillary clinton, but she's currently blowing out
Donald Trump in the polls (538 currently has her as a 4-1 favorite to win)

~~~
dmix
Considering how much of a disaster Trump and his campaign has been, this is
still pretty underwhelming that he was close to matching her 50-50 as much as
1-2 weeks ago.

~~~
happytrails
Even if Trump is not being funded, influenced etc by Russia he's amateur at
best. I almost compare Trump to a Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany. Not a great
statesman and would create a terrible political environment and make major
mistakes. :( It only takes one weak president and combined with a horrible
congress and we're gonna have a bad 4-8 years.

------
mbfg
translate: US government diverts attention away from new wikileaks dump of
clinton emails.

------
pasbesoin
I accuse the government, and the political parties, of gross incompetence.

------
happytrails
Trump reminds me of Kaiser Wilhelm.. Good luck America!

------
fingar
Smaller countries are on the receiving end of advanced hacking for a long
time.

This one is about some old private server...

~~~
empath75
I don't think it would be a major international incident or even be
particularly unexpected for them to hack the rnc and dns and anything else
they could get their hands on. In fact, they'd be failing at their jobs if
they weren't trying their hardest to do that.

The problem is that they _released_ the data. And they are fairly blatantly
attempting to tip the scales in an ongoing election. That's not something that
the US can politely ignore. It threatens the entire political system of the
US.

------
ommunist
Да, мы единственно не смогли хакнуть трансгуманистов.

------
ge96
They're trying to make sure Trump is the one so he brings down the country
without Russia or other powers haha.

\- ignorant person speaking

------
grandalf
This is certainly one of the more peculiar incidents of late.

It's been my impression that the US and Russia conduct various sorts of covert
mischief such as this, but it's usually under the radar.

"Hacking" an insecure email server configured by campaign volunteers or other
non-technical people is not exactly what would qualify as a "state sponsored
attack".

(edit: if you disagree please explain why rather than simply downvoting)

~~~
dogma1138
Actually this is a pretty clear sign of a state sponsored attack, most attacks
including the ones that the US does are not technically sophisticated but they
are executed near flawlessly with a very good operational methodology, the
other aspect of state sponsored attacks is protection; even the criminal
elements of the security/hacking community stays out of military and
government networks usually unless they have a pretty strong patron they can
run to, no one wants to experience rendition or a drone strike both of which
are very real threats hackers that attack government networks face.

~~~
eloff
Really? Can you name one hacker targeted in a drone strike? I'm pretty sure
that only happens in your mind.

~~~
dogma1138
[http://www.wsj.com/articles/hacker-killed-by-drone-was-
secre...](http://www.wsj.com/articles/hacker-killed-by-drone-was-secret-
weapon-1440718560)

~~~
eloff
Obviously ISIS hackers will get killed in drone strikes, that's a war. But
nobody is going to drone strike a hacker in Russia, Germany, or the USA. Let's
get real here.

