
Treason charges against Russian cyber experts linked to 7-year-old accusations - mzs
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-russia-cyber-insight-idUSKBN1650MA
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jdp23
As Marcy Wheeler points out, this is something Bryan Krebs had suggested last
month:

[https://krebsonsecurity.com/2017/01/a-shakeup-in-russias-
top...](https://krebsonsecurity.com/2017/01/a-shakeup-in-russias-top-
cybercrime-unit/)

[https://www.emptywheel.net/2017/02/26/reuters-confirms-
krebs...](https://www.emptywheel.net/2017/02/26/reuters-confirms-krebs-
supposition-on-russian-treason-charges/)

~~~
akhilcacharya
>My suspicion is that the King Servers connection identified other
associations that were far more sensitive for Russia than just an old spam
business grudge. And that’s why Vrublevsky is finally getting his revenge

Hmm

I hope we can have an independent investigation about this.

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gesman
Now we know ~0.1% of the whole story.

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zigzigzag
_December 's arrests came shortly after the United States accused Russia of
trying to influence its presidential election through computer hacking, an
accusation Moscow denies_

They're referring to the Clinton campaign leaks here, right? Not actual
hacking of voting infrastructure, which is what it sounds like. Unless the
story has moved on whilst I wasn't watching.

~~~
jlgaddis
It has.

~~~
zigzigzag
So can you show me evidence of this? Because a few of the obvious Google
searches to try just throw up lots of western news stories saying that no such
thing ever happened.

~~~
mikeyouse
Via Krebs, they are suspected of being tied to these hacks:

[http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/politics/ct-
illinoi...](http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/politics/ct-illinois-
state-board-of-elections-hack-update-met-0830-20160829-story.html)

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-
security/fbi-i...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/fbi-
is-investigating-foreign-hacks-of-state-election-
systems/2016/08/29/6e758ff4-6e00-11e6-8365-b19e428a975e_story.html)

~~~
zigzigzag
Those two stories both refer to incidents that have nothing to do with
affecting election outcomes, and could have been done by anyone. There's a lot
of insinuation that it's by generic "Russians" and there sure is a lot of
online crime coming out of former Soviet states, but as the second article
points out in the text, it can easily be criminals. This is especially the
case because American personal details are so easily used for various forms of
financial fraud.

But we're not talking about petty theft of SSNs which may or may not come from
Russians here. We're talking about deliberate foreign intelligence operations
against actual voting infrastructure. Which hasn't happened.

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conistonwater
Does anybody know if we can read the actual indictment somewhere?

~~~
purple-again
Ask Putin how he feels about the "Freedom of Information Act" ;)

------
fixxer
Redacted

~~~
mc32
I guess from this I can surmise the Chinese run a tighter ship. I've not heard
of Chinese charged with treason for disclosing cyber espionage to US agents.
Either that or they are as sloppy but the NYT doesn't follow those stories. Or
Chinese authorities don't care about leaks from their experts.

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baybal2
What so secret that guy could have disclosed? That Kaspersky writes the
"ware?" and has more devs writing it than their poopy AV programs? That was
hardly a secret for god knows how many years.

