
Putin's DNC Hackers Actively Targeting French Elections - dsr12
http://www.defenseone.com/technology/2017/01/putins-dnc-hackers-actively-targeting-french-elections/134603/
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Santosh83
Quite obviously the military-industrial complex on all sides has gotten rather
bored of the relative peace we saw for sometime after the fall of the USSR, so
we need another cold-war potentially building up into contained, localised
conflicts again, so we can expect allegations like these fly thick and fast
now and in the future. Quite obviously nation states of all hues have stopped
protecting or even representing the welfare of the majority of their people
but instead work for the powerful minority, be it a fuedal clan or a
sophisticated network of big business or anything in between. And these are
served well by continuing conflicts and poverty and localised war. The only
thing they don't want is an all out global war but they don't realise they
have to be careful what they wish for, as history has shown repeatedly.

~~~
generic_user
I think the economic, military and political power behind NATO would consider
a military confrontation that might escalate into a third world war if they
determine that without such a war world events would lead to an existential
threat to there existence.

A four or eight year Detente between the United States and Russia combined
with an integration of Eurasian defence strategy could see a dramatic
obsolescence of an organisation that is no longer politically relevant nor
operationally capable to fulfill its mandate.

Currently both of those trends are moving forward.

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nl
Those who (reasonably!) question the lack of actual evidence presented by the
US intelligence community over the US hacks would do well to read the 2014
FireEye paper on APT28 (the group involved). It's pretty compelling, even if
it doesn't address the specific allegations around the election(s). The TL;DR
is that there is significant circumstantial evidence that this group is
government backed, and also evidence against it being a false flag operation.

Note that the date of the report should provide some protection against
allegations it is politically motivated.

See [https://www.fireeye.com/blog/threat-
research/2014/10/apt28-a...](https://www.fireeye.com/blog/threat-
research/2014/10/apt28-a-window-into-russias-cyber-espionage-operations.html)

~~~
Natsu
Should also read this, too:

[http://blog.erratasec.com/2017/01/dear-obama-from-
infosec.ht...](http://blog.erratasec.com/2017/01/dear-obama-from-infosec.html)

~~~
nl
Sure, that is all pretty valid criticism of the terrible report the intel
groups put out. It doesn't do anything to show the background, which Errata
are taking as assumed knowledge. The first paragraph is basically a "we think
it's true" and the rest is "that doesn't actually explain anything"

~~~
Natsu
Right, it's meant as a summary of everything to date. They've covered pretty
much everything before.

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sev
Whether or not the DNC was hacked by the Russians or someone else, or it
wasn't a hack at all, but a leak instead is less important to me than the fact
that because of this incident we all were made aware (with proof) of the shit-
show and corruption that exists in our government. The DNC chief worked
against a candidate to bring forth another - honestly, I'm glad this incident
occurred to highlight the mess.

~~~
micaksica
This is exactly how I feel about the situation. These types of covert games
have just decided to become overt in hopes of riling up populations; they've
been going on since the birth of nation states. However, Russia didn't
actually do anything particularly damning to the DNC: the DNC did it to
themselves. If they weren't internally corrupt they wouldn't have had any
issue.

Political parties and government shouldn't have anything to hide, so what do
they have to fear, right? That's what they say to us.

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thescribe
While this is serious we do need to make sure it does not become "Putin's
hackers help everyone I don't like".

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thewhitetulip
I'm curious, does anyone have concrete evidence about these things or are
people just saying that "on the evidence which we are gathering"

~~~
rwmj
I guess solid evidence _is_ hard to put forward. Suppose I follow a chain of
forwarders back to a Russian government hacking organization. What evidence
would convince you that it happened? A PDF report listing the IPs?
Screenshots? Print outs? An independent third party (and how would I convince
them?)

Add to that the secrecy of the agencies gathering this evidence (completely
unnecessary IMO) and the partisan/scepticism of the recipients, it's a hard
problem.

~~~
Natsu
Hack one of them and release their email/recordings/etc. showing the plot.

Maybe you'd burn some sources or methods, but if the alternative is that you
get taken over, is that not worth it?

~~~
nl
Except that will be disclaimed as being faked, and it will be impossible to
prove otherwise.

~~~
Natsu
There are many ways to corroborate evidence from 3rd party sources. It's done
in courtrooms every single day.

Take, for example, the leaked emails. They can be shown to have DKIM
signatures which are signed by both Google & Hillary's email servers and these
can be validated. Or in the physical world, you can show that people were in
the right place in the right time. You can find multiple, named witnesses who
have proof of being in the right place at the right time and other
corroborating evidence.

Sure, it will be disclaimed as being faked. But then you end up like Donna
Brazille:

\- First you show her denying this:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Izl0e4xvgGA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Izl0e4xvgGA)

\- Now you show a DKIM validated email: [https://wikileaks.org/podesta-
emails/emailid/5205](https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/5205)

\- Now you show how to perform the validation:
[http://blog.erratasec.com/2016/10/yes-we-can-validate-
wikile...](http://blog.erratasec.com/2016/10/yes-we-can-validate-wikileaks-
emails.html?m=1)

At this point, they can deny however they like. It only makes them look more
guilty.

~~~
nl
Well it depends on the evidence, right? I'd imagine that the FSB has
reasonable OpSec, and APT28 too.

~~~
Natsu
Turn that around to see why there's always a weak link somewhere. I'd expect
the NSA to have reasonable OpSec too, but there's Snowden.

And they protect the US Secretary of State, too, but look at how hard Colin
Powell made their job:

[https://wikileaks.org/clinton-
emails/emailid/30324](https://wikileaks.org/clinton-emails/emailid/30324)

It's in the PDF attached to that. There's always a weak link somewhere. When
you have people like this in power, even the smartest spies can't protect them
--

"Now, the real issue had to do with PDAs, as we called them a few years ago
before BlackBerry became a noun. And the issue was DS would not allow them
into the secure spaces, especially up your way. When I asked why not they gave
me all kinds of nonsense about how they gave out signals that could be read by
spies, etc. Same reason they tried to keep mobile phones out of the suite. I
had numerous meetings with them. We even opened one up for them to try to
explain to me why it was more dangerous than say, a remote control for one of
the many tvs in the suite. Or something embedded in my shoe heel. They never
satisfied me and NSA/CIA wouldn't back off. So, we just went about our
business and stopped asking. I had an ancient version of a PDA and used it. In
general, the suite was so sealed that it is hard to get signals in or out
wirelessly."

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_Codemonkeyism
Germany is next with this years elections.

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beshrkayali
It's absolutely hilarious that obvious lies and propaganda are creating this
much tension.

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fdik
It was a lie, and there will be more lies. Putin, the evil emperor.

Bullshit for the simple minded.

