The OP is a shameful blot on Bruce Schneier's record [imo].
For "evidence" we are directed to The New York Times -- a political organization. This sort of evidence certainly suffices for the non-technical set but that HN is accepting this without subjecting the assertion to the rigor that we apply to topics that are not conflated with emotional and psychological triggers is disconcerting.
I would like to pose the question here to my fellow geeks: Do you really think Russians are so incompetent that they would not avail themselves of e.g. Tor to cover their tracks?
[edit: take courage & answer the question instead of downvoting.]
"The OP is a shameful blot on Bruce Schneier's record [imo].
For "evidence" we are directed to The New York Times -- a political organization."
I originally skipped that blog entry but all these anti-Schneier comments make it worth reading. Reading it shows the opposite of the claims I'm seeing on HN. It's in the style of his other reporting on stuff, like Sony situation, where he lists the official position on it in non-committal way (note the "if"), optionally lists alternative theories (apparently has none or doesn't care), focuses on meat of situation (election insecurity), optionally notes prior warnings/work (his and others), and then delivers recommendations to reduce or eliminate the risk. Common pattern on his blog very evident from a guy reading it for about eight years.
Far as personal bias, I've regularly counterpointed him on his own blow & even wrote a character assessment of him based on reading many claims:
Schneier's moderation style is so permissive we get the thoughtful and trolling alike. Yet, far as political or technical points, he doesn't expect lip service from anybody. Let's the "yay," "nay," and "screw you all" posts all stand. So, I speak for myself noting he's not pushing New York Times, the main theory, anything but the topic of elections security & recommendations to get it on track. Those recommendations also reflect both his own research and tons of discussion on those topics on his blog that came to same conclusions. They're the blog's consensus.
As a minimum you get a server to work from (and have your backdoors point back to) that does not directly link back to you. Typically another hacked machine - not necessarily hacked by you - you can buy them cheaply on dark net market places.
DNC has an obvious interest in spinning this and they seem to have done this very successfully.
What bothers me is that no-one seems to be able to separate politics from technical assessment. Even people with deep technical insights such as mr. Schneier.
I think the chance of Trump's presidency scares a lot of people and that scare clouds judgement.
I don't have any say in the american election but I think that people overestimate what the presidential post means and underestimate the check-and-balances of the rest of democratic system (congress, legal system, existing GOP apparatus, press and so on).
Well, even if it wasn't Russia that hacked the DNC (and now the Clinton campaign) it is still the case that someone did, and that's still reason enough to take the measures Bruce Schneier's advocates.
Please answer the question. Leaks may also be from disgruntled staffers whose idealism shattered on encountering the hard realities of American political system.
The question about about TOR?
Sure, they could have used TOR, but that doesn't make them automatically untraceable. I am definitely not an expert on this kind of forensics, but in past cases the "smoking gun" pointed to by experts tends to be some sort of metadata (i.e., text files encoded using cyrillic character set), not an ip.
Also, there's been some claims that NSA and other agencies are running TOR exit nodes. Not sure if there's anything to it, but the point is state level actors have resources that nobody else does.
Besides, I am not sure what is your point. "Russian hackers would have covered their tracks, therefore it must not have been Russian hackers"?
For "evidence" we are directed to The New York Times -- a political organization. This sort of evidence certainly suffices for the non-technical set but that HN is accepting this without subjecting the assertion to the rigor that we apply to topics that are not conflated with emotional and psychological triggers is disconcerting.
I would like to pose the question here to my fellow geeks: Do you really think Russians are so incompetent that they would not avail themselves of e.g. Tor to cover their tracks?
[edit: take courage & answer the question instead of downvoting.]