I commented this on Ars. It got downvoted so many times that it's now hidden on the website. Also I was accused of being a Russian bot several times.
``Just because the US intelligence community gets attribution details in 2014 doesn't mean they didn't fake the attribution for the 2016 DNC hack. That's like me registering an account with your username on some site and posting stuff with it - many digital "fingerprints" can be faked. Readers of Ars should know this.
Also, the author's claim that the US intelligence community attributed the DNC hack is dubious. James Clapper did, and he threw around a debunked "17 intelligence agencies" slogan[0], but the man's a retired partisan[1]. Recall that the DNC would not let the FBI do actual forensics on their hacked server[2] - well, there's one intelligence agency that didn't get a chance to make an attribution. Recall too that the Crowdstrike's hack report claims were debunked by the Ukranian army[3] & authenticity of the C&C software was questioned by many in the cyber security community[4].
``Just because the US intelligence community gets attribution details in 2014 doesn't mean they didn't fake the attribution for the 2016 DNC hack. That's like me registering an account with your username on some site and posting stuff with it - many digital "fingerprints" can be faked. Readers of Ars should know this.
Also, the author's claim that the US intelligence community attributed the DNC hack is dubious. James Clapper did, and he threw around a debunked "17 intelligence agencies" slogan[0], but the man's a retired partisan[1]. Recall that the DNC would not let the FBI do actual forensics on their hacked server[2] - well, there's one intelligence agency that didn't get a chance to make an attribution. Recall too that the Crowdstrike's hack report claims were debunked by the Ukranian army[3] & authenticity of the C&C software was questioned by many in the cyber security community[4].
[0] https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2017/07/06/clapper_c...
[1] https://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2016-11-17/lawmakers-re...
[2] http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2017/05/09/the_fbi_i...
[3] https://www.voanews.com/a/cyber-firm-rewrites-part-disputed-...
[4] http://www.zdnet.com/article/no-smoking-gun-for-russian-dnc-... ``