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Technical report on DNC hack [pdf]

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Re: Technical report on DNC hack [pdf]

#251

Post by threeseed »

smitherfield wrote: post #147
acjohnson55 wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's rather naive to think these things didn't have an effect. The problem isn't the truth of the claims, it's that the illicitly gained information was strategically released to disrupt one specific campaign, effectively destabilizing our election. Much like Comey's last minute email announcement revealed nothing new, yet allowed the email narrative to renew its currency in the last days of the campaign. Imagine if…

> Imagine if the IRS "accidentally" released Trump's tax returns or been hacked to allow this data to come out. The NYT did publish Trump's stolen tax return, and were quite self-congratulatory about having done so... > Or if the alleged tapes went public of Donald Trump making openly racist remarks on his TV shows outtakes. ...and, the stories about the hacked material were outnumbered probably 100-1 by the simultan…

There is no evidence that the NYT stole Trump's tax returns.

His ex-wife had copies of those documents and it's widely suspected that she was the one to leak them.

Re: Technical report on DNC hack [pdf]

#252

Post by mundo »

ww520 wrote: post #199
StanislavPetrov wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "evidence" boils down to: The Hackers drove a truck. Russians drive trucks. The Russians did the hacking. While its insulting that our government would try to pass off this drivel as "evidence", I'm much more dismayed that so many of my fellow Americans will uncritically accept it as such.

The purpose of these "reports" and the retaliation against the Russians is to undermine the legitimacy of the Trump presidency. There's no need for proof, just innuendo and allegation would do. Pretty sick of technology got dragged through the mud for political purpose.

This is the least plausible conspiracy theory I've ever heard. C'mon man. Imagine you're whoever-it-is you think is behind this, and you want to discredit Trump for whatever reason. What would you do?

You've got access to all of his tax returns, and all the sealed details of his divorces, and all of his medical records, and all of his business records. You've got a whole squad of spies working for you, you can fabricate evidence, whatever you want. And this is a guy a guy who has outstanding loans from Russian banks in the hundreds of millions of dollars, and who has cheated on at least two of his wives. And this is what you go with? Accuse someone unrelated to him of hacking in to someone unrelated to him? That's your big plot? And you wait to do it until after the election? Via press release?

Re: Technical report on DNC hack [pdf]

#253

Post by WalterSear »

gipp wrote: post #104
cmdrfred wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you believe this proves that claim I have some WMD's in Iraq to sell you.

I said no such thing. Nor does the report.

It's not meant to be read. It's meant to be announced on television as 'proof'.

Re: Technical report on DNC hack [pdf]

#254

Post by threeseed »

15155 wrote: post #137
grandalf wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're supposed to trust them that it was not just Russian geographically but the Russian government and also the highest levels of the Russian government.

WMDs were in Iraq, too, didn't you hear?

You can keep making this point but you know it's a stupid one.

There was widespread dissent amongst the intelligence communities about the presence of WMD. In this case there isn't such dissent.

Re: Technical report on DNC hack [pdf]

#255

Post by wyager »

mundo wrote: post #244
StanislavPetrov wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "evidence" boils down to: The Hackers drove a truck. Russians drive trucks. The Russians did the hacking. While its insulting that our government would try to pass off this drivel as "evidence", I'm much more dismayed that so many of my fellow Americans will uncritically accept it as such.

This (complaining about the lack of evidence) just seems ludicrous to me. Does the FBI have a history of declassifying stuff like this so that randos on the internet can independently verify its conclusions? When high-level intelligence people collude to lie to the American people and discredit a president, do they usually do it via press release clearly written by a PIO? The accusation that people who find this cred…

The FBI has a history of political activism, to put it lightly. Here's a fun one: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/FBI–King_suicide_letter

You're being foolish if you trust a word the FBI says without solid evidence.

Re: Technical report on DNC hack [pdf]

#256

Post by dfc »

codedokode wrote: post #127

I have looked through the report. The only useful information was brief description of attack methods, everything else looks like a list of general recommendations one can find on the OWASP website. As I understand from report the main methods used were: - sendind emails with executable files that victims for some reason executed - phishing So, they used script kiddie level tools anyone could use (and they are cheap;…

> The report also contains a pretty useless firewall rule

For what it's worth Yara is not a firewall. It's essentially an intelligent grep for incident response. An IOC is an indicator of compromise, so it's after the fact not a preventative measure.

http://virustotal.github.io/yara/

Re: Technical report on DNC hack [pdf]

#257

Post by wyager »

empath75 wrote: post #217
StanislavPetrov wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "evidence" boils down to: The Hackers drove a truck. Russians drive trucks. The Russians did the hacking. While its insulting that our government would try to pass off this drivel as "evidence", I'm much more dismayed that so many of my fellow Americans will uncritically accept it as such.

The actual evidence is probably closer to 'we have moles in the kremlin and taps on their phones' but they're not exactly going to publish that are they.

If they're not going to publish their (hypothetical, ostensible, theoretical, possibly entirely imaginary) evidence, then why would we put much faith into their claim? It's not like all major US intelligence agencies haven't led deception campaigns against the public before.

Re: Technical report on DNC hack [pdf]

#258

Post by avn2109 »

mynameisvinn124 wrote: post #192
cloakandswagger wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the real absurdity of this debacle to me. Many of the whitepapers that I read about the DNC hack listed the attack's "sophistication" as proof that it came from a state actor, yet it was the most routine, simple attack conceivable. No rootkits, no 0 days, just simple phishing and social engineering.

"Many breach announcements this year pointed to a “sophisticated attacker” as a narrative of their issue. This usually is followed up by criticism when an initial means of their compromise is revealed. Most breaches begin with spear phishing, commodity exploits, a leaked key, or some other obvious or preventable detail. However, this is almost never the “sophisticated” aspect of a breach worth talking about. It’s eas…

>> "An adversary may show you what “sophistication” means after advancing from their beachhead."

Sure, that's obviously true in general, but given the current absence of evidence of "sophistication," there is no reason to assume its presence.

Re: Technical report on DNC hack [pdf]

#259

Post by mundo »

wyager wrote: post #255
mundo wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This (complaining about the lack of evidence) just seems ludicrous to me. Does the FBI have a history of declassifying stuff like this so that randos on the internet can independently verify its conclusions? When high-level intelligence people collude to lie to the American people and discredit a president, do they usually do it via press release clearly written by a PIO? The accusation that people who find this cred…

The FBI has a history of political activism, to put it lightly. Here's a fun one: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/FBI–King_suicide_letter You're being foolish if you trust a word the FBI says without solid evidence.

I don't! Dammit, read the post! No one on god's green earth trusts the FBI at their word, but that doesn't mean you can assume the opposite of what they said is true without evidence!

Re: Technical report on DNC hack [pdf]

#260

Post by lern_too_spel »

fleitz wrote: post #242
cloakandswagger wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Valid point, but I should clarify my original comment: I don't find either aspect of the attack--the entry or the payload--to be particularly sophisticated. Everything I've read indicates the bulk of work was done by Powershell scripts, along with a backdoor process running in the open. If you told me that the backdoor was a kernel level rootkit or something similar then I could get onboard, but as it stands I don't…

Who else could have forced the DNC to rig the primaries? It's very clear from the collusion between CNN and the Hillary campaign that state level actors were involved.

Please don't spread fake news about primary rigging, even if tongue-in-cheek. Stick to discussing the article.
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