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Ask HN: Do you believe the Russia hacking story?

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Ask HN: Do you believe the Russia hacking story?

#1

Post by apeace »

I'm interested to hear from security experts: have you seen any evidence of the claims in the media? From a technical perspective, do you believe that 1) Russia hacked the DNC and John Podesta, and 2) Russia provided exfiltrated data to WikiLeaks and under the pseudonym "Guccifer 2.0"?

Keep this on-topic for HN: what are the technical arguments being made that attribute these acts to the same attacker, and what are the technical arguments being made that the attacker is related to the Russian government?

I'm surprised that the tech community hasn't been more vocal in demanding evidence for these claims. In 2010, Bruce Schneier was skeptical of claims that Stuxnet was created by the U.S., or even targeted a specific nuclear enrichment facility[0]. Of course, he later agreed that evidence showed it had targeted the Natanz plant[1]. This is the skeptical and scientific approach I expect from the tech community. Am I missing something the rest of the community has seen?

[0] https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2010/10/stuxnet.html

[1] https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2012/02/another_piece_o.html

Re: Ask HN: Do you believe the Russia hacking story?

#2

Post by setra »

Watching various media outlets they tend to say something along the lines of: "Russia hacked the election!". Reporting on the hack of the DNC / Podesta, followed by saying that Russia attempted to influence the US election. Both of which are documented and true events. However they attempt to conflate the two in presentation into the literal "Russia hacked John Podesta and Clinton to help Trump". Which is not justified from the limited amount of information available. Similarly they will talk about voting machine hacks, followed by Russia's attempted influence, and in presentation giving you the impression that "Russia hacked US voting machines".

Re: Ask HN: Do you believe the Russia hacking story?

#3

Post by AndrewKahr »

I think the U.S is very behind when it comes to cybersecurity. We are throwing kids who are talented into prison and giving them felonies at a young age because the U.S does not understand them. If they get a felony for minor drug possession or messing around online as a teen, they have this negative feeling towards law enforcment and choose private sector.

But hey, isn't the private sector the new law enforcement? I recall the FBI not even requesting the DNC server for forensic analysis, we just passed it off to a 3rd party. https://www.buzzfeed.com/alimwatkins/the-fbi-never-asked-for...

Re: Ask HN: Do you believe the Russia hacking story?

#4

Post by morganvachon »

setra wrote: post #2

Watching various media outlets they tend to say something along the lines of: "Russia hacked the election!". Reporting on the hack of the DNC / Podesta, followed by saying that Russia attempted to influence the US election. Both of which are documented and true events. However they attempt to conflate the two in presentation into the literal "Russia hacked John Podesta and Clinton to help Trump". Which is not justifi…

I think the first (Russia hacked to install Trump) is more likely than the second (Russia successfully hacked US voting machines). I draw this conclusion only because of things I had noticed long before the hacks came to light, mostly Trump's ambiguity regarding his relationship with Putin and Russia from a business point of view. It didn't help his position when he started appointing Russia-friendly cabinet members.

Still, I don't think you can draw a direct line from Trump to Putin regarding the hacks themselves; in other words, Trump didn't order the attacks, he just reaped the benefits.

Re: Ask HN: Do you believe the Russia hacking story?

#6

Post by alistproducer2 »

Watching so-called "liberals" defending the CIA is really the icing on the cake for the last 8 years. The tribalism in this country transcends principles. As long as your team is the one winning, it doesn't matter what it does. If your team is losing, no alliance is too strange, no principle is too important to be cast aside in pursuit of destroying the enemy.

Do I like Donold Trump? Not a chance. Does my dislike of Trump make me more conducive to believe spies and spooks more than I did before November? Not really.

Re: Ask HN: Do you believe the Russia hacking story?

#9

Post by droithomme »

The Podesta emails were acquired by someone who downloaded them from gmail after Podesta voluntarily gave his password in response to a standard mass phishing email that many other people got as well. I don't think this is reasonably called hacking, it's more social engineering or scamming. It also doesn't seem to be spear phishing (a targetted attack) given that large numbers of people got the same emails.

Wikileaks says the DNC leaks were given to them personally by an insider. This is not a hack either.

Did foreign state intelligence services hack or try to hack servers of political operations in the US? Undoubtedly. That's their job and we've seen that there's not a lot of sense or security awareness by a lot of politicians, so it's likely a lot gets through.

Did foreign states give the info to Wikileaks? There's no evidence of that, and there's evidence from those who are in a position to know, such as Wikileaks, to the contrary.

Re: Ask HN: Do you believe the Russia hacking story?

#10

Post by pingswept »

I scanned through the 25-page unclassified report released a couple of days ago. I found no technical details, which I'm afraid means that the question devolves to whether you trust the FBI, CIA, and the NSA, (plus the non-technical arguments about Putin's motivations in the report, which I found reasonably compelling).

It seems to me that it would be difficult to get all three agencies to agree that Russia was behind the DNC email hack if that weren't true, so I suspect it's probably true, but not with great certainty.

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