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Ask HN: Do you believe the Russia hacking story?
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Re: Ask HN: Do you believe the Russia hacking story?
#12[deleted]
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Re: Ask HN: Do you believe the Russia hacking story?
#13The 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…
I understand why Wikileaks refuses to announce their sources, but I really wish they would in this case. I would love to see the shake-up if they were to show proof that the DNC leaks were provided by the late Seth Rich[1], for instance.
Re: Ask HN: Do you believe the Russia hacking story?
#14Read FireEye's reports about APT28 and APT29:
http://www2.fireeye.com/rs/fireye/images/rpt-apt28.pdf
https://www2.fireeye.com/rs/848-DID-242/images/rpt-apt29-hammertoss.pdf
As a software developer, I can say that this "feels" par for the course for software developed in large organizations. Software that does it's job but obvious things, such as not realizing the developers workstation's locale names are being added to the binary, is forgotten.
Note also that the accusations against Russia hacking the DNC aren't coming out of the blue. The same evidence was there already in July when the emails were published by WikiLeaks. It wasn't until after the election that pundits started to believe something other than Russia was behind the hack.
Re: Ask HN: Do you believe the Russia hacking story?
#15This is a bizarre question. It's tantamount to asking "do you think the fbi and cia lied to the american people?"
Well, we know they're constantly lying by omission. Is it such a stretch to believe they'd actively lie as well?
Re: Ask HN: Do you believe the Russia hacking story?
#16With regard to your first part of your first contention, that Russia hacked the DNC, read the Crowdstrike report[1]. That will contain the most technical indicators publicly revealed.
The second part, that Russia hacked John Podesta, is summarized mostly in these analyses.[2][3] Basically some actor used a single bitly account to create nearly 10,000 bitly links to sites that were obvious phishing domains for Google logins. Many of these links targeted people who only Russia would be interested in, for example, investigators of the MH17 shootdown, journalists and academics with a Russia focus, and organizations in the former Soviet states and Europe. Some of these domains were also linked to other campaigns known to be linked to APT28 or 29 (i.e., Russia).
Your second contention, that Russia provided exfiltrated data to Wikileaks, seems to rely mostly on classified intelligence. All the public evidence is circumstantial. Up to you to believe it or not.
[1]: https://www.crowdstrike.com/blog/bears-midst-intrusion-democ...
[2]: https://www.secureworks.com/research/threat-group-4127-targe...
[3]: https://www.threatconnect.com/blog/russia-hacks-bellingcat-m...
Re: Ask HN: Do you believe the Russia hacking story?
#17I 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 behin…
If this is true, I really have to wonder why there is no evidence of this. Gov't already had their chance to release evidence in their 25 page JAR report, but after reading it, I found 0 evidence of Russia being responsible for the DNC hack.
Re: Ask HN: Do you believe the Russia hacking story?
#18I 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 behin…
That lack of technical details is pretty much all I need to hear. The whole thing smells of politics. The media have certainly been trying to conflate all of it in an attempt to make people think Trumps victory is invalid - and even worse, a plot by Putin.
Re: Ask HN: Do you believe the Russia hacking story?
#19Watching 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…
I think you are creating a strawman. One does not have to approve of the CIA to think that they are correct. Indeed, if one believes the CIA and NSA are adept at collecting intelligence on the American people, it follows that they might also be good at collecting it on Russia. There does not have to be an "alliance" to agree on established facts.
Indeed, I would argue that your point that if one disproves of CIA tactics that everything the CIA says or asserts is now somehow in question is probably more "tribalistic" than viewing data and agreeing on facts. That smacks of conspiracy theory.
Whether or not this makes any of this true is another story, but tribalism is a bad response.
Re: Ask HN: Do you believe the Russia hacking story?
#20The 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…
> I don't think this is reasonably called hacking, it's more social engineering or scamming.
The vector doesn't matter.
The mark of sophistication is not that they use highly technical vectors, but that they know how to use their toolbox, and social engineering remains one of the most powerful tools in there.
Data was still exfiltrated without consent. That's hacking.