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Ask HN: Do you believe the Russia hacking story?
21–30 of 44 posts
Re: Ask HN: Do you believe the Russia hacking story?
#22Watching 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 tact…
How much one decides to believe a particular statement from organizations that claim never to be able to provide proof is entirely dependent on one's need for that statement to be true. If that statement provides for the destruction of "the other side" people are much more likely to believe it.
>everything the CIA says or asserts is now somehow in question
The CIA is an agency where everyone is taught to lie. They of course call it something else, tradcecraft, but they are, by profession, liars. A good spy knows to trust no one, especially not other spies.
Re: Ask HN: Do you believe the Russia hacking story?
#23The 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…
Is there hard proof though that the Podesta leak was just a mass fishing by-catch and it was nothing else? It would be trivial for a hacker to place false emails as a red herring.
What I find more interesting than the origin of the leaks is that almost nobody is talking about their content. Little in the US, almost not at all internationally. The only reporting about the Podesta leaks I noticed was that they occurred, and that some people described as cranks were discussing them on reddit - but at least in Germany no discussion of the contents, and in US media not much more. Same for the DNC leaks. The "pied piper" memo, where Democrats were hoping Trump would win the primaries... And how they tried to undermine Sanders - how did that not cause more outrage?
Re: Ask HN: Do you believe the Russia hacking story?
#24Researchers traced the phishing link back to a bitly account that wasn't password protected. When they saw the other links in the account, they were able to decode the email address each link corresponded to. This unveiled that gaining access to Podesta's emails was part of a coordinated attack against the Clinton campaign. See http://motherboard.vice.com/read/how-hackers-broke-into-john...
The second question is one of attribution (i.e. "Who did it?"). That's harder. I believe it was the Russians, but that's based more on faith in the U.S. and British intelligence services getting this one right than a smoking gun linking back to the Kremlin.
Re: Ask HN: Do you believe the Russia hacking story?
#25There are 3 possibilities:
1) Russia hacked the election
2) Russia did not hack the election but the intelligence community wrongly believes they did
3) Russia did not hack the election and the intelligence agencies don't believe they did but have decided to lie to the American people for their own reasons.
Some of the reasons to believe they did:
[1] They had the motivation
[2] They have the capability
[3] They have done similar attacks in the past (as has the US)
[4] Russian linked hacking groups like Fancy Bear have been tied to the attacks
[5] The choice of targets and leaked information appeared to benefit Russia.
I think there is enough evidence to point to Russia hacking as the most probable explanation.
Re: Ask HN: Do you believe the Russia hacking story?
#26The 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…
Is there hard proof though that the Podesta leak was just a mass fishing by-catch and it was nothing else? It would be trivial for a hacker to place false emails as a red herring. What I find more interesting than the origin of the leaks is that almost nobody is talking about their content. Little in the US, almost not at all internationally. The only reporting about the Podesta leaks I noticed was that they occurred…
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Re: Ask HN: Do you believe the Russia hacking story?
#27Read 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 They are finding various correlations, such as Russian language settings, compile timestamps matching Russian work days, malware activity ceasing on Russian holidays... As a software developer, I can say that this "feels" par for the course for so…
Correlation doesn't imply causation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correlation_does_not_imply_cau...
The question is about technical specs.
Re: Ask HN: Do you believe the Russia hacking story?
#28This is a bizarre question. It's tantamount to asking "do you think the fbi and cia lied to the american people?"
When you put it that way...
What about Iraq? Or MKUltra, or Iran-Contra?
That does not mean they lied this time, but that context makes this question less bizarre than many seem to think
Re: Ask HN: Do you believe the Russia hacking story?
#29This is a bizarre question. It's tantamount to asking "do you think the fbi and cia lied to the american people?"
Not so much lie as be mistaken. There's a lot of groupthink in these agencies. Remember WMD?
Re: Ask HN: Do you believe the Russia hacking story?
#30Watching 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.…
> in other words, Trump didn't order the attacks
Yep, he did not order it, he only asked kindly for some help
> “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing,”