New Charges in Huge C.I.A. Breach Known as Vault 7 • Hacker News Board

Re: New Charges in Huge C.I.A. Breach Known as Vault 7

#151

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Jun 23, 2018, 6:50 AM UTC

zeth___ wrote: post #147

rosser wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't expect journalism to be non-partisan. I expect it to be affirmatively transparent about its partisanship. You're right, though, that nothing actually meets that bar. It's a human institution; it's necessarily flawed. That's why you source across biases and ideologies, and correct accordingly. The thing I'm talking about is instead the deliberate pretense of not being partisan. Fox News calling itself "fair an…

>You're right, though, that nothing actually meets that bar. Then your post is content free. If you find nothing to meet your personal standard of being journalism than you finding wikileaks to not be journalists merely means they are the same as the New York Times.

[deleted]

Re: New Charges in Huge C.I.A. Breach Known as Vault 7

#152

Post by rosser » Sat, Jun 23, 2018, 7:01 AM UTC

zeth___ wrote: post #147

rosser wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't expect journalism to be non-partisan. I expect it to be affirmatively transparent about its partisanship. You're right, though, that nothing actually meets that bar. It's a human institution; it's necessarily flawed. That's why you source across biases and ideologies, and correct accordingly. The thing I'm talking about is instead the deliberate pretense of not being partisan. Fox News calling itself "fair an…

>You're right, though, that nothing actually meets that bar. Then your post is content free. If you find nothing to meet your personal standard of being journalism than you finding wikileaks to not be journalists merely means they are the same as the New York Times.

>> But it's ultimately a spectrum, and it's on me to gauge where on that spectrum any given source lands.

In no way did I claim, or even imply some sort of equivalence between Wikileaks and the NYT. Please don't put words in my mouth which I explicitly disclaim just two paragraphs later.

My point is more that it's impracticable to impossible to share all of our biases, not least because we aren't aware of so many of them. When we've internalized a narrative, it becomes an unconscious bias, and can't very well be meaningfully disclosed.

Re: New Charges in Huge C.I.A. Breach Known as Vault 7

#153

Post by mrsteveman1 » Sat, Jun 23, 2018, 7:45 AM UTC

Cacti wrote: post #128

ruskerdax wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is nothing about the use of a VM that is "hard to explain away." You know what a VM is, right? You know anyone could plant things on a VM just like any other computer, right? You know there are many ways someone like the CIA could obtain a password used to encrypt a VM, right? Perhaps it was not always encrypted? Perhaps his host machine was infected with a key logger? Perhaps they used an exploit in the softwa…

My other comment is below. Have you read the complaint? The government is claiming that there is essentially 8 years of evidence on that VM, that in addition to the actual CP, there is a long trail of metadata and inode data that would be fairly difficult to fake. I mean, think about it: if you were the defendant, all you'd have to do is have someone examine it and find inode activity when you had a clear alibi that…

> all you'd have to do is have someone examine it and find inode activity when you had a clear alibi that the government didn't know about (which would be easy, given we're talking 8 years here, he'd just have to find when he was on a date or out to dinner or something, the government isn't going to know his entire life history for 8 years), and you'd be well on your way to creating enough doubt with a jury.

There are plenty of ways that happens even accidentally though, a prosecutor would be able to knock out that claim easily.

You've never seen a Linux machine write entries to the system log with the wrong timestamp? It happens all the time on machines with no RTC (Raspberry Pi) or a dead battery.

Re: New Charges in Huge C.I.A. Breach Known as Vault 7

#154

Post by notveryrational » Sat, Jun 23, 2018, 7:51 AM UTC

jonhendry18 wrote: post #17

mindslight wrote: post #2

Prosecute the messenger; leave the criminal conspiracy untouched.

What criminality? Unless the CIA was using the tools against targets in the US, there's no US law broken. Every country does it.

Common misconception. CIA is allowed to target Americans, and does on a regular basis.

Targeting Americans for political purposes is illegal. Targeting Americans for National Security reasons is perfectly within National Security Law.

Re: New Charges in Huge C.I.A. Breach Known as Vault 7

#155

Post by notveryrational » Sat, Jun 23, 2018, 8:02 AM UTC

StanislavPetrov wrote: post #11

Crickets from all of the "news" outlets that pointed to this incident as more "proof" of a Russia-Wikileaks partership. Very much like the Sony hack, which was widely attributed to North Korea (again, without a shred of evidence), you can be sure that there will be very few, if any, mea-culpas issued by those media organizations that uncritically swallowed DC/CIA misinformation and reported that misinformation as fac…

North Korea was very likely the culprit behind the SONY hacks.

If you read the leaked emails, you will find that SONY had worked with the US Department of State and the CIA to add American propaganda into "The Interview" with a plan to distribute it across the Korean Peninsula. Seth Rogan also did several interviews about CIA and State Department working on the set.

The group attributed for hacking SONY was "DarkSeoul" within "Bureau 121". This group is known for actively retaliating against companies that use propaganda to attack North Korean national security as a form of deterrence.

Additionally, the group posted, along with the SONY leaks, criticisms of what they called "the movie of terrorism" ("The Interview").

Of course, American media turned it all around and pretended that they said something about blowing up movie theaters, and caused a public panic.

Nobody in the IC attributed Vault7 to Russia. Wikileaks themselves suggested that it was a CIA contractor. US media did domestically propagandize the public via IC partnerships to "infer" and "suggest" that it was Russia, but no public statements that I'm aware of were made.

Re: New Charges in Huge C.I.A. Breach Known as Vault 7

#156

Post by notveryrational » Sat, Jun 23, 2018, 8:09 AM UTC

StanislavPetrov wrote: post #46

rubbingalcohol wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I researched your claim. For the Sony hack, no actual evidence was ever provided implicating North Korea - just unsupported allegations. [Independent researchers]( https://www.theguardian.com/film/2014/dec/30/sony-hack-resea... ) found it was much more likely to have been disgruntled employees. However, for the Vault 7 leak, almost no major news organizations cited Russia as a likely culprit for this. I agree with yo…

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2017/mar/07/wikileaks-cia-... >no actual evidence was ever provided implicating North Korea - just unsupported allegations. No actual evidence has been provided implicating Wikileaks received anything from Russia either - just unsupported allegations. If you disagree, I welcome you to link below actual evidence that has been provided. Despite the exhorations of many, claims made by s…

That's because Wikileaks is not in any way a Russian operation.

Wikileaks is globally important as a whistleblowing operation. If you go back to the 1990s you can find the US government applauding Wikileaks' publications.

When Wikileaks distributed several large caches of US documents, and would not negotiate with the US Justice Department on disclosure, censorship and propaganda agreements common with most other news providers - this more friendly relationship curdled.

The US became increasingly hostile with Wikileaks, tried to get its operators extradited, even shopped around for internet sock puppets and social media campaigns to damage their reputations.

Wikileaks in turn became distasteful of the US, and happily publishes damaging materials on the United States. These documents also happen to cover many of the details associated with unsavory activity of the world's sole superpower, which makes the reporting rather important.

US media characterizations of Wikileaks as a Russian operation are, and have been, a (successful?) domestic propaganda campaign. The way the IG talks in internal documents (go find them) about Wikileaks is that it is an independent information organization that "punches above its weight" and has geopolitical capabilities as a non-state actor. That's much closer to the truth.

Re: New Charges in Huge C.I.A. Breach Known as Vault 7

#157

Post by donutte » Sat, Jun 23, 2018, 8:13 AM UTC

TomMckenny wrote: post #70

salimmadjd wrote: post #5

Mr. Schulte had been charged last year in New York with possession of child pornography Very interesting! It almost seems like the pornography charges against him was a way to punish him but without prosecuting him for the actual leakage. Perhaps the government wanted to still point the fingers at someone else or avoid embarrassment?

States, even relatively benevolent ones, take any steps necessary to secure national secrets, even extra legal ones. Take the likelihood that a leaky contractor coincidently is a pedophile. One who works in security yet encrypts stuff with the same cellphone password everywhere. Balance that with the possibility that a motivated state actor could plant such files on a pc or alter logs on a server they are monitoring.…

Reading further down in the docket reveals a few suggestive details. Of particular note, this filing which lead to the revocation of Schulte’s bail [https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.480183...]. Two salient points:

1. Schulte agreed as a condition of his pretrial house arrest not to own, possess, or use a computer or any other form of internet access. Surveillance showed internet connections from his house, accessing his personal email as well as the TOR network.

His attorneys argue that these connections were Schulte’s cousin (who lives with him) checking his email (and TOR?) on his behalf, which after all the Court never said he couldn’t do.

2. At his bail hearing, the prosecutor mentioned a photograph (apparently recovered from Schulte’s phone) showing an unconscious person (apparently Schulte’s roommate) being sexually assaulted (apparently in their shared bathroom). The identity of the assailant having not being established, this wasn’t taken into consideration at pretrial. But...

Since that hearing, the cops in Virginia followed up and have a reasonable suspicion that the person seen in a photograph on Schulte’s phone, sexually assaulting Schulte’s unconscious roommate, in Schulte’s house, might indeed be Schulte himself. So it sounds like he’s facing sexual assault charges in Virginia, as soon as his federal child-porn-cum-treason prosecution gets sorted out.

So... well, even if these additional allegations don’t change your perspective on his character, they proooooobably cut against any presumption of doubt based on dude’s mastery of opsec.

Re: New Charges in Huge C.I.A. Breach Known as Vault 7

#158

Post by simion314 » Sat, Jun 23, 2018, 8:13 AM UTC

Cacti wrote: post #56

simion314 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly, some bad iframe could load CP files and not display them, later if someone checks the network logs they can "prove" you visited and watched those urls. Combine this with the very specific ad targeting that is possible to pull of(like the guy that managed to make FB to show his ad to his roommate) and you get an easy and remote way to frame people

A hidden iframe was used to install an encrypted VM on the defendants computer, with an encrypted file on it, accessible using a password Only the defendant knew? There are also extensive file system logs indicating a history of use. That was faked too? And the IRC logs, those are fake? Come on man.

I was not referring to the article but to the parent comment, my point is if someone monitors your traffic then it is very easy for any tech person to put bad links in your logs.

There was a case, I do not remember in what country where a guy was accused of child pornography because of his IP address and later was found that someone in police made a typo and they had the wrong IP.

Maybe the traffic logs are not enough to put you in jail but the accusation itself could destroy you and your family.

Re: New Charges in Huge C.I.A. Breach Known as Vault 7

#159

Post by notveryrational » Sat, Jun 23, 2018, 8:40 AM UTC

I remember getting in trouble for hacking with friends in High School. When a friend got in trouble for stealing and publishing data from our school, the state police went around scaring all of the parents and media with accusations of suspected child porn (completely made up, and never part of any actual investigation). Just uttering the words turned parents who had been closed lipped into law abiding, pre-judgemental, and supportive accolades.

In his case, there was never any plant (thank god), but honestly - I've watched this tactic used again and again to destroy reputations. If the State Police feel empowered to use it at will, it's entirely believable for me to believe the _CIA_ would go so far as to plant - especially given the extra-legal authority of impunity they are empowered by.

Re: New Charges in Huge C.I.A. Breach Known as Vault 7

#160

Post by austinheap » Sat, Jun 23, 2018, 9:05 AM UTC

notveryrational wrote: post #159

I remember getting in trouble for hacking with friends in High School. When a friend got in trouble for stealing and publishing data from our school, the state police went around scaring all of the parents and media with accusations of suspected child porn (completely made up, and never part of any actual investigation). Just uttering the words turned parents who had been closed lipped into law abiding, pre-judgement…

I remember getting in trouble for hacking with friends in High School. I don't remember the part where the police -- who were involved -- manufactured or planted child pornography accusations.

As you pointed out, that also isn't the case here either. Hat tip for the accurate username though.