Grand Jury Indicts Russian Officers for Hacking Related to the 2016 Election • Hacker News Board

Re: Grand Jury Indicts Russian Officers for Hacking Related to the 2016 Election

#101

Post by dwheeler » Fri, Jul 13, 2018, 6:58 PM UTC

wongarsu wrote: post #94

mkempe wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The claim that President Trump is an anti-American, Russian agent is insane. [added] I will not provide any reply or assistance if you further promote, hypothesize, or engage in crazy conspiracy theories.

Hypothetically, if a Russian agent became President of the USA, what would you expect him to do? Try to withdraw from as many international treaties as possible? Insult foreign heads of state and sabotage America's relationship with their allies? Refuse to enact sanctions against Russia? I don't think Trump is a Russian agent, but I wouldn't call the idea crazy

If the agent is known to be an agent, Congress can quickly impeach him. During an election, all parties are highly incentivized to find dirt on the others, which helps increase the likelihood of discovery. No system is perfect, but directly voting in an agent is generally unlikely.

Re: Grand Jury Indicts Russian Officers for Hacking Related to the 2016 Election

#102

Post by jdoliner » Fri, Jul 13, 2018, 6:58 PM UTC

dragonwriter wrote: post #100

jdoliner wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's not; the issue is that a US Presidential campaign actively collaborated in an influence operation by a hostile foreign power directed against the US That's a bold claim given that this indictment is exclusively of Russian agents and the special counsel has explicitly stated that said President is not a target of the probe [0]. When you say "active collaboration" what does that actually mean? And could you pres…

> That's a bold claim given that this indictment is exclusively of Russian agents This is not the only indictment by the special counsel office, and the statement of the offense in one of the guilty pleas in a prior indictment is directly about active collusion efforts. And I'm discussing what is at issue in the scandal, not merely what is covered by indictments that have already been issued. > the special counsel ha…

You've answered neither of my questions though, just given me reasons that this doesn't disprove your "active collaboration" claim. I don't think any of this does disprove it, but you claim that he "actively collaborated" with Russia in this hack. I'm just wondering what, specifically, he did to "actively collaborate" and what the evidence of this is.

Re: Grand Jury Indicts Russian Officers for Hacking Related to the 2016 Election

#103

Post by freehunter » Fri, Jul 13, 2018, 7:04 PM UTC

dwheeler wrote: post #101

wongarsu wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hypothetically, if a Russian agent became President of the USA, what would you expect him to do? Try to withdraw from as many international treaties as possible? Insult foreign heads of state and sabotage America's relationship with their allies? Refuse to enact sanctions against Russia? I don't think Trump is a Russian agent, but I wouldn't call the idea crazy

If the agent is known to be an agent, Congress can quickly impeach him. During an election, all parties are highly incentivized to find dirt on the others, which helps increase the likelihood of discovery. No system is perfect, but directly voting in an agent is generally unlikely.

But that only works if Congress has an incentive to vote to impeach. If we're in a hypothetical situation where we know the president to be a foreign agent, assuming that people in Congress are not similarly compromised, at the very least they are members of the same political party as the president. Impeaching one of their own would have political consequences, and Trump's approval rating still shows a pretty decent base who like him.

It would be basically political suicide for any Republican to vote to impeach because many Americans don't believe Trump is an agent, don't believe he did anything wrong, and still agree with his policies and agenda.

Congress has the ability to impeach, but not the will.

Re: Grand Jury Indicts Russian Officers for Hacking Related to the 2016 Election

#104

Post by dragonwriter » Fri, Jul 13, 2018, 7:05 PM UTC

jdoliner wrote: post #102

dragonwriter wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's a bold claim given that this indictment is exclusively of Russian agents This is not the only indictment by the special counsel office, and the statement of the offense in one of the guilty pleas in a prior indictment is directly about active collusion efforts. And I'm discussing what is at issue in the scandal, not merely what is covered by indictments that have already been issued. > the special counsel ha…

You've answered neither of my questions though, just given me reasons that this doesn't disprove your "active collaboration" claim. I don't think any of this does disprove it, but you claim that he "actively collaborated" with Russia in this hack. I'm just wondering what, specifically, he did to "actively collaborate" and what the evidence of this is.

> but you claim that he "actively collaborated" with Russia

No, I don't. The campaign is not a “he”, and I said that the collaboration by the campaign (and the potential that, if that is the case, the President is effectively a foreign agent) is the issue, that is, the subject of concern/debate, not that it's a fact (though at least one member of the campaign has already admitted to actively seeking to collaborate with Russia, and implicated other campaign officials, in his guilty plea to charges laid by the special counsel.)

Re: Grand Jury Indicts Russian Officers for Hacking Related to the 2016 Election

#105

Post by cmurf » Fri, Jul 13, 2018, 7:06 PM UTC

From the indictment with my comments in []

22. On or about July 27 2016 the Conspirators attempted after hours to spearphish for the first time email accounts at a domain hosted by a 3rd party provider and used by Clinton's personal office. At or around the same time, they also targeted seventy-six email addresses at the domain for the Clinton Campaign.

[July 27 2016 is the date on which Trump said on national TV "Russia if you're listening..." and invited Russia to commit a crime to hack and find Clinton's 'missing' emails.]

34. In or around Sep 2016 the Conspirators successfully gained access to DNC computers hosted on 3rd party cloud-computing services. These computers contained test applications related to the DNC's analytics. After conducting reconnaissance, the Conspirators gathered data by creating backups, or snapshots, of the DNC's cloud-based systems using the cloud provider's own technology. The Conspirators then moved the snapshots to cloud-based accounts they had registered with the same service, thereby stealing the data from the DNC.

[Trump claims the DNC did not turn over the hacked (physical) server to the FBI. And per this indictment it's clear it was a virtual server hosted in the cloud and at least Mueller's team does have quite a bit of forensic evidence to show how the theft occurred.]

43a. On or about Aug 15 2016, the Conspirators posing as Guccifer 2.0 recieved a request for stolen documents from a candidate for the U.S. Congress. The Conspirators responded using the Guccifer 2.0 persona and sent the candidate stolen documents related to the candidate's opponent.

[Let's pretend this candidate didn't know Guccifer 2.0 was the GRU. He still knew he was asking for and receiving illegally obtained documents.]

72. In or around July 2016, KOVALEV and his co-conspirators hacked the website of a state board of elections (SBOE 1) and stole information related to approximately 500,000 voters including names, addresses, party affiliation, social security numbers, dates of birth, and driver's license numbers.

There are quite a few Americans "involved" either by being affected by ID theft by a crime organization purporting to be a government[1]; an American soliciting a foreign government to commit a crime the proceeds of which would likely benefit his campaign; and at least one American who solicited materials obtained in course of a crime who then received those materials to use against a competing candidate for Congress.

So the idea that American's aren't involved is nonsense. There are no Americans indicted for crimes in this particular filing, however.

[1] This is diplomatic. The less diplomatic version is that this is one nation attacking another, and is an act of war. That's how spy games get characterized when you get caught and revealed to the public.

Re: Grand Jury Indicts Russian Officers for Hacking Related to the 2016 Election

#106

Post by merpnderp » Fri, Jul 13, 2018, 7:09 PM UTC

krapp wrote: post #12

SlowRobotAhead wrote: post #5

Just checking... But in the Russian Hacking Scandal... Was any of the information released to the public wrong or fake? Because if the issue is that "Russia meddled!" by showing true things... Isn't that shooting the messenger? Isn't the larger issue that the DNC, Podesta, and Clinton did and said things that weren't aligned with their public statements? edit: Downvotes for a serious question, hello Reddit, I hadn't…

>Isn't the larger issue that the DNC, Podesta, and Clinton did and said things that weren't aligned with their public statements? No, the larger issue would still be a foreign power attempting to influence an American election by illegal means. That doesn't actually stop becoming illegal or an issue of national security because one doesn't like the party being targeted.

It is mind boggling to me that people are shocked at this. It has been going on for decades, going back to at least the time the USSR tried to help Kennedy win the election.

What happened was expected at every election, it's on the DNC and FBI for not protecting their servers.

Never mind the joke being on the Russians as Trump is turning out to be several times tougher on them than Hillary would likely have been, even going so far as to start threatening their European gas pipelines.

Re: Grand Jury Indicts Russian Officers for Hacking Related to the 2016 Election

#107

Post by Gargoyle » Fri, Jul 13, 2018, 7:09 PM UTC

civilitty wrote: post #49

colinbartlett wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The indictment is a reminder of just how much data can be pieced together about a person's online activity, at least with considerable resources and seemingly proper court authorized warrants. From web searches, to emails, twitter posts, block chain transactions, all of it could be correlated together. The searching for specific phrases that then appeared in a text is particularly damning. What I could not glean from…

> What I could not glean from the indictment is how they could possibly have identified these 12 people individually. The government must have some other sigint or humint for that? Will this ever make it to trial so that evidence can be revealed? These indictments are the result of a massive counterintelligence operation spanning many agencies from several nations. In this case specifically, the AIVD (Dutch intel) ha…

I'm curious why it should stay secret when it's literally world-wide public knowledge they have it.

What would be at risk by sharing what is absolutely known to exist?

Re: Grand Jury Indicts Russian Officers for Hacking Related to the 2016 Election

#108

Post by bbatsell » Fri, Jul 13, 2018, 7:11 PM UTC

koolba wrote: post #26

toufka wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So GRU, during Moscow work-hours, searched for terms like: "worldwide known", "think twice about", "some hundred sheets", and "company's competence". And those terms happen to all show up later that day in this post: https://guccifer2.wordpress.com/2016/06/15/dnc/ We all here talked about that release at the time: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11912412 Our top comment suggested, "The media (and CrowdStrike) bl…

> Additionally, on July 27, Trump suggested in his speech, "Russia, if you're listening. I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing." And those same computers, "attempted after hours to spearphish for the first time email accounts... used by Clinton's personal office." Anyone who has seen the actual video for that blurb that doesn’t take it as a joke should re-evaluate their sense of humor.

> Trump and his campaign tried to claim he was kidding. He was not. At that same press conference, minutes later, I asked if it gave him "pause" to ask a foreign government to hack into the emails of any American citizen. He said no and then accused me of trying to "save" Clinton.

https://twitter.com/KatyTurNBC/status/1017814447782580224

Re: Grand Jury Indicts Russian Officers for Hacking Related to the 2016 Election

#109

Post by pdeuchler » Fri, Jul 13, 2018, 7:11 PM UTC

toufka wrote: post #6

silveira wrote: post #3

Full indictment document: https://www.justice.gov/file/1080281/download

So GRU, during Moscow work-hours, searched for terms like: "worldwide known", "think twice about", "some hundred sheets", and "company's competence". And those terms happen to all show up later that day in this post: https://guccifer2.wordpress.com/2016/06/15/dnc/ We all here talked about that release at the time: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11912412 Our top comment suggested, "The media (and CrowdStrike) bl…

replace "computer" with "IP address" and all the sudden that evidence becomes much less convincing

Re: Grand Jury Indicts Russian Officers for Hacking Related to the 2016 Election

#110

Post by dragonwriter » Fri, Jul 13, 2018, 7:11 PM UTC

dwheeler wrote: post #101

wongarsu wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hypothetically, if a Russian agent became President of the USA, what would you expect him to do? Try to withdraw from as many international treaties as possible? Insult foreign heads of state and sabotage America's relationship with their allies? Refuse to enact sanctions against Russia? I don't think Trump is a Russian agent, but I wouldn't call the idea crazy

If the agent is known to be an agent, Congress can quickly impeach him. During an election, all parties are highly incentivized to find dirt on the others, which helps increase the likelihood of discovery. No system is perfect, but directly voting in an agent is generally unlikely.

> If the agent is known to be an agent, Congress can quickly impeach him.

Of course, for members of his party concerned about the danger such public knowledge would do to their own personal political position and their party, the incentive if they know he is a foreign agent is to actively blur and distract from the issue to prevent the public from getting a clear understanding.

EDIT: This might result, say, in the bizarre spectacle of Congress members and of that party continuously attacking the credibility of individuals and institutions which have traditionally favored (or who are members of) that party simply because they are faithfully pursuing (or insufficiently sabotaging) an investigation of the operation in which the President is involved.