Reddit Shuts Down AMA from Former NSA Technical Director Bill Binney • Hacker News Board

Re: Reddit Shuts Down AMA from Former NSA Technical Director Bill Binney

#21

Post by AaronFriel » Tue, Aug 25, 2020, 11:17 PM UTC

nickysielicki wrote: post #17

AaronFriel wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The basis of William Binney and Patrick Lawrence and other grifters is: 1. Filesystem timestamps are a reliable indicator of transfer speed, mechanism of transfer, or anything at all 2. It's impossible to transfer files over 23MB/s over the internet The first is hard to disprove, admittedly. There might be some cases in which filesystem timestamps, which can be changed by all sorts of different things, are relevant.…

> 1. Filesystem timestamps are a reliable indicator of transfer speed, mechanism of transfer, or anything at all How do you figure they're not? Can you explain this? Obviously they can be modified after the fact, but you seem to be presenting a wild theory that the timestamps were presumably modified after-the-fact to represent 23MB/s. That's a wild unfalsifiable theory with zero evidence. The most likely and reasona…

> How do you figure they're not? Can you explain this?

Filesystem timestamps are based on local clocks, various command line arguments and tools to package up files can manipulate those timestamps, and there are ways to simply _set_ them to whatever one wants.

That the alleged transfer speed was 23MB/s is not proof of anything on its own, and it certainly isn't proof that it's impossible that it was a hack.

The allegation from Patrick Lawrence's 2017 article in The Nation, since repeated by countless grifters, has consistently been:

> “Transfer rates of 23 MB/s (Mega Bytes per second) are not just highly unlikely, but effectively impossible to accomplish when communicating over the Internet at any significant distance,”

This is so laughably false that you should immediately doubt anyone who repeats that as if it were a fact.

Re: Reddit Shuts Down AMA from Former NSA Technical Director Bill Binney

#22

Post by nickysielicki » Tue, Aug 25, 2020, 11:20 PM UTC

AaronFriel wrote: post #18

nickysielicki wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The argument isn't that 23MB/s is so outrageously fast that it must be from a USB drive and couldn't be from the internet. The argument is that 23 MB/s is a peculiar number because it is so close to USB 2 max throughput (480Mbit in spec, but practically closer to 280Mbit due to bus access overhead and underlying storage limitations.) It's not at all unreasonable to expect that a USB2 mass storage device would cap out…

This is again absurd. You have simply regurgitated a series of numbers without evidence. Meanwhile: The Mueller report and grand jury indictments against Russian state actors, the intelligence community's public statements, and the bipartisan assessment of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence all dispute these coincidences. Your numbers do not make sense. You write 480mbps, then you write 280mbps, but 23MB/s i…

> Your numbers do not make sense. You write 480mbps, then you write 280mbps, but 23MB/s is 183mbps.

There's a series of bottlenecks. The spec bottleneck is 480mbit, but it's further constrained by bus access to something like 280mbit, which is further constrained by the underlying storage medium to something in the ballpark of 20MB/s to 30MB/s. It depends on the particular flash chip in the device. Try it yourself with a handful of older usb2 drives and see.

> > “Transfer rates of 23 MB/s (Mega Bytes per second) are not just highly unlikely, but effectively impossible to accomplish when communicating over the Internet at any significant distance,”

You're being uncharitable. Maybe what he's saying isn't that the overall transfer rate is impossible over the internet, but he's saying that a sustained unvarying 23MB/s transfer is unlikely over the internet. I think most reasonable techies would agree that the former isn't true (aka: I agree with you), but the latter is a much more interesting claim. It's definitely not total nonsense, as you're making it out to be.

Re: Reddit Shuts Down AMA from Former NSA Technical Director Bill Binney

#23

Post by nickysielicki » Tue, Aug 25, 2020, 11:24 PM UTC

AaronFriel wrote: post #21

nickysielicki wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 1. Filesystem timestamps are a reliable indicator of transfer speed, mechanism of transfer, or anything at all How do you figure they're not? Can you explain this? Obviously they can be modified after the fact, but you seem to be presenting a wild theory that the timestamps were presumably modified after-the-fact to represent 23MB/s. That's a wild unfalsifiable theory with zero evidence. The most likely and reasona…

> How do you figure they're not? Can you explain this? Filesystem timestamps are based on local clocks, various command line arguments and tools to package up files can manipulate those timestamps, and there are ways to simply _set_ them to whatever one wants. That the alleged transfer speed was 23MB/s is not proof of anything on its own, and it certainly isn't proof that it's impossible that it was a hack. The alleg…

> Filesystem timestamps are based on local clocks, various command line arguments and tools to package up files can manipulate those timestamps, and there are ways to simply _set_ them to whatever one wants.

Right. I just said that in the comment you're replying to...

But that's a pretty wild theory you're presenting, isn't it? Why would they transfer at some speed, then go back and calculate timestamps to make it seem like the modified times line up with a transfer at 23MB/s? Isn't it much more reasonable to just assume that the files, y'know, were actually transferred at 23MB/s?

> That the alleged transfer speed was 23MB/s is not proof of anything on its own, and it certainly isn't proof that it's impossible that it was a hack.

Agreed. It's not proof. It's just evidence. But when there isn't proof to be had, what else can we go off of except evidence?

Re: Reddit Shuts Down AMA from Former NSA Technical Director Bill Binney

#24

Post by AaronFriel » Tue, Aug 25, 2020, 11:27 PM UTC

nickysielicki wrote: post #22

AaronFriel wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is again absurd. You have simply regurgitated a series of numbers without evidence. Meanwhile: The Mueller report and grand jury indictments against Russian state actors, the intelligence community's public statements, and the bipartisan assessment of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence all dispute these coincidences. Your numbers do not make sense. You write 480mbps, then you write 280mbps, but 23MB/s i…

> Your numbers do not make sense. You write 480mbps, then you write 280mbps, but 23MB/s is 183mbps. There's a series of bottlenecks. The spec bottleneck is 480mbit, but it's further constrained by bus access to something like 280mbit, which is further constrained by the underlying storage medium to something in the ballpark of 20MB/s to 30MB/s. It depends on the particular flash chip in the device. Try it yourself wi…

It is absolutely total nonsense and it is the basis for the following proposition:

(The following is not true!) "It is impossible to transfer files at a speed over 23MB/s over the Internet."

If we accept that proposition as true, then yes, there is maybe a world in which we can discredit the DNC hack as an inside job, if we conditionally also believe that the timestamps accurately reflect the transfer speed and not, say, the result of the files being transferred at some point after the hack.

For example, if the hackers transferred the files to a thumb drive. Or to a file server. Or they archived the files then unarchived them with fresh timestamps and the rate of decompression was ~23MB/s. There are many, many different ways to get file timestamps that reflect a transfer speed of 23MB/s at any point after the initial transfer.

These are the two key propositions to believe the inside job argument.

On the other hand, grand juries, the intelligence community, the Mueller report, and the bipartisan consensus of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence all agree those propositions are nonsense.

Re: Reddit Shuts Down AMA from Former NSA Technical Director Bill Binney

#25

Post by AaronFriel » Tue, Aug 25, 2020, 11:31 PM UTC

nickysielicki wrote: post #23

AaronFriel wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How do you figure they're not? Can you explain this? Filesystem timestamps are based on local clocks, various command line arguments and tools to package up files can manipulate those timestamps, and there are ways to simply _set_ them to whatever one wants. That the alleged transfer speed was 23MB/s is not proof of anything on its own, and it certainly isn't proof that it's impossible that it was a hack. The alleg…

> Filesystem timestamps are based on local clocks, various command line arguments and tools to package up files can manipulate those timestamps, and there are ways to simply _set_ them to whatever one wants. Right. I just said that in the comment you're replying to... But that's a pretty wild theory you're presenting, isn't it? Why would they transfer at some speed, then go back and calculate timestamps to make it se…

Because the evidence is nonsense! It's not proof of what the authors, Patrick Lawrence or William Binney, or anyone else, claim!

Their central thesis is, and it pains me to repeat this:

(This is a false claim.) "The DNC files could not have been transferred over the internet because a speed of 23MB/s is impossible."

That is demonstrably, laughably false. The fact that on Hacker News we're disputing whether or not it's possible to transfer files over 23MB/s is absurd! OF COURSE IT IS!

As for why the timestamps might reflect that speed, there are many possible reasons:

* That was the actual speed of the initial transfer/dump from the DNC - whether over the internet or to a USB2 flash drive

* The timestamps were planted to provide plausible deniability or disinformation

* The timestamps were the result of a program producing files at a rate of 23MB/s, such as: a secondary transfer to a flash drive after the hack occurred, an archival or unarchival process, a compression or encryption process, copying to a network storage server, or an analysis process step that touched each file and averaged 23MB/s.

Since there are many possible ways to get to 23MB/s, it's not proof, or even evidence, of what the authors claim.

Re: Reddit Shuts Down AMA from Former NSA Technical Director Bill Binney

#26

Post by nickysielicki » Tue, Aug 25, 2020, 11:34 PM UTC

addicted wrote: post #10

paraxisi wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO if you're not familiar with the story, this alone makes it worthy of deeper inspection: "Would you like me to post the last modified times for all of the 35,813 emails? And include the Podesta email last modified times for comparison? Because the Podesta stuff was hacked." Again, in my opinion, but there are major inconsistencies.

So the proof that a certain set of files were not hacked by an expert hacking agency is that the last modified time stamps are not consistent with them... I remember fooling my 9 year old sister by modifying the metadata for files when I was 14. I didn’t realize expert hackers are incapable of figuring out what I did as a 14 year old.

I can't stand to see this sort of logical inversion take place.

There are exactly two possibilities:

A. The timestamps weren't modified at all, and the modification time on the file truly represents the time at which they were written. ie: the timestamps are a roughly accurate indicator of transfer speed.

B. The timestamps were modified, but the hackers specifically went through the effort to calculate timestamps that align with 23MB/s, and then set those timestamps on the files.

Possibility B is much more contrived, is unfalsifiable, and yet you're defending it as if those that believe Possibility A are the real conspiracy theorists.

In reality, you're the conspiracy theorist! You're saying there must have been an explicit effort (say, a conspiration) to set modification times to align with 23MB/s. It's ridiculous.

Re: Reddit Shuts Down AMA from Former NSA Technical Director Bill Binney

#27

Post by AaronFriel » Tue, Aug 25, 2020, 11:43 PM UTC

nickysielicki wrote: post #26

addicted wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the proof that a certain set of files were not hacked by an expert hacking agency is that the last modified time stamps are not consistent with them... I remember fooling my 9 year old sister by modifying the metadata for files when I was 14. I didn’t realize expert hackers are incapable of figuring out what I did as a 14 year old.

I can't stand to see this sort of logical inversion take place. There are exactly two possibilities: A. The timestamps weren't modified at all, and the modification time on the file truly represents the time at which they were written. ie: the timestamps are a roughly accurate indicator of transfer speed. B. The timestamps were modified, but the hackers specifically went through the effort to calculate timestamps tha…

There is a much more plausible explanation:

1. The timestamps reflect some process that occurred before the files were uploaded to the internet.

That's it. That's the plausible explanation.

* Secondary transfer to removable media that changed timestamps

* Transfer to network file server, likewise

* Archival

* Compression/decompression

* Encryption/decryption

* Analysis of files that touched them (set timestamp) to indicate completion

Basically any process that proceeded at an average of 23MB/s would produce that pattern. And note, that it doesn't preclude the possibility that the timestamps changed many times between when they were on the DNC server and when they were made public. So indeed, the 23MB/s could indicate removeable media was involved, but it could have been from one Russian intelligence officer's computer to another's.

Occam's razor: the simplest explanation is the most likely one: The timestamps reflect a process that occurred at a rate of about 23MB/s.

We just can't speculate on what process that is.

Re: Reddit Shuts Down AMA from Former NSA Technical Director Bill Binney

#28

Post by renewiltord » Tue, Aug 25, 2020, 11:48 PM UTC

AaronFriel wrote: post #9

The central component of the allegation that the DNC leak was an inside job as opposed to a hack has been repeated by writers at Consortium News and by journalist Patrick Lawrence: > Key among the findings of the independent forensic investigations is the conclusion that the DNC data was copied onto a storage device at a speed that far exceeds an Internet capability for a remote hack. Here's the article from Patrick…

I had that speed to the US West Coast over Hyperoptic gigabit in 2017 from London. Very steady. There are qualifiers that are missing from the claim, I agree.

Re: Reddit Shuts Down AMA from Former NSA Technical Director Bill Binney

#29

Post by what-the-grump » Wed, Aug 26, 2020, 12:03 AM UTC

AaronFriel wrote: post #9

The central component of the allegation that the DNC leak was an inside job as opposed to a hack has been repeated by writers at Consortium News and by journalist Patrick Lawrence: > Key among the findings of the independent forensic investigations is the conclusion that the DNC data was copied onto a storage device at a speed that far exceeds an Internet capability for a remote hack. Here's the article from Patrick…

I mean the better question is what speed did the ISP provide at the termination. And if this was moved off-site then uploaded at a higher speed.

27MB/sec is nothing crazy on regular commercial plan.

Now if they have information that they office had a crappy 100/20mb TWC plan... Sure

Re: Reddit Shuts Down AMA from Former NSA Technical Director Bill Binney

#30

Post by mark_l_watson » Wed, Aug 26, 2020, 12:03 AM UTC

I think I will cancel my monthly support for Reddit, partly over this and partly because I find it less valuable than Twitter and HN and don't visit that often anymore.

BTW, in general I support whistle blowers - they play an important part in free and open governments. I have heard Bill Binney before and thought that his experience and opinions were interesting.