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Russian Hackers Read Obama’s Unclassified Emails, Officials Say

nytimes.com

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Re: Russian Hackers Read Obama’s Unclassified Emails, Officials Say

#21

Post by dmix »

vinhboy wrote: post #17
derefr wrote: post #5

Sounds perfectly alright to me. Remember that there are levels of classification. Unclassified (the lowest level) could be running through Gmail in plain text for all anyone at the White House cares. Anything of even minute importance will get a classification status. (Also, Re: the NSA—they do the government's COMSEC , securing the classified data. OPSEC, the risk/reward policies regarding what data should be classi…

In today's political climate, it doesn't really have to be "classified" for it to damaging. All they need is an email of the president making some sort of offbeat joke about conservatives or something, and that would be a major crisis for him once the media gets their hand on it. It's stupid, but that's just how it is.

Thats inescapable today, especially for public figures, so everyone must be very very careful what they email on semi-private channels. Especially to 3rd parties they don't 100% trust.

The president is no doubt instructed on the level of security he should expect from non-secure channels. I would hardly feel bad for politicians vs maybe some young teenager in highschool who doesn't yet know any better.

Re: Russian Hackers Read Obama’s Unclassified Emails, Officials Say

#22

Post by dmix »

mikecb wrote: post #16
CamperBob2 wrote: post #2

Hello, National Security Agency: Preventing this sort of thing is your job. Once you're done snarfing up my personal data, perhaps you could attend to it.

These networks would be under the white house communications agency, a subset of the defense information systems agency which is not affiliated with NSA. Supposedly his blackberry is run through NSA (See, e.g., the fishbowl project), and was not implicated in this breach.

That being said NSA is involved in plenty of national defenses measures, its part of their mandate to help defend American networks. They also basically led the US Cyber Command and pioneered most of the systems used to monitor traffic/threats signatures (Einstein).

Once they find out the foreign location of the attacker, I'm sure it gets handed off to NSA at some level. And recently it seems the FBI isn't scared to seek criminal charges either.

Re: Russian Hackers Read Obama’s Unclassified Emails, Officials Say

#23

Post by dmix »

saraid216 wrote: post #9
CamperBob2 wrote: post #2

Hello, National Security Agency: Preventing this sort of thing is your job. Once you're done snarfing up my personal data, perhaps you could attend to it.

Fun fact: hackers are never American citizens somehow. It's 'cuz Americans are all model patriots. Obviously.

Well to be fair, America is one of the few countries really really good at catching hackers. So I doubt many citizens ever bother.

Case in point: when was the last time you heard Russia/China arresting a hacker?

Re: Russian Hackers Read Obama’s Unclassified Emails, Officials Say

#24

Post by mikecb »

kkl wrote: post #3

I am under the impression that attribution is a very difficult and often impossible process. If that is true, what is the point of including "Russian" in this headline? I would guess the most probable response would be something involving "fulfilling a narrative." Even if that is true, what makes "Russian" hackers more exciting then just "Hackers?" I am not trying to pose some profound question. I am genuinely confus…

Sounds like a mention in passing of the most likely culprit by a background source turned into definitive proof in original article, then all other media repeat ad nauseum. This is a very typical newscycle, and doesn't mean officials have solid proof. Though it doesn't mean they do not either.

Re: Russian Hackers Read Obama’s Unclassified Emails, Officials Say

#25

Post by iancarroll »

vinhboy wrote: post #15

I always wonder how these hackers know which IP range to attack. Is it just like a hit and miss kinda thing? Or do they have insiders who leak those info to them.

% dig mx whitehouse.gov

; > DiG 9.8.3-P1 > mx whitehouse.gov ;; global options: +cmd ;; Got answer: ;; ->>HEADER;; QUESTION SECTION: ;whitehouse.gov. IN MX

;; ANSWER SECTION: whitehouse.gov. 9982 IN MX 110 mail6.eop.gov. whitehouse.gov. 9982 IN MX 105 mail2.eop.gov. whitehouse.gov. 9982 IN MX 110 mail5.eop.gov. whitehouse.gov. 9982 IN MX 105 mail1.eop.gov. whitehouse.gov. 9982 IN MX 105 mail4.eop.gov. whitehouse.gov. 9982 IN MX 105 mail3.eop.gov.

Re: Russian Hackers Read Obama’s Unclassified Emails, Officials Say

#26

Post by vezzy-fnord »

dmix wrote: post #23
saraid216 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fun fact: hackers are never American citizens somehow. It's 'cuz Americans are all model patriots. Obviously.

Well to be fair, America is one of the few countries really really good at catching hackers. So I doubt many citizens ever bother. Case in point: when was the last time you heard Russia/China arresting a hacker?

It's probably more an issue of incentive than of capability.

Not that the USA doesn't have plenty of malicious infosec hackers, that's just a silly notion.

Re: Russian Hackers Read Obama’s Unclassified Emails, Officials Say

#27

Post by pandaman »

dmix wrote: post #23
saraid216 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fun fact: hackers are never American citizens somehow. It's 'cuz Americans are all model patriots. Obviously.

Well to be fair, America is one of the few countries really really good at catching hackers. So I doubt many citizens ever bother. Case in point: when was the last time you heard Russia/China arresting a hacker?

A week ago a Russian group that used an Android trojan to steal money using a banking app has been busted [1]. You don't read about this because they targeted a Russian bank so it's of little interest to the people outside Russia. When you read news in Russian you will get much more on the Russian hackers. Same, I believe, is true for Chinese though I don't read Chinese news myself so I could be mistaken here.

[1] http://safe.cnews.ru/news/top/index.shtml?2015/04/13/594827

Re: Russian Hackers Read Obama’s Unclassified Emails, Officials Say

#28

Post by yzmtf2008 »

Just quoting some of the comments on NYTimes:

> Am I the ONLY one who has a hard time believing that these hackers ONLY got "unclassified" stuff? Riiiiiiiiight. They just don't want us to know how deeply in these folks got. Why would they just get "unclassified" stuff?

> Only unclassified emails. Right.

Do people even read articles these days?

Re: Russian Hackers Read Obama’s Unclassified Emails, Officials Say

#29

Post by eoi »

mikecb wrote: post #24
kkl wrote: post #3

I am under the impression that attribution is a very difficult and often impossible process. If that is true, what is the point of including "Russian" in this headline? I would guess the most probable response would be something involving "fulfilling a narrative." Even if that is true, what makes "Russian" hackers more exciting then just "Hackers?" I am not trying to pose some profound question. I am genuinely confus…

Sounds like a mention in passing of the most likely culprit by a background source turned into definitive proof in original article, then all other media repeat ad nauseum. This is a very typical newscycle, and doesn't mean officials have solid proof. Though it doesn't mean they do not either.

I think it's more likely a deliberate move by the White House. They want us to believe it was Russia, but they either aren't ready to publicly substantiate the claim or don't want to be held to it politically, so they make the accusation through an anonymous source.

Re: Russian Hackers Read Obama’s Unclassified Emails, Officials Say

#30

Post by rdtsc »

dmix wrote: post #23
saraid216 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fun fact: hackers are never American citizens somehow. It's 'cuz Americans are all model patriots. Obviously.

Well to be fair, America is one of the few countries really really good at catching hackers. So I doubt many citizens ever bother. Case in point: when was the last time you heard Russia/China arresting a hacker?

America is a one of the countrie most targeted by hackers. Because Americans have $$$. Out of that big number, a few hackers get caught, and you hear it on the news. That ones that don't get caught do not make the news.

In other words without knowing how many hackers get away you can't make any assumption about the effectiveness of American hacker catching abilities.

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