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Russian Hackers Stole NSA Data on U.S. Cyber Defense

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Re: Russian Hackers Stole NSA Data on U.S. Cyber Defense

#181

Post by rdtsc »

SomeStupidPoint wrote: post #96
killjoywashere wrote: post #70

I'm going to go out on a limb and propose a hypothesis: The DoD's hyper-innefficient contracting system rewards DC insiders and effectively limits the department's ability to invest where investment is needed while draining the public coffers of unfathomable amounts of money. The DoD's hyper-ineffective personnel system inhibits personal development while at the same time making it nearly impossible to move laterally…

Contracting instead of developing in-house capabilities is completely destroying the DoD and American military effectiveness. The corruption around that is posing a real, impactful threat to national security. Fuck these people and their "free market" lies as a cover for outright theft of public funds. It's not just in the cyber domain that this is a problem, but the cyber domain is one in which the corner-cutting, h…

Was selling to the DoD before and agree with you. We just sold a product but interacted with contractors and various agencies. It's a hot mess, the corruption, nepotism, stuff like request for quotes for a project and specs made to meet exactly only one vendor and nobody else and so on.

Re: Russian Hackers Stole NSA Data on U.S. Cyber Defense

#182

Post by DrScump »

spaceseaman wrote: post #75
indubitable wrote: post #54

I find these allegations are deserving of some scrutiny. The entire story is quite bizarre when you begin to consider it. The NSA is apparently leaking like a broken pipe with this information. And it's peculiar because this is information that makes our intelligence agencies look completely inept. That is a very good thing if this story is fake, but a very bad thing if its true. It is stupefying that NSA contractors…

> Our media and our government lied to generate a case for war. And I feel lately that they are now trying to build a case for some sort of conflict, presumably cold, against Russia I mean, there's verifiable evidence Russia tried to influence our election. That's pretty new for a lot of Americans. I imagine that's why the government and the media are running wild with it. Mueller is still investigating. I would say…

  I think it's pretty clear that's just the NSA's lack of confidence in its leader.
The leak addressed in this article stems from 2015.

Re: Russian Hackers Stole NSA Data on U.S. Cyber Defense

#183

Post by rdtsc »

spaceseaman wrote: post #75
indubitable wrote: post #54

I find these allegations are deserving of some scrutiny. The entire story is quite bizarre when you begin to consider it. The NSA is apparently leaking like a broken pipe with this information. And it's peculiar because this is information that makes our intelligence agencies look completely inept. That is a very good thing if this story is fake, but a very bad thing if its true. It is stupefying that NSA contractors…

> Our media and our government lied to generate a case for war. And I feel lately that they are now trying to build a case for some sort of conflict, presumably cold, against Russia I mean, there's verifiable evidence Russia tried to influence our election. That's pretty new for a lot of Americans. I imagine that's why the government and the media are running wild with it. Mueller is still investigating. I would say…

> I mean, there's verifiable evidence Russia tried to influence our election.

No doubt, I don't think anyone argues that point. Russia and ex-Soviet Union's KGB have always tried to manipulate Western governments. Propaganda and planting stories in newspapers was one of their favorite methods.

Any developed country would be trying. US is too important for anyone with any power or resource to not try to influence it.

However I don't believe what they did had any meaningful effect on US elections. We would have found out by now. I didn't believe it since it came out and I still don't. So far I see a PR story that has gone out of hand, it was pushed and promoted in order to explain what happened. Heck, people tell that story to themselves. "Surely, my compatriots couldn't have voted this, way, it must have been some super villain spy thing".

> This is just the first time Russia has been so involved in our politics since the Cold War, and the media is rightly running with that idea.

When did Russia stop involved being in our politics. It sent undercover spies to live and try to infiltrate think tanks and such. Remember the spy ring that was uncovered. Literal KGB agents living illegally around NY and such. That stuff never stopped.

> Is it that unbelievable for some people that Russia was involved in trying to influence our election?

It is unbelievable that they singled out Russians and keep running with it for a year without any proof that the Russian did anything to change the result of the election. The amount of talk this received, it would seem they have proof the Russian changed the votes in those Rust Belt states' voting machines. Unless we think those states are full of KGB agents this is story is mostly a waste of time.

And yes, the tragedy here is the opportunity cost of wasting energy on something like this instead of focusing efforts and coming with a new platform for the Democrat party, starting a new party. Instead its Russia, Trump said a stupid thing, his taxes, more Russia, he ate 2 scoops of ice-cream, back to Russia.

Sure they tried, they deserve some credit:

http://www.cnn.com/2017/07/24/politics/democratic-agenda-unv...

---

"Schumer: Democrats' top priority is health care, not Russia"

The plan -- "A Better Deal: Better Jobs, Better Wages, Better Future" -- is a three-pronged approach that focuses on improving wages, lowering costs of everyday expenses and boosting job-training opportunities.

---

But compared to Russia and the piss dossier and scoops of ice-cream that doesn't seem to interest very many people (if we assume media reflects and presents to people what they really want to hear).

Re: Russian Hackers Stole NSA Data on U.S. Cyber Defense

#184

Post by rdtsc »

DrScump wrote: post #182
spaceseaman wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Our media and our government lied to generate a case for war. And I feel lately that they are now trying to build a case for some sort of conflict, presumably cold, against Russia I mean, there's verifiable evidence Russia tried to influence our election. That's pretty new for a lot of Americans. I imagine that's why the government and the media are running wild with it. Mueller is still investigating. I would say…

I think it's pretty clear that's just the NSA's lack of confidence in its leader. The leak addressed in this article stems from 2015 .

I think he meant Obama. By 2015 many have given up on hope and change. Unless the hope was to drop over 20k bombs on countries we were not even at war with after receiving a Nobel Peace prize. Overthrow governments in Middle East and arm dangerous rebels in that region.

Re: Russian Hackers Stole NSA Data on U.S. Cyber Defense

#185

Post by shawn-furyan »

cm2187 wrote: post #72
jakelarkin wrote: post #34

how Kaspersky was ever thought to be "okay" in the US enterprise/government market has always been perplexing to me. Antivirus, something which literally inspects all of your files and network activity, made in the country that's a hotbed of blackhat activity and home one of the most aggressive cyber-espionage militaries outside the US. yea okay great, sign me up.

In general there is much to be said about the huge amount of code that runs from thousands of sources on every machine. Most OS comes with hundreds of drivers, many created by hardware makers all over the world, running with root privileges / kernel mode. And then you add to that all of the software that you install, developed by companies or volunteers all over the world, and running all sort of third party librarie…

Downvoted, not because your general sentiment is wrong, but rather that this comment what-about's a specific threat identification. It is useful to raise awareness of general threats or wide-spread operational malpractice, but doing so in direct response to the identification of a specific threat is a distraction that primarily serves to engender a sense of nihilism about defense in general. That is counter-productive, and a specific strategy in propoganda.

Defense is not hopeless. Some threats are more immediate than others.

note: this is not an endorsement of the gp comment. I merely think that discussion of the gp comment should be focused on its own merits rather than nihilistic dismissals of it.

Re: Russian Hackers Stole NSA Data on U.S. Cyber Defense

#186

Post by rdtsc »

peoplewindow wrote: post #153
0xfeba wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm so skeptical now of skeptical Russia posts. A 25 day old account who's first comment [0] was about media and divisiveness. 0 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15336362

And you signed up about a year and a half ago - just the right time to try and influence the US election. Perhaps you work for a western intelligence agency. Or perhaps you are easily manipulated by the media. I've been called Russian on various forums several times. I am actually British and have never even been to Russia. My crime was to point out the flimsy nature of so many of the allegations regarding Russian in…

I was just called a Russian shill here the other day. Then they started to dig through my post history and proved that I speak Russian. They found a post from 340 ago, kind of an admirable effort but also kinda creepy. I probably mention something "back in the old Soviet Union" every week or so. Not sure they had to go back a year.

The plot twist is that I am not Russian (people speaking multiple languages though are suspicious, gotta agree there). Even a better twist, I have more reason to hate Russians (as a country, never personally) than any most of the posters here. But you know, KGB agents hiding in the bushes, and all.

Re: Russian Hackers Stole NSA Data on U.S. Cyber Defense

#187

Post by VVayneTracker »

rdtsc wrote: post #184
DrScump wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's pretty clear that's just the NSA's lack of confidence in its leader. The leak addressed in this article stems from 2015 .

I think he meant Obama. By 2015 many have given up on hope and change. Unless the hope was to drop over 20k bombs on countries we were not even at war with after receiving a Nobel Peace prize. Overthrow governments in Middle East and arm dangerous rebels in that region.

Don't forget state sanctioned extrajudicial killing of U.S. citizens.

Re: Russian Hackers Stole NSA Data on U.S. Cyber Defense

#189

Post by VVayneTracker »

travmatt wrote: post #166
peoplewindow wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"A lawyer who happened to be Russian" is not the same thing as "the Russians", the latter implying some sort of official Russian government conspiracy - presumably at vast scale, to affect something as large as the US election. I too would like to see this verifiable evidence. So far all evidence presented of so-called Russian "interference" isn't even remotely credible.

"A lawyer who happened to be Russian" is an extraordinarily significant misrepresentation of who Natalia Veselnitskaya is.

She's "former" FSB. And there's no such thing as "former" FSB.

Re: Russian Hackers Stole NSA Data on U.S. Cyber Defense

#190

Post by nl »

peoplewindow wrote: post #174
state_less wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I too would like to see this verifiable evidence. He went to the meeting because Russians said they have dirt on Hilary and admitted it. Also, There was at least one Russian troll farm targeting voters. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/facebook-says-it-sol... Russia also has a history of influencing elections in other countries.

"Russians" didn't. A woman did. It turned out she had nothing and the meeting was a waste of time. Very far from what the phrase "meeting with the Russians" implies - some sort of large, organised group engaged in official Russian state business.

Veselnitskaya is a paid member of a group registered to lobby against the Magnitsky act[1]. The group paying her was organized by a former GRU agent[2] and paid for by a Russian oligarch Denis Katsyv.

Reversing the Magnitsky act is pretty much the number one thing the Russian government would like.

Of course there is nothing wrong with this in itself. But while Veselnitskaya may not have been a Russian official, she was promoting official Russian policy and paid by politically connected Russian interests.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natalia_Veselnitskaya#Advocacy...

[2] https://www.grassley.senate.gov/sites/default/files/judiciar... (Note this complaint was made in 2016, before the election)

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