Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Dear Obama, from Infosec

blog.erratasec.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 91 posts

Re: Dear Obama, from Infosec

#21

Post by hartator »

nl wrote: post #12

Bloody Hell. I find it very frustrating that intelligent people don't seem to follow through their thought process here. The intelligence community will never be able to release enough information to satisfy people. The information will either be so non-specific as to be useless ("we had spies who told us" - would anyone here believe that anymore than they do now?), or so specific it will damage ongoing interests ("W…

> It's much more interesting to discuss the shared conclusion was formed that "the Russians" were trying to throw the election to Trump

And it's why we need proof. Guessing a password or phising it can be a one man operation.

Re: Dear Obama, from Infosec

#22

Post by santoriv »

nl wrote: post #12

Bloody Hell. I find it very frustrating that intelligent people don't seem to follow through their thought process here. The intelligence community will never be able to release enough information to satisfy people. The information will either be so non-specific as to be useless ("we had spies who told us" - would anyone here believe that anymore than they do now?), or so specific it will damage ongoing interests ("W…

> The intelligence community will never be able to release enough information to satisfy people. The information will either be so non-specific as to be useless ("we had spies who told us" - would anyone here believe that anymore than they do now?), or so specific it will damage ongoing interests ("We have communication intercepts between the hacking groups and the GRU/FSB, and there they are, and here is how we got them" - it's likely there are actual humans involved in that process who will die if they are exposed).

This argument seems plausible. Even so, they are doing a very poor job of convincing knowledgeable folks.

To a large degree, this comes down to an issue of trust.

Do you trust the US intelligence community?

Consider that James Clapper, the current Director of National Intelligence, "wittingly" lied to Congress about spying on US citizens. Also consider that the CIA spied on the Senate Intelligence Committee while the committee was investigating the CIA's torture program, initially lied about it to the Senate, then admitted it but said that it wasn't wrong.

They lie with impunity to Congress, the people who _theoretically_ have power over their budgets.

Do you think they will balk at lying to the press or the American public?

Re: Dear Obama, from Infosec

#23

Post by extra88 »

petre wrote: post #17
nl wrote: post #12

Bloody Hell. I find it very frustrating that intelligent people don't seem to follow through their thought process here. The intelligence community will never be able to release enough information to satisfy people. The information will either be so non-specific as to be useless ("we had spies who told us" - would anyone here believe that anymore than they do now?), or so specific it will damage ongoing interests ("W…

This Russians hacked the election narrative is just like Saddam has WMDs back ten years ago, only more dangerous. So unless any hard evidence comes to light, we can safely dismiss it as propaganda and not get too excited about it.

It's not "just like" that because people in the Bush administration were pressuring the CIA to say the thinnest of evidence proved he had WMDs and was trying to get nukes then repeated the claim again and again.

Cut to 2016 where none of the intelligence branches claim Russians "hacked the election," they claim they hacked the DNC and other political organizations for political ends. There's no evidence that anyone in the Obama administration pressured the CIA, let alone multiple other intelligence branches to make those claims. There have been concerns that Russians tampered with voting machines themselves but they only things LEOs, intelligence branches, and other representatives of the Executive branch have been saying is when they've looked, they've found no evidence that it happened. So, not like "Saddam has WMDs" 14-15 years ago.

Re: Dear Obama, from Infosec

#24

Post by santoriv »

hartator wrote: post #18

Assange repeatably - and again tonight - said he was sure it wasn't Russia. I think it's worth something to consider the main visible actor opinion.

I have the same level of skepticism towards Assange that I do for the US intelligence community, but for different reasons.

If Assange received a email dump from a source, how could he possibly know with absolute certainty that the Russian government didn't have any involvement? The only thing I can think of is if he or one of his very trusted associates executed the attacks themselves. Isn't it possible that the Russian government orchestrated the attacks and then handed the data off to a third party? He has the same burden of proof as the CIA. ...and yes I understand that Wikileaks can't reveal its sources but one should not really make such claims if they can't be backed up with evidence.

Re: Dear Obama, from Infosec

#25

Post by djsumdog »

petre wrote: post #17
nl wrote: post #12

Bloody Hell. I find it very frustrating that intelligent people don't seem to follow through their thought process here. The intelligence community will never be able to release enough information to satisfy people. The information will either be so non-specific as to be useless ("we had spies who told us" - would anyone here believe that anymore than they do now?), or so specific it will damage ongoing interests ("W…

This Russians hacked the election narrative is just like Saddam has WMDs back ten years ago, only more dangerous. So unless any hard evidence comes to light, we can safely dismiss it as propaganda and not get too excited about it.

Russia and the US are allies and both produce propaganda to propagate the myth they are not. It helps keep Americans unfocused. The anger (misplaced anger really) is used to divide the America people and help them forget about the banks that profited in the 2008 financial collapse and the massive war industry that requires endless conflicts in order to keep its masses employed:

http://fightthefuture.org/videos/does-voting-make-a-differen...

The CIA has admitted before congress that it places adverts in magazines and has refused to answer questions on whether or not they do so on TV as well.

I agree with you entirely. It's exactly like the WMDs. We are in an era where social media networks are talking about filtering out real/fake news. This should worry everyone. "Simply don't use Amazon/Google/Facebook" is less of an option when these industries as so big they control the distribution (and therefore the narrative). Who determines the algorithms on what is real and fake? (I hope it's not the people who created Postini/Google's spam algorithms with its insane false positive rate).

It's not limited to America. We don't live in the Iran/China/Saudi 1984 where governments actively censor content (and consequently, most of the citizens know they are being censored). We live in that other version where lies and facts are mixed into all of our news and content so it's impossible to tell what is real, and what is propaganda.

Re: Dear Obama, from Infosec

#26

Post by agildehaus »

nl wrote: post #12

Bloody Hell. I find it very frustrating that intelligent people don't seem to follow through their thought process here. The intelligence community will never be able to release enough information to satisfy people. The information will either be so non-specific as to be useless ("we had spies who told us" - would anyone here believe that anymore than they do now?), or so specific it will damage ongoing interests ("W…

> It's much more interesting to discuss the shared conclusion was formed that "the Russians" were trying to throw the election to Trump (rather than just to sow chaos).

Not sure those are mutually exclusive. Tipping the election to Trump seems to be a good way to sow chaos.

Re: Dear Obama, from Infosec

#27

Post by xname2 »

Did Russians tell DNC chairwoman to leak debate questions to the HRC team? Did Russians tell DNC to backstab Bernie Sanders? It is so crazy that democrats and liberal main stream media are trying so hard to avoid discussing the real problem. And they truly believe that people are stupid enough to no seeing which problem is more important.

Re: Dear Obama, from Infosec

#29

Post by yakcyll »

Pardon my ignorance, but as a non-American, I still have no bloody clue what the election hacking was about.

That, plus, it shouldn't matter who has done it, since (especially if it was Russia) they most likely won't be persecuted for it. What the focus should be put on is making sure this won't happen again - but that the general public isn't very interested in.

Re: Dear Obama, from Infosec

#30

Post by petre »

djsumdog wrote: post #25
petre wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This Russians hacked the election narrative is just like Saddam has WMDs back ten years ago, only more dangerous. So unless any hard evidence comes to light, we can safely dismiss it as propaganda and not get too excited about it.

Russia and the US are allies and both produce propaganda to propagate the myth they are not. It helps keep Americans unfocused. The anger (misplaced anger really) is used to divide the America people and help them forget about the banks that profited in the 2008 financial collapse and the massive war industry that requires endless conflicts in order to keep its masses employed: http://fightthefuture.org/videos/does-v…

Career politicians always divert the public's attention and engage scaremongering to hide the fact that they are in fact incapable of managing the economy. They do this to stay in power. If nothing else works, blame the and start a war.

Just look at Turkey's Erdogan. He's blaming an expat preacher and his followers for the coup in order to tigthen his grip on institutions and the media, arrest HDP (Kurdish moderate left wing party) MPs and leaders, ultimately leading to PKK (Kurdish commie extermists) reemergence. Putin is a role model for him.

Post reply on HN