Technical report on DNC hack [pdf] • Hacker News Board

Re: Technical report on DNC hack [pdf]

#451

Post by lern_too_spel » Fri, Dec 30, 2016, 4:14 PM UTC

belorn wrote: post #445

lern_too_spel wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What "meddling" did the DNC do in the primary? How were they were backing her before the primaries finished?

> In a May 2016 email chain, the DNC chief financial officer (CFO) Brad Marshall told the DNC chief executive officer, Amy Dacy, that they should have someone from the media ask Sanders if he is an atheist prior to the West Virginia primary.[46][47] > high-ranking DNC officials discussed the possibility of making Sanders' religion a campaign issue in southern states Did they do so? If so, thats clear meddling. If not…

> Did they do it?

They did not bring up Sanders's religion, so there was no meddling there.

> Paustenbach suggested that a past incident could be used to promote a "narrative for a story, which is that Bernie never had his act together, that his campaign was a mess."

This is out of context. Sanders was attacking the DNC in the media for following pre-agreed-upon rules in Nevada. They were discussing how to respond to those frankly ridiculous attacks. http://www.politifact.com/nevada/statements/2016/may/18/jeff...

> Regardless if the intended meddling happed or not, it is clear that even the party itself know that they were in the wrong.

To recap, we have their full email history here, yet we still can't find a single instance of them acting to rig the primaries against Sanders. Wasserman-Schultz resigned to get out of the spotlight, which she believed would put more attention on Clinton for the general election.

Re: Technical report on DNC hack [pdf]

#452

Post by unclepresent » Fri, Dec 30, 2016, 4:17 PM UTC

mundo wrote: post #373

mistermann wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is no way any a fair observer could read the comments here and conclude that the people who find Russia hacking the DNC credible do so because they have blind faith in Clapper or the FBI or anyone else. Isn't that what you were more or less saying here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13281736

No. I believe the official version (that the reason the intelligence agencies are accusing Russia of hacking the DNC is because believe it did) because the alternative is less plausible and there's no evidence for it. That's pure Occam's Razor, no faith involved. The FBI has lied and will lie again, getting me to believe they lied about something is not hard, but they don't generally do it in big, obvious ways that a…

everyone is innocent until proven guilty... there is no any prove in report that hacking even took place, date, time, size of materials, exact mechanism of attack, which email address was compromized, which link was attached to email, what happened after link got openned, why outlook did not block link, why anti virus did not block exploit be installed, which exploit , why firewall accepted outcoming traffic to unknown source outside of trsuted network ... why russians ?

Re: Technical report on DNC hack [pdf]

#453

Post by unclepresent » Fri, Dec 30, 2016, 4:21 PM UTC

lern_too_spel wrote: post #385

elif wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with relying upon motive and established MO exclusively is that anyone is therefore capable of framing whomever they like. This is the next generation of warfare, attribution is simply impossible. Even if there existed actual forensic evidence it could not be relied upon. Reacting to purported attacks at face value will leave you like a 1-layer chess player, potentially acting on behalf of your adversary.

As I said above, the attribution does not rely solely on motive. All private security firms that analyzed the attack have attributed it to Russia, and they would not stake their reputations on such a flimsy argument.

all private security firms ? name one, please

Re: Technical report on DNC hack [pdf]

#454

Post by acjohnson55 » Fri, Dec 30, 2016, 4:28 PM UTC

smitherfield wrote: post #147

acjohnson55 wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's rather naive to think these things didn't have an effect. The problem isn't the truth of the claims, it's that the illicitly gained information was strategically released to disrupt one specific campaign, effectively destabilizing our election. Much like Comey's last minute email announcement revealed nothing new, yet allowed the email narrative to renew its currency in the last days of the campaign. Imagine if…

> Imagine if the IRS "accidentally" released Trump's tax returns or been hacked to allow this data to come out. The NYT did publish Trump's stolen tax return, and were quite self-congratulatory about having done so... > Or if the alleged tapes went public of Donald Trump making openly racist remarks on his TV shows outtakes. ...and, the stories about the hacked material were outnumbered probably 100-1 by the simultan…

It's not hypocritical. There's something very different about a government doing this, let alone a foreign government.

Private domestic entities are subject to lawsuits, if the injured party believes their rights have been violated. The recourse is clear.

If it's the US government getting directly involved (e.g. IRS leak), that's a huge scandal. That's why Watergate led to the resignation of a president.

The only way we can hold foreign governments accountable is via our own government. So sanctions would seem to be completely appropriate to me.

Re: Technical report on DNC hack [pdf]

#455

Post by lern_too_spel » Fri, Dec 30, 2016, 4:44 PM UTC

Natsu wrote: post #387

praxulus wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because there's absolutely no evidence that it was rigged? Just because the DNC preferred the lifelong Democrat to the lifelong independent (who could have guessed that?) doesn't mean they couldn't still have operated a fair primary.

The emails show that Sanders was more or less a token opponent kept on a leash and kept in line. Remember also how they cut Sanders out of the DNC voting data. There were no big name Democrats running against Hillary. They also sucked all the money from the state level campaigns into Hillary's campaign, hurting the entire party when they lost after spending so much money trying to force Hillary through. https://wikil…

What specifically did the DNC do to keep Sanders on a leash? My memory of the primaries is far different, with Sanders suing the DNC over access to NGP VAN (which the DNC had cut off until the Sanders campaign showed they had deleted their copies of Clinton's data), loudly complaining about the DNC following the existing rules at the Nevada Convention (http://www.politifact.com/nevada/statements/2016/may/18/jeff...), and generally loudly making unfounded allegations of rigging. Sanders was clearly unleashed, if not unhinged (though the cranky old progressive personality is what I like about him, in much the same way that libertarians are drawn to cranky old Ron Paul).

> They also sucked all the money from the state level campaigns into Hillary's campaign.

You're misreading the Politico article about the Hillary Victory Fund. In that article, the DNC said it was using the initial money to set up common infrastructure for the state parties to use. The money that was supposed to go to the state parties did eventually go to the state parties as you can see here: https://www.opensecrets.org/jfc/summary.php?id=C00586537. To refresh your memory, the first [FEC maximum contribution amount] donated by an individual to the Hillary Victory Fund would go to her primary campaign, the next [max amount] would go to her general election campaign, the next [max amount] would go to the DNC, and the rest would be distributed among the state parties.

Also, I'm curious: whom would you consider a big name Democrat worthy of challenging Clinton not as a token opponent?

Re: Technical report on DNC hack [pdf]

#456

Post by fleitz » Fri, Dec 30, 2016, 4:56 PM UTC

lern_too_spel wrote: post #455

Natsu wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The emails show that Sanders was more or less a token opponent kept on a leash and kept in line. Remember also how they cut Sanders out of the DNC voting data. There were no big name Democrats running against Hillary. They also sucked all the money from the state level campaigns into Hillary's campaign, hurting the entire party when they lost after spending so much money trying to force Hillary through. https://wikil…

What specifically did the DNC do to keep Sanders on a leash? My memory of the primaries is far different, with Sanders suing the DNC over access to NGP VAN (which the DNC had cut off until the Sanders campaign showed they had deleted their copies of Clinton's data), loudly complaining about the DNC following the existing rules at the Nevada Convention ( http://www.politifact.com/nevada/statements/2016/may/18/jeff...…

Donna Brazille and DWS were respectively fired from CNN and resigned over the corruption.

Re: Technical report on DNC hack [pdf]

#457

Post by lern_too_spel » Fri, Dec 30, 2016, 4:57 PM UTC

unclepresent wrote: post #453

lern_too_spel wrote: post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I said above, the attribution does not rely solely on motive. All private security firms that analyzed the attack have attributed it to Russia, and they would not stake their reputations on such a flimsy argument.

all private security firms ? name one, please

I named three in my first comment above. There are also Mandiant (FireEye) and SecureWorks. Previous attacks with the same malware were attributed to Russia by Threatconnect and Microsoft, who calls the "Fancy Bear" group "Strontium."

Re: Technical report on DNC hack [pdf]

#458

Post by lern_too_spel » Fri, Dec 30, 2016, 5:02 PM UTC

fleitz wrote: post #456

lern_too_spel wrote: post #455

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What specifically did the DNC do to keep Sanders on a leash? My memory of the primaries is far different, with Sanders suing the DNC over access to NGP VAN (which the DNC had cut off until the Sanders campaign showed they had deleted their copies of Clinton's data), loudly complaining about the DNC following the existing rules at the Nevada Convention ( http://www.politifact.com/nevada/statements/2016/may/18/jeff...…

Donna Brazille and DWS were respectively fired from CNN and resigned over the corruption.

Donna Brazille wasn't DNC chair until after the primaries were over, so how would she be an example of the DNC rigging the primaries for Clinton?

Wasserman-Schultz resigned to get out of the spotlight, which she believed would put more attention on Clinton for the general election.

We have the DNC's full email history here. Surely if they rigged the primary for Clinton, there would be at least one email showing it.

Re: Technical report on DNC hack [pdf]

#459

Post by candiodari » Fri, Dec 30, 2016, 5:15 PM UTC

EthanHeilman wrote: post #444

candiodari wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So essentially someone hacked the DNC, and it's "advanced" because some custom software was written just for this particular target ? I've written custom software (which was a lot harder to find than some python WMI hooks) for hacking a lot lower profile organisations. I've consulted for organisations that were hacked by Chinese hackers for bitcoin ransom that had custom software written too. I mean, high profile tar…

The sophistication is not evidence of government involvement, the lack of sophistication is not evidence that a government was not involved. Certainly malware which costs serious resources to develop, like stuxnet, says something about the capabilities of the attacker. Given that at the high end of the resource spectrum it is mostly governments, resources required are suggestive of a government, but resources are not…

Apparently John McAfee disagrees with you:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDTKKmBjlwE#t=5m40s

Re: Technical report on DNC hack [pdf]

#460

Post by okreallywtf » Fri, Dec 30, 2016, 5:23 PM UTC

Natsu wrote: post #443

codedokode wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While the methods used were very simple, I have an opinion why this could be done for some government or political party. The emails and data from a political party are probably very boring stuff, so a typical hacker would not bother to spend a lot of time sending thousands of phishing emails to get access to them. And later he would have to read through them to find some facts the mass media would be interested in.…

Hackers have been targeting boring government docs for as long as there's been hacking, sometimes just for laughs, bragging rights, etc. If all the docs are boring, isn't that all the more reason to think that a nation state had nothing to do with this? The NSA would've intercepted your new router in the mail with a backdoor and could've used a TEMPEST van to read your screens from miles away. I have to believe those…

Why bother when it wasn't needed?

They have the motive to do it, as much or more than anyone else and certainly the capacity. They are tied to a disinformation campaigns [1] that seem to have the goal of sowing suspicion between allies who oppose them and have everything to gain by swaying our political process.

That isn't enough evidence of course, but I'm surprised by the suspicion here and I can only chock it up to the increase in cynicism that is partly a result of these very actions. Because the Bush administration managed to finagle the intelligence enough to justify the war in Iraq we can just ignore our intelligence agencies whenever we want, right?

Internal bullshit like what was going on at the DNC is annoying, frustrating and unfortunate but people are falling for the trap hook line and sinker. This happens everywhere, you can damn be sure it was going on at the RNC as well but republicans wouldn't have abandoned their party (at this point its pretty clear nothing can make a fair number of them abandon their party) but independents and some liberals are doing exactly what the hackers want (whoever they turn out to be, likely the Russians): we are getting cynical and despondent. Rather than getting involved and saying we should clean house, its like "well if you didn't suck so much you wouldn't have lost." while doing nothing to make things suck less.

[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/29/world/europe/russia-sweden...