Technical report on DNC hack [pdf]

Post by mundo » Fri, Dec 30, 2016, 5:46 PM UTC

wyager wrote: post #450

mundo wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

That's not how Occam's razor works. You don't pick the most likely single outcome and then just assume that to be true with 100% confidence. Occam's razor is just an informal statement of the fact that you should assign a higher a priori probability to simpler hypotheses. It doesn't mean you should ignore any marginally less likely hypothesis.

Post by wyager » Fri, Dec 30, 2016, 6:09 PM UTC

mundo wrote: post #461

wyager wrote: post #450

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not how Occam's razor works. You don't pick the most likely single outcome and then just assume that to be true with 100% confidence. Occam's razor is just an informal statement of the fact that you should assign a higher a priori probability to simpler hypotheses. It doesn't mean you should ignore any marginally less likely hypothesis.

Please stop accusing people of being 100% confident. It's such a weak, insulting tactic. What is the alternate hypothesis that's "marginally less likely"? (Please remember what question we're trying to answer. It is not "Who hacked the DNC?". We are not in a position to know; hell, we don't even know there was a hack. It is also not "Is the FBI trustworthy?" Of course they're not. It is "Why are US intelligence agenc…

Post by Natsu » Fri, Dec 30, 2016, 6:18 PM UTC

okreallywtf wrote: post #460

Natsu wrote: post #443

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

Post by mundo » Fri, Dec 30, 2016, 6:24 PM UTC

DearDon wrote: post #434

mundo wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm referring to parent of this whole thread, which (briefly) is a press release that says, "Here are some ways you can protect yourself from the kind of attack the Russians did on the DNC" and then goes on to describe spear-phishing. The reason this is unusual is because the intelligence agencies are being so matter-of-fact about this. They're not trying to convince anyone, like they did with Iraq's WMDs. They're no…

Absolutely any state that would enjoy the benefits of the distractions that comes with an escalated political conflict, Israel, China, Saudi Arabia. Think about how quickly Erdogan switched from being US ally to being best chums with Russians and helping with the peace negotiations with Iran after the attempted coup. Was it Russia, was it US, what was the motive, does one have motive to frame the other? It's not thei…

Post by cenkemuygurt » Fri, Dec 30, 2016, 6:33 PM UTC

EthanHeilman wrote: post #270

cloakandswagger wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the real absurdity of this debacle to me. Many of the whitepapers that I read about the DNC hack listed the attack's "sophistication" as proof that it came from a state actor, yet it was the most routine, simple attack conceivable. No rootkits, no 0 days, just simple phishing and social engineering.

The report just didn't get into that much detail but they did say: "the code delivers Remote Access Tools (RATs) and evades detection using a range of techniques." A "range of techniques" includes things like rootkits. >No rootkits, The attackers did use stealthy persistence techniques often called 'rootkits". "the SeaDaddy implant developed in Python and compiled with py2exe and another Powershell backdoor with pers…