Russia Just Hacked into the Pentagon’s Email System
time.com
time.com
First off, let's be absolutely 100% crystal clear about something: the Russian and Chinese governments hack things sometimes (both economic and security related).
That being said it seems like blaming the Chinese/Russian government for random hacks is more a political move (in the USG's continued "China/Russia bad" campaign, since "Communism bad" no longer works as well).
I justify this belief due to three factors:
- The USG is extremely quick to blame them, so quick in fact that it seems implausible that they conducted any type of technical investigation before finger pointing. Under a day in some cases.
- Not every attack coming physically from China/Russia is from the governments in those countries. A lot of lone blackhats exist all over the world, it is insane to assume it is different there. Just as when you see an attack from the US, it MIGHT be the USG, or it MIGHT just be a lone wolf or wolves. People could also be using endpoints located in China/Russia to hide their true origin.
- Due to the way the internet works anyone with some skill can hide their true origin pretty well. We're meant to believe that Chinese/Russian hackers are this uber threat, but at the same time that they lack the 101s of hiding their identity and location. Seems contradictory.
As to why the US blames China and Russia for "hacking" I believe they have two motives (as an over-simplification):
- They can paint these hacks as being highly sophisticated, and therefore avoid the implication that the break-ins are primarily due to incompetence or neglect within the USG (which is almost always the case).
- Keeping Russia/China/NK/Iran/etc on a constant "war footing" with the US public seems like standard operating procedure. I guess "just in case" war broke out, half of the PR is already done. Watching the NBC Nightly news in the US is very similar to watching Russia Today in, well, Russia.