Guccifer 2.0: DNC's servers hacked by a lone hacker | Hacker News Reader

Guccifer 2.0: DNC's servers hacked by a lone hacker

guccifer2.wordpress.com

468 pointsr721163 comments

The media (and CrowdStrike) blame Russians for it [0]. Heh... yet this blog and the hacker himself, says he did it alone. I guess it's easier to forgive incompetence if you blame the attack on some huge, powerful, resourceful, state-funded opponent. That's why every hacking report of some big organization or company today lays the blame on APTs, China, Russia, NORKs and so on.

Management is off the hook since they don't have to admit that they were hacked by some kid and the security company gets the prestige of 'fighting and outsmarting a state actor'. And everyone's job is more or less safe. Other companies and CIO/CSOs now know that 'Sec Company X' will cover their ass by shifting the blame on some huge entity. Company lawyers are also happy because the liability of such attacks will be less. And the cycle continues. Guccifer, for example, didn't even know how to program and he used his phone to hack [1].

Yes, APTs definitely do happen but I'd bet they happen a lot less frequently than the media and security companies would want us to believe.

[0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/russi...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guccifer#Computer_hacking_acti...

If it was China or Russia and they planned to release the information, they wouldn't want anyone to acknowledge their connection to the hacker. Not saying it was them behind this, just that the hacker could have just as much motive to lie about it.

There were also talks recently that "NATO may counter cyber attacks with conventional weapons" [1], so hypothetical nation-state attackers would want to downplay their involvement.

[1] http://www.reuters.com/article/us-cyber-nato-idUSKCN0Z12NE

I am sensing bullshit, I'm pretty sure a lot of countries in NATO wouldn't want to do that, and if a NATO country attacks first (or a country doesn't interprets a cyber attack as an actual attack), the alliance doesn't hold.

Simple possible explanation: lots of people hacked the DNC servers.

Indeed, filthy metaphors about doing semen forensics analysis in a whorehouse come to mind :-)

I don't see why a state actor (one that ostensibly wants him to become president) would reveal that it was responsible.

After the email fkup, it's not hard at all to believe that the DNC's servers are still insecure. I mean, the people that HRC hired to set up her server were introduced via the party machine.

Is it not the case that when APTs "happen", they stay happening whether you detect them or not. That's the persistent threat part. The advanced part means you can't realistically do anything about it.

The notion of unscrupulous or frivolous APTs (not just routine espionage) is quite frightening for that reason.

Ask any grey hat or black hat hacker if they've ever stepped on another hacker's toes. Sometimes it gets comical. Sometimes they actually leave big new holes by mistake and you get in and then claim you owned it first. If a big juicy target can be owned once, chances are it'll be owned again.

Here's what I can see in the files:

* The first few documents (1.doc through 3.doc) have metadata which says they were written by Warren Flood. However, the "last saved by" claims is was by Феликс Эдмундович. It also claims that it was created earlier today.

* The 4.doc file said the author was "Blake" and the company was "Grizli777" and it was last saved by "user" and created today.

* 5.doc claims to have been written by "jbs836" at the company "University of Texas at Austin". Again, last saved by "Феликс Эдмундович" and again, created earlier today.

* None of the excel files had anything interesting, except that their creation dates also all said today.

Research:

* There is a Warren Flood associated with the DNC (according to LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/warrenflood).

* Google translates "Феликс Эдмундович" as "Felix", Bing and Prompt as "Felix Dzerzhinsky". Googleing "Felix Dzerzhinsky" turns up Felix Edmundovich Dzerzhinsky, the former Director of Cheka... an Russian internal security service. He's been dead 90 years, so I doubt it was really him though.

* Googling "Grizli777" seems to suggest that the user's copy was pirated. Nothing really to go on there.

* Googling "jbs836" finds people (talking about this subject) suggesting that it's James B. Steinberg (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Steinberg) a Democratic politician who formerly worked for the University of Texas at Austin.

My Take:

* The files are either genuine or someone bothered to find some Democrats names to attach to them. I'm leaning toward genuine since they didn't clean up any other metadata.

* The files have at least passed through the hands of a Russian or someone who likes using former Russian spies as a pseudonym.

* There's no evidence that these files came from a DNC server and not, say, Warren Flood's laptop.

* There's no evidence that the individual who wrote this acted alone or that he is not working for a state.

I assumed these were going to be filled with FUD, and that this was a "false flag" against the Clinton campaign when I read the blog post without looking at the contents of the documents.

But tbh, all the stuff that's "leaked" looks pretty reasonable to me. The Trump stuff is all true, public knowledge --- obviously spun a little bit, but maybe even more fair to Trump than John Oliver. The policy stuff sounds pretty good to me --- national cyber advisor is probably needed, the crisis response stuff sounds like a pretty good idea, a speech to an Islamic forum in the first 100 days sounds good too.

If this were fake, you'd think it would be more damaging. If anything, this probably makes me a little more comfortable with the idea of voting Clinton, since she has (less) incentive to lie in "confidential documents." (Of course, I don't think that she would have the confidential-confidential-plans-to-expand-the-NSA papers in the hands of a campaign staffer.)

So.... solid leak, Guccifer 2.0. You keep doing you.

> all the stuff that's "leaked" looks pretty reasonable to me.

If I understand correctly, the only point of this leak was to demonstrate that the hack actually happened. The damaging stuff has been given to Wikileaks, which knows better how to maximise its impact.

Depending on WL and the leaker's agenda, they'll release it before or after the DNC convention: some people would rather have Sanders as a Dem candidate, some others would rather have an undermined Clinton being trounced by Trump.

France faced a similar situation in 2012: DSK (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominique_Strauss-Kahn) was bound to win the presidency, except that he could neither keep his dick in his pants, nor bother to get consent before shoving it down people's throats. His campaign exploded before the left-wing primary, because he allegedly raped a maid in New York's Sofitel; but the right-wing government had an ongoing investigation on pimping charges, linked to Lille's Carlton, which was scheduled to go public after the primary. Had he been bust by the French investigation, rather than prematurely in New York, French then-president Sarkozy would have very likely been re-elected.

The problem with this read is that Sanders will never be the dem candiate (even if Hillary drops dead tomorrow the backup is Uncle Joe and maybe Sen. Warren) and Hillary could emulate the Cheetoh Jesus' claim and shoot someone dead on 5th avenue and she is still going to be the next US president. Releasing to WL is also a good move if the leak were to have come direclty from the Clinton camp, as there are few information sources more biased and discredited among the general public than WL.

I admit I don't know enough about Democratic party rules to guess who would replace a busted Clinton candidacy. Common sense would dictate that a candidate who came close second would be chosen, but common sense doesn't necessarily apply here indeed.

As for Clinton being the next president, I'd be surprised if she were. Based among others on PG's "It's Charisma, stupid" [http://www.paulgraham.com/charisma.html], more recently Scott Adams' perspectives, US history, and the mounting anti-establishment sentiments empowered by Internet bypassing centralised media, I expect Trump to tune his public persona for a target wider than Tea Party voters, then to thoroughly beat her. It sounds very bold, until you remember that this country chose Bush Jr. against Kerry, who was vastly more likeable, competent, and seemingly honest than HRC.

I'm also doubtful about the public at large being influenced by a WL apparent origin: I'm afraid the general public hasn't yet learned to mind and evaluate sources. That's a digital native reflex, we're still a minority, and we're rather sympathetic towards WL.

"Scott Adams' perspectives"? Seriously, what particular insight to you think that particular MRA douche brings to bear here? You just need to look at the polling data to see where things are going to go; there are not enough angry white bros left to make a difference in the election at this point. The only question is the degree of impact on down-ticket races that the upcoming beat-down of Trump will have. The Senate is going to flip control, but at the speed at which Trump is crashing to earth I think the House may be in play.

The prediction markets say something like 75% Clinton to 25% Trump. Either you know something they don't (and are about to make a lot of money) – or you probably shouldn't be making predictions with that degree of confidence. Especially considering how unpredictable the elections have been thus far.

Just looking at the polling data is exactly what did the many pundits who completely failed to predict the GOP primary outcome (as well as Sanders' excellent performance).

By contrast, Adams predicted what would happen, why how and when, with striking accuracy, all of that before it happened, when traditional pundits struggle to even fit the facts in a narrative retrospectively.

Polls are good to predict more of the same, this election is different (and would have been even more so, had the DNC been impartial between candidates). Calling him a "MRA douche" is an ad hominem attack, a sign that you're short in rational arguments. I believe it also happens to be false.

Finally, those who think Trump will be elected don't expect angry white bros to multiply by magic; they expect Trump to appeal to a much wider demographic. Angry white bros are whom you need to seduce to steal the GOP from its elite, and boy has he done it skillfully. Given the limited memory and attention span of many electors, many people believe he has the skill to completely reposition himself.

I would like to stress the difference between acknowledging populist skills and endorsing someone as a great potential president, but such nuances are usually lost to angry people, whether they're white bros or not.

Primaries are notorious for bad polling. What it basically comes down to is that the voting model for a primary is hard to determine since it has such a low turnout. This is not a new phenomenon and pundits have routinely failed to predict primary results. Things get much, much better when you are talking about a general election.

Adams' "prediction" was more a restatement of what he wanted to see happen and once it comes to pass you seem to think it is an indicator of some keen insight rather than blind luck combining with wishful thinking. Most pundits work with anecdotal models about what they think will happen and things which break outside of that model cause problems (c.f. the mea culpa from Nate Silver). No, this election is not "different" other than having one of the worst candidates possible manage to come out on top of the Republican primaries.

As far as Adams himself, I think you are misunderstanding what an ad hominem attack is. I noted that Adams' loathsome misogyny led him to his particular prediction, which is completely accurate. If I had instead stated "Scott Adams is a bad driver because he is an MRA douche" then I would be engaging in ad hominem. I this case his misogyny is what is leading him to think that a mere woman could never convince people to vote for them, because (like children and handicapped people according to Adams) he feels that women are treated differently and no one would ever let a woman do something crazy like lead a superpower. His grotesque personal views colored his prediction to the point where there is no difference between the two.

The thing about Trump is that there is no wider demo he can appeal to. If he was capable of pivoting he would have done so already once the primary was locked up. You are reading in to him a populist touch that he simply lacks; like most "reality" stars what you see is what you get. There is no hidden depth to Donald, or we would have seen it already in his long history in the spotlight. What is most amusing is that even when smarter Republican politicians try to advise and/or course-correct for his bumbling misstatements he ends up attacking them. Trump does not have "populist skills", he just has a Mr. Angry persona and a small rump of the Republican party that think this is just what they were looking for in a candidate. The problem for Trump is that 30% of the smaller party in American politics is not enough to get the job done.

Of course, this is just looking at Trump and not at the map. The map is what matters. Presidential elections are won on a state-by-state basis and here things look even worse for Trump. In these sort of analysis you start with the previous presidential results (the prior for this experiment) and then try to determine what states this new candidate can put into play to change the outcome of the election. Here is where Trump goes from failure to embarrassing punchline.

The short version of electoral analysis is that Trump might be able to put Pennsylvania, Maine, and possibly Ohio into play, but that doesn't get him to the finish line. In contrast, Clinton is polling well enough that Arizona and Georgia are in contention. OTOH, you could also just look at the state of either campaign to see that Trump has no ground game, no organization (seriously, he has less than 100 people working on his campaign), and very little money.

If you want predictions then here is one: Clinton is going to put Texas into play this election cycle. Maybe not win it, but come close enough that the RNC and Trump will have to start running ads.

> and that this was a "false flag" against the Clinton campaign

> If this were fake, you'd think it would be more damaging.

Why would you think it'd be more damaging if it were fake? If you're going to hack yourself to gain pity, you would obviously only release documents that didn't significantly damage your campaign.

I think the OP means fake meaning "fabricated to do damage to the DNC", not fake as in "created by the DNC for publicity". The suggestion is that if the intent was to do damage, the contents would've been made much more inflammatory.

>* The files have at least passed through the hands of a Russian or someone who likes using former Russian spies as a pseudonym.

Looks to me that someone desperately wants to implicate Russians or to make it seem that the attacker is Russian. Even the original Guccifer used Russian proxies (as per his Wikipedia entry).

I also read on twitter that ")))" is a Russian version of a smiley face... they apparently omit ':' in ':)'. That version of the smiley face was used in his blog post. Again, that's definitely not a subtle clue.

I hope someone runs linguistic forensic analysis on that whole blog post because the 'broken english' nature of it might reveal where the author could be from and what his mother tongue might be. People who are not native speakers of english make different mistakes based on what their mother tongue is so that's something that might be harder to manufacture. Broken english of a chinese speaker will be different from someone who speaks french, for example.

I've also seen malware analysis reports which show that malware authors often change the locale of their computers and often insert variable names in different languages to further obfuscate the origin of malware.

This is a fascinating case and it reads like a spy novel!

I used to play an MMO primarily populated by Russians and Ukrainians - I've also lived in a few other places. The writing on the blog post definitely sounds Russian.

I really doubt it was Russian intelligence services, though, just a hacker having some fun with account names etc.

> * The files have at least passed through the hands of a Russian or someone who likes using former Russian spies as a pseudonym.

Or intentionally made to look like that. Attribution of hacks is on the spectrum of hard to impossible. Who can prove it wasn't the NSA/CIA?

Those automatic translations are wrong. The name you cited means "Felix Edmundovich" (or "Felix, son of Edmund")

I agree. This leads to the question what the heck Bing is translating here.

It's algorithm is probably associating words or ideas with equivalent but not identical best match in English - if you translate First Patronymic of some famous dude (famous enough that the bingbot has a lot of Russian and English text about them to learn from) it'll spit out the English First Last - as the patronymic will rarely be used in English articles about them. In that way First-Patronymic serves as sort of a dual-index on the Russian half of the Russian-English translation. Just a guess

Russian names are generally given name then patronymic (i.e. 'son of' or 'daughter of') then family name. A person is formally addressed by their given and patronymic names.

In this case Felix Edmundovich would refer to Felix Edmundovich Dzerzhinsky.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felix_Dzerzhinsky

So much investigation, when this line alone tells he's a russian:

>appreciated my skills so highly))) But in fact

The))) smile.

Or is supposed to tell that he is?

Time to put on my tinfoil hat.

Actually, I'd say that the "Grizzli777" signature is a hint that it's an individual or a small group. State-level actors wouldn't use pirated software - Microsoft Office is cheap for a government, and running 'warez' is really bad security practice, and a great way to have your own systems compromised.

Many state actors use contractors with lots of leeway; the NSA-GCHQ model of tight control is actually not the norm when it comes to APT. Just look at the Mandiant report on PLA Unit 61398.

If they used MS Office they'd be sure to pirate it. That way if it leaked any information it wouldn't be real.

For state agencies, assume that they are capable of misleading, but not generally capable of completely avoiding slip-ups.

So "state-level actors wouldn't use pirated software" is not good evidence - they might, both because it's easy and to make it look authentic as an independent hacker. Whether independent or not, if you're good enough to gain access where you shouldn't, you probably know where to get safe pirated copies.

But the Russian name in the most recent save is still evidence, because it's a perfectly plausible slip-up.

You can't prove a negative, and you certainly can never prove that something wasn't done by a more capable, more powerful actor pretending to be a less capable and powerful actor. It's the "that's what they WANT you to believe" argument of conspiracy theories.

As I see it, there are two options here. One is that a lone hacker succeeded in making it look like the Russians. The other is that the Russians failed at making it look like a lone hacker. Faking stuff is hard, so I'm betting on the failure.

DNC also said they believe it's a Russian intrusion, but we don't know if they rely on the same evidence for that - they potentially have access to a lot more.

Another thing is that Putin's government doesn't seem to be terribly concerned that you know they did something, as long as they can spread just a little doubt or have a fig leaf of plausible deniability. (Otherwise they'd probably not go around poisoning people with polonium). It makes sense if you view them as a sort of mafia: a mafia boss may not want it to be an official matter that he killed some people who got in his way - but he sure wants similar people to know.

I think a lone hacker managed to look like he's a Russian. The DNC has every motivation to claim that they have been hacked by "the Russians" as it's significantly less embarrassing to be hacked by a state actor than by an individual.

EDIT: Let's assume Russian state level actor, and that the purpose of the hack is to obtain evidence that will lead to an indictment of Hillary, improving Trumps chances at winning the presidency (a Trump presidency would presumably be very susceptible to strong-man optics and influence form the Kremlin). First strike against that, is timing: You want Hillary to formally secure the nomination first. An (imminent) indictment against the presumptive nominee would surely allow some kind of manoeuvring to hand the nomination to Sanders (or even someone else) in a way that can't be done after the convention is wrapped up. Sanders/Trump is probably in Trumps favour, but not as much as indicted-Hillary/Trump is. Second strike is the publicity. Being hacked, especially by a malevolent foreign power, has several positive PR spins, standing up against foreign interference in a democratic election etc. If you just wanted to hit Hillary, make it look like an anonymous whistleblower from inside the DNC leaking documents to an investigative reporter (Russia certainly has the capacity to make such a plant). Best not to have Russian fingerprints at all on this.

This leads me to suspect multiple different groups may have independently gained access to their servers. Definitely this guy, but possibly also Russians.

Definitely russian. His/her smileys don't have eyes.

:) vs )

According to my Russian friend, that evolved because the colon is Shift-6, so it's a bit annoying to type.

It's pretty naive to think that APT wouldn't consider this a target as well. More than one person can hack the same box :)

I agree this hack in particular is probably not APT.

If you think APT wouldn't be interested in a political campaign, just look back to the 2013 leak about the US's espionage of the Brazilian presidential candidate Dilma Rousseff's campaign. (Now it seems pretty prescient given her impeachment for corruption).

> That's why every hacking report of some big organization or company today lays the blame on APTs, China, Russia, NORKs and so on.

What? We must have very different sources of reports. The big hacks I read about in the NYT or LA times are almost always some poorly-secured retail company or social media company has a credit card or password dump. Brian Krebs has earned his living for years based off of this reporting.

> media and security companies would want us to believe.

Security companies? Maybe. Media? Where's the motive? This is the top comment? Come on.

I will reprise a comment from yesterday:

The only thing interesting about this story is that whoever did it "got caught". Sort of. Maybe.

Is there anyone here who really believes that every major campaign organization since, say, 2004 hasn't been completely owned up? What, you think the people that build the software and IT environments for campaigns --- sites that by design have millions of users with persistent accounts, and thousands of staff members at varying levels of privilege --- are the creme de la creme of software security talent?

Because, sure, I mean, everyone I know in software security and pentesting tells me "my first career choice is to go work in IT for the DNC and the GOP", but somehow along the way Google manages after a mighty struggle to outbid the 70k/year cost-center IT organizations offer for security talent.

If there was any interesting "oppo research" on McCain in the DNC servers during the '08 election, I will bet all the money in my pocket versus all the money in yours that the Chinese read all of it long before everyone on the official CC list did.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11903136

It is also interesting because Charles Koch is listed as a donor to Obama... scratching my head there.

A puppeteer can also be a ventriloquist.

Some recent interviews I heard made the Kochs seem less exclusively-Republican than I had previously thought. They're reportedly staying largely out of the 2016 election now that Donald Trump is the nominee. They're now an NPR sponsor too, which definitely caught me off-guard.

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/201...

As someone who's been familiar with them since before their association with the Republican party, their platform goals are what they typically donate towards.

Marijuana legalization / decriminalization, marriage equality, cancer research, arts, the Smithsonian, PBS' Nova, open borders, school choice, and free market principles. Yes, they donate to Republicans, and no, I don't know why. Also worth noting, they used to donate to Democrats more than they do now, and most of the 'big names' in the Democratic world (Hillary, Harry Reid, Barack Obama, et al) are recipients of Koch donations.

It's definitely possible that they're also spending for nefarious purposes, but I suspect that it depends more on predisposed ideology, or ideology on the role of PACs in society as to whether or not you view them that way.

Makes sense to me.

If Guccifer 2.0 writes a blog about "My first 10 minutes on a server" It would be a great read and we would know he reads hacker news.

Step 1:

> echo Fuck CrowdStrike!!!!!

You might get some interesting results if you aren't careful of history expansion...

That was my first guess as I read the title yesterday and was quite disappointed to see a security guide

I read the convincing CrowdStrike detailed and technical description of how the DNC server got hacked. CrowdStrike saw the tracks of two known Russian groups.

The published documents to me look real. The SECRET document from the State Department had the obviously secret item that the USA will not nuke terrorist training camps nor hideouts in Pakistan. Official US policy is that all tools are on the table.

Question is how did the SECRET document get on to the DNC server?

Regarding Guccifer 2.0, I believe this is Russia's obfuscation of their release of these damaging documents. They want to help Trump, but must not admit it for fear that Obama takes action now, Hillary takes action if she is elected, or even if Trump wins - Russians helping him might actually hurt him given the foreign interference in USA elections.

What damage? These are pretty positive documents, they all look like pretty good things to me.

Those don't look like actual classification markings, which are required to appear at both the top and bottom of pages. It seems more likely that those are some internal Democratic party markings. Also the fact that the documents seem to be talking about the first 100 days in the future tense would point to them being planning documents produced by people in the party.

That isn't a U.S. government classification marking. This is just a document that has the word "secret" in the header.

1. There are no dissemination controls present in the banner, e.g. SECRET//NOFORN.

2. None of the paragraphs are portion-marked e.g. (S) or (U).

3. There is no classification authority or date in the footer.

Seems like the DNC does not have a great track record on computer security. The Sanders campaign filed suit on the DNC. Both Sanders and Clinton may have been able to access each others files.

According to CNN, Wasserman Schultz said: "[The Sanders staff] not only viewed it, but they exported it and they downloaded it... We don't know the depth of what they actually viewed and downloaded. We have to make sure that they did not manipulate the information... That is just like if you walked into someone's home when the door was unlocked and took things that don't belong to you in order to use them for your own benefit. That's inappropriate. Unacceptable."

Maybe you shouldn't leave your front door open.

[1] http://www.cnn.com/2015/12/18/politics/bernie-sanders-campai... .

In that breach, the DNC wasn't the custodian of the data. A shared private vendor used by democratic candidates was.

The causes of the two issues are quite different - in one, an application doesn't have sufficient internal controls to ensure isolated multi-tenancy. The other is a breech by a malicious outsider.

If/when wikileaks begins to talk then we'll know if it was a legit leak.

The docs listed aren't the full dump, just "proof" that there is more.

Wikileaks is hardly a reliable and impartial third party.

Correct but if it happens it'll likely contain enough data to better verify its origin.

Genuinely curious: have WL released unreliable information in the past?

Their collateral murder video that claimed to show photographers being killed but ignored or edited out the frames showing someone with an RPG and an AK47 in the same group.

This fact is rarely mentioned. Thanks for bringing it up. This editing was not done by Chelsea; she submitted the information as-is. It was indeed WL / Assange who edited the video.

No, the edited video had all the critical details.

And, unlike any other journalists, they released the unedited video as well.

Very interesting thread about this here: https://twitter.com/pwnallthethings/status/74317975006403788...

Looks like it may still be Russia

It is entirely likely that the hacker is Russian, but state sponsored is a huge stretch.

I don't think that this was a pro-Trump hack either. Opposition research isn't anything new/groundbreaking. It's merely a writeup for quick reference when planning new content, polling, or debate prep. In 2016, this sort of information would be better suited in a wiki-format, but alas a mega-doc will suffice. Leaking it doesn't put the DNC at a disadvantage since this is all public information.

    > but state sponsored is a
    > huge stretch

Why?

I very much doubt that a hacker hired by the Russian government would go and create a WordPress and dump documents.

Wouldn't that be a good way to make it look like there wasn't Russian government involvement, then?

What if the purpose is leaking documents relatively benign on Trump and secret DoS documents that shouldn't ever be on a CNC server that demonstrate Hillary did not safeguard those documents responsibly? What if they want to dissociate the hack from any state-sponsored group?

The hack was discovered and the access was cut. Any documents of strategic value has long been read. Why not leak?

Exactly, we all know Russians use LiveJournal

Did they just out Jim Simmons of Renaissance technologies as donating $5,000,000 to the democrats?

Robert Mercer won't be happy:)

https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2016/06/a-hedge-fund-house-...

David Shaw of D.E. Shaw fame is there as well.

2016: Giant meteor hitting the Trump vs Hilary debate and wiping out them and their fervent supporters is our only chance of surviving.

media made it sound all but official that Russia hacked them. of course no one ever publishes any proof for these sort of claims.

What's that saying again? Never attribute to malice which can be adequately explained by incompetence?

Hanlon's Razor

I counter with gray's law [1] "Any sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice."

It's pretty clear that the DNC needs a huge shakeup. DWS is a blathering joke.

[1] http://joshuabrauer.com/2007/07/grays-law

It is, of course, possible that multiple parties hacked the servers independently of each other.

Or that this person is lying or a confederate.

That playbook is weak. Real research would be a lot more explosive than that.

How could one prove it? Describe the hack in detail in a message and sign it with a key?

I'm thinking the same thing. Is this really all they got against Trump? This way too benign, and none of these are some dark secrets.

Or, it's all they can admit publicly to having. (which makes sense in a play book)

The really juciy secrets would be kept offline I think

After reading through everything Gawker published, I now realize Trump might actually have a serious chance at winning the election.

The x.wordpress.com domain made me smile, is there a history of hackers using one-off free/hosted blogs for releases like this? It goes against every one of my marketing bones, but it is so dam cool.

Yes. A deep history.

Paying for a blog is a really bad way to drop documents onto the Internet and stay anonymous.

I'd seen pastebin and some others, just not wordpress.com Makes sense.

tumblr, wordpress, blogspot and pastebin are frequent spots for hackers to share their findings. This isn't out of ordinary.

On that note, I'm quite surprised this hasn't been yanked. Depending on externally-controlled services for info like this is a bit scary.

But then there are probably 100 backups of the page and info by now so...

I love how easy attribution is now a days! They use multiple Virtual Machines and and English and Russian fonts, must be Russian.

I also love how both sides instantly blamed the other.

Obviously trump hacked the DNC and then released its oppo research (on him) to hurt Hillary. Either they removed all the bad stuff, or wanted to release it all at once and force the attribution to Hillary.

Obviously Hillary Hacked the DNC and released the oppo research on trump to cause an easy document dump and get media attention on all her weak oppo research

No Expert's Opinion or Confirmation Bias going on today.

Edit: It is totally possible some extra "secret" attribution is going on by bigger entities.

I am sorry if this is a stupid question but why does anyone care if it's Russia, China or a lone US hacker? What's the point of discussing that over the content of this documents?

I think it's a good question. Clearly the content of the documents should matter the most. However, whoever leaked it has an agenda. If it's a lone hacker, it's most likely for the lulz. If it's a foreign country actor, we should keep their intentions in context.

I personally think it was for the lulz and this was a lone hacker.

The understanding of 'why' and 'how' changes entirely depending upon the size of the operation that did this. If it'a a lone hacker, the 'why' is pretty much lost, and the 'how' becomes very embarrassing, because individuals don't have the same access to development resources and zero-days as APT types. On the other hand, if it's an APT, we should assume substantial political scheming (because a for-profit outfit wouldn't do this.) In that case, it would be interesting to know, for example, if this is a Chinese or Russian priority to the extent required for a serious operation to be undertaken.

I'm guessing people jumped on that angle because (a) this is a tech-oriented site; and (b) no one commenting has yet taken the considerable time needed to read that huge document.

Among the files made public is one named ‘big-donors-list’/

Under a tab named ‘Not Met With’ and a heading called ‘Obama Billionaires’ appears the name “Charles Koch”.

Obviously, this may indicate that Koch raised funds for Obama in some capacity and that Clinton would like to reprise that relationship. Obviously, that makes no sense.

Is the Koch that gave cash to pbs more liberal?

These documents are 8+ years old. The National Security document is from 2008. Talks about Don't ask, Don't tell. Discusses Reversing a bunch of Bush Doctrine. Repealing don't ask/don't tell. And is focussed on Obama first 100 days, Not hilary.

OT: HN posts are starting to resemble "fake news" in the game Uplink. [1] :)

[1] http://i.imgur.com/FeFPcwj.png

Stuff is always hacked by one person. If that person works for some sort of organization does not really alter the "hack".

This is a bizarre position. Do you consider all the prep work to be unimportant. Or are you just saying this for the sake of pointing out a misleading technicality?

Bizarre from your perspective apparently.

Don't know what "prep work" you are talking about?

    "Or are you just saying this for the sake of pointing out a misleading technicality?"

no.

Guccifer 2.0 is a psyop pumped by the DNC

Media stories:

http://gawker.com/this-looks-like-the-dncs-hacked-trump-oppo...

http://www.thesmokinggun.com/documents/crime/dnc-hacker-leak...

https://motherboard.vice.com/read/guccifer-20-is-likely-a-ru...

So is there anything interesting here?

Another interesting theory: The Trump campaign alleges that the DNC hacked itself

https://twitter.com/JTSantucci/status/743194156739108865/pho...

I'm not sure that's a reasonable interpretation. Is there a such thing as Occam's Taser?

I took a quick read through the so-called "Opposition Playbook". It's just quotes from news articles and stories about Trump. There's no actual guidance or anything internal-looking from what I saw. The huge "CONFIDENTIAL" watermark also seems a bit out of place.

most likely answer: DNC sucks at oppo

(the best insult they could come up with for trump was 'dangerous donald', i mean seriously)

When I first heard it - I thought it was a compliment. Or the next spin off from Serious Sam.

Most likely answer: They don't need anything except Trump's own words and public news segments about what Trump does on a regular basis in order to make him look batshit crazy and unfit to be president.

You're not wrong, but the DNC has done a pretty bad job against probably the easiest candidate to beat so far.

I mean something like this: '“Dangerous Donald,” the “loose cannon,” hated by loser Republicans, capable of doing anything. This is all straight out of the orange idiot’s dream journal.' - http://gawker.com/dont-blow-this-1775111772

I like thin skinned.

There is no conspiracy theory that the Trump campaign won't try to hang on to. They're like your crazy uncle that has tinfoil stapled to the ceiling of his shack but somehow manages to have an internet account that he only uses to read about the Illuminati.

In this election season there are no conspiracy theories anymore. Just theories.

What about the theory to which Trump alludes suggesting that Obama is somehow complicit in the continued existence of ISIS?

That one is actually easier to swallow than others if the implication is just that Obama is soft on threats. Every leader can be considered 'complicit' in that regard.

>if the implication is just that Obama is soft on threats

My point is that he is suggesting something more sinister.

wouldn't be the first time the U.S. has armed an ostensibly rogue power in the region.

Sinister meaning Obama is sympathetic to ISIS and the terrorist ideology.

I don't think anybody is implying that.

Hmm, that's the interesting thing about implication, it's can be very ambiguous. If you leave something ambiguous knowing a small minority will misinterpret the real implication for something worse, and accept that as beneficial and make no move to clarify that point, are you implying that as well?

Trump seemed to imply it on a recent interview, watch it here[0].

It is vague, granted, but I really can't imagine what other inference we (or Trump's supporters) are meant to make from that.

[0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k0qvCYSK5wA

I think the obvious implication here is that Obama would be using the climate of terrorism for unrelated political ends... That he would allow the fire to burn because he benefits from the heat, not at all that he has an ideological coherence with their movement.

I'd be willing to accept that interpretation, if he hadn't also mentioned how Obama "can't even mention the words 'radical Islam'."

And if Trump hadn't posted a tweet supporting the claim by a Brietbart article (which has been debunked) that the Obama administration supported ISIS financially[0], specifically claiming that he (Trump) "was right" about what the media says he was "insinuating" about Obama:

    An: Media fell all over themselves criticizing what DonaldTrump "may 
    have insinuated about @POTUS." But he's right: https://t.co/bIIdYtvZYw
    — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 15, 2016

What insinuations has Trump apparently made, that he feels have been vindicated by an article accusing the Obama administration of having funded ISIS? I may be unreasonably biased, but I don't think Trump is trying to paint a picture of Obama as a mere political opportunist here.

And of course, it's always worth pointing out, Trump is a birther. He believes Obama isn't even legally fit to be president, that he faked his birth certificate and that his administration has been covering up what essentially amounts to a coup by a foreign power. He has a long and storied history of implying Barack Obama is a Muslim[2] (as if somehow that's a crime in and of itself.) Note in the CNN article, the following exchange between Trump and a supporter at a campaign rally:

    "We have a problem in this country. It's called Muslims," a man 
     attending Trump's rally in Rochester, New Hampshire, said. 
     "You know our current president is one. You know he's not 
     even an American."

    "We need this question," Trump said, chuckling. "This is the 
     first question."

    The man continued: "We have training camps growing where they want 
    to kill us. That's  my question: When can we get rid of them?"

    "We're going to be looking at a lot of different things," Trump 
    said. "You know, a  lot of people are saying that and a lot of people 
    are saying that bad things are happening. We're going to be looking at 
    that and many other things."

One could interpret that as simply dismissing the crank views of a paranoid voter as diplomatically as possible - if one were not aware of the beliefs Donald Trump actually held regarding the president's religion and legal status, and if Donald Trump were the sort of person to be diplomatic about anything.

Either Trump doesn't consider that an unreasonable question, or for some reason he can't bring himself to admit how unreasonable it is openly, because he wants to court the votes of people who consider it reasonable. He said later he didn't entirely hear the question, but that doesn't seem likely given the context of his response.

[0]http://www.breitbart.com/2016-presidential-race/2016/06/14/h...

[1]https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/74307515450748928...

[2]http://www.cnn.com/2015/09/18/politics/trump-obama-muslim-bi...

I can appreciate this, but I find it both true and irrelevent. It is not as if many people here (I would assume) would choose Trump to be president out of some crowded room of well rounded and accomplished people.

I guess I'm still wondering what your larger point is? Do you plan to vote?

Unfortunately, the implication is that the Obama administration supports ISIS[0], and that Obama himself is actually sympathetic to their views[1].

Donald Trump, remember, doesn't even believe Obama is an American citizen, or legally qualified to be president to begin with. Believing Obama's a terrorist sympathizer isn't a stretch, if you already believe he's a crypto-Muslim plant conspiring to cover up his own illegitimacy.

[0]https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/74307515450748928...

[1]http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2016/06/15/3788809/donald-...

I am not advocating for that devil, but the events from the recent years - active encouragement of replacement of secular government with Islamist ones. Deal with Iran that cements the Islamic revolution, support for Erdogan while he makes Turkey a theocracy, giant arms sales to Saudi Arabia, drone strikes that are effective Taliban and ISIS recruitment tools, arming Iraq army which only strategic move is to drop their gear for ISIS to use and flee. Either there is strong support for islamisation of the middle east or the recent administrations have no idea and clue what are they doing.

>Either there is strong support for islamisation of the middle east or the recent administrations have no idea and clue what are they doing.

They probably have no idea and clue what they're doing.

I still remember being promised we would be welcomed into Baghdad as liberators, like Christ being led into Jerusalem.

I enjoy criticism of our current administration as much as anyone, but I'm going to go with Hanlon's Razor and guess the latter: they have no clue what effective foreign policy looks like. I suspect that simply doing nothing at all (leaving all pre-existing policies and agreements in place) would have been more effective than what we have done. At least it would have appeared consistent and predictable.

> they have no clue what effective foreign policy looks like.

We've a new rulebook. Does anyone, anywhere, know that?

So our choices in November are between a blowhard and the architect of much of this foreign policy clusterfuck. What interesting times we live in.

> Deal with Iran that cements the Islamic revolution,

Knowing what I know about the MiddleEast, I can assure you that Iran is a much better option than the Saudis. The Saudis basically owned the USG over the last couple of decades. Case in point: after 9/11, when all flights were grounded, a couple of special flights were allowed to fly zig-zag across the country, picking up Saudis so they could get out of the US before the FBI came knocking. And Saudis are the biggest exporters and funders of extremist Wahhabi version of Islam.

Iran, on the other hand, has a much more moderate version of Islam. There are still Jews in Iran who practice freely, for instance. I challenge you to find one Jew in Saudi Arabia who practices freely.

Iran population is a lot more progressive and secular than the ruling elite. Which is unusual.

Are you implying that a non-elected form of government failing to represent the people is unusual?

That's not the implication, though. The implication is that Obama is a secret Muslim extremist and is actively collaborating with terrorists. "Soft on threats" is just the dog whistle.

Was it continued, or initial existence of ISIS?

Does it matter? Either one is nonsense.

Why? The US has a long and storied history of supporting one group of people, but once they come into power un-supporting them.

Or, for that matter, that he faked his birth in Hawaii.

> Obama is somehow complicit in the continued existence of ISIS? He said so himself: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrfjhgBPKg8

People are going to study the way Trump captured the hearts of the alt-right, white supremacist and conspiracist fringe for years to come, if Trump actually wins. It'll become the new and improved Southern Strategy.

What other conspiracy theories are you referring to?

Well Obama being a secret Muslim from Kenya....

Cruz's father helped to assassinate JFK.

Obama is secretly a muslim and wants the terrorists to win.

The Clintons murdered Vince Foster.

Trump tweeted that climate change is a conspiracy created by the Chinese to destroy the American economy.

I wish I was making that up.

https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/26589529219124838...

Looking at the file, I have to agree... I doubt there was a hack and I doubt this is really their oppo playbook. This looks like Black PR to me... a way to dump talking points easily in the media without having them all come out of Clinton's mouth.

I've been in both politics and Infosec long enough to know that you're probably correct.

Candidates already feed talking points to the media via backchannels....there would be no need to leak this doc for that purpose.

Also, consider how benign the information is in the doc.

This is more impactful. It is designed to let those in opposition look at them as well and say "aha, yeah, maybe this does make sense".

Perhaps like a Trojan Horse type attack. Nobody in the Trump camp will believe these unless they think these are the hidden dark secrets full of juicy secrets from Hillary. So they read and it and then see stuff like "Oh Trump is a racist, huh, I guess maybe that's right".

I love the "Trump is a racist" meme. He's been in the public eye for 30+ years, but somehow now it comes out that he's been secretly racist all along. Typical democratic race baiting strategy worked pretty well - too bad we all need to live in this world that they built.

You've looked at the file and have thusly determined that the DNC faked first a state-level-actor hack and then changed it up to a single script-kiddie attack.

Thought this was HN.

What do you mean, all I see is a detailed point-by-point summary of why Donald Trump is a scumbag and some State Department documents that seem to show Hillary Clinton is really smart!

It's very possible the supposed hacker is a Clinton supporter and/or Trump opposer and when deciding which documents to publish they naturally tended toward documents which make Clinton look good and/or make Trump look bad.

But leaking campaign finance details? I feel like that is a good way to piss off your donors.

Donor information is filed publicly with the FEC. These spreadsheets may include some additional information, such as e-mail addresses or donor gifts, but for the most part you can search the DNC's filings to see who has donated and how much they've donated.

This is quite odd. I had posted a reply previously but it seems to have been removed.

Admin(s): tell me if I did something wrong but I believe I was just making observations about the docs on the site.

(Not an admin - that would probably be someone like dang)

Have you tried resubmitting the reply? It might've gotten eaten by a slow spam filter or something (I have no idea how HN works). You have contact info in your profile, so that works if there's a real issue.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11912615 and marked it off-topic.

"Guccifer may have been the first one who penetrated Hillary Clinton ... but he certainly wasn't the last."

uh...

False flag to offset the email server lies.

Russia does not have America's best intrest in mind so if they did secretly do this to help Trump, that's more of a reason to NOT vote for him

Reply on news.ycombinator.com