A Russian Expat Leading the Fight to Protect America
esquire.com
esquire.com
I'm not that knowledgeable about current hacking technologies so maybe this is a dumb question, but how can they 'identify' the origin of these spy-/malwares?
Wouldn't a group with equal or more knowledge be able to obfuscate their origin?
I think it's kind of suspicious that Russian state hackers would send the data to a server that's apparently already known to be owned by Russia.
None of which is ironclad, but frankly there's not much reason for e.g. a Russian actor to bother faking that. Both states have groups doing this stuff, they're not really hiding it, and they might as well work on a reasonable timeframe.
Some technical indicators: https://www.crowdstrike.com/blog/bears-midst-intrusion-democ...
What media tells us: Russian state-sponsored hackers breach the deepest secrets of the country.
What really happened: script-kiddie pwned the WordPress blog through hacked Russian VPS.
TFA, Alperovitch, and one supposes the ruling party as well, can't seem to make up their mind about Alperovitch. For a security dude, he seems to make a lot of political judgments. Maybe that's a natural part of the whole attribution "know thy enemy" shtick, but it does undermine the impartiality of his attributions. Then again, maybe they do need some help with diplomacy:
Administration officials asked Alperovitch to attend a meeting to consider what to do. He was the only native Russian in the room.
An ugly bit of trivia. This sentence would actually sound different to a Russian speaker than to an English speaker, particularly an American one. In English, "Russian" can mean both "of ethnic Russian origin" and "a citizen/national of Russia". In Russian, those two concepts have different words.
With antisemitism still being strong in Russia, and in the context of the article, many Russians (as in both ethnic origin and citizenship) would be quick to point out that Alperovitch is not a "native Russian" in both of these senses like them.
>"You have to let them save face," he told the group. "escalation will not end well."
Why is it these so called Russian friends always encourage everyone to do nothing, it's always something like "best not to do anything and just let it go".
Seems like that would just encourage more of the same.
Now who knows what was really said and this is just an article that isn't any official report. Its not like the Administration is going to tell Esquire their plans. Never the less if that is what he said I would be hesitant to trust such a person.
This seems like a good moment to differentiate what we want to do from what we can do. One reading of this is "just ignore the bully and they won't make things worse", which I agree is silly. But the other reading is "holy shit guys, don't set a norm of publicizing state hacking efforts, we will not look good."
Granting the claim that Russia did this, it's worth following up with the possibility that the Equation Group auction was done to embarrass the TAO and the US more broadly. A few people I've seen (including the grugq, who is hardly a partisan) have suggested that it was revealed to threaten escalation if the US keeps pushing to embarrass Russia over hacking.
In which case, the compliance argument may be totally reasonable. It wouldn't be giving in, it'd just be counseling politicians that maybe they don't want to take the moral high ground here.
> A Russian Expat Leading the Fight to Protect Clinton's Campaign
More accurate.
Yes, we know that the "U.S. No Longer An Actual Democracy" [1] but, can the US MSM at least TRY to make us think that it is? I mean, look at these:
http://static3.businessinsider.com/image/54dca6ffeab8ea393e4...
http://gdb.rferl.org/4881AF9E-1328-47C6-B468-559DBCE349DF_w9...
http://gdb.rferl.org/4D8132DF-9979-4338-8545-2FE3A9B7E259_w9...
http://cdn.spectator.co.uk/content/uploads/2016/10/cover_spe...
http://cdn.static-economist.com/sites/default/files/imagecac...
(This is just a small excerpt. Search Google images for putin cover page. Just for fun, Google search for trump cover page as well.)
Is this objective, non-partisan, peace-oriented media? Or lying, partisan and warmongering media?
Where are the evidences that Russia or Putin himself are breaking into US servers? No one provides one.
Why is this not a headline news:
James Clapper: Non-state actor likely to blame for massive cyberattack
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/james-clapper-non-state-actor-li...
Where is Joe Biden to threaten Russia after these revelations by Clapper?
Listen, I want to live in peace and prosperity and not have to die (or be maimed) in some war or to be a refugee or to have to build my home. And, I hope, neither do YOU.
[1] Don't believe me. Believe the son of the US billionaire Herbert Sandler:
https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/3723#efmAMnANJA...
The subtlety is that "controlled media" isn't just "state-owned media" (something that the US media loves pointing out about RT for example). If you have a system where incentives are put in place so that the media has an interest in presenting an image of those in power which is the image that those in power would like to present, then the media won't show you an objective picture. In the case of democracies (and here I'm not only talking about the US) these incentives are what's called "access". That is, the idea that if someone in the media wants to call an insider in the government, that guy will take the call. Media companies who don't have this access aren't seen as serious and lose viewers. That is why media in the US (and most democracies) isn't really free (for the most part; there are exceptions): because if they're seen to be very anti-establishment, they won't get any access.
Here's a thought experiment. Imagine that we institute by law a "Chinese wall" [1], of the type that banks already have, between government and media. Prediction: the first time this idea will be proposed, both the government and the media will hysterically oppose this idea. The government because they lose on of the most important forms of control that they have over the media, and the media because they lose their competitive advantage over any well informed youtuber with smart things to say.
I have a problem with the way access is traded on, but I think the solution is to convince some media companies to have some backbone (we invited Titus J. Stuffington on tonight, he didn't want to talk about the bribes he took, we decided not to get some damn fool to defend the bribes in his stead), not to ban them from talking to government officials.
The problem with "convince media companies" to have backbone is one of incentives. Media companies are fighting amongst them, and if the incentives are such that the ones that "have a backbone" will always lose to the ones that don't, then your approach is a non-starter (and I believe this is currently the case because viewers demand that the media company have "access").
So how could you align a media company having a backbone with it winning in the media company competition? Well, for example by targeting a niche audience that hates seeing media companies pandering for the establishment. With that audience, your media company would win. Of course, only small companies target small niches. Then the question becomes: is that audience big enough that the big established media companies notice and want to gun for it?
Then there's an additional complication which is that with your method media companies aren't _really_ calling out poor bad governmental behaviours, but only having the appearance of doing so. That is, they try to appeal to the "no bullshit crowd" by calling out minor pre-negociated points, while still cuddling with the government on the things that really matter.
It's a complicated world.
Maybe the answer isn't that they can't talk altogether, but that regulations should be put in place for communications. For example, if a journalist wants to talk to a government official they can do so whenever the government officla say so, but the _full_ content of the conversation has to be made available to all media companies before any one of them can publish anything. The downside with this approach is that it removes the incentive of any one media company to put much resources into investigative journalism that gets it scoops from conversations with the government. The upside with this approach is that it removes the obvious conflict of interests which is that media companies won't trash the government in order to be fed these scoops (and when I say "the government" I'm including the opposition; one's business model is to be fed by the Republicans (Fox) the other's will be to be fed by the Democrats (MSNBC))
Maybe because everyone and their dog in tech understands this was just script kiddies playing with new toys?
As far as the email hacks, there are a couple of recent pieces laying out the case for tying them to Russia:
http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a49791/russian-dnc-emai...
http://motherboard.vice.com/read/how-hackers-broke-into-john...
As the Motherboard article says, there is no known smoking gun, but the targeting of the phishing campaign has a pretty strong overlap with Russian interests.
NSA Whistleblower: US Intelligence Worker Likely Behind DNC Leaks, Not Russia
http://theantimedia.org/nsa-whistleblower-dnc-russia/
I have William Binney and you have Vice (owned by Disney) and Esquire (by Hearst). Someone like Binney beats journalists working for corporatocracy. Every day. :-)
Thomas Rid has worked for "Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik, a Berlin think tank".
And do you know who SWP has worked for? U.S. State Department:
> The Cablegate leak produced evidence that leading representatives of the SWP (Volker Perthes, its head, and Walter Posch, an expert on Iran) had advised the U.S. State Department to proceed against Iran with a "policy of covert sabotage (unexplained explosions, accidents, computer hacking etc)".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Institute_for_Internati...
Thank you again for helping me expose yet another branch of the corporatocracy tree.
(BTW, I have researched this in five minutes, max.)
What's your point? You can take previous work in the field both ways, it "connects" someone, but it also means they have some chance of knowing what they are talking about. Above, you use Binney's past at the NSA as something that adds credence to his words...
> Binney was a Russia specialist and worked in the operations side of intelligence, starting as an analyst and ending as a Technical Director prior to becoming a geopolitical world Technical Director. In the 1990s, he co-founded a unit on automating signals intelligence with NSA research chief Dr. John Taggart. Binney's NSA career culminated as Technical Leader for intelligence in 2001. Having expertise in intelligence analysis, traffic analysis, systems analysis, knowledge management, and mathematics (including set theory, number theory, and probability), Binney has been described as one of the best analysts in the NSA's history.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Binney_(U.S._intellige...
William Binney is a heavyweight (NSA Technical Director), an insider, Russia expert (especially regarding SIGINT).
I don't see that Thomas Rid has done anything but teaching and writing while working for various USG affiliated think thanks. While that might be admirable in itself, what credibility does he have regarding the expertise or the inner workings of US or Russian intelligence? I don't see much, even when not compared to Binney.
Another difference: By working for USG affiliated think thanks (RAND Corporation, SWP), Rid is just another exceptionally well paid [1] alibi provider for the imperial politics the US oligarchy leads. And that makes him very biased, which in turn makes his writing very biased. So biased in fact, that it insults my intelligence. How are the Esquire editors so stupid not to think that I will take Rid's name, Google it and find out (in less than five minutes!) that he's a shill?
[1] Normal professors cannot afford to live "in the Barbican in the City of London". And he even has chuzpe to brag about it!
I am well aware that I am manipulated, as is everybody else. By every medium. Be it a small blog, be it commercially owned medium, be it state owned medium. And I try to consume a wide range of them to get a better picture.
Here is my list of worst to best in "propaganda quality":
- US corporate media just insults my intelligence. I consume it but it's unbearable. Its manipulation tactics are so obvious, so inelegant, so clumsy. US empire and its media has done something remarkable in the 26 years since the fall of the Berlin wall: In 1990 USA was a country with a great image, in 2016 USA is arguably the most hated country in the world.
- BBC does it MUUUUCH better. You can see that the Brits still know how to be an empire. Smaller, but an empire nonetheless. They have learned their lesson and now they don't let their hubris take over. That's why BBC is much more bearable because they are subtle in the way they manipulate.
- Russia Today, state owned (just like the BBC!) does it best! Look at its name: Russia Today. You'd think that you'll learn something about Russia today by consuming it. Well, you kind of do, but they show you only the good stuff. They don't lie (like their US or, subtler, British colleagues). No, they left out news that make them look bad but they (almost) don't lie. And, regarding the world (especially US, UK, Europe, wars NATO as alliance and member states are involved in) they are very close to the core truth. Big plus, they (often) invite people who have opposite opinion. Bottom line, they don't insult my intelligence by manipulating me.
You linked to a highlighted story on their sci/tech section. What more do you want? There's tens of outlets reporting his comments - just check Google News.
It's a very specific kind of journalism that's contorting straight-news reporting into human interest column space by focusing on individuals and appearances. I often don't like it, but the alternative for Esquire was running an essay on mixology or something, not a cleaner version of this piece.
It presumably is an endpoint installed agent with root access, but if the attacker has got there first how do you trust your install. And even if you trust it (maybe they have not subourned the kernel) but even so ... how?
Is it as simple as "we know what code they are using, so we look for that code?"
They had come across the Russian malware before - to the extent of decompiling it enough to extract comments or variable names - so they had a pretty good idea of what to look for.
Interesting - I suppose the only way to get good at this game is to start and collect as you go along. Pokemon for IDS