U.S. Punishes Russia for Election Hacking | Hacker News Reader

U.S. Punishes Russia for Election Hacking

nytimes.com

36 pointshelloworld41 comments

Trump's cavalier response to this is shocking. These are serious allegations. His statement is mind melting on so many levels:

Asked on Wednesday night at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Fla., about reports of the impending sanctions, Mr. Trump said: “I think we ought to get on with our lives. I think that computers have complicated lives very greatly. The whole age of computer has made it where nobody knows exactly what is going on. We have speed, we have a lot of other things, but I’m not sure we have the kind, the security we need.”

> We have speed, we have a lot of other things, but I’m not sure we have ... the security we need.

He's not entirely wrong about this. Unfortunately, he wont do anything to help the matter.

Also,

> The whole age of computer

lol

He is not winning any friends with the non-investor, blue-collar coder crowd with his arrogance that's for sure. I don't think he realizes we and those who follow are the future of manufacturing, the people who actually breath soul into the "automation" Joe J. Miner so desperately fears and lusts after.

Whether or not US manufacturing continues upward per prediction, that Joe the Miner isn't going to get those new manufacturing jobs -- his children maybe can, but not him. That Joe the Miner may realise that as Americans, we are truly not in the same boat, and neither are our children. While one American sinks, another sails to millionairedom.

Given Trump's personality, I wonder what material is being held back by "state actors" to be used at an appropriate time.

Trump isn't going to do or say anything that makes it look like his election might in any way be the result of Russian meddling, because it brings into question the legitimacy of his presidency.

Whether this is the right course of action or not (which I don't think anyone outside of the government is informed enough to have a valid opinion on), I don't like the idea of an outgoing President making major foreign policy maneuvers in their last month of office, especially with the incoming President not being in agreement.

It's like if George W. Bush had started invading Iran in December of 2008.

I don't like the idea of an outgoing President making major foreign policy maneuvers in their last month of office, especially with the incoming President not being in agreement.

I agree that it's a bit sketchy. On the other hand, the incoming president might have benefited from the actions of Russian intelligence agencies, and he doesn't seem inclined to investigate (at least not without public outcry). So on balance, getting this information on the record now might be in the interests of national security.

George H.W. Bush did enter Somalia in December 1992[1].

In this case, Obama's in a tough situation. On paper, he's the President till January 19th. He has to act on the results of the investigation. He can't just sit back and say "well, my days are almost over, so I'll just let the next guy handle it".

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

The US entered Somalia in December 1992 with the express approval of a unanimous UN Security Council resolution, and there is no indication whatsoever that President-Elect Bill Clinton opposed it. Also, the situation in Somalia was rapidly deteriorating.

It seems to me that the right course of action would be for Obama to release the findings of an investigation and let the next President decide what the right course of action is.

I'm no fan of Obama, but I agree completely. And think your inclusion of Bush 41's actions are on-target.

After January 19th, if Trump feels that any of Obama's actions are inappropriate, he can take steps to undo them. But if time is of the essence, then it is better for the sitting President to take action rather than let a bad situation get worse.

I don't know if this case in particular fits the bill, but if you start hamstringing the incumbent, then you might as well swear in the new President the day after the election.

>But if time is of the essence, then it is better for the sitting President to take action rather than let a bad situation get worse.

Agreed. But is time of the essence?

Well, that's why I said that I didn't know if this case fits the bill. That's certainly debatable, at least outside of access to any classified material that supports the assertion that Russia was directly involved.

> After January 19th, if Trump feels that any of Obama's actions are inappropriate, he can take steps to undo them.

That's exactly the point. This is political, not urgent. If Trump (I'm no fan of Trump, or any other politician, really) doesn't roll back these changes, it will hurt his prospects on the way forward he said he wanted to take - better relations with Russia. If he does roll them back, queue howls of outrage from everywhere that Trump is weak and being a pushover to the public enemy number one du-jour.

It is a political move, and a petty and small minded one at that.

Overly principled politicians don't do well in the US system (or perhaps any political system). You might be right but what's the point of being right if you have zero influence?

This is what I've learned about US politics anyway.

I am really worried. Worried about the Russian propaganda that is being spread in Norway. Comments sections are filled with anti-US rhetorics by facebook users whom profile looks empty (0 friends, few posts made this year).

Some of the comments are obviously written in other language and translated to Norwegian.

I may have to contact the chief editors to discuss strategies against it.

Mr. Obama decided to expand an executive order that he issued in April 2015, after the Sony hacking. He signed it in Hawaii on Thursday morning, specifically giving himself and his successor the authority to issue travel bans and asset freezes on those who “tamper with, alter, or cause a misappropriation of information, with a purpose or effect of interfering with or undermining election processes or institutions.”

Are there any lawyers here who might explain whether this kind of executive order is unusual? The "giving himself and his successor the authority" part seems, well, undemocratic. Isn't it the Congress (as constrained by the Constitution) that typically gives the executive branch authority to do new things?

Without reading the order, my guess is that it lays out an administrative process to issue those travel bans and asset freezes, as opposed to requiring a fresh executive order for each.

The President has wide authority to conduct foreign policy flowing from both the Constitution and various Acts of Congress.

Here's the full statement from the White House, via NPR: https://twitter.com/NPR/status/814551976935559168

> "...the “Autonomous Non-commercial Organization Professional Association of Designers of Data Processing Systems,” whose lengthy name, American officials said, was cover for a group that provided specialized training for the hacking."

Holy cow, now that's a company name, although it appears they go by ANO PO KSI. And their website looks like a website for a shell company in a 1997 Hollywood movie:

http://www.poksi.ru/homeeng.html

I see nothing unusual about their website. It looks like the sites for 5,000,000 other companies that don't sell things online.

There's millions of tech companies that do $20 million a year in revenue (per Hoover's) with a website like that?

There are many companies that do much more in revenue with sites like that, yes.

Can you link a couple? This seems hard to believe.

> a group that provided special training

Didn't Podesta get "hacked" through a simple spear phishing email?

Edit: Found the Homeland Security document outlining the payload it came with. https://www.us-cert.gov/sites/default/files/publications/JAR...

Zerohedge has the actual list of individuals and organizations being sanctioned: http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-12-29/us-announces-sancti...

there is something sketchy with the list.

BOGACHEV, Evgeniy Mikhaylovich (a.k.a. BOGACHEV, Evgeniy Mikhailovich; a.k.a. "Lastik"; a.k.a. "lucky12345";

this is no other than the infamous Zeus/p2p-zeus malware writer. He was FBI wanted in 2014 I think. So he is still active and US has identified him??

if anyone else is interested, I can tell you that back in the p2p-zeus days Slavik/lucky12345/pollingsoon implemented a secret spy functionality in the malware that only he knew of. It scanned files and mails for text related to georgia (during russia-georgia conflict). It also scanned for specific words on ukraine, turkey bots.

So one can assume he was already partly working for russian intelligence back then.

Given he hasnt been caught yet its probable that Russian government is protecting him in exchange for more "work"

You would expect more. There's no chance at more happening when for the last 8 years the republicans have allowed nothing and they benefitted from the hacks.

Edit: not going to get into politics :)

I can't help but wonder: if 35 were identified as intelligence operatives, why did the US gov't wait until now to eject them?

I can appreciate the need to perhaps keep a few known entities around to feed bogus information, but allowing that many to just hang out seems like a recipe for trouble. Unless this happens routinely, in which case it likely has nothing to do with this "punishment".

more technical details emerge: https://www.us-cert.gov/sites/default/files/publications/JAR...

I find it interesting they keep pushing "election hacking" which is not the case. The DNC was hacked, which is vastly different from the "election" being hacked.

Also the hack happened a long time before the election.

Edit: If you downvoted please correct me and show evidence of the election being hacked.

This is another semantic game, along the same lines as "it depends on what your definition of 'is' is": the hacking allegedly took place during the election season and involved the disclosure of information about a candidate and their campaign staff, so it technically can be called "election hacking".

But of course calling it such also makes it sound like actual votes were affected, which nobody has claimed at this point.

Using this terminology not only brings attention to a potentially serious issue, but allows one party to undermine the legitimacy of the other's election victory.

We don't know the full specs yet as they have not been declassified and divulged. If one part of a two party election benefits from something the other part loses and vice versa. That's tampering and foreign entities shouldn't be doing it.

> That's tampering and foreign entities shouldn't be doing it.

Surely you mean "That's tampering and foreign entities shouldn't be doing it _to us_". Because the US does that all the time.

We shouldn't be doing that either but I left it out. Two wrongs don't make a right.

Not Russian, but U.S. hackers and insiders:

http://blackboxvoting.org/fraction-magic-video/

How about a focus on the content of emails revealed? More to explore there.

We will have to wait for historians to provide a more detailed and (hopefully) objective review of their contents in the decades to come.

Look how long it took for Deep Throat of the Watergate scandal to be identified.

It's funny how the US is getting its panties in a bunch over the hacking, when they (i.e., we, as I'm a USC) themselves have been doing this all over the world for many decades.

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