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Being cynical about a government that's consistently shown disregard for individual privacy makes us nutty conspiracy theorists?

IMO it's crazy not to question at least their competence if not also their motive.

> Do you think the British and Americans were going to publish stories about Enigma back in WW2 in the Times during the war? There were like a handful of people in the world who knew the details.

Well they plan on releasing the malware samples and evidence of the hack, so I'm not sure what you mean here...

This isn't the enigma in war time. It's not even a denied operation like Stuxnet (which was also had malware samples found in the wild and plenty of details on how it was spread and worked). It's standard nation state malware from a foreign adversary and the phishing email was already released from the Podesta hack via Wikileaks.

The only question is how they connected the public leaks to Russia. Which most people doubt they even have. But that detail won't stop the press from believing it was one and the same. Even though any number of people could have accessed it.

But otherwise simply connecting the hack to Russia and the hack itself is hardly a mystery or interesting in itself. You're very much overselling that which I'll just attribute to not knowing much about infosec.

From NYTimes:

>> The samples of malware were in what the Obama administration called a “joint analytic report” from the F.B.I. and the Department of Homeland Security that was based in part on intelligence gathered by the National Security Agency. A more detailed report on the intelligence, ordered by President Obama, will be published in the next three weeks, though much of the detail — especially evidence collected from “implants” in Russian computer systems, tapped conversations and spies — is expected to remain classified.

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/12/29/us/politics/russia-elec...

Obviously they won't release every detail, especially regarding implants in Russia, but they'll release more than just 'trust us'. They always do.

I'll wait to actually see it first.

We know what nation state hacking looks like thanks to the leaks about the NSA. There would normally be things like custom hardware or TEMPEST like tools, not kiddie level phishing scams.

> While we technical folks would love to see all the details that's not how intelligence works. Some things have to be secret even though these days everything becomes a conspiracy and a political controversy and a tweet storm.

That's perfectly fair, so why can't they say "The Russians did it but we can't say why we know."? Instead we get "The Russians did it." and "Here is some evidence of the attack." This way, they are not directly saying it is evidence of the Russian attack, they just leave people to form that conclusion themselves. Pardon me if I'm a little suspicious at the "accidentally" confusing communication.

> That said I doubt anyone in either party committee had any idea how security works; even worse is that much of the US government is (and will be) lead by political benefactors with an axe to grind and not people with a real clue about modern security either so expect nothing much different in the future until someone hacks the nuclear "football".

Or the media. And yet, they know, with absolute certainty, despite no evidence or knowledge in the field, that the Russians are responsible for the attack.

I don't think 'Do you think the British and Americans were going to publish stories about Enigma back in WW2 in the Times during the war?' is a fair comparison to what's happening now.

Given the credibility of some three letter agency, it is reasonable that people who are technically adept or otherwise have doubt over this report. Even when you just look at the report without the credibility, it still lacks so much for anyone to pinpoint the acts to Russian state. While the report itself does not claim that, the media hype is otherwise.