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Comment by mynameisvinn124 | Hacker News Reader

"Many breach announcements this year pointed to a “sophisticated attacker” as a narrative of their issue. This usually is followed up by criticism when an initial means of their compromise is revealed.

Most breaches begin with spear phishing, commodity exploits, a leaked key, or some other obvious or preventable detail. However, this is almost never the “sophisticated” aspect of a breach worth talking about. It’s easy to point at an embarrassing vector and dismiss the rest of an attack. Thus, do not judge an adversary by the vector they’ve chosen.

An adversary may show you what “sophistication” means after advancing from their beachhead."

* https://medium.com/starting-up-security/learning-from-a-year...

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Valid point, but I should clarify my original comment: I don't find either aspect of the attack--the entry or the payload--to be particularly sophisticated.

Everything I've read indicates the bulk of work was done by Powershell scripts, along with a backdoor process running in the open. If you told me that the backdoor was a kernel level rootkit or something similar then I could get onboard, but as it stands I don't think the attack's complexity is a solid argument for "Russia did it"

The main arguments might be not technical. The political emails are pretty boring stuff for an outsider so it should be some government or politician bothering to get them.

I also remember that some gmail accounts of people from DNC staff were hacked. Gmail probably has logged what IP addresses were used when logging in with stolen passwords and they could be used as a hint too (though most probably they point to cheap VPS bought by some anonymous person or Tor node, I doubt anyone would use a stolen password from their real IP address).

nobody except complete amateurs is using its own computer to do hacking. there are thousands if not millions of compromized computers in aws cloud and similar hosting services that in turn work as robot-hackers to compromise other sites. it is like a self building hacking network where each cell works to infect other cells. so atack, if it was any atack (as document does not have any evidence that it was one) was unlikely be runnig from a real IP but from a random AWS instance registered by some junior software developer from India who bought it to deploy a pet project that was hacked without him even knowing this weeks ago before the event.

Who else could have forced the DNC to rig the primaries? It's very clear from the collusion between CNN and the Hillary campaign that state level actors were involved.

Please don't spread fake news about primary rigging, even if tongue-in-cheek. Stick to discussing the article.

How is primary rigging fake news? Its very obvious from reading the wiki leaks emails that the DNC was brazenly biased towards Hillary and against Sanders.

Because there's absolutely no evidence that it was rigged? Just because the DNC preferred the lifelong Democrat to the lifelong independent (who could have guessed that?) doesn't mean they couldn't still have operated a fair primary.

But your facts and reasoning regretfully interrupts the circle jerk of the Bernie bros who are convinced their democratic socialist was on the brink of revolutionizing the American political system and finally delivering us to a Denmarkian utopia.

Never mind the fact that Sanders was treated much more gently by the Clinton campaign than Obama was in '08, the only salient fact is that minority voters should have yielded their preference for a man who has spent 30+ years in Washington and yet has largely failed to build any power base.

I'm confused by the last sentence. Are you suggesting that more minority voters went for Sanders over Clinton in the primaries? I had thought the exact opposite.

It's sarcasm... the paranoid Sanders voters screaming that the election was rigged often 'forget' (find unacceptable/truly are clueless) that minority voters are the 800lb gorilla of the Democratic Party. In 08 they wanted Obama, and that's who it got. In 16 they wanted hrc and that's who it got. They throw around Clinton's pop vote win as if it showed our system is broken, all while genuinely believing she beat Sanders by cheating, conveniently ignoring the fact that she beat him by a larger margin.

I have no doubt that Hillary Clinton would have won the primary regardless of the DNC "meddling" in the primary, but I do feel that they would have a more unified DNC had there not been news of the DNC backing HRC before the primaries had even finished.

What "meddling" did the DNC do in the primary? How were they were backing her before the primaries finished?

I was referring to the emails that showed clear favoritism for Clinton over Sanders. I put meddling in quotations because it wasn't necessarily actual instances, but rather the way the DNC treated one of their candidates that left a sour taste in many Sanders supporters mouths.

That led to a lot of acquaintances of mine that supported Sanders to continue bashing Clinton after the primaries were already over, when it would have been really helpful for the Democratic party to have been unified throughout all of that.

I think that's the exact delusion I'm referring to. I think many Sanders supporters genuinely believe that since they have a clear preference for a candidate, that their preference is the only valid option and other people simply aren't allowed to make their own choice.

Again, I refer to them as delusional because the '16 primary fight was about 1/3 as dirty as the '08 primaries, and somehow Sanders supporters feel being treated gently isn't good enough, what they expected was a clear majority of democratic voters to simply hand over the reins of the Democratic Party. They truly expected politics to revolutionize itself because of Sanders presidential run, and somehow tricks would not be a part of politics instantly and forevermore.

I think my big takeaway regarding the primaries is that most 'progressive' Sanders voters simply wanted to hurt the American establishment, and if they couldn't do it with Bernie they wanted to cry, pick up their ball, and go home.

> In a May 2016 email chain, the DNC chief financial officer (CFO) Brad Marshall told the DNC chief executive officer, Amy Dacy, that they should have someone from the media ask Sanders if he is an atheist prior to the West Virginia primary.[46][47]

> high-ranking DNC officials discussed the possibility of making Sanders' religion a campaign issue in southern states

Did they do so? If so, thats clear meddling. If not, its shows intent of meddling.

> Paustenbach suggested that a past incident could be used to promote a "narrative for a story, which is that Bernie never had his act together, that his campaign was a mess."

Again, suggestion to do acts of meddling but not clear if they went through with it.

> Wasserman Schultz resigned as DNC chair after the leak, and was replaced by Donna Brazile and the Democratic National Committee issued an apology to Sanders.[52] Speaking on CNN, Sanders responded to the email leak: "...it is an outrage and sad that you would have people in important positions in the DNC trying to undermine my campaign.

Regardless if the intended meddling happed or not, it is clear that even the party itself know that they were in the wrong.

> Did they do it?

They did not bring up Sanders's religion, so there was no meddling there.

> Paustenbach suggested that a past incident could be used to promote a "narrative for a story, which is that Bernie never had his act together, that his campaign was a mess."

This is out of context. Sanders was attacking the DNC in the media for following pre-agreed-upon rules in Nevada. They were discussing how to respond to those frankly ridiculous attacks. http://www.politifact.com/nevada/statements/2016/may/18/jeff...

> Regardless if the intended meddling happed or not, it is clear that even the party itself know that they were in the wrong.

To recap, we have their full email history here, yet we still can't find a single instance of them acting to rig the primaries against Sanders. Wasserman-Schultz resigned to get out of the spotlight, which she believed would put more attention on Clinton for the general election.

The emails show that Sanders was more or less a token opponent kept on a leash and kept in line. Remember also how they cut Sanders out of the DNC voting data. There were no big name Democrats running against Hillary.

They also sucked all the money from the state level campaigns into Hillary's campaign, hurting the entire party when they lost after spending so much money trying to force Hillary through.

https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/22224

https://wikileaks.org/dnc-emails/emailid/11056

https://wikileaks.org/dnc-emails/emailid/5477

https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/24440

https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/10669#efmAO0APK...

https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/5688

https://wikileaks.org/dnc-emails/emailid/9999%20

https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/5423

https://wikileaks.org/dnc-emails/emailid/7643

https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/44131

What specifically did the DNC do to keep Sanders on a leash? My memory of the primaries is far different, with Sanders suing the DNC over access to NGP VAN (which the DNC had cut off until the Sanders campaign showed they had deleted their copies of Clinton's data), loudly complaining about the DNC following the existing rules at the Nevada Convention (http://www.politifact.com/nevada/statements/2016/may/18/jeff...), and generally loudly making unfounded allegations of rigging. Sanders was clearly unleashed, if not unhinged (though the cranky old progressive personality is what I like about him, in much the same way that libertarians are drawn to cranky old Ron Paul).

> They also sucked all the money from the state level campaigns into Hillary's campaign.

You're misreading the Politico article about the Hillary Victory Fund. In that article, the DNC said it was using the initial money to set up common infrastructure for the state parties to use. The money that was supposed to go to the state parties did eventually go to the state parties as you can see here: https://www.opensecrets.org/jfc/summary.php?id=C00586537. To refresh your memory, the first [FEC maximum contribution amount] donated by an individual to the Hillary Victory Fund would go to her primary campaign, the next [max amount] would go to her general election campaign, the next [max amount] would go to the DNC, and the rest would be distributed among the state parties.

Also, I'm curious: whom would you consider a big name Democrat worthy of challenging Clinton not as a token opponent?

Donna Brazille and DWS were respectively fired from CNN and resigned over the corruption.

Donna Brazille wasn't DNC chair until after the primaries were over, so how would she be an example of the DNC rigging the primaries for Clinton?

Wasserman-Schultz resigned to get out of the spotlight, which she believed would put more attention on Clinton for the general election.

We have the DNC's full email history here. Surely if they rigged the primary for Clinton, there would be at least one email showing it.

Donna Brazille was fired for leaking debate questions to the HRC campaign

> Donna Brazille wasn't DNC chair until after the primaries were over, so how would she be an example of the DNC rigging the primaries for Clinton?

Because she sent the emails to the Hillary Campaign. And then was surprise surprise, appointed to the DNC Chair.

You know instead of the Hillary campaign saying, no no, you shouldn't appoint her, we have evidence that she is corrupt, here's the evidence.

And then after the evidence came to light the DNC was like, oh that's fine.

Once again, how is that evidence of the DNC rigging the primaries for Clinton against Sanders? Do you admit that no such evidence exists?

No I don't, to me the emails and the resignations are both evidence and an admission of guilt, to you it might not be.

I hope that Hillary and the DNC are able to get their day in court so the evidence can be heard by a jury of their peers rather than the court of public opinion.

> To me the emails and the resignations are both evidence and an admission of guilt.

Be specific. Which emails are evidence of guilt? None of the emails I've seen have shown any evidence of the DNC rigging the primaries. Why would the resignations be evidence of guilt if the stated reasons for resignation are just as plausible?

Do you realize how much you sound like a conspiracy theorist?

"Rigging", at least as I read it, doesn't imply cheating - it can just imply that the system is unbalanced or all candidates are not on a level playing field.

For example, if I had to compete against someone in a drawing competition, and one of the judges was the parent of my competitor, and that judge has gone out of his way to train and groom his child for years for this competition, I may lament that the contest is rigged, even if the judge doesn't stuff the ballot box.

Rigging implies fraud, deception, or dishonesty, not just unbalanced.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/rigged

See sense 3

1. to manipulate or control usually by deceptive or dishonest means <rig an election>

2. to fix in advance for a desired result <rig the contest>

Editted to add second part of sense 3.

Why did you skip the second part of sense 3, which is "to fix in advance for a desired result"?

I don't see that it adds anything to contradict the idea that rigging is only something "unbalanced" and not connoting deceit. "Fix in advance" is an example of fraud. I have no issue with including it in my comment, and have updated it to do so.

I'm not sure why you would think otherwise, though if you're implying that the example of extra, specialized training you provided above is an example of "fix in advance", I disagree. To "fix in advance" would mean that the outcome is predetermined, such as by bribes. This sense of fix is here:

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/fix

7b. to influence the actions, outcome, or effect of by improper or illegal methods <the race had been fixed>

If you have some other meaning implied by your comment, please explain. I find I'm a terrible mind reader.

Why is there both a judge and a ballot box in your analogy? In the primaries, there were only ballot boxes, and Clinton got almost 30% more ballots from normal people outside of the DNC than Sanders. It was a landslide so large that the media had to construct a horse race story just to try to keep it interesting.

The DNC had "groomed" Clinton insofar as she had run in the primaries before and was familiar with the rules. She didn't receive any special treatment from the DNC during the primaries as far as their emails showed.

Because the judges put their votes in a ballot box. Or because stuffing a ballot box is an idiomatic phrase.

Biased? Yes, the DNC would obviously prefer a Democrat to an independent. Rigged? There was no evidence of any rigging outside of fake news.

Imaginary friends don't have legitimate interests.

Here you're using a common everyday definition of the verb "rig". Observe that this definition excludes e.g. publicizing a political candidate's banal episodes of tawdriness to the scrutiny of voters, so it's not the definition in wide use in USA news media over the last month or so.

I'm using rig in a broad sense. The DNC didn't publicize banal episodes of tawdriness to the scrutiny of voters. If you're talking about the NGP VAN data access, that hit the news on 12/17/2015 when Michael Briggs (Sanders's communications aide) talked about it to BuzzFeed, and the story blew up on 12/18 when the Sanders campaign filed a lawsuit against the DNC over temporarily shutting down their access to the system until they could show that they had deleted any copies they might have had of the Clinton campaign's data.

That's the point. Rigging an election consists of stuffing ballot boxes or intimidating voters or something like that. Phishing John Podesta is the sort of thing that used to be called "opposition research" (assuming arguendo that the phishing party actually cared who won).

I'm sorry, but I don't see what phishing Podesta has to do with fleitz's claim that the DNC rigged the primaries.

Perhaps you've missed the last month of news media output; congratulations! There has been a great deal of innuendo about hackers rigging our election under V. Putin's direct command. Here's the top of Google News just now when I checked: [0] This fine polemic starts with a lamentation of Podesta's email security, mumbles through some baseless speculation about fake news and voting machine hacks, then admits to that baselessness before winding up to this breezy pronouncement: "The bottom line is that as dangerous as actual attempts to compromise voter outcome are, the perception that voting results are flawed is also capable of delegitimizing the democratic process. If citizens believe the vote has been rigged, then why bother voting at all?"

One might note that this author stops short of saying rather than merely insinuating that "publishing emails" constitutes "rigging an election", but he sure wrote a lot of words in that effort.

[0] http://www.cnbc.com/2016/12/29/russia-election-hack-obama-re...

I haven't missed that at all. It just has absolutely nothing to do with fleitz's claim that the DNC rigged the primaries.

Maybe you are not an American. Do you know what the primaries are?

Does the definition of "rig" change from the primaries to the general?

We were discussing fleitz's claim that the DNC rigged the primaries for Clinton. I assert that they didn't. I'm still not sure what you're claiming or whom you think you are disagreeing with.

>> "An adversary may show you what “sophistication” means after advancing from their beachhead."

Sure, that's obviously true in general, but given the current absence of evidence of "sophistication," there is no reason to assume its presence.

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