Top Secret NSA Report Details Russian Hacking Effort Days Before 2016 Election | Hacker News Reader

Top Secret NSA Report Details Russian Hacking Effort Days Before 2016 Election

theintercept.com

86 pointsjbegley36 comments

As a Canadian I find it disturbing that foreign governments engage in these types of actions to affect the outcomes of elections but do find it a bit hypocritical that the US is getting so upset about it, when IMHO the US three letter agencies have been involved in regime change and political tampering for decades. It kind of seems like yall got of taste of your own medicine.

Hey...that's not exactly true - we did not physically change the voting information in the machines - that would be totally unethical. We just had the right people killed, and allowed the right people who were doing the killing to grow extremely wealthy until they were no longer of use to us. Nicaragua, Chile, Panama, etc's elections were always left up to the citizens of those respective countries.

This comment is propaganda specifically because it ignores all the propaganda that was necessary to pull those operations off. The TLA's had to convince a good chunk of people that the replacement leader was who they wanted so they wouldn't just re-replace the leader with more bullets. Propaganda was also the dominant technique for the recent election. Stays the best tool with it honed to near perfection by the likes of Fox.

I think the post you're replying to was tongue in cheek and not propaganda i.e. "we technically didn't change vote totals, we just assassinated democratically elected leaders and installed brutal puppet dictatorship regimes in their place [which is obviously far, far worse]".

As was mine. ;)

it's not hypocrisy. it's force. we did it because we could and the only thing egregious about this is that we allowed the russians to do it. Obama placed some sanctions and trjmp is lifting them but even that isn't enough. we have the force to do much more and should have if we wanted to teach the world a lesson.

A taste of your own medicine? Would the North Koreans somehow attacking Seattle also be a taste of "your own medicine" for the Korean War or Hiroshima? Christ.

Well that would be a bit more than a taste wouldn't it? And it's Mr. Christ to you!

Whether the Russians were successful in vote tampering is irrelevant (and admittedly unlikely). What is relevant is how long we will accept brazen cyberattacks against American targets in order to leak data and hurt a particular candidate who promised to be tough against Russia.

Would we have the same reaction if the intelligence community blamed IS hackers or the SEA?

That's similar to my take here. Whether or not Trump actively colluded with Russia to affect election results, he's still behaving abnormally about the issue. I mean, if you step back and look at this, and just give Trump the benefit of the doubt and allow that maybe he was ignorant about Russia's attacks on the US elections, is his response reasonable for a president?

He should be vigorously defending the US, and aggressively trying to get to the bottom of it. Instead, he's actively obstructing the investigation and thwarting US defenses. In short, he's doing the opposite of what he should be doing as president. He's acting like a damn mole using the office to further his own interests and those of his business associates, including Russia.

At worst Trump is a traitor, and at best he's grossly derelict of duty. How this is not front and center of US political discussion on all sides, including the GOP, befuddles me.

This also seems critical to interpreting Trump's voter fraud commission, as the Russia efforts were focused on voter registration. I predict Trump will somehow spin what was being reported on in this article into something having to do with voter fraud. That is, "let's not talk about Russian hacking of voter registration records, as that's just speculation. We agree, though, that there are anomalies in the voter registration records, and given that we all agree on that, it's time for voter ID laws."

If the president is derelict of duty, then he's a traitor.

> Whether or not Trump actively colluded with Russia to affect election results, he's still behaving abnormally about the issue. I mean, if you step back and look at this

Agree 100%. The coverup could be worse than the crime.

I'm subscribing to the theory that there was contact between Russian-linked individuals (Assange, undercover intelligence) and tertiary members of the campaign (Roger Stone, Carter Page), and the Trump inner circle was unaware.

Trump's actions make more sense if you consider the possibility of more minor crimes committed by the Trump Organization in the casino and real estate business.

> I mean, if you step back and look at this, and just give Trump the benefit of the doubt and allow that maybe he was ignorant about Russia's attacks on the US elections, is his response reasonable for a president?

We have to remember that Trump was elected on the basis of his being not a typical politician, and his lack of expertise or insight into the office. Without commenting on Russian collusion one way or another, I think it's a mistake to judge his intent based on what a reasonable president might do, since he is the antithesis of that.

I think a lot of his behavior can be explained as the result of a deep antipathy he feels for any challenge to his authority, intelligence or decisions, all of which have probably gone unchallenged his entire life, and by him being a sociopathic narcissist who prevaricates on a dime while lacking any of the nuance typical of politicians at that level of power.

In other words, he looks like he's hiding something because he's too incompetent to look like he isn't, regardless of whether or not he is.

Russians did you a favor pentesting your voting infrastructure for free.

What really is important is how people have no problem with a voting system which apparently is at risk of hacking by foreign nation states and presumably also by candidates themselves, domestic or international mafia, the NSA and pretty much everybody's dog.

And the best thing is, on the Internet nobody even knows you are a dog if you are behind seven proxies.

I mean, sure, probably the NSA has some good evidence that it was Russians. Maybe. Hopefully. And probably even if China knew how the NSA identifies hackers they still would be cautious about attempting to frame Russia, assuming they don't want conflict with Russians. I suppose.

Should this kind of reasoning be the basis of trust in the system?

"...a Florida-based vendor of electronic voting services and equipment."

I would have thought we would have learned 17 years ago that Florida really should just not be making voting equipment.

At what point would nation-state sponsored hacking be considered as an act of war? From this article it doesn't seem like the hacking effort had significant result, but if, let's say if, Donald Trump was elected due to direct hacking attempt by Russian military intelligence, then what is the correct course of action?

The correct course of action would result in a complete restructuring of NSA. The idiotic course of action would be waging a nuclear war with Russia.

> another country attacks us and an agency documents it

> dismantles agency so that they can do it again

????

Somebody signed off on electronic voting; someone signed off on all the procedures and safeguards years ago. Etc.

A hacking incident of this magnitude would indicate a complete national security failure on every single level.

You can't trust that level of incompetence.

But this isn't about the NSA, it's about state-level secretaries of state offices.

You think it was the NSA who signed off on electronic voting? I think it was the state election boards, and maybe the Federal Election Commission.

Anyway, the NSA is not the party that messed up to allow flawed electronic voting. They're the party that can (and often has) detected Russian attempts to mess with stuff. So, once again, how does cutting the NSA help?

Why can the NSA influence the decision making process at NIST but they can't influence the design and implementation of a safe and verifiable voting system if it's going to be electronic?

Like this really is one of those "What would you say ya do, here?" moments because it sure as hell doesn't look like the NSA does anything preventative that is effective.

Government isn't a corporation that can be managed autocratically. Voting systems, norms, and technologies are highly politicized and contentious, and there's the federal government, numerous quasi-autonomous agencies, 50 state governments, and 20000 counties, not to mention 2 political parties and numerous regional factions.

It seems like a single technical problem to you, but socially it's incredibly complex.

That's irrelevant. Those decisions are approved and closely monitored by federal agencies responsible for national security.

The state may dictate the way federal laws are translated or adopted on their level; everything else is under federal juricstiction. The electronic voting machines were not covered under any 'law'.

The FEC is just another arm for the FBI. They share the same block; if not the same building and security clerances. Neither operate on state level.

> Those decisions are approved and closely monitored by federal agencies responsible for national security.

Do you have any evidence for that claim? As far as I can see, they have had no influence on such decisions.

> The FEC is just another arm for the FBI.

Do you have any evidence for that claim, beyond just "they share the same block"?

It's interesting to compare American and Russian strategic military doctrine on the conduct of war in general. American strategic doctrine tends towards bright-line thresholds, past which a declaration of war is triggered. Russian strategic documents consider battlespace preparation the first and necessary phase of conflict and is less concerned with specific thresholds. Draw your own conclusions.

tl;dr; Russian hackers actually attacked voting systems, and were successful at stealing credentials at the very least. It's uncertain if they were able to actually hack voting machines or the count.

Almost certainly, whatever they did this election, they'll try to do more the next one.

Isn't it "people an NSA analyst believes are Russian hackers"? I read the Intercept story but didn't see where it showed convincing evidence of that. It just says they showed no doubt.

There are simple enough statistical tests that could provide hints (or not) of tampering activities: risk limited audits. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risk-limiting_audit

That page describes ways to manually recount votes that were cast. But the article suggests that the tampering might have been in the voter registration databases, so that people would wrongly be refused the opportunity to cast a vote.

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/federal-contractor-reality...

And this is how democracy ends...

If all it takes to enforce one-party rule is to claim the other party was aided by a foreign power, then the 3 letter agencies can, in effect, choose who rules.

Or similarly when one party is so encompassed in party loyalty that they look past the insane amount of smoke emulating for the home and insist everyone else is crazy because they heading there to look for a fire.

Not exactly. It's cause for concern, not wholesale reason to discard three results of our election. I don't think anyone is claiming that either.

If there is suspicion that there has been influence from another nation, it should not be ignored. That would also be an end to democracy. Our nation should attempt to reach the truth, and that truth (barring collusion) should not invalidate a vote.

If your systems aren't strong enough to withstand another nation's influence, that's on you. The US influences elections around the world, and vice versa.

I see nothing wrong with Putin influencing US elections, god knows the US does the same in Russia. Alex Navalny et al would be nothing without US support...

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