FBI: GRU Hackers on Most Wanted list for international cyber attacks | Hacker News Reader

FBI: GRU Hackers on Most Wanted list for international cyber attacks

fbi.gov

30 pointsfortran7713 comments

It's strange how HN is much more willing to believe terrible things of China than it is of Russia.

Mind you, in my country we had Russian agents blatantly murder people on a couple of occasions and have done remarkably little about it. Instead we made a security risk and KGB-linked man into a permanent unelected legislator. https://bylinetimes.com/2019/10/25/spooking-the-spooks-media...

China is unconsciously seen as a threat to American hegemony, Russia isn't as much.

I'm probably missing something but, if these are intelligence officers of a foreign country, why are we only going after the officers, but not the organizations that plan or fund these things? Officers could be anyone they hire/train/direct.

Those are politics and war, outside of the purview of the FBI.

Because the organization that plans/funds this is the Kremlin.

And short of sanctions which I assume will be forthcoming under the Biden administration there isn't much you can do.

Would be interesting to see the "preponderance of evidence" which let them establish the _names_ of those involved. Did they upload the source code with their names in the comments or something? Or is this simply PR designed for people who have no clue whatsoever?

Lawyers and judges from the Western District of Pennsylvania are involved in an elaborate conspiracy with the Trump administrator to indict these individuals. Now did they doctor the evidence themselves or was the whole trial a sham ?

Just curious about how this PR exercise works.

I'd like to see what the "evidence" could even be in this case. Do we know authors of most other malware? Almost never. Yet here they are naming not one individual, but several, and attribute roles to each, and not just any individuals, but purportedly foreign state intelligence operatives whose real identities wouldn't even be known in Russia, let alone in the US, and would not be used as a part of any cyberwarfare operation. And not just naming, which doesn't really require evidence, but indicting, which does have certain evidentiary standards.

How do you tell from another end of the wire whether it's these six dudes, or some teenage hacker in his bedroom in Chelyabinsk (or indeed in Slickpoo, Idaho)? How do you tell, moreover, the location from which they are operating?

I've actually looked into this in Russian press. Turns out it was easy to find where these folks live, and two of them had court cases for not paying enough tax, which doesn't sound plausible, because if they are government employees taxes are withdrawn automatically.

https://sobesednik.ru/politika/20201023-sobesednik-nashel-ru...

Until recently their photos were all over the social media, real names and all.

Pliskin in particular had a solo consulting company for a while in 2018 - his name shows up in the government registry. How do you do that if you're working for the GRU?

Moreover, some of the largest Russian companies, such as Rosneft and Evraz were hit by NotPetya as well.

> False Registration of a Domain Name

What?

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/3559

I think that's the "Fraudulent Online Identity Sanctions Act"

https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/108/hr3754/summary

Court of one country convicts citizens of second country for crimes in third country. A bit of a reach if you ask me, similar in ways to that biological WMDs threat from Iraq.

The miscalculation on the biological capabilities of Iraq was a decade after the discovery of such capabilities of the Soviets. The Reagan "trust but verify" wasn't sufficient to uncover these unknown unknowns.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_biological_weapons_pr...

Does anyone else notice the free association going on here?

Trump people dispute election -> we're mad at disinformation -> we remember that time disinformation was blamed on Russians -> a pennsylvania judge issuing arrest warrants for foreign propagandists.. registering a domain name improperly

For god's sake, we have billion dollar presidential campaigns and 100M dollar senate campaigns. The disinformation is on us, and a couple mickey-mouse websites pale before the resources we have. If we don't take responsibility and learn to deal with it, we'll just keep getting owned.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com