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From the underlying statement: > The recent disclosures of alleged hacked e-mails on sites like DCLeaks.com and WikiLeaks and by the Guccifer 2.0 online person

From the underlying statement: > The recent disclosures of alleged hacked e-mails on sites like DCLeaks.com and WikiLeaks and by the Guccifer 2.0 online persona are consistent with the methods and motivations of Russian-directed efforts I really hope that we have better evidence than this. The US intelligence community has made errors before, even in circumstances where they released considerably more information than this. Given that the attacks have been directed at a particular party, and that party is the one currently in power in the executive branch, establishing that the results of the investigation are truly objective should be a critical goal here, to prevent this press release itself being seen as an attempt to influence the election.

grandalf 10y ago
Exactly. I hope that additional detail is released. It's a pretty serious accusation to make. Also, I think it's worthwhile to draw the distinction between a state sponsored attack (as in Project Sauron) and state sponsored mischief (as in launching script kiddie style pen tests on unsecured systems). Obviously Russia is doing the first kind of attack, but what would be the strategic benefit of doing the latter but not covering up the tracks well enough to prevent this sort of accusation?
- spiderxxxx 10y ago
  You're probably not going to see any additional details. If you have an intelligence asset on the inside, revealing the source can jeopardize that asset. For example, if they say that the CIA is funding a vpn provider in Moldova that revealed in its logs that the source is Russia, well that wouldn't be appropriate to the continued monitoring effort. You've burned your asset.
  - grandalf 10y ago
    Ok, I don't dispute that, but why would the following happen: - The campaign led by a former secretary of state decides to essentially go rogue and start accusing a foreign government of election tampering. - The USG stays silent for a while and then rather than simply having a direct communication with Russia decides to issue an extremely vague public statement about the alleged cyber attacks.
dragonwriter 10y ago
> I really hope that we have better evidence than this. That's not the evidence, its the conclusion. (And its a conclusion reached by private attribution firms and made public long before any official government statement, at least as to the methods part.)
- andrewla 10y ago
  I don't want to bandy words -- what they say is that the attacks "... are consistent with the methods and motivations of Russian-directed efforts". This seems to be an extremely weak statement -- that they are "consistent with", rather than "can be unambiguously traced to". Assuming good faith in the intelligence community, we can only assume that these "consistencies" would be difficult or impossible for another actor (a different state or a rogue agent) to mimic. The statement is phrased so weakly that it is difficult to say this with confidence. Because of the political situation, government agencies should be extremely careful to avoid making statements like this unless there can be concrete assurances that the conclusions are fully supported by the evidence, without any political agenda attached.
  - dragonwriter 10y ago
    Again the attribution by private security firms, and it's (general, at least, but more specific than the government statement had specified) basis had been public for some time. And, in any case, even if government agencies are as careful as you suggest, you are unlikely to be able to distinguish that, because the kind of evidence that works fully support it us not the kind of evidence that could be fully disclosed without compromising future intelligence activities.
    - chatmasta 10y ago
      I've read those reports, and I did not find the evidence particularly convincing. Much of it was of the type "if you want to make it look like Russia did this, what metadata should we conveniently leave lying around?" IIRC the major points of evidence were a Cyrillic character set attached to an SSH session, and Russian IP addresses connecting to a VPN website. This is hardly substantial evidence. And don't fool yourself - these "private firms" have no interest in biting the hand that feeds them. They want the next contract too.

grandalf 10y ago

Exactly. I hope that additional detail is released. It's a pretty serious accusation to make. Also, I think it's worthwhile to draw the distinction between a state sponsored attack (as in Project Sauron) and state sponsored mischief (as in launching script kiddie style pen tests on unsecured systems). Obviously Russia is doing the first kind of attack, but what would be the strategic benefit of doing the latter but not covering up the tracks well enough to prevent this sort of accusation?

spiderxxxx 10y ago
You're probably not going to see any additional details. If you have an intelligence asset on the inside, revealing the source can jeopardize that asset. For example, if they say that the CIA is funding a vpn provider in Moldova that revealed in its logs that the source is Russia, well that wouldn't be appropriate to the continued monitoring effort. You've burned your asset.
- grandalf 10y ago
  Ok, I don't dispute that, but why would the following happen: - The campaign led by a former secretary of state decides to essentially go rogue and start accusing a foreign government of election tampering. - The USG stays silent for a while and then rather than simply having a direct communication with Russia decides to issue an extremely vague public statement about the alleged cyber attacks.

dragonwriter 10y ago

> I really hope that we have better evidence than this. That's not the evidence, its the conclusion. (And its a conclusion reached by private attribution firms and made public long before any official government statement, at least as to the methods part.)

andrewla 10y ago
I don't want to bandy words -- what they say is that the attacks "... are consistent with the methods and motivations of Russian-directed efforts". This seems to be an extremely weak statement -- that they are "consistent with", rather than "can be unambiguously traced to". Assuming good faith in the intelligence community, we can only assume that these "consistencies" would be difficult or impossible for another actor (a different state or a rogue agent) to mimic. The statement is phrased so weakly that it is difficult to say this with confidence. Because of the political situation, government agencies should be extremely careful to avoid making statements like this unless there can be concrete assurances that the conclusions are fully supported by the evidence, without any political agenda attached.
- dragonwriter 10y ago
  Again the attribution by private security firms, and it's (general, at least, but more specific than the government statement had specified) basis had been public for some time. And, in any case, even if government agencies are as careful as you suggest, you are unlikely to be able to distinguish that, because the kind of evidence that works fully support it us not the kind of evidence that could be fully disclosed without compromising future intelligence activities.
  - chatmasta 10y ago
    I've read those reports, and I did not find the evidence particularly convincing. Much of it was of the type "if you want to make it look like Russia did this, what metadata should we conveniently leave lying around?" IIRC the major points of evidence were a Cyrillic character set attached to an SSH session, and Russian IP addresses connecting to a VPN website. This is hardly substantial evidence. And don't fool yourself - these "private firms" have no interest in biting the hand that feeds them. They want the next contract too.