It's funny to see how many educated people on HN expect to see something like "Russia / FSB / etc" hacking tools or documents leaks or whatever. Probably it's d

It's funny to see how many educated people on HN expect to see something like "Russia / FSB / etc" hacking tools or documents leaks or whatever. Probably it's due to looking at how three letter agencies operate in first world countries someone would expect that you actually need that many people to steal some emails or get hands over company database. It's obviously that no matter how big NSA conspiracy is every dollar spent, every meeting occur, every decision made all have to be controlled and documented. And any 3rd party company working for agency must have official contract, must report taxes and sometimes can even sell all the same tools for other governments. So it's thousand people participate at every single step. In world of paranoid and corrupt ex-KGB mafia nothing like that required. All you need is just few experts and enough of money. Russia have plenty of online criminals: carders, illegal pharmacy and drug dealers, owners of credit card processings used for fraud, money laundering payment systems, botnet owners, spyware developers and most of them are controlled by state or somewhat under special agency protection racket. Need 0-day exploit? Rootkit? Spyware? Any unique tools? Anything can is there for money! DDoS attack or a lot of proxy servers at any location needed? Plenty of services there and agencies obviously know owners. No documentation or reporting needed since corrupt government agencies are closely tied to those criminals for years. So the same attacks that would involve at least few hundred of people in usual US three letter agency would likely require to just few dozens in Russia. What's more important no one would ever tell the difference between this activity and usual agency behaviour that related to usual corruption schemes. So if you seriously think there is Russian government behind some attacks then shouldn't expect any leaks about that. If there is something important for Kremlin they wouldn't mind to dump money on it, but there will be very few people aware of it and of course there will never be any documents or other traces since they would be done as any other attack against commercial company or opposition politician.