10 ms·

> How can you be sure? Don't go down this route. This leads to things like questioning if we can really be 100% super double sure that we landed on the moon, s

by croon 9y ago

> How can you be sure? Don't go down this route. This leads to things like questioning if we can really be 100% super double sure that we landed on the moon, seeing as none of us have any verifiable proof. Russians were involved in a lot of hacking during the election, and a lot that has surfaced since, like intrusion into power plants, etc. How do we know this? Because all investigations from the three letter agencies agree on it. Do we have to trust them every time they say they're not spying on us? Or whether they have any active investigations on something? No. But there is no national security or stability reason for them to lie about this. Quite the opposite. That GP is being downvoted for stating this is disconcerting.

tertius 9y ago
> Because all investigations from the three letter agencies agree on it. You may want to verify this.
- croon 9y ago
  I already have [1]. Are you mistaken or referring to something else? [1] https://www.dni.gov/files/documents/ICA_2017_01.pdf https://www.dni.gov/files/documents/ICA_2017_01.pdf
  - tertius 9y ago
    All of their reports on all of their investigations into Russian hacking is not included on the declassified document. Did they investigate voting machine hacking? It's not included in this report.
    - croon 9y ago
      You're moving goalposts. The claim you refuted was whether Russians were involved, which they were. Regardless of the amount of classified documents, any new information wouldn't contradict the current public reports of Russian involvement in X. Whether they had involvement in Y is secondary.
      - tertius 9y ago
        Goalposts: > Blaming things on the Russians was another common thing during the cold war.
        croon 9y ago
        I've lost the thread. Are you saying that the major intelligence agencies are merely blaming Russia without basis?
        tertius 9y ago
        > merely blaming Russia High confidence, about very specific things. Not all the things, i.e. the goalposts.
        croon 9y ago
        > High confidence, about very specific things. Not all the things, i.e. the goalposts. I'm not being mean, but honestly have a hard time understanding you. Can you explain what you mean in full sentences?
        deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
        uabstraction 9y ago
        You have to forgive him. Shilling Kremlin talking points in a second language is not as easy as it looks.
        tertius 9y ago
        Are you this good at sniffing out an immigrant in person as well?
        dang 9y ago
staunch 9y ago
It's not as certain as the moon landings. I agree Russia is almost certainly responsible. There is a ton of publicly available circumstantial evidence that points to them. But without libpcap dumps showing what really went down, we can only take the word of various conflicted people. It's totally possible the NSA had the hackers bugged, and even saw the order come in from their Russian handler, but we haven't seen anything like this ourselves.
- nl 9y ago
  You can download the malware samples and do forensics yourself. http://contagiodump.blogspot.com.au/2017/02/russian-apt-apt28-collection-of-samples.html http://contagiodump.blogspot.com.au/2017/02/russian-apt-apt2... has the ATP28 samples (do verify the hashes though!) https://www.fireeye.com/content/dam/fireeye-www/global/en/current-threats/pdfs/rpt-apt28.pdf https://www.fireeye.com/content/dam/fireeye-www/global/en/cu... has the techniques they used to identify developers. I agree it is circumstantial, but it's pretty strong and systemic. I personally find this more compelling than a pcap which would just show the last jump.
  - staunch 9y ago
    I'm referring to dumps of the hackers themselves, detailing their chat logs, emails, bitcoin transactions, ssh traffic, etc. Not just the exploit-based traffic. If I ran the NSA, I'd have every hacker group I could find under total surveillance. I have video of the moon landings and the testimony of thousands of people that were physically involved.
    - losteric 9y ago
      > I'm referring to dumps of the hackers themselves, detailing their chat logs, emails, bitcoin transactions, ssh traffic, etc. Not just the exploit-based traffic. Do you think this is how the NSA operates? They have that big ol' office building so they can email each other incriminating evidence, pay themselves with bitcoin, and ssh into rooted boxes from government facilities? This is state-sponsored warfare, not script kiddies or hacker gangs.
nl 9y ago
Because all investigations from the three letter agencies agree on it. We don't need to trust US agencies who claim "it was them but we can't tell you why" There's a lot of evidence which came out before and during the attacks from non-government sources which points to the culprits. I've posted this before, but I think it's important people understand what public evidence is available: The 2014 report into ATP-28: https://www.fireeye.com/blog/threat-research/2014/10/apt28-a-window-into-russias-cyber-espionage-operations.html https://www.fireeye.com/blog/threat-research/2014/10/apt28-a... presenting pretty compelling (if circumstantial) evidence that group is Russian state backed. (July) 2016 report into the DNC hacking, showing it was first breached by ATP-29 (The other Russian state backed hacking group), but the leaks almost certainly came from a second breach by ATP-28 later: https://www.crowdstrike.com/blog/bears-midst-intrusion-democratic-national-committee/ https://www.crowdstrike.com/blog/bears-midst-intrusion-democ... Note the dates here. 2014 is way before anyone could claim some kind of anti-Trump deep state conspiracy. There's the Olympic hacks (which clearly benefited Russian interests) by the same group too. Ironically, even Putin's comments on the matter are more credible: "Hackers are free people, just like artists who wake up in the morning in a good mood and start painting," he said. "The hackers are the same. They would wake up, read about something going on in interstate relations and if they feel patriotic, they may try to contribute to the fight against those who speak badly about Russia."[1] That GP is being downvoted for stating this is disconcerting. Thanks, but I'm not surprised. Feel free to correct it ;) [1] http://www.zdnet.com/article/putin-says-russia-doesnt-hack-others-but-patriots-might-have/ http://www.zdnet.com/article/putin-says-russia-doesnt-hack-o...
- zimpenfish 9y ago
  GCHQ also flagged it in 2015: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/apr/13/british-spies-first-to-spot-trump-team-links-russia https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/apr/13/british-spie... > GCHQ first became aware in late 2015 of suspicious “interactions” between figures connected to Trump and known or suspected Russian agents, a source close to UK intelligence said. This intelligence was passed to the US as part of a routine exchange of information, they added.
  - nl 9y ago
alehul 9y ago
Regarding the trustworthiness of 'three letter agencies', two of them (DoD, JCS) approved plans for another (CIA) to commit terrorism against American civilians in order to justify a war against Cuba [1]. They could ultimately have America's best interests at heart, however you can be certain that their public statements have no standard of truth and are made to serve a covert agenda. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Northwoods https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Northwoods
- losteric 9y ago
  One operation from over 50 years ago is your example? Back then the spooks were doing far worse, conducting operations against domestic civil rights groups. That's a little different than a public DNI statement on behalf of 17 different agencies pointing to Russian attacks, corroborated by multiple other nations, in an era of wide-spread whistleblowing that would uncover a large-scale conspiracy. Occam's Razor says all signs point to Russia.
  - alehul 9y ago
    I agree Russia is the most likely perpetrator, but it's all circumstantial from the evidence I've seen, and there's clearly a large sociopolitical impact from this hack.. hence it's substantial enough to be framed for some purpose. I'm merely pointing out that we should question it when the U.S. government says "They did this!", as they've clearly tried to lie about it before in dire circumstances. I wish I had more recent examples to give you, or examples that were actually executed on, however I think that'd be rather dangerous and impossible to obtain.
  - dom0 9y ago
    > One operation from over 50 years ago is your example? Back then the spooks were doing far worse, conducting operations against domestic civil rights groups. Or torturing Americans civilians for eh... testing whether interrogation techniques would work on the real enemy(tm) as well.
wu-ikkyu 9y ago
>No. But there is no national security or stability reason for them to lie about this They don't have to be lying, they could just be mistaken. Is it not common for hackers to leave fake tracks pointing to someone else as a diversion?
- vasilipupkin 9y ago
  sure, but Putin basically admitted Russia did it https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/01/world/europe/vladimir-putin-donald-trump-hacking.html?mcubz=0 https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/01/world/europe/vladimir-put...
rdtsc 9y ago
> Russians were involved in a lot of hacking during the election, and a lot that has surfaced since, like intrusion into power plants, etc. Any large enough country is involved in such activities. Iranians, Chinese, Israelis and North Koreans, Romanians, US false flags, private interests are probably able to hire people to work for them. > 100% super double sure that we landed on the moon Clearly you have just as good evidence that Russians hacked the election and overturned the result that is comparable to moon landing. A video perhaps, an audio recording, a chat log that can be verified, a confession from a credible source or a defector? I hoping the vote recount would show some proof in Wisconsin but it turned out it gave Trump 3 more votes. Yeah, serious allegation require more serious evidence to be believed. Otherwise it looks like a conspiracy theory. And just like a conspiracy theory, if more people repeat it doesn't make it more true. If there are 10k contrails or lizard people making the same argument, it doesn't make the argument more true. > How do we know this? Because all investigations from the three letter agencies agree on it. The 17 intelligence agencies, including the Coast Guard Intelligence has irrefutable proof Russia overturned our election results?
- wallace_f 9y ago
  The reason that the word of all 3 letter agencies is a gold standard for proof (just as good as the proof we have that we landed on the moon) is because they never lied to us before, or tried to do anything shady. /s Just kidding. What should I cite? Everything awful the FBI did to MLK? That the NSA lied to us about domestic spying? The fact that Iraq was actually trying to disarm while the Bush admin and 3 letter agencies engaged in a cover up so as to not disrupt their plans in the ME?[1] In fact, I'd like to know why I should trust 3 letter agencies because their accountability to the public right now seems to be nonexistent. 1 - https://theintercept.com/2016/12/15/if-donald-trump-is-so-upset-about-iraq-wmd-lies-why-is-he-hiring-john-bolton/ https://theintercept.com/2016/12/15/if-donald-trump-is-so-up...
- vasilipupkin 9y ago
  "The 17 intelligence agencies, including the Coast Guard Intelligence has irrefutable proof Russia overturned our election results?" how is this relevant to anything? russia can have many aims in hacking during the election, besides actually overturning the election results. I am always amused by this zero or 1 logic.
igivanov 9y ago
so the US propaganda machine has partially achieved its goal even on HN where people are expected (if I am not mistaken) not to take anything at face value. More to the point, there were no credible investigations, "intrusion into power plants" was fake news, the FBI even hasn't up to this day examined the "hacked" DNC server.
vasilipupkin 9y ago
Stop wondering whether or not Russia did it. Putin admitted as much https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/01/world/europe/vladimir-putin-donald-trump-hacking.html?mcubz=0 https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/01/world/europe/vladimir-put...
kafkaesq 9y ago
> How can you be sure? Don't go down this route. Which "route"? The "asking questions" route?
- DanBC 9y ago
  You know that "only asking" is a well known trolling technique, right? https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Just_asking_questions https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Just_asking_questions
  - kafkaesq 9y ago
    You may be right - that post does come off trolly-y, in retrospect.

by croon 9y ago

tertius 9y ago

> Because all investigations from the three letter agencies agree on it. You may want to verify this.

croon 9y ago
I already have [1]. Are you mistaken or referring to something else? [1] https://www.dni.gov/files/documents/ICA_2017_01.pdf https://www.dni.gov/files/documents/ICA_2017_01.pdf
- tertius 9y ago
  All of their reports on all of their investigations into Russian hacking is not included on the declassified document. Did they investigate voting machine hacking? It's not included in this report.
  - croon 9y ago
    You're moving goalposts. The claim you refuted was whether Russians were involved, which they were. Regardless of the amount of classified documents, any new information wouldn't contradict the current public reports of Russian involvement in X. Whether they had involvement in Y is secondary.
    - tertius 9y ago
      Goalposts: > Blaming things on the Russians was another common thing during the cold war.
      - croon 9y ago
        I've lost the thread. Are you saying that the major intelligence agencies are merely blaming Russia without basis?
        tertius 9y ago
        > merely blaming Russia High confidence, about very specific things. Not all the things, i.e. the goalposts.
        croon 9y ago
        > High confidence, about very specific things. Not all the things, i.e. the goalposts. I'm not being mean, but honestly have a hard time understanding you. Can you explain what you mean in full sentences?
        deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
        uabstraction 9y ago
        You have to forgive him. Shilling Kremlin talking points in a second language is not as easy as it looks.
        tertius 9y ago
        Are you this good at sniffing out an immigrant in person as well?
        dang 9y ago

staunch 9y ago

It's not as certain as the moon landings. I agree Russia is almost certainly responsible. There is a ton of publicly available circumstantial evidence that points to them. But without libpcap dumps showing what really went down, we can only take the word of various conflicted people. It's totally possible the NSA had the hackers bugged, and even saw the order come in from their Russian handler, but we haven't seen anything like this ourselves.

nl 9y ago
You can download the malware samples and do forensics yourself. http://contagiodump.blogspot.com.au/2017/02/russian-apt-apt28-collection-of-samples.html http://contagiodump.blogspot.com.au/2017/02/russian-apt-apt2... has the ATP28 samples (do verify the hashes though!) https://www.fireeye.com/content/dam/fireeye-www/global/en/current-threats/pdfs/rpt-apt28.pdf https://www.fireeye.com/content/dam/fireeye-www/global/en/cu... has the techniques they used to identify developers. I agree it is circumstantial, but it's pretty strong and systemic. I personally find this more compelling than a pcap which would just show the last jump.
- staunch 9y ago
  I'm referring to dumps of the hackers themselves, detailing their chat logs, emails, bitcoin transactions, ssh traffic, etc. Not just the exploit-based traffic. If I ran the NSA, I'd have every hacker group I could find under total surveillance. I have video of the moon landings and the testimony of thousands of people that were physically involved.
  - losteric 9y ago
    > I'm referring to dumps of the hackers themselves, detailing their chat logs, emails, bitcoin transactions, ssh traffic, etc. Not just the exploit-based traffic. Do you think this is how the NSA operates? They have that big ol' office building so they can email each other incriminating evidence, pay themselves with bitcoin, and ssh into rooted boxes from government facilities? This is state-sponsored warfare, not script kiddies or hacker gangs.

nl 9y ago

Because all investigations from the three letter agencies agree on it. We don't need to trust US agencies who claim "it was them but we can't tell you why" There's a lot of evidence which came out before and during the attacks from non-government sources which points to the culprits. I've posted this before, but I think it's important people understand what public evidence is available: The 2014 report into ATP-28: https://www.fireeye.com/blog/threat-research/2014/10/apt28-a-window-into-russias-cyber-espionage-operations.html https://www.fireeye.com/blog/threat-research/2014/10/apt28-a... presenting pretty compelling (if circumstantial) evidence that group is Russian state backed. (July) 2016 report into the DNC hacking, showing it was first breached by ATP-29 (The other Russian state backed hacking group), but the leaks almost certainly came from a second breach by ATP-28 later: https://www.crowdstrike.com/blog/bears-midst-intrusion-democratic-national-committee/ https://www.crowdstrike.com/blog/bears-midst-intrusion-democ... Note the dates here. 2014 is way before anyone could claim some kind of anti-Trump deep state conspiracy. There's the Olympic hacks (which clearly benefited Russian interests) by the same group too. Ironically, even Putin's comments on the matter are more credible: "Hackers are free people, just like artists who wake up in the morning in a good mood and start painting," he said. "The hackers are the same. They would wake up, read about something going on in interstate relations and if they feel patriotic, they may try to contribute to the fight against those who speak badly about Russia."[1] That GP is being downvoted for stating this is disconcerting. Thanks, but I'm not surprised. Feel free to correct it ;) [1] http://www.zdnet.com/article/putin-says-russia-doesnt-hack-others-but-patriots-might-have/ http://www.zdnet.com/article/putin-says-russia-doesnt-hack-o...

zimpenfish 9y ago
GCHQ also flagged it in 2015: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/apr/13/british-spies-first-to-spot-trump-team-links-russia https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/apr/13/british-spie... > GCHQ first became aware in late 2015 of suspicious “interactions” between figures connected to Trump and known or suspected Russian agents, a source close to UK intelligence said. This intelligence was passed to the US as part of a routine exchange of information, they added.
- nl 9y ago

alehul 9y ago

Regarding the trustworthiness of 'three letter agencies', two of them (DoD, JCS) approved plans for another (CIA) to commit terrorism against American civilians in order to justify a war against Cuba [1]. They could ultimately have America's best interests at heart, however you can be certain that their public statements have no standard of truth and are made to serve a covert agenda. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Northwoods https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Northwoods

losteric 9y ago
One operation from over 50 years ago is your example? Back then the spooks were doing far worse, conducting operations against domestic civil rights groups. That's a little different than a public DNI statement on behalf of 17 different agencies pointing to Russian attacks, corroborated by multiple other nations, in an era of wide-spread whistleblowing that would uncover a large-scale conspiracy. Occam's Razor says all signs point to Russia.
- alehul 9y ago
  I agree Russia is the most likely perpetrator, but it's all circumstantial from the evidence I've seen, and there's clearly a large sociopolitical impact from this hack.. hence it's substantial enough to be framed for some purpose. I'm merely pointing out that we should question it when the U.S. government says "They did this!", as they've clearly tried to lie about it before in dire circumstances. I wish I had more recent examples to give you, or examples that were actually executed on, however I think that'd be rather dangerous and impossible to obtain.
- dom0 9y ago
  > One operation from over 50 years ago is your example? Back then the spooks were doing far worse, conducting operations against domestic civil rights groups. Or torturing Americans civilians for eh... testing whether interrogation techniques would work on the real enemy(tm) as well.

wu-ikkyu 9y ago

>No. But there is no national security or stability reason for them to lie about this They don't have to be lying, they could just be mistaken. Is it not common for hackers to leave fake tracks pointing to someone else as a diversion?

vasilipupkin 9y ago
sure, but Putin basically admitted Russia did it https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/01/world/europe/vladimir-putin-donald-trump-hacking.html?mcubz=0 https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/01/world/europe/vladimir-put...

rdtsc 9y ago

> Russians were involved in a lot of hacking during the election, and a lot that has surfaced since, like intrusion into power plants, etc. Any large enough country is involved in such activities. Iranians, Chinese, Israelis and North Koreans, Romanians, US false flags, private interests are probably able to hire people to work for them. > 100% super double sure that we landed on the moon Clearly you have just as good evidence that Russians hacked the election and overturned the result that is comparable to moon landing. A video perhaps, an audio recording, a chat log that can be verified, a confession from a credible source or a defector? I hoping the vote recount would show some proof in Wisconsin but it turned out it gave Trump 3 more votes. Yeah, serious allegation require more serious evidence to be believed. Otherwise it looks like a conspiracy theory. And just like a conspiracy theory, if more people repeat it doesn't make it more true. If there are 10k contrails or lizard people making the same argument, it doesn't make the argument more true. > How do we know this? Because all investigations from the three letter agencies agree on it. The 17 intelligence agencies, including the Coast Guard Intelligence has irrefutable proof Russia overturned our election results?

wallace_f 9y ago
The reason that the word of all 3 letter agencies is a gold standard for proof (just as good as the proof we have that we landed on the moon) is because they never lied to us before, or tried to do anything shady. /s Just kidding. What should I cite? Everything awful the FBI did to MLK? That the NSA lied to us about domestic spying? The fact that Iraq was actually trying to disarm while the Bush admin and 3 letter agencies engaged in a cover up so as to not disrupt their plans in the ME?[1] In fact, I'd like to know why I should trust 3 letter agencies because their accountability to the public right now seems to be nonexistent. 1 - https://theintercept.com/2016/12/15/if-donald-trump-is-so-upset-about-iraq-wmd-lies-why-is-he-hiring-john-bolton/ https://theintercept.com/2016/12/15/if-donald-trump-is-so-up...
vasilipupkin 9y ago
"The 17 intelligence agencies, including the Coast Guard Intelligence has irrefutable proof Russia overturned our election results?" how is this relevant to anything? russia can have many aims in hacking during the election, besides actually overturning the election results. I am always amused by this zero or 1 logic.

igivanov 9y ago

so the US propaganda machine has partially achieved its goal even on HN where people are expected (if I am not mistaken) not to take anything at face value. More to the point, there were no credible investigations, "intrusion into power plants" was fake news, the FBI even hasn't up to this day examined the "hacked" DNC server.

vasilipupkin 9y ago

Stop wondering whether or not Russia did it. Putin admitted as much https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/01/world/europe/vladimir-putin-donald-trump-hacking.html?mcubz=0 https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/01/world/europe/vladimir-put...

kafkaesq 9y ago

> How can you be sure? Don't go down this route. Which "route"? The "asking questions" route?

DanBC 9y ago
You know that "only asking" is a well known trolling technique, right? https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Just_asking_questions https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Just_asking_questions
- kafkaesq 9y ago
  You may be right - that post does come off trolly-y, in retrospect.