5 ms·

I've read a few articles on this story, and this one was pretty good, until it got to the North Korea attribution. Funny how FireEye is always around getting pa

I've read a few articles on this story, and this one was pretty good, until it got to the North Korea attribution. Funny how FireEye is always around getting paid while pointing the finger at the same group of belligerents... but sorry no specifics, NDA and all that. (But of course the NDA doesn’t prevent the NYT from broadcasting FireEye’s conclusion.) FireEye's incentive is to deliver attribution, a "bad guy" for the breached victim to shift the blame to. That's why major companies and governments hire them after a breach; because they want answers, not necessarily the truth. If FireEye said "sorry, we're not sure who did this," business would not go so well for them. Trouble is, attribution is hard, and must be qualified by a degree of certainty. FireEye should be willing to say "we don't know" sometimes, because that is often the truth! But monetary incentives obstruct their ability and/or willingness to do so. It's easy to find evidence when you don't know exactly what you're looking for, everything could mean anything, and you’ll get paid for finding something.

vuln 9y ago
We saw this exact thing not too long ago with CrowdStike and the DNC. One thing that still baffles me is why did the DNC choose a for profit consultant over the United States Government. I guess when it's a private company that you are paying you can cantrol the narrative. When your job is to hammer nails everything starts looking like a nail.
- michaelt 9y ago
  Well, they might have simply wanted a report that came out before the election.
- mox1 9y ago
  CrowdStrike is filled with former Govt employees (FBI, NSA). So you get all of the training and techniques of top FBI / NSA hackers without all of the pesky "rules" associated with using them.
- heartbreak 9y ago
  The United States government came to the same conclusion that CrowdStrike did [0]. And the USG presumably is able to get over the "attribution is hard" problem with HUMINT and SIGINT sources that FireEye and CrowdStrike do not have. [0] https://www.dni.gov/files/documents/ICA_2017_01.pdf https://www.dni.gov/files/documents/ICA_2017_01.pdf
- jonknee 9y ago
  > One thing that still baffles me is why did the DNC choose a for profit consultant over the United States Government I think it's really obvious why a political party would want an independent conclusion other than a government conclusion, but that's me. In the end it was the same result.
- Kalium 9y ago
  Without getting into questions about motive, I can think of a good reason to choose CrowdStrike over the FBI. If you hire CrowdStrike, you can choose what happens with the findings. If you let the FBI do it, they're going to do as they choose with the findings.
- travmatt 9y ago
  >One thing that still baffles me is why did the DNC choose a for profit consultant over the United States Government. This is brilliant thinking, the DNC should have given the FBI more material to leak to Guiliani. Then Comey could have based his October surprise on something in the DNC servers, instead of having to obfuscate the fact that the emails he was basing his 're-opening' of the case on weren't anything new. Oddly enough, he had no problem concealing the fact that the other candidate was the current subject of a counter-intelligence investigation opened when the ambassador of australia formally notified the us that the trump campaign claimed to be cooperating with a hostile foreign power. A contradiction your comment creates and you don't actually engage is the fact that the Crowdstrike report and the IC report on election interference both support each other. If you claim the DNC was trying to control the narrative, it's only necessary to hire outside expertise if you're trying to challenge the credibility of different experts. If the experts are already going to be saying the same thing as you, there's no need to pay an outsider to parrot it.

vuln 9y ago

We saw this exact thing not too long ago with CrowdStike and the DNC. One thing that still baffles me is why did the DNC choose a for profit consultant over the United States Government. I guess when it's a private company that you are paying you can cantrol the narrative. When your job is to hammer nails everything starts looking like a nail.

michaelt 9y ago
Well, they might have simply wanted a report that came out before the election.
mox1 9y ago
CrowdStrike is filled with former Govt employees (FBI, NSA). So you get all of the training and techniques of top FBI / NSA hackers without all of the pesky "rules" associated with using them.
heartbreak 9y ago
The United States government came to the same conclusion that CrowdStrike did [0]. And the USG presumably is able to get over the "attribution is hard" problem with HUMINT and SIGINT sources that FireEye and CrowdStrike do not have. [0] https://www.dni.gov/files/documents/ICA_2017_01.pdf https://www.dni.gov/files/documents/ICA_2017_01.pdf
jonknee 9y ago
> One thing that still baffles me is why did the DNC choose a for profit consultant over the United States Government I think it's really obvious why a political party would want an independent conclusion other than a government conclusion, but that's me. In the end it was the same result.
Kalium 9y ago
Without getting into questions about motive, I can think of a good reason to choose CrowdStrike over the FBI. If you hire CrowdStrike, you can choose what happens with the findings. If you let the FBI do it, they're going to do as they choose with the findings.
travmatt 9y ago
>One thing that still baffles me is why did the DNC choose a for profit consultant over the United States Government. This is brilliant thinking, the DNC should have given the FBI more material to leak to Guiliani. Then Comey could have based his October surprise on something in the DNC servers, instead of having to obfuscate the fact that the emails he was basing his 're-opening' of the case on weren't anything new. Oddly enough, he had no problem concealing the fact that the other candidate was the current subject of a counter-intelligence investigation opened when the ambassador of australia formally notified the us that the trump campaign claimed to be cooperating with a hostile foreign power. A contradiction your comment creates and you don't actually engage is the fact that the Crowdstrike report and the IC report on election interference both support each other. If you claim the DNC was trying to control the narrative, it's only necessary to hire outside expertise if you're trying to challenge the credibility of different experts. If the experts are already going to be saying the same thing as you, there's no need to pay an outsider to parrot it.