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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

by vuln 8y 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 8y ago
Well, they might have simply wanted a report that came out before the election.
mox1 8y 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 8y 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 8y 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 8y 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 8y 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.

by vuln 8y ago

michaelt 8y ago

Well, they might have simply wanted a report that came out before the election.

mox1 8y 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 8y 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 8y 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 8y 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 8y 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.