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Given the long history of nation-states engaging in false flag premises for both diplomacy and "diplomacy by other means," how much scrutiny should we give to n

Given the long history of nation-states engaging in false flag premises for both diplomacy and "diplomacy by other means," how much scrutiny should we give to nation-states claims of hacking? How easy or hard is it to fake such claims? I should think it's much easier to fake than hiding nuclear weapons or instances of armed violence.

NegativeLatency 8y ago
Could’ve contracted it out too. It’s not necessarily the Chinese State, could’ve been freelancers hired by someone else.
mc32 8y ago
People do this all the time when they don't want to believe. At one point people didn't want to believe North Korea was the perpetrator of the Sony Hack, for political reasons, but then for other political reasons people were sure it was North Korea. Just like the email hacks --people tend to believe or not believe depending a lot on their ideology and how it aligns with them, unfortunately.
- colordrops 8y ago
  Typically these situations where belief follows political lines are an indicator that there isn't strong evidence to support either interpretation.
- netsharc 8y ago
  I also wanted to mention the Sony hack, and on the Wikipedia page there's a section quoting experts who doubted that it was them who did it. Associating this with sanctions against Chinese networking companies makes me think that it's just too convenient of an excuse.
  - lawnchair_larry 8y ago
    Those "experts" were not experts in attribution, and the consensus is that they were wrong. One is from Norse, a widely discredited and now defunct security firm, ironically infamous for their false attributions. Two are journalists. Enough said. One is Seth Rogen the actor. Enough said. One is Sabu from LulzSec, a script kid turned FBI snitch, who is way out of his league commenting on this. One is Marc Rogers, who I don't know personally, but I doubt he maintains his skepticism today. In any case, a security expert to be certain, but not an expert in attribution and not privy to the evidence (only some of which has ever been made public). Worth noting that he published followup blog posts to the wikipedia-linked citation that walked back his skepticism quite a bit (http://marcrogers.org/2015/01/24/wrapping-up-the-whole-sony-thing-for-now/ http://marcrogers.org/2015/01/24/wrapping-up-the-whole-sony-... - "In my eyes, the preponderance of evidence definitely suggests North Korean involvement or someone trying very hard to make it look like North Korean involvement."). He basically settled on it being plausible, but concerning, and acknowledged that he wasn't privy to the evidence.
- stcredzero 8y ago
  People do this all the time when they don't want to believe. I'm fine with the prospect of China hacking the US. It fits in just fine with my world view. However, there's also the sinking of the Maine, the Gulf of Tonkin incident, and Iraqi WMD. Skepticism is called for.
  - mc32 8y ago
    That skepticism is earned indeed. But despite that people will believe something along these lines (WMD[1], Sony Hack, Russia, etc.) if it aligns with their political view. And if it doesn't then they're even more skeptical than is healthy. [1]Although to be fair, Saddam _wanted_ his neighbors to believe he had WMDs. It was a sort of a reverse 'boy who cried wolf' and then not wanting to lose face kept playing games (which fooled many to believe more than they should have with flimsy independent evidence that he had WMDs (including many in the opposition parties).
    - freeflight 8y ago
      To be fair: Even the responsible UN weapons inspector, Scott Ritter [0] quite bluntly stated there was no evidence at all for the Iraqi WMD program. Not that anybody in the Bush administration would have cared, everybody there was well aware of this fact, that's also the reason why they tried to play up the fictitious "Saddam al-Qaeda" link [1] for a while and why the whole WMD thing just became a joke to them a mere year after the invasion [2]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Ritter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Ritter [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saddam_Hussein_and_al-Qaeda_link_allegations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saddam_Hussein_and_al-Qaeda_li... [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O35NA6TywAg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O35NA6TywAg
      - mc32 8y ago
        That whole thing was a fiasco and a stupid mistake or undertaking. It really was a terrible thing to do (there was reason to unseat Saddam, but not at the cost it would take). However, it would be a mistake to think this was only a Bush thing. This was broadly bipartisan in the US. It was neoliberal politics and war hawks who thought they could shape the world in their neoliberal view. With the Soviets out of the way, they thought they could help make the rest of the world more like western democracies (obvs through force if necessary) We saw a continuation with the Arab spring enthusiasm which turned horribly wrong as well.
- freeflight 8y ago
  > People do this all the time when they don't want to believe. People do this all the time because people working in the sector know [0] that attribution, with anything "cyber", is near impossible, if the attackers know what they are doing it actually is impossible. As such most attribution usually boils down to guessing games based on code samples and used attack vectors but rarely, if ever, on anything actually solid. [0] https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2015/01/attack_attribut.html https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2015/01/attack_attrib...
  - mc32 8y ago
    Right but on the other hand, with the same hedges people _will_ believe something despite all these qualifications that something was done by someone if it aligns with their politics to believe it.
    - freeflight 8y ago
      Accusations like this shouldn't be based on "hedges", as long as they do they only serve to do exactly what you describe: Lead people down predefined conclusions. That's why it's important to point out the difficulties of attribution or else people will simply take it as they see it, without even questioning it. In that context questioning it is not "hedging" anything, it's inquiring about actual evidence, which most rational people should be asking for instead of "hedging" based on political beliefs.
      - mc32 8y ago
        I agree with your take but I disagree with hedging being inappropriate here. Hedging just means using qualifications and conditions given some uncertainty in a claim.
  - lawnchair_larry 8y ago
    People do this all the time because people working in the sector know [0] that attribution, with anything "cyber", is near impossible, if the attackers know what they are doing it actually is impossible. This is wrong. Schneier has no idea what he is talking about (as usual). The funny part is that he opens with skepticism about the North Korea/Sony hack, of which many were skeptical early on, but now is not disputed by anybody. So he was wrong about that too. So very wrong. Especially this line: More likely, the culprits are random hackers who have loved to hate Sony for over a decade, or possibly a disgruntled insider. I'll be honest, I was skeptical of that one too. But I knew what I didn't know, so instead of challenging experts or trying to get my uninformed opinion out in the public sphere, I kept that to myself. And when I heard someone who I know would know make the NK claim without hesitation, it made me re-evaluate some assumptions. When it turned out that they were correct, I knew it was not a lucky guess. Attribution is not easy, but it's absolutely not impossible in all cases, or even difficult in many cases. People who understand technology make a lot of assumptions about how attribution works, and then make assertions like this. Attribution isn't simply that the bad packets came from a Chinese IP address. A good rant on the topic is here: http://www.robertmlee.org/russian-election-meddling-grizzleysteppe-and-bananas/ http://www.robertmlee.org/russian-election-meddling-grizzley...
adventured 8y ago
For over a year there has been widespread reporting of a surge in Chinese hacking, since the trade conflict began with the Trump Administration. Before that, the Obama Administration managed to get a brief cease fire, during which reports of Chinese hacking plunged dramatically. So what exactly was the Obama Administration getting an agreement on? China was doing it before, stopped after a publicly acknowledged agreement with the Obama Admin, and then it's so far fetched that they'd start up again during an increasingly aggressive trade war as to be worthy of false flag considerations - I don't think so. If it was China in this case, it's nothing more than par for the course for how they've been behaving for the last decade plus. It's an invaluable tool in their arsenal for dealing with the US in a variety of regards.

NegativeLatency 8y ago

Could’ve contracted it out too. It’s not necessarily the Chinese State, could’ve been freelancers hired by someone else.

mc32 8y ago

People do this all the time when they don't want to believe. At one point people didn't want to believe North Korea was the perpetrator of the Sony Hack, for political reasons, but then for other political reasons people were sure it was North Korea. Just like the email hacks --people tend to believe or not believe depending a lot on their ideology and how it aligns with them, unfortunately.

colordrops 8y ago
Typically these situations where belief follows political lines are an indicator that there isn't strong evidence to support either interpretation.
netsharc 8y ago
I also wanted to mention the Sony hack, and on the Wikipedia page there's a section quoting experts who doubted that it was them who did it. Associating this with sanctions against Chinese networking companies makes me think that it's just too convenient of an excuse.
- lawnchair_larry 8y ago
  Those "experts" were not experts in attribution, and the consensus is that they were wrong. One is from Norse, a widely discredited and now defunct security firm, ironically infamous for their false attributions. Two are journalists. Enough said. One is Seth Rogen the actor. Enough said. One is Sabu from LulzSec, a script kid turned FBI snitch, who is way out of his league commenting on this. One is Marc Rogers, who I don't know personally, but I doubt he maintains his skepticism today. In any case, a security expert to be certain, but not an expert in attribution and not privy to the evidence (only some of which has ever been made public). Worth noting that he published followup blog posts to the wikipedia-linked citation that walked back his skepticism quite a bit (http://marcrogers.org/2015/01/24/wrapping-up-the-whole-sony-thing-for-now/ http://marcrogers.org/2015/01/24/wrapping-up-the-whole-sony-... - "In my eyes, the preponderance of evidence definitely suggests North Korean involvement or someone trying very hard to make it look like North Korean involvement."). He basically settled on it being plausible, but concerning, and acknowledged that he wasn't privy to the evidence.
stcredzero 8y ago
People do this all the time when they don't want to believe. I'm fine with the prospect of China hacking the US. It fits in just fine with my world view. However, there's also the sinking of the Maine, the Gulf of Tonkin incident, and Iraqi WMD. Skepticism is called for.
- mc32 8y ago
  That skepticism is earned indeed. But despite that people will believe something along these lines (WMD[1], Sony Hack, Russia, etc.) if it aligns with their political view. And if it doesn't then they're even more skeptical than is healthy. [1]Although to be fair, Saddam _wanted_ his neighbors to believe he had WMDs. It was a sort of a reverse 'boy who cried wolf' and then not wanting to lose face kept playing games (which fooled many to believe more than they should have with flimsy independent evidence that he had WMDs (including many in the opposition parties).
  - freeflight 8y ago
    To be fair: Even the responsible UN weapons inspector, Scott Ritter [0] quite bluntly stated there was no evidence at all for the Iraqi WMD program. Not that anybody in the Bush administration would have cared, everybody there was well aware of this fact, that's also the reason why they tried to play up the fictitious "Saddam al-Qaeda" link [1] for a while and why the whole WMD thing just became a joke to them a mere year after the invasion [2]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Ritter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Ritter [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saddam_Hussein_and_al-Qaeda_link_allegations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saddam_Hussein_and_al-Qaeda_li... [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O35NA6TywAg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O35NA6TywAg
    - mc32 8y ago
      That whole thing was a fiasco and a stupid mistake or undertaking. It really was a terrible thing to do (there was reason to unseat Saddam, but not at the cost it would take). However, it would be a mistake to think this was only a Bush thing. This was broadly bipartisan in the US. It was neoliberal politics and war hawks who thought they could shape the world in their neoliberal view. With the Soviets out of the way, they thought they could help make the rest of the world more like western democracies (obvs through force if necessary) We saw a continuation with the Arab spring enthusiasm which turned horribly wrong as well.
freeflight 8y ago
> People do this all the time when they don't want to believe. People do this all the time because people working in the sector know [0] that attribution, with anything "cyber", is near impossible, if the attackers know what they are doing it actually is impossible. As such most attribution usually boils down to guessing games based on code samples and used attack vectors but rarely, if ever, on anything actually solid. [0] https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2015/01/attack_attribut.html https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2015/01/attack_attrib...
- mc32 8y ago
  Right but on the other hand, with the same hedges people _will_ believe something despite all these qualifications that something was done by someone if it aligns with their politics to believe it.
  - freeflight 8y ago
    Accusations like this shouldn't be based on "hedges", as long as they do they only serve to do exactly what you describe: Lead people down predefined conclusions. That's why it's important to point out the difficulties of attribution or else people will simply take it as they see it, without even questioning it. In that context questioning it is not "hedging" anything, it's inquiring about actual evidence, which most rational people should be asking for instead of "hedging" based on political beliefs.
    - mc32 8y ago
      I agree with your take but I disagree with hedging being inappropriate here. Hedging just means using qualifications and conditions given some uncertainty in a claim.
- lawnchair_larry 8y ago
  People do this all the time because people working in the sector know [0] that attribution, with anything "cyber", is near impossible, if the attackers know what they are doing it actually is impossible. This is wrong. Schneier has no idea what he is talking about (as usual). The funny part is that he opens with skepticism about the North Korea/Sony hack, of which many were skeptical early on, but now is not disputed by anybody. So he was wrong about that too. So very wrong. Especially this line: More likely, the culprits are random hackers who have loved to hate Sony for over a decade, or possibly a disgruntled insider. I'll be honest, I was skeptical of that one too. But I knew what I didn't know, so instead of challenging experts or trying to get my uninformed opinion out in the public sphere, I kept that to myself. And when I heard someone who I know would know make the NK claim without hesitation, it made me re-evaluate some assumptions. When it turned out that they were correct, I knew it was not a lucky guess. Attribution is not easy, but it's absolutely not impossible in all cases, or even difficult in many cases. People who understand technology make a lot of assumptions about how attribution works, and then make assertions like this. Attribution isn't simply that the bad packets came from a Chinese IP address. A good rant on the topic is here: http://www.robertmlee.org/russian-election-meddling-grizzleysteppe-and-bananas/ http://www.robertmlee.org/russian-election-meddling-grizzley...

adventured 8y ago

For over a year there has been widespread reporting of a surge in Chinese hacking, since the trade conflict began with the Trump Administration. Before that, the Obama Administration managed to get a brief cease fire, during which reports of Chinese hacking plunged dramatically. So what exactly was the Obama Administration getting an agreement on? China was doing it before, stopped after a publicly acknowledged agreement with the Obama Admin, and then it's so far fetched that they'd start up again during an increasingly aggressive trade war as to be worthy of false flag considerations - I don't think so. If it was China in this case, it's nothing more than par for the course for how they've been behaving for the last decade plus. It's an invaluable tool in their arsenal for dealing with the US in a variety of regards.