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"It is well known that Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction." This Russia link is stated so often without a shred of evidence on the authority of kno

by harry8 7y ago

"It is well known that Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction." This Russia link is stated so often without a shred of evidence on the authority of known liars I think we're safe to say it's less likely than 50:50 at this point. I'll change my mind for credible evidence of which nobody has that they can share. Evidence. Put up or shut up. The motive for spreading that lie, if it is a lie as seems more than plausible is as as big as the WMD lie are obvious. Or at least be honest enough to say you still believe WMD as i did before evidence.

meowface 7y ago
There's a fair bit of evidence in Mueller's report: https://www.justice.gov/storage/report.pdf https://www.justice.gov/storage/report.pdf. But probably the most damning evidence is still highly classified. There's evidence released by private firms, including ThreatConnect, FireEye, CrowdStrike, Fidelis, and Dell SecureWorks, who have been tracking Russian intelligence groups, including the ones that they allege hacked the DNC, for many years prior: * https://threatconnect.com/blog/reassesing-guccifer-2-0-recent-claims/ https://threatconnect.com/blog/reassesing-guccifer-2-0-recen... * https://www.fireeye.com/current-threats/apt-groups/rpt-apt28.html https://www.fireeye.com/current-threats/apt-groups/rpt-apt28... * https://www.crowdstrike.com/blog/bears-midst-intrusion-democratic-national-committee/ https://www.crowdstrike.com/blog/bears-midst-intrusion-democ... * https://www.fidelissecurity.com/threatgeek/archive/findings-analysis-dnc-intrusion-malware/ https://www.fidelissecurity.com/threatgeek/archive/findings-... * https://www.secureworks.com/research/threat-group-4127-targets-hillary-clinton-presidential-campaign https://www.secureworks.com/research/threat-group-4127-targe... (There are varying degrees of technical details in each report, but I recommend reading them all to get a full picture.) Dutch intelligence says they hacked GRU computers and cameras and observed the hacks as they were happening: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2018/01/dutch-intelligence-hacked-video-cameras-in-office-of-russians-who-hacked-dnc/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2018/01/dutch.... They contacted NSA, and this may have been the first time US intelligence became aware of this. The evidence is so comprehensive, Mueller was able to name 12 of the GRU officers who conducted the breaches: https://www.justice.gov/file/1080281/download https://www.justice.gov/file/1080281/download. This indictment gets extremely specific, to the point of what software they were running and when, what they were searching for, how they got the funding to buy the VPN access they used to register the Guccifer 2.0 Twitter account, exactly what they said and sent to Wikileaks, etc. This goes into very granular detail. Here's an excerpt: >Between on or about May 25, 2016 and June 1, 2016, the Conspirators hacked the DNC Microsoft Exchange Server and stole thousands of emails from the work accounts of DNC employees. During that time, YERMAKOV researched PowerShell commands related to accessing and managing the Microsoft Exchange Server. 30. >On or about May 30, 2016, MALYSHEV accessed the AMS panel in order to upgrade custom AMS software on the server. That day, the AMS panel received updates from approximately thirteen different X-Agent malware implants on DCCC and DNC computers. There is essentially a global consensus among intelligence and security organizations, governmental and private, that Russian intelligence was behind the DNC hack and the Guccifer 2.0 persona. By contrast, not a single entity other than the US government backed the Iraq WMD claims, and there wasn't any sort of specific public claims made beyond "they have WMDs". Here, Mueller's reports make hundreds of very specific, narrow claims. If you like, I could write a 30+ page summary of all of the credible evidence in all of these documents, in addition to hints at what sort of classified evidence US intelligence may have (likely through compromised GRU and Russian government systems, and perhaps also moles, in combination with what the Dutch gave them). As for whether Assange was aware of any of this or suspected it; who knows. It's very likely "Guccifer 2.0" / GRU would have maintained their cover while sending him information. Doesn't really make sense for them to be like "hey, Russia here, here's some stuff you might want". He's smart, though, and surely was (or at least is now) aware of the possibility.
- blaser-waffle 7y ago
  > If you like, I could write a 30+ page summary of all of the credible evidence in all of these documents, in addition to hints at what sort of classified evidence US intelligence may have (likely through compromised GRU and Russian government systems, and perhaps also moles, in combination with what the Dutch gave them). If you're offering... yes please. I've seen some good RAND Corp write ups, and others on security blogs, to include one of those you listed, but a reasonably concise omnibus would be nice.
  - meowface 7y ago
    I want to and may get around to it eventually, but my infosec day job is occupying quite a bit of my time at the moment. If there's still contention around this in this sub-thread, that'll increase the odds I'll try to do it. (If most repliers are in agreement with the conclusion, not too much point of it.) And just an aside unrelated to your post: I know the WMD error/lie/both depending on who was saying it has severely tarnished the credibility of the US intelligence community, as it should have, but it'd also be unempirical to disregard everything they ever say afterwards no matter how many decades later, especially when there seems to be near-universal independent agreement. Purely speculatively, I suspect this was all very intentional of Russian intelligence, and perhaps Putin himself (if reports of his personal involvement are accurate; given his past field experience in intelligence, it seems plausible). For example, that's one reason they began sending phishing emails the same day Trump gave his "Russia, if you're listening" comment/joke. They knew what kind of look that would create. They knew that whatever they did would be vehemently denied by Trump and his supporters and aggressively pounced on by his detractors and drive a huge wedge through the country and create wild disagreement about the integrity of this and future elections. The "metagame" (interpretation, backlash, and other butterfly effects) may have been much more of the goal than the game itself (releasing the compromised emails, which really weren't that juicy beyond things we already knew like bias against Bernie, the only exception being the Donna Brazile thing; though the perception and theories may have done much more damage than the actual facts). The mere appearance of Russian manipulation and the debates over whether it's ruining us or is a conspiracy theory achieves a significant objective without having to do hardly anything at all. Maybe I'll write a big blog post about this whole thing, since I've ranted about this kind of meta-manipulation idea at length before (not that it's a novel proposition, or anything) in addition to debates about the evidence. First I'd need to make a blog, though.

by harry8 7y ago

meowface 7y ago

There's a fair bit of evidence in Mueller's report: https://www.justice.gov/storage/report.pdf https://www.justice.gov/storage/report.pdf. But probably the most damning evidence is still highly classified. There's evidence released by private firms, including ThreatConnect, FireEye, CrowdStrike, Fidelis, and Dell SecureWorks, who have been tracking Russian intelligence groups, including the ones that they allege hacked the DNC, for many years prior: * https://threatconnect.com/blog/reassesing-guccifer-2-0-recent-claims/ https://threatconnect.com/blog/reassesing-guccifer-2-0-recen... * https://www.fireeye.com/current-threats/apt-groups/rpt-apt28.html https://www.fireeye.com/current-threats/apt-groups/rpt-apt28... * https://www.crowdstrike.com/blog/bears-midst-intrusion-democratic-national-committee/ https://www.crowdstrike.com/blog/bears-midst-intrusion-democ... * https://www.fidelissecurity.com/threatgeek/archive/findings-analysis-dnc-intrusion-malware/ https://www.fidelissecurity.com/threatgeek/archive/findings-... * https://www.secureworks.com/research/threat-group-4127-targets-hillary-clinton-presidential-campaign https://www.secureworks.com/research/threat-group-4127-targe... (There are varying degrees of technical details in each report, but I recommend reading them all to get a full picture.) Dutch intelligence says they hacked GRU computers and cameras and observed the hacks as they were happening: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2018/01/dutch-intelligence-hacked-video-cameras-in-office-of-russians-who-hacked-dnc/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2018/01/dutch.... They contacted NSA, and this may have been the first time US intelligence became aware of this. The evidence is so comprehensive, Mueller was able to name 12 of the GRU officers who conducted the breaches: https://www.justice.gov/file/1080281/download https://www.justice.gov/file/1080281/download. This indictment gets extremely specific, to the point of what software they were running and when, what they were searching for, how they got the funding to buy the VPN access they used to register the Guccifer 2.0 Twitter account, exactly what they said and sent to Wikileaks, etc. This goes into very granular detail. Here's an excerpt: >Between on or about May 25, 2016 and June 1, 2016, the Conspirators hacked the DNC Microsoft Exchange Server and stole thousands of emails from the work accounts of DNC employees. During that time, YERMAKOV researched PowerShell commands related to accessing and managing the Microsoft Exchange Server. 30. >On or about May 30, 2016, MALYSHEV accessed the AMS panel in order to upgrade custom AMS software on the server. That day, the AMS panel received updates from approximately thirteen different X-Agent malware implants on DCCC and DNC computers. There is essentially a global consensus among intelligence and security organizations, governmental and private, that Russian intelligence was behind the DNC hack and the Guccifer 2.0 persona. By contrast, not a single entity other than the US government backed the Iraq WMD claims, and there wasn't any sort of specific public claims made beyond "they have WMDs". Here, Mueller's reports make hundreds of very specific, narrow claims. If you like, I could write a 30+ page summary of all of the credible evidence in all of these documents, in addition to hints at what sort of classified evidence US intelligence may have (likely through compromised GRU and Russian government systems, and perhaps also moles, in combination with what the Dutch gave them). As for whether Assange was aware of any of this or suspected it; who knows. It's very likely "Guccifer 2.0" / GRU would have maintained their cover while sending him information. Doesn't really make sense for them to be like "hey, Russia here, here's some stuff you might want". He's smart, though, and surely was (or at least is now) aware of the possibility.

blaser-waffle 7y ago
> If you like, I could write a 30+ page summary of all of the credible evidence in all of these documents, in addition to hints at what sort of classified evidence US intelligence may have (likely through compromised GRU and Russian government systems, and perhaps also moles, in combination with what the Dutch gave them). If you're offering... yes please. I've seen some good RAND Corp write ups, and others on security blogs, to include one of those you listed, but a reasonably concise omnibus would be nice.
- meowface 7y ago
  I want to and may get around to it eventually, but my infosec day job is occupying quite a bit of my time at the moment. If there's still contention around this in this sub-thread, that'll increase the odds I'll try to do it. (If most repliers are in agreement with the conclusion, not too much point of it.) And just an aside unrelated to your post: I know the WMD error/lie/both depending on who was saying it has severely tarnished the credibility of the US intelligence community, as it should have, but it'd also be unempirical to disregard everything they ever say afterwards no matter how many decades later, especially when there seems to be near-universal independent agreement. Purely speculatively, I suspect this was all very intentional of Russian intelligence, and perhaps Putin himself (if reports of his personal involvement are accurate; given his past field experience in intelligence, it seems plausible). For example, that's one reason they began sending phishing emails the same day Trump gave his "Russia, if you're listening" comment/joke. They knew what kind of look that would create. They knew that whatever they did would be vehemently denied by Trump and his supporters and aggressively pounced on by his detractors and drive a huge wedge through the country and create wild disagreement about the integrity of this and future elections. The "metagame" (interpretation, backlash, and other butterfly effects) may have been much more of the goal than the game itself (releasing the compromised emails, which really weren't that juicy beyond things we already knew like bias against Bernie, the only exception being the Donna Brazile thing; though the perception and theories may have done much more damage than the actual facts). The mere appearance of Russian manipulation and the debates over whether it's ruining us or is a conspiracy theory achieves a significant objective without having to do hardly anything at all. Maybe I'll write a big blog post about this whole thing, since I've ranted about this kind of meta-manipulation idea at length before (not that it's a novel proposition, or anything) in addition to debates about the evidence. First I'd need to make a blog, though.