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.. in addition to that, it's not like Norway is without controversy, when it comes to accusing Russia. I'm not making any claims here. Not about Russia being be

.. in addition to that, it's not like Norway is without controversy, when it comes to accusing Russia. I'm not making any claims here. Not about Russia being behind it, nor the opposite. If Norway publicly accuses Russia, then it better have some very credible (and independently verifiable) evidence for it (just an IP address from within Russia certainly won't do). After having seen a long chain of blatantly flawed and clearly political attribution to alleged Russian wrongdoings (in all kind of matters), I'd say not a single EU country (let alone the USA) still has even remotely enough credibility left for granting them any benefit of a doubt, whenever they come with yet another finger pointing exercise towards Russia. I'm not saying Russia isn't doing anything bad, they may very well be, but that's no excuse for making accusations without credible evidence. It should pretty clear by now that both the EU and USA aren't much interested in ever providing actual proof. That alone should worry anyone, considering their own shoddy track records. When will people finally demand to either put up (the evidence) or shut up (with what mostly likely is rather dirty politics). Or maybe Russia should just start with somehow reciprocally deal with countries that make such accusations without a willingness to provide their proof. Maybe this game would stop, once it actually starts to hurt. Sure, their email system was very likely hacked .. but what better way than to blame it on Russia, instead of the many other possibilities (probably including the possibility of embarrassing personal incompetence or a royal screw-up in their security setup). "I'm not to blame, it was Russia that ate my homework!"

jnurmine 6y ago
Norway likely has irrefutable proof, at least enough so that it can confidently claim another nation was behind it all. Also, presenting detailed proof could reveal something about Norway's capabilities which they'd rather keep hidden. Now, let's play a thought game: what would happen if Norway DID in fact present evidence and proof? In the end, no amount of evidence would be enough or credible enough or good enough or acceptable enough etc. This has been heard already in numerous cases such as GPS jamming in Northern Norway, poisoning of an opposition politician, interference in elections, shoot-down of a civilian passenger aircraft, deploying a military nerve agent in Salisbury, failed coup plot in Montenegro, and so on.
- elmo2you 6y ago
  > presenting detailed proof could reveal something about Norway's capabilities which they'd rather keep hidden Then they can also keep this accusation out of the public eye and deal with this on a diplomatic, which is where these kind of things should be (first) dealt with anyways (as least according to protocol). And this is exactly where so many political accusation lately go off the rails, because although most people are blissfully unaware of it (and hence make them good useful idiots to have the wool pulled over their eyes), these direct political attacks without presented proofs are very much against both the spirit and also the letter of the protocols for such situation. I have to admit that in this particular case I don't know if diplomatic protocols have not been first exhausted before going public like this, but in many other cases that step certainly has been skipped/omitted. Which in themselves were pretty darn shameful violations in their own right. No, some people argue that it is warranted because Russia is doing wrong in the first place, which of course fully hinges on the assumption that the claims are valid in the first place (without any chance to verify this). However, nowhere does it say that such situations should null and void diplomatic protocols, so this line of reasoning is actually politicized hogwash. > no amount of evidence would be enough or credible enough or good enough or acceptable enough etc Where did you get that? If you know how this "game" actually works, you would know that at some level there will be matching/corroborating information coming from source that are not all controlled by the same interests (or group of interests). I've heard this (false) argument that it all comes don't to trust in whoever provides whatever evidence, but that just isn't true. With enough detailed information (which of course and conveniently is never given; should give rise to enough doubts on its own) it is most certainly possible to give a credibility to such evidence that goes way beyond just the credibility of the source of the damning details itself. I've personally seen cases where this was done, among nations that usually have different or even opposing agendas. But when it comes to (most) accusations towards Russia, the most striking part is always the total absence of any evidence at all. Since when have we become all this gullible, that we just believe organization who themselves have questionable track records on their good word and reputation? Nah, that just doesn't cut it for me. For for anyone to whom it does, good luck with that unwavering faith (which in my opinion goes straight against logic).
  - 6y ago
PeterisP 6y ago
Usually, a big part of attribution is the reuse of specific TTPs (tactics/tools/procedures), malware components, and components of C&C infrastructure - sophisticated attacks are tool-heavy, the tools are custom and generally not distributed much (even within the same country - e.g. it appears that in Russia the military intelligence and foreign intelligence units don't share much of their tooling/infrastructure with each other for some political reasons), you don't/can't recreate all that code from scratch for every single attack, so there's inevitably reuse that allows you to link some attacks to others. Since there are some earlier attacks where we can link particular actions not only to a country, but to specific people in specific organizations, usually due to some mistake on their behalf, it's sometimes possible to also determine the attribution of new atacks with reasonable certainty.
- cnst 6y ago
  Or, maybe someone messed up, and in order to divert attention from themselves, they had to find and put the blame on the boogeyman. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FW10zLDI3Eg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FW10zLDI3Eg

jnurmine 6y ago

Norway likely has irrefutable proof, at least enough so that it can confidently claim another nation was behind it all. Also, presenting detailed proof could reveal something about Norway's capabilities which they'd rather keep hidden. Now, let's play a thought game: what would happen if Norway DID in fact present evidence and proof? In the end, no amount of evidence would be enough or credible enough or good enough or acceptable enough etc. This has been heard already in numerous cases such as GPS jamming in Northern Norway, poisoning of an opposition politician, interference in elections, shoot-down of a civilian passenger aircraft, deploying a military nerve agent in Salisbury, failed coup plot in Montenegro, and so on.

elmo2you 6y ago
> presenting detailed proof could reveal something about Norway's capabilities which they'd rather keep hidden Then they can also keep this accusation out of the public eye and deal with this on a diplomatic, which is where these kind of things should be (first) dealt with anyways (as least according to protocol). And this is exactly where so many political accusation lately go off the rails, because although most people are blissfully unaware of it (and hence make them good useful idiots to have the wool pulled over their eyes), these direct political attacks without presented proofs are very much against both the spirit and also the letter of the protocols for such situation. I have to admit that in this particular case I don't know if diplomatic protocols have not been first exhausted before going public like this, but in many other cases that step certainly has been skipped/omitted. Which in themselves were pretty darn shameful violations in their own right. No, some people argue that it is warranted because Russia is doing wrong in the first place, which of course fully hinges on the assumption that the claims are valid in the first place (without any chance to verify this). However, nowhere does it say that such situations should null and void diplomatic protocols, so this line of reasoning is actually politicized hogwash. > no amount of evidence would be enough or credible enough or good enough or acceptable enough etc Where did you get that? If you know how this "game" actually works, you would know that at some level there will be matching/corroborating information coming from source that are not all controlled by the same interests (or group of interests). I've heard this (false) argument that it all comes don't to trust in whoever provides whatever evidence, but that just isn't true. With enough detailed information (which of course and conveniently is never given; should give rise to enough doubts on its own) it is most certainly possible to give a credibility to such evidence that goes way beyond just the credibility of the source of the damning details itself. I've personally seen cases where this was done, among nations that usually have different or even opposing agendas. But when it comes to (most) accusations towards Russia, the most striking part is always the total absence of any evidence at all. Since when have we become all this gullible, that we just believe organization who themselves have questionable track records on their good word and reputation? Nah, that just doesn't cut it for me. For for anyone to whom it does, good luck with that unwavering faith (which in my opinion goes straight against logic).
- 6y ago

PeterisP 6y ago

Usually, a big part of attribution is the reuse of specific TTPs (tactics/tools/procedures), malware components, and components of C&C infrastructure - sophisticated attacks are tool-heavy, the tools are custom and generally not distributed much (even within the same country - e.g. it appears that in Russia the military intelligence and foreign intelligence units don't share much of their tooling/infrastructure with each other for some political reasons), you don't/can't recreate all that code from scratch for every single attack, so there's inevitably reuse that allows you to link some attacks to others. Since there are some earlier attacks where we can link particular actions not only to a country, but to specific people in specific organizations, usually due to some mistake on their behalf, it's sometimes possible to also determine the attribution of new atacks with reasonable certainty.

cnst 6y ago
Or, maybe someone messed up, and in order to divert attention from themselves, they had to find and put the blame on the boogeyman. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FW10zLDI3Eg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FW10zLDI3Eg