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So far I've seen ZERO EVIDENCE. Reuters and the Washington Post have breathless claims of Russian hackers "according to officials familiar with the matter." Uh

So far I've seen ZERO EVIDENCE. Reuters and the Washington Post have breathless claims of Russian hackers "according to officials familiar with the matter." Uh huh. Saying "APT29" or "CozyBear" doesn't make the accusation any more credible. If multiple US agencies are trumpeting the same story, you really must ask yourself "Why? Why this? Why now?" It's pretty amusing, in a depressing way, to see how quickly so many otherwise intelligent people can be made to snap to attention and fight the Russian Menace with a few anonymous government claims.

jen729w 6y ago
Given the scope of this product — basically everyone runs it — any chance that this is some sort of hoax will be mitigated by the “too large to be a hoax” thing. Probably some sort of fallacy whose name I don’t know. See: moon landing. Of course we went to the moon otherwise, what, 50,000 people are keeping a perfect and scandalous secret for half a century?
- jiggawatts 6y ago
  The best proof that the United States went to the Moon is that there was extensive Russian spying going on at the time, but Russia never claimed that the US was lying about the Apollo program.
  - hn_throwaway_99 6y ago
    The best proof that we went to the moon is that we left mirrors there that we use to bounce lasers off of to detect the distance to the moon.
    - jiggawatts 6y ago
      That's difficult for people with poor science educations to fully grasp. For example, they might think that the moon's surface itself could reflect the laser light, etc... Not to mention that unmanned probes could also have placed reflectors without humans ever being sent to the Moon!
      - asdff 6y ago
        Why even go to those lengths? If they lied about the moon landing surely they are lying about lasers even hitting the moon, or it not being made of cheese...
      - hn_throwaway_99 6y ago
        Just 2 points to add here: Scientists have reflected lasers just off the surface, and there are unmanned probes (Russian ones) that placed reflectors on the moon. But the point should still be that, if anyone cares to learn about the difference, and how we know the difference between all these different types of reflectors, that information is freely available and could easily be understood by most people.
icedistilled 6y ago
Why are there so many people who absolutely deny Russia does any hacking. It's always some big conspiracy theory that multiple cyber security agencies, all the three letter agencies, and multiple news agencies are in on. I'd bring up tin foil hats, but nowadays we can make fabric faraday cages so we can all be fashionable no matter what we believe.
- njharman 6y ago
  > Why are there so many people who absolutely deny Russia does any hacking. Because there are many people paid to do so. (and soon if not already automated bots).
  - La1n 6y ago
    Not everyone who questions something is a paid shill.
    - blunte 6y ago
      The beauty, from a nefarious standpoint, is that you don't have to pay people to spread disinformation. You just have to use the right psych techniques on them and ensure they get proper reinforcement. These are the techniques that have turned my family and many of their friends (and clearly a measurable percentage of Americans) into the exact opposite of the values they taught me and demonstrated for decades. They truly believe virtually anything spoken by people like Limbaugh, Glenn, Orielly, Carlson, etc. If you try to use some logic or evidence, even showing two conflicting statements made by one of those idols, they just shut down. The cognitive dissonance is too uncomfortable.
      - dragonsky 6y ago
        You might want to explain who Limbaugh, Glenn, Orielly, Carlson etc are for those of use outside of the US bubble
- ehsankia 6y ago
  I'm curious, are people saying that "Russia doesn't do any hacking" or that "there isn't yet enough evidence that this specific attack is by Russia". Those are two very different claims. I don't think there's any doubt about the former claim, personally. The latter though, I think it's too early to tell, especially since we've seen recently how certain hackers have explicitly started putting bait signs from other nation-states to misdirect.
throwawaybutwhy 6y ago
Krebs: Update, 8:30 p.m. ET: An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated that FireEye attributed the SolarWinds attack to APT29. That information has been removed from the story.
px43 6y ago
We've got like 12 years of historical records tracking the evolution of internal tooling and infrastructure that Cozy Bear uses. Yeah attribution is hard, yeah someone could have been trying to frame them, but in general these groups tend to use a lot of in-house tools and consistent infrastructure and techniques. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cozy_Bear https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cozy_Bear Did you read the Fancy Bear incitements for the DNC hack? https://www.justice.gov/file/1080281/download https://www.justice.gov/file/1080281/download The evidence was absolutely overwhelming. It isn't like someone saw an IP in Russia and assumed it must be Russians. The intelligence agencies had been tracking them for years. They knew exactly who was doing exactly what within the Fancy Bear organization. They know when people joined up and how they were introduced to their GRU handlers. The idea that these attributions are just thrown around whimsically is pure ignorance.
- px43 6y ago
  Here's the article I was trying to remember last night about how Dutch intelligence actually hacked security cameras and watched the DNC hack go down live. (source) https://nos.nl/nieuwsuur/artikel/2213767-dutch-intelligence-first-to-alert-u-s-about-russian-hack-of-democratic-party.html https://nos.nl/nieuwsuur/artikel/2213767-dutch-intelligence-... (summary) https://www.cbsnews.com/news/dutch-intelligence-us-fbi-russian-hacking-cozy-bear-democratic-national-committee/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/dutch-intelligence-us-fbi-russi... Misattributions happen, but Fancy Bear / Cozy Bear is extremely well understood, and they don't generally make much of an effort to hide the fact that it was them that did it. For them, it's often about sending a message.
- leggomuhgreggo 6y ago
  According to Charles Carmakal, senior vice president and chief technical officer at Mandiant, FireEye’s incident response arm “There will unfortunately be more victims that have to come forward in the coming weeks and months,” he said. While some have attributed the attack to a state-sponsored Russian group known as APT 29, or Cozy Bear, FireEye had not yet seen sufficient evidence to name the actor, he said. A Kremlin official denied that Russia had any involvement. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-12-15/fireeye-stumbled-across-solarwinds-breach-while-probing-own-hack https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-12-15/fireeye-s...
blunte 6y ago
Given your use of "breathless" and "Russian Menace", it's clear which echo chamber you spend time in.

jen729w 6y ago

Given the scope of this product — basically everyone runs it — any chance that this is some sort of hoax will be mitigated by the “too large to be a hoax” thing. Probably some sort of fallacy whose name I don’t know. See: moon landing. Of course we went to the moon otherwise, what, 50,000 people are keeping a perfect and scandalous secret for half a century?

jiggawatts 6y ago
The best proof that the United States went to the Moon is that there was extensive Russian spying going on at the time, but Russia never claimed that the US was lying about the Apollo program.
- hn_throwaway_99 6y ago
  The best proof that we went to the moon is that we left mirrors there that we use to bounce lasers off of to detect the distance to the moon.
  - jiggawatts 6y ago
    That's difficult for people with poor science educations to fully grasp. For example, they might think that the moon's surface itself could reflect the laser light, etc... Not to mention that unmanned probes could also have placed reflectors without humans ever being sent to the Moon!
    - asdff 6y ago
      Why even go to those lengths? If they lied about the moon landing surely they are lying about lasers even hitting the moon, or it not being made of cheese...
    - hn_throwaway_99 6y ago
      Just 2 points to add here: Scientists have reflected lasers just off the surface, and there are unmanned probes (Russian ones) that placed reflectors on the moon. But the point should still be that, if anyone cares to learn about the difference, and how we know the difference between all these different types of reflectors, that information is freely available and could easily be understood by most people.

icedistilled 6y ago

Why are there so many people who absolutely deny Russia does any hacking. It's always some big conspiracy theory that multiple cyber security agencies, all the three letter agencies, and multiple news agencies are in on. I'd bring up tin foil hats, but nowadays we can make fabric faraday cages so we can all be fashionable no matter what we believe.

njharman 6y ago
> Why are there so many people who absolutely deny Russia does any hacking. Because there are many people paid to do so. (and soon if not already automated bots).
- La1n 6y ago
  Not everyone who questions something is a paid shill.
  - blunte 6y ago
    The beauty, from a nefarious standpoint, is that you don't have to pay people to spread disinformation. You just have to use the right psych techniques on them and ensure they get proper reinforcement. These are the techniques that have turned my family and many of their friends (and clearly a measurable percentage of Americans) into the exact opposite of the values they taught me and demonstrated for decades. They truly believe virtually anything spoken by people like Limbaugh, Glenn, Orielly, Carlson, etc. If you try to use some logic or evidence, even showing two conflicting statements made by one of those idols, they just shut down. The cognitive dissonance is too uncomfortable.
    - dragonsky 6y ago
      You might want to explain who Limbaugh, Glenn, Orielly, Carlson etc are for those of use outside of the US bubble
ehsankia 6y ago
I'm curious, are people saying that "Russia doesn't do any hacking" or that "there isn't yet enough evidence that this specific attack is by Russia". Those are two very different claims. I don't think there's any doubt about the former claim, personally. The latter though, I think it's too early to tell, especially since we've seen recently how certain hackers have explicitly started putting bait signs from other nation-states to misdirect.

throwawaybutwhy 6y ago

Krebs: Update, 8:30 p.m. ET: An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated that FireEye attributed the SolarWinds attack to APT29. That information has been removed from the story.

px43 6y ago

We've got like 12 years of historical records tracking the evolution of internal tooling and infrastructure that Cozy Bear uses. Yeah attribution is hard, yeah someone could have been trying to frame them, but in general these groups tend to use a lot of in-house tools and consistent infrastructure and techniques. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cozy_Bear https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cozy_Bear Did you read the Fancy Bear incitements for the DNC hack? https://www.justice.gov/file/1080281/download https://www.justice.gov/file/1080281/download The evidence was absolutely overwhelming. It isn't like someone saw an IP in Russia and assumed it must be Russians. The intelligence agencies had been tracking them for years. They knew exactly who was doing exactly what within the Fancy Bear organization. They know when people joined up and how they were introduced to their GRU handlers. The idea that these attributions are just thrown around whimsically is pure ignorance.

px43 6y ago
Here's the article I was trying to remember last night about how Dutch intelligence actually hacked security cameras and watched the DNC hack go down live. (source) https://nos.nl/nieuwsuur/artikel/2213767-dutch-intelligence-first-to-alert-u-s-about-russian-hack-of-democratic-party.html https://nos.nl/nieuwsuur/artikel/2213767-dutch-intelligence-... (summary) https://www.cbsnews.com/news/dutch-intelligence-us-fbi-russian-hacking-cozy-bear-democratic-national-committee/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/dutch-intelligence-us-fbi-russi... Misattributions happen, but Fancy Bear / Cozy Bear is extremely well understood, and they don't generally make much of an effort to hide the fact that it was them that did it. For them, it's often about sending a message.
leggomuhgreggo 6y ago
According to Charles Carmakal, senior vice president and chief technical officer at Mandiant, FireEye’s incident response arm “There will unfortunately be more victims that have to come forward in the coming weeks and months,” he said. While some have attributed the attack to a state-sponsored Russian group known as APT 29, or Cozy Bear, FireEye had not yet seen sufficient evidence to name the actor, he said. A Kremlin official denied that Russia had any involvement. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-12-15/fireeye-stumbled-across-solarwinds-breach-while-probing-own-hack https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-12-15/fireeye-s...

blunte 6y ago

Given your use of "breathless" and "Russian Menace", it's clear which echo chamber you spend time in.