22 ms·

A CIA hacker’s revenge

180 points by jbegley 4y ago

weeeeelp 4y ago
https://archive.ph/3oNMJ https://archive.ph/3oNMJ
RcouF1uZ4gsC 4y ago
> Because of national-security concerns, they couldn’t take work home, or talk with anyone on the outside about what they did all day. I wonder if that would be an advantage. You are a clear separation between work and life. No one is allowed to call or message you at home about work when you are out of the office.
- perch56 4y ago
  Checkout Severance on Apple TV if you have the possibility but that’s pretty much the story behind the series.
  - cshokie 4y ago
    An interesting topic and well done by the show. Just be warned that season one ends on a cliffhanger, and season two is a year away (or more). I didn’t know that and found it frustrating.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- Spooky23 4y ago
  Yes and no. To pull it off you need a lot of process and bureaucracy. It’s both good and bad.
kome 4y ago
about https://wikileaks.org/ https://wikileaks.org/ "the site had released e-mails from the Democratic National Committee which had been stolen by hackers working on behalf of the Kremlin" is this true? i don't think there has never been a definitive evidence or proof about this. just "journalistic evidence" (= news outlets repeating the same info without any real evidence).
- StanislavPetrov 4y ago
  There has never been any evidence released, definitive or otherwise. The assertions have always been along the lines of, "we know Russia is capable of doing this and we know Russia would like to do this therefore Russia did this".
  - wil421 4y ago
    It’s been said in various news outlets over and over again that Dutch Intelligence watched them carry out the DNR hack. Of course they aren’t going to release actual evidence. The info was released to the press much later presumably after the Dutch hack was no longer useful. See another commenters article from Ars above.
    - trasz 4y ago
      >It’s been said in various news outlets over and over again Try a little thought experiment: substitute "China" for "USA" and ask yourself, would you believe claims by Chinese espionage agency official, repeated by numerous Chinese outlets? Even if he wasn't known for committing crimes, like James Clapper is?
    - StanislavPetrov 4y ago
      >Of course they aren’t going to release actual evidence. The info was released to the press much later presumably after the Dutch hack was no longer useful. No, the "evidence" was never released. If I'm mistaken, I'd be grateful if you provided a link. If you make an assertion and claim you have secret evidence that you can't show it is exactly the same as making as assertion with no evidence.
- astrange 4y ago
  It was released in a “talking indictment” of some GRU hackers. You’d very rarely want to release this as it would compromise sources and methods. Due to the extreme public interest we do actually know the info came from the Dutch intelligence agency, who among other things were tapping the GRU’s security cameras.
boomboomsubban 4y ago
It's not surprising that the cause of the leaks was petty and personal. "Deep Throat" Mark Felt's reason for exposing Nixon seems to be that he was upset he didn't get the director job, a similarly petty reason. Ideological cases like Ellsberg, Snowden, and Manning are the exception.
- pizzachan 4y ago
  I wouldn’t be surprised if they each had their ‘petty’ reasons as well. You have to lose faith in the people around you and the system at large before you feel you can go rogue. I personally burned a pretty significant relationship and my career in the process when the Trump military trans ban came through. I had by that point been hit with many petty injustices and indignities, but it was ban that finally brought me over the edge.
  - imwillofficial 4y ago
    What do you mean?
- antiverse 4y ago
  >Snowden Looking back at everything that transpired with Snowden boggles the mind. I still have no idea if he's an adversarial plant by some government (meant to sow distrust, etc) or if he was genuine from the get-go. It is incredibly hard to get to the truths of these things, and the media outlets spinning it in their own ways (based on who donates to them and who owns them) makes it even harder.
  - aaaaaaaaata 4y ago
    Used to entertain ideas that he was an intelligence limited hangout, but...he's just too relentless & genuine to be doing a "good job" as one! He really does try to inform the People.
  - ProAm 4y ago
    I wonder if the Ukraine war has affected Snowden with all the sanctions? An America, exiled in Russia who has a job and works. Is he paid in Rubles? Is life immensely more difficult for him now than it was 6 months ago? Curious.
DeathArrow 4y ago
If I infect someone's device with malware and exfiltrate data do gain money or obtain unfair advantages, I am a criminal. If a CIA employee infects a foreign finance minister's device with malware so US can obtain unfair advantages, he's an unsung hero.
- greggsy 4y ago
  But everyone does it - not just the US. If the CIA does something against another country it’s still illegal.. just not inside the US.
  - photochemsyn 4y ago
    Ah so we are no better than China, Russia, North Korea and Iran. The claim that the US foreign policy agenda is promoting democratic values and human rights around the world, then, I guess that was just a two-faced con artist act? The NSA and CIA are probably more interested in feeding Wall Street insider information on foreign economic activity so they can obtain advantages than anything else, and of course there's the kickback angle with the private contractors bloated secret budgets. How patriotic can you get?
    - greggsy 4y ago
      your first paragraph is just a reflection of the way the world works. You can take sides - most people do - or not. Either way the ethics are steeped in a complex of nationalism, ideology, media, state control, and everything in between. Your second paragraph seems a tad hyperbolic. The intel machine is there to progress a country’s interests. Most of the time, it is for peaceful purposes, but agreed there is often a commercial interest at play.
      - boomchinolo78 4y ago
        Having met someone who was at the top of my country's intelligence machine: CIA is corrupt, other countries fare a bit better but not too well. It's a difficult problem to concentrate so much power and not have corruption.
photochemsyn 4y ago
This article is a waste of time at best and a deliberate misdirection at worst. Focusing on the (alleged) leaker and ignoring the content of the leak is a classic propaganda tactic. Right at the beginning we see this claim in defense of the CIA program: This is not dragnet mass surveillance of the kind more often associated with the National Security Agency. These are hacks, or “exploits,” designed for individual targets. Perhaps the most news-making program in that leak was something called "Marble Framework", and as I recall NSA whistleblower Bill Binney talked quite a bit about it in relation to Russiagate. I don't care about Russiagate, so let's search Google with 'verbatim' (under tools) on. binney "marble framework" CIA -russiagate So, here we get a lot of interesting results and a description of Marble Framework. Here's one source for example, not sure I agree with their characterization of Binney, who was at least trying to be responsible and follow the laws that banned mass domestic warrantless collection, and who seems like a decent person (plus B-tree tutorial) but at least this source discusses the central matter: https://freethoughtblogs.com/stderr/2017/04/14/why-cia-and-nsa-tool-leaks-matter/ https://freethoughtblogs.com/stderr/2017/04/14/why-cia-and-n... > "Description: The Marble Framework is designed to allow for flexible and easy-to-use obfuscation when developing tools. When signaturing tools, string obfuscation algorithms (especially those that are unique) are often used to link malware to a specific developer or development shop. This framework is intended to help us (AED) to improve upon our current process for string/data obfuscation in our tools. The framework utilizes pre and post-build execution steps to apply obfuscation to the tool. [CIA Marble Framework docs]" This is a tool allowing for things like 'false flag' cyberattacks, such as planting malware that looks like it came from whoever - North Korea, Iran, etc. - but which reports back to CIA. Rather tellingly, this article doesn't even mention it. Nor does it dig into the issue of economic espionage, something the US government claims it never does. See the above source's discussion of something called 'Longhorn' for the counterexample. The issue is this makes all the US government claims about 'detecting the signature of foreign hackers' in all manner of news reports completely suspect. How do we know they didn't put those signatures there themselves? Now they have a massive credibility problem (see also lies about WMDs in Iraq, etc.) - and that's something the New Yorker apparently doesn't want to dig into. Kind of pathetic really.
itsthecourier 4y ago
DeWilde 4y ago
> But WikiLeaks had also shown, quite recently, a willingness to be a mouthpiece for foreign intelligence services: in 2016, the site had released e-mails from the Democratic National Committee That is certainly one perspective you can have. Another perspective is that if the DNC hadn't engaged in corrupt practices then foreign intelligence services wouldn't have anything to leak.
- jamespo 4y ago
  Another perspective is WikiLeaks seems to be very selective about what it publishes
  - kome 4y ago
    Do you have any evidence they received leaks about republicans (or whatever you mean...) and they didn't publish it?
    - martey 4y ago
      - https://www.dailydot.com/debug/wikileaks-syria-files-syria-russia-bank-2-billion/ https://www.dailydot.com/debug/wikileaks-syria-files-syria-r... - https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2016/dec/18/john-podesta/its-true-wikileaks-dumped-podesta-emails-hour-afte/ https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2016/dec/18/john-podes... - https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/08/17/wikileaks-turned-down-leaks-on-russian-government-during-u-s-presidential-campaign/ https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/08/17/wikileaks-turned-down-l...
- ianhawes 4y ago
  What exactly in the DNC emails would you call a corrupt practice? The purpose of the 2016 political email "leaks" was entirely embarrassment and to create the aura that the emails were proof of corruption.
  - willcipriano 4y ago
    How can the emails be both embarrassing and not embarrassing at the same time?
Rotdhizon 4y ago
I enjoyed the beginning of the article because it was actually informative. Once you get to the part where it becomes a blatant smear and misdirection campaign, it loses its interest and credibility. Why does half the entire read just focus on destroying this guys character? If he actually did get caught with what they say he did, then sure he deserves to go down but it's weird how hyper focused they are on painting this guy as the devil in his personal life. It seems like it's because their isn't any real evidence present to nail this guy. It's all circumstantial and worse, in ways that could very easily be planted/faked.
- jaywalk 4y ago
  When the article revealed the child porn, my first thought was "of course they 'found' child porn." Such a coincidence how tough cases like this always turn up with child porn charges.
  - jjoonathan 4y ago
    "Just sprinkle some child porn on him Johnson, and let's get out of here" That said, it sounds like they caught him fair and square with actual evidence (the backdoor, the access logs, and the versioning of the leak) and the mistrial was the result of a confused jury.
    - jaywalk 4y ago
      But they were missing the key piece, which is that he leaked it. Without that, it's all circumstantial. Was he probably the one who leaked it? Yeah, I think it's safe to say that. But that's not where the bar lies in a criminal trial.
      - boomboomsubban 4y ago
        I believe possession of unauthorized copies of classified information is already a crime, though I think the possible charges are far less than leaking it.
Ansil849 4y ago
What's with the uncritical pro-CIA tone throughout this whole article? Quotes like this go completely unchallenged: > Karen, the O.S.B. supervisor, later recalled. “That information getting out into a forum like that can hurt people and impact our mission. It’s a huge loss to the organization.” What about the people who could be hurt as a result of the intelligence the CIA collects via the spyware?
- dylan604 4y ago
  >What about the people hurt as a result of the intelligence the CIA collects via the spyware? How exactly was someone "hurt" because of said spyware? >How did they reach this conclusion The CIA (or any TLA) does not comment on ways & means of investigations. That's just silly to think they would as it would expose those ways & means. I'm all for being critical of anything spoken out of which ever side of the mouth the CIA PR people are speaking, but I'm not sure you're arguments are really effective here.
  - Ansil849 4y ago
    > How exactly was someone "hurt" because of said spyware? What do you think the information gleaned from the targets is used for, if not to harm the targets or others? This is beyond the fact that you don't think the mere act of having spyware installed on your devices is hurtful?
    - dylan604 4y ago
      I equate this to those that say that downloading warez is not hurtful as it's just some electrons shifting around, so nothing was actually stolen. Having spyware sucks, and I do the best of my ability to not let it get installed. However, random internet thiefs vs nation state operatives are not the same and I do not humor myself to think I am adequetely equipped to prevent it. If the CIA plants stuff on my, a US citizen's computer, then that is absolutely something to be pissed off about and they need to be punished for this behavior. However, I know in my personal life there is nothing they will find of value and it is ultimately an absolute waste of their time and resources. If some random internet thief also can make use of the US Gov't agency's spyware in a way that is harmful to me (stealing money, etc), then it's even worse as they TLA probably think "secret" backdoors are safe.
rhema 4y ago
> This is not dragnet mass surveillance of the kind more often associated with the National Security Agency. These are hacks, or “exploits,” designed for individual targets. Mhmm. Pray tell what oversight should make me believe this is true? > Snowden and Manning were not seeking to blow the whistle on any one particular policy, in the manner that Ellsberg was; theirs was a more generalized disaffection, and the troves of data that they exposed were indiscriminate Both good whistleblowers who I do not care what ideological principles inspired them. > Unlike other prominent digital leakers, Schulte did not seem like an ideological whistle-blower. I guess you have to be a good person to be a whistleblower in the CIA. Maybe that's why they don't hire good people.
- alas_141 4y ago
  On your last bit, I don't see your point. It was obvious from the article that Josh didn't have a problem breaching personal privacy/security provided he was wielding/creating the tool that did it. It didn't track that he leaked data for any ideological reason other than he could, and felt the CIA deserved to get egg on their face for how they treated him. Also, beyond the idea that the CIA knew of vulnerabilities on public companies that exposed Americans and neglected to cooperate to patch them, the data, largely made up of exploits, that was leaked can't really be ideologically driven unless you're operating under the assumption that it isn't widely known that intelligence agencies hack their adversaries.
siliconc0w 4y ago
It sounds like a leak was inevitable given their IT security. Encrypted virtual machine with an encrypted home folder containing an encrypted archive with passwords kept unencrypted on his phone is pretty comical but Op Sec is hard. The only evidence that is mildly convincing is that he accessed the same archive as the one uploaded though just because the leak might have came from a credential he created as an administrator doesn't necessarily tie it to him. Still from this it's a wonder anyone with talent wants to work for government - get paid less and possibly prosecuted if you leave on bad terms.
- imiric 4y ago
  > passwords kept unencrypted on his phone Yeah, I scoffed at this part. What are the chances someone working in OpSec would leave his personal devices so insecure? Either the CIA had much more access than what this article claims, or the article is missing details.
anonymousisme 4y ago
Why does the article repeat this known-to-be-false assertion about Wikileaks? "But WikiLeaks had also shown, quite recently, a willingness to be a mouthpiece for foreign intelligence services: in 2016, the site had released e-mails from the Democratic National Committee which had been stolen by hackers working on behalf of the Kremlin." The DNC leak was an inside job and not a result of a "hack". https://nypost.com/2017/08/15/new-report-claims-dnc-hack-was-an-inside-job-not-russia/ https://nypost.com/2017/08/15/new-report-claims-dnc-hack-was...
- kappuchino 4y ago
  Not the most credible news-source. "Report claims" - and that was during the Trump Administration, correct me if I am wrong.
  - anonymousisme 4y ago
    There are plenty of other contemporaneous sources all saying the same thing. Similar to the now dis-proven Russia-gate hoax, the DNC are the ones pushing the narrative that the leak was a Russian operation. The analysis of the time stamps on the DNC files has proven that they were not copied over a network, but copied locally.
    - kappuchino 4y ago
      This source say otherwise ... and its from a forensics company https://www.crowdstrike.com/blog/bears-midst-intrusion-democratic-national-committee/ https://www.crowdstrike.com/blog/bears-midst-intrusion-democ...
      - stefantalpalaru 4y ago
        > a forensics company https://www.crowdstrike.com/blog/bears-midst-intrusion-democratic-national-committee/ https://www.crowdstrike.com/blog/bears-midst-intrusion-democ... That's just a front for a think-tank: https://web.archive.org/web/20200930134745/https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/expert/dmitri-alperovitch/ https://web.archive.org/web/20200930134745/https://www.atlan... And CrowdStrike is so deeply involved with the DNC that they ended up lying for them: https://mate.substack.com/p/indicted-clinton-lawyer-hired-crowdstrike https://mate.substack.com/p/indicted-clinton-lawyer-hired-cr...
tomohawk 4y ago
If this story is credible, it shows glaring incompetence on the part of CIA management and leadership in letting simple HR and team issues spin wildly out of control.
KKKKkkkk1 4y ago
Like drone pilots who destroy villages in Afghanistan from an air-conditioned trailer in Nevada, the engineers of the O.S.B. experienced an uncanny incongruity between the safety of their surroundings and the knowledge that their work supported high-stakes covert operations abroad. Drone pilots don't destroy villages in Afghanistan, what is this nonsense.
- qikInNdOutReply 4y ago
  They do though. If you hit a funeral of some talib and kill half the villages population, that is what you do.
dontbenebby 4y ago
Minus the physical violence this reminds me of an old office "mate". Did everyone who signs up for The New Yorker newsletter get this one, or was this another "targeted" "share"? ;-)

180 points by jbegley 4y ago

https://archive.ph/3oNMJ https://archive.ph/3oNMJ

> Because of national-security concerns, they couldn’t take work home, or talk with anyone on the outside about what they did all day. I wonder if that would be an advantage. You are a clear separation between work and life. No one is allowed to call or message you at home about work when you are out of the office.

perch56 4y ago
Checkout Severance on Apple TV if you have the possibility but that’s pretty much the story behind the series.
- cshokie 4y ago
  An interesting topic and well done by the show. Just be warned that season one ends on a cliffhanger, and season two is a year away (or more). I didn’t know that and found it frustrating.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
Spooky23 4y ago
Yes and no. To pull it off you need a lot of process and bureaucracy. It’s both good and bad.

kome 4y ago

about https://wikileaks.org/ https://wikileaks.org/ "the site had released e-mails from the Democratic National Committee which had been stolen by hackers working on behalf of the Kremlin" is this true? i don't think there has never been a definitive evidence or proof about this. just "journalistic evidence" (= news outlets repeating the same info without any real evidence).

StanislavPetrov 4y ago
There has never been any evidence released, definitive or otherwise. The assertions have always been along the lines of, "we know Russia is capable of doing this and we know Russia would like to do this therefore Russia did this".
- wil421 4y ago
  It’s been said in various news outlets over and over again that Dutch Intelligence watched them carry out the DNR hack. Of course they aren’t going to release actual evidence. The info was released to the press much later presumably after the Dutch hack was no longer useful. See another commenters article from Ars above.
  - trasz 4y ago
    >It’s been said in various news outlets over and over again Try a little thought experiment: substitute "China" for "USA" and ask yourself, would you believe claims by Chinese espionage agency official, repeated by numerous Chinese outlets? Even if he wasn't known for committing crimes, like James Clapper is?
  - StanislavPetrov 4y ago
    >Of course they aren’t going to release actual evidence. The info was released to the press much later presumably after the Dutch hack was no longer useful. No, the "evidence" was never released. If I'm mistaken, I'd be grateful if you provided a link. If you make an assertion and claim you have secret evidence that you can't show it is exactly the same as making as assertion with no evidence.
astrange 4y ago
It was released in a “talking indictment” of some GRU hackers. You’d very rarely want to release this as it would compromise sources and methods. Due to the extreme public interest we do actually know the info came from the Dutch intelligence agency, who among other things were tapping the GRU’s security cameras.

boomboomsubban 4y ago

It's not surprising that the cause of the leaks was petty and personal. "Deep Throat" Mark Felt's reason for exposing Nixon seems to be that he was upset he didn't get the director job, a similarly petty reason. Ideological cases like Ellsberg, Snowden, and Manning are the exception.

pizzachan 4y ago
I wouldn’t be surprised if they each had their ‘petty’ reasons as well. You have to lose faith in the people around you and the system at large before you feel you can go rogue. I personally burned a pretty significant relationship and my career in the process when the Trump military trans ban came through. I had by that point been hit with many petty injustices and indignities, but it was ban that finally brought me over the edge.
- imwillofficial 4y ago
  What do you mean?
antiverse 4y ago
>Snowden Looking back at everything that transpired with Snowden boggles the mind. I still have no idea if he's an adversarial plant by some government (meant to sow distrust, etc) or if he was genuine from the get-go. It is incredibly hard to get to the truths of these things, and the media outlets spinning it in their own ways (based on who donates to them and who owns them) makes it even harder.
- aaaaaaaaata 4y ago
  Used to entertain ideas that he was an intelligence limited hangout, but...he's just too relentless & genuine to be doing a "good job" as one! He really does try to inform the People.
- ProAm 4y ago
  I wonder if the Ukraine war has affected Snowden with all the sanctions? An America, exiled in Russia who has a job and works. Is he paid in Rubles? Is life immensely more difficult for him now than it was 6 months ago? Curious.

DeathArrow 4y ago

If I infect someone's device with malware and exfiltrate data do gain money or obtain unfair advantages, I am a criminal. If a CIA employee infects a foreign finance minister's device with malware so US can obtain unfair advantages, he's an unsung hero.

greggsy 4y ago
But everyone does it - not just the US. If the CIA does something against another country it’s still illegal.. just not inside the US.
- photochemsyn 4y ago
  Ah so we are no better than China, Russia, North Korea and Iran. The claim that the US foreign policy agenda is promoting democratic values and human rights around the world, then, I guess that was just a two-faced con artist act? The NSA and CIA are probably more interested in feeding Wall Street insider information on foreign economic activity so they can obtain advantages than anything else, and of course there's the kickback angle with the private contractors bloated secret budgets. How patriotic can you get?
  - greggsy 4y ago
    your first paragraph is just a reflection of the way the world works. You can take sides - most people do - or not. Either way the ethics are steeped in a complex of nationalism, ideology, media, state control, and everything in between. Your second paragraph seems a tad hyperbolic. The intel machine is there to progress a country’s interests. Most of the time, it is for peaceful purposes, but agreed there is often a commercial interest at play.
    - boomchinolo78 4y ago
      Having met someone who was at the top of my country's intelligence machine: CIA is corrupt, other countries fare a bit better but not too well. It's a difficult problem to concentrate so much power and not have corruption.

photochemsyn 4y ago

This article is a waste of time at best and a deliberate misdirection at worst. Focusing on the (alleged) leaker and ignoring the content of the leak is a classic propaganda tactic. Right at the beginning we see this claim in defense of the CIA program: This is not dragnet mass surveillance of the kind more often associated with the National Security Agency. These are hacks, or “exploits,” designed for individual targets. Perhaps the most news-making program in that leak was something called "Marble Framework", and as I recall NSA whistleblower Bill Binney talked quite a bit about it in relation to Russiagate. I don't care about Russiagate, so let's search Google with 'verbatim' (under tools) on. binney "marble framework" CIA -russiagate So, here we get a lot of interesting results and a description of Marble Framework. Here's one source for example, not sure I agree with their characterization of Binney, who was at least trying to be responsible and follow the laws that banned mass domestic warrantless collection, and who seems like a decent person (plus B-tree tutorial) but at least this source discusses the central matter: https://freethoughtblogs.com/stderr/2017/04/14/why-cia-and-nsa-tool-leaks-matter/ https://freethoughtblogs.com/stderr/2017/04/14/why-cia-and-n... > "Description: The Marble Framework is designed to allow for flexible and easy-to-use obfuscation when developing tools. When signaturing tools, string obfuscation algorithms (especially those that are unique) are often used to link malware to a specific developer or development shop. This framework is intended to help us (AED) to improve upon our current process for string/data obfuscation in our tools. The framework utilizes pre and post-build execution steps to apply obfuscation to the tool. [CIA Marble Framework docs]" This is a tool allowing for things like 'false flag' cyberattacks, such as planting malware that looks like it came from whoever - North Korea, Iran, etc. - but which reports back to CIA. Rather tellingly, this article doesn't even mention it. Nor does it dig into the issue of economic espionage, something the US government claims it never does. See the above source's discussion of something called 'Longhorn' for the counterexample. The issue is this makes all the US government claims about 'detecting the signature of foreign hackers' in all manner of news reports completely suspect. How do we know they didn't put those signatures there themselves? Now they have a massive credibility problem (see also lies about WMDs in Iraq, etc.) - and that's something the New Yorker apparently doesn't want to dig into. Kind of pathetic really.

itsthecourier 4y ago

DeWilde 4y ago

> But WikiLeaks had also shown, quite recently, a willingness to be a mouthpiece for foreign intelligence services: in 2016, the site had released e-mails from the Democratic National Committee That is certainly one perspective you can have. Another perspective is that if the DNC hadn't engaged in corrupt practices then foreign intelligence services wouldn't have anything to leak.

jamespo 4y ago
Another perspective is WikiLeaks seems to be very selective about what it publishes
- kome 4y ago
  Do you have any evidence they received leaks about republicans (or whatever you mean...) and they didn't publish it?
  - martey 4y ago
    - https://www.dailydot.com/debug/wikileaks-syria-files-syria-russia-bank-2-billion/ https://www.dailydot.com/debug/wikileaks-syria-files-syria-r... - https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2016/dec/18/john-podesta/its-true-wikileaks-dumped-podesta-emails-hour-afte/ https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2016/dec/18/john-podes... - https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/08/17/wikileaks-turned-down-leaks-on-russian-government-during-u-s-presidential-campaign/ https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/08/17/wikileaks-turned-down-l...
ianhawes 4y ago
What exactly in the DNC emails would you call a corrupt practice? The purpose of the 2016 political email "leaks" was entirely embarrassment and to create the aura that the emails were proof of corruption.
- willcipriano 4y ago
  How can the emails be both embarrassing and not embarrassing at the same time?

Rotdhizon 4y ago

I enjoyed the beginning of the article because it was actually informative. Once you get to the part where it becomes a blatant smear and misdirection campaign, it loses its interest and credibility. Why does half the entire read just focus on destroying this guys character? If he actually did get caught with what they say he did, then sure he deserves to go down but it's weird how hyper focused they are on painting this guy as the devil in his personal life. It seems like it's because their isn't any real evidence present to nail this guy. It's all circumstantial and worse, in ways that could very easily be planted/faked.

jaywalk 4y ago
When the article revealed the child porn, my first thought was "of course they 'found' child porn." Such a coincidence how tough cases like this always turn up with child porn charges.
- jjoonathan 4y ago
  "Just sprinkle some child porn on him Johnson, and let's get out of here" That said, it sounds like they caught him fair and square with actual evidence (the backdoor, the access logs, and the versioning of the leak) and the mistrial was the result of a confused jury.
  - jaywalk 4y ago
    But they were missing the key piece, which is that he leaked it. Without that, it's all circumstantial. Was he probably the one who leaked it? Yeah, I think it's safe to say that. But that's not where the bar lies in a criminal trial.
    - boomboomsubban 4y ago
      I believe possession of unauthorized copies of classified information is already a crime, though I think the possible charges are far less than leaking it.

Ansil849 4y ago

What's with the uncritical pro-CIA tone throughout this whole article? Quotes like this go completely unchallenged: > Karen, the O.S.B. supervisor, later recalled. “That information getting out into a forum like that can hurt people and impact our mission. It’s a huge loss to the organization.” What about the people who could be hurt as a result of the intelligence the CIA collects via the spyware?

dylan604 4y ago
>What about the people hurt as a result of the intelligence the CIA collects via the spyware? How exactly was someone "hurt" because of said spyware? >How did they reach this conclusion The CIA (or any TLA) does not comment on ways & means of investigations. That's just silly to think they would as it would expose those ways & means. I'm all for being critical of anything spoken out of which ever side of the mouth the CIA PR people are speaking, but I'm not sure you're arguments are really effective here.
- Ansil849 4y ago
  > How exactly was someone "hurt" because of said spyware? What do you think the information gleaned from the targets is used for, if not to harm the targets or others? This is beyond the fact that you don't think the mere act of having spyware installed on your devices is hurtful?
  - dylan604 4y ago
    I equate this to those that say that downloading warez is not hurtful as it's just some electrons shifting around, so nothing was actually stolen. Having spyware sucks, and I do the best of my ability to not let it get installed. However, random internet thiefs vs nation state operatives are not the same and I do not humor myself to think I am adequetely equipped to prevent it. If the CIA plants stuff on my, a US citizen's computer, then that is absolutely something to be pissed off about and they need to be punished for this behavior. However, I know in my personal life there is nothing they will find of value and it is ultimately an absolute waste of their time and resources. If some random internet thief also can make use of the US Gov't agency's spyware in a way that is harmful to me (stealing money, etc), then it's even worse as they TLA probably think "secret" backdoors are safe.

rhema 4y ago

> This is not dragnet mass surveillance of the kind more often associated with the National Security Agency. These are hacks, or “exploits,” designed for individual targets. Mhmm. Pray tell what oversight should make me believe this is true? > Snowden and Manning were not seeking to blow the whistle on any one particular policy, in the manner that Ellsberg was; theirs was a more generalized disaffection, and the troves of data that they exposed were indiscriminate Both good whistleblowers who I do not care what ideological principles inspired them. > Unlike other prominent digital leakers, Schulte did not seem like an ideological whistle-blower. I guess you have to be a good person to be a whistleblower in the CIA. Maybe that's why they don't hire good people.

alas_141 4y ago
On your last bit, I don't see your point. It was obvious from the article that Josh didn't have a problem breaching personal privacy/security provided he was wielding/creating the tool that did it. It didn't track that he leaked data for any ideological reason other than he could, and felt the CIA deserved to get egg on their face for how they treated him. Also, beyond the idea that the CIA knew of vulnerabilities on public companies that exposed Americans and neglected to cooperate to patch them, the data, largely made up of exploits, that was leaked can't really be ideologically driven unless you're operating under the assumption that it isn't widely known that intelligence agencies hack their adversaries.

siliconc0w 4y ago

It sounds like a leak was inevitable given their IT security. Encrypted virtual machine with an encrypted home folder containing an encrypted archive with passwords kept unencrypted on his phone is pretty comical but Op Sec is hard. The only evidence that is mildly convincing is that he accessed the same archive as the one uploaded though just because the leak might have came from a credential he created as an administrator doesn't necessarily tie it to him. Still from this it's a wonder anyone with talent wants to work for government - get paid less and possibly prosecuted if you leave on bad terms.

imiric 4y ago
> passwords kept unencrypted on his phone Yeah, I scoffed at this part. What are the chances someone working in OpSec would leave his personal devices so insecure? Either the CIA had much more access than what this article claims, or the article is missing details.

anonymousisme 4y ago

Why does the article repeat this known-to-be-false assertion about Wikileaks? "But WikiLeaks had also shown, quite recently, a willingness to be a mouthpiece for foreign intelligence services: in 2016, the site had released e-mails from the Democratic National Committee which had been stolen by hackers working on behalf of the Kremlin." The DNC leak was an inside job and not a result of a "hack". https://nypost.com/2017/08/15/new-report-claims-dnc-hack-was-an-inside-job-not-russia/ https://nypost.com/2017/08/15/new-report-claims-dnc-hack-was...

kappuchino 4y ago
Not the most credible news-source. "Report claims" - and that was during the Trump Administration, correct me if I am wrong.
- anonymousisme 4y ago
  There are plenty of other contemporaneous sources all saying the same thing. Similar to the now dis-proven Russia-gate hoax, the DNC are the ones pushing the narrative that the leak was a Russian operation. The analysis of the time stamps on the DNC files has proven that they were not copied over a network, but copied locally.
  - kappuchino 4y ago
    This source say otherwise ... and its from a forensics company https://www.crowdstrike.com/blog/bears-midst-intrusion-democratic-national-committee/ https://www.crowdstrike.com/blog/bears-midst-intrusion-democ...
    - stefantalpalaru 4y ago
      > a forensics company https://www.crowdstrike.com/blog/bears-midst-intrusion-democratic-national-committee/ https://www.crowdstrike.com/blog/bears-midst-intrusion-democ... That's just a front for a think-tank: https://web.archive.org/web/20200930134745/https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/expert/dmitri-alperovitch/ https://web.archive.org/web/20200930134745/https://www.atlan... And CrowdStrike is so deeply involved with the DNC that they ended up lying for them: https://mate.substack.com/p/indicted-clinton-lawyer-hired-crowdstrike https://mate.substack.com/p/indicted-clinton-lawyer-hired-cr...

tomohawk 4y ago

If this story is credible, it shows glaring incompetence on the part of CIA management and leadership in letting simple HR and team issues spin wildly out of control.

KKKKkkkk1 4y ago

Like drone pilots who destroy villages in Afghanistan from an air-conditioned trailer in Nevada, the engineers of the O.S.B. experienced an uncanny incongruity between the safety of their surroundings and the knowledge that their work supported high-stakes covert operations abroad. Drone pilots don't destroy villages in Afghanistan, what is this nonsense.

qikInNdOutReply 4y ago
They do though. If you hit a funeral of some talib and kill half the villages population, that is what you do.

dontbenebby 4y ago

Minus the physical violence this reminds me of an old office "mate". Did everyone who signs up for The New Yorker newsletter get this one, or was this another "targeted" "share"? ;-)