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Btw, read recently by way of the Intercept about Russian opposition people who feel that the western narrative gives to much credit to Putin. He wishes he was the almighty puppeteer!
But anyone not healthily alarmed by Russia's fingerprints on some major cyber assaults is foolishly naive.
How An Entire Nation Became Russia's Test Lab for Cyberwar - Wired
Looking at the attackers' methods, Lee began to form a notion of who he was up against. He was struck by similarities between the blackout hackers' tactics and those of a group that had recently gained some notoriety in the cybersecurity world--a group known as Sandworm. In 2014 the security firm FireEye had issued warnings about a team of hackers that was planting BlackEnergy malware on targets that included Polish energy firms and Ukrainian government agencies; the group seemed to be developing methods to target the specialized computer architectures that are used for remotely managing physical industrial equipment. The group's name came from references to Dune found buried in its code, terms like Harkonnen and Arrakis, an arid planet in the novel where massive sandworms roam the deserts. No one knew much about the group's intentions. But all signs indicated that the hackers were Russian: FireEye had traced one of Sandworm's distinctive intrusion techniques to a presentation at a Russian hacker conference. And when FireEye's engineers managed to access one of Sandworm's unsecured command-and-control servers, they found instructions for how to use BlackEnergy written in Russian, along with other Russian-language files. Most disturbing of all for American analysts, Sandworm's targets extended across the Atlantic. Earlier in 2014, the US government reported that hackers had planted BlackEnergy on the networks of American power and water utilities. Working from the government's findings, FireEye had been able to pin those intrusions, too, on Sandworm.
Looking at the attackers' methods, Lee began to form a notion of who he was up against. He was struck by similarities between the blackout hackers' tactics and those of a group that had recently gained some notoriety in the cybersecurity world--a group known as Sandworm. In 2014 the security firm FireEye had issued warnings about a team of hackers that was planting BlackEnergy malware on targets that included Polish energy firms and Ukrainian government agencies; the group seemed to be developing methods to target the specialized computer architectures that are used for remotely managing physical industrial equipment. The group's name came from references to Dune found buried in its code, terms like Harkonnen and Arrakis, an arid planet in the novel where massive sandworms roam the deserts.
No one knew much about the group's intentions. But all signs indicated that the hackers were Russian: FireEye had traced one of Sandworm's distinctive intrusion techniques to a presentation at a Russian hacker conference. And when FireEye's engineers managed to access one of Sandworm's unsecured command-and-control servers, they found instructions for how to use BlackEnergy written in Russian, along with other Russian-language files.
Most disturbing of all for American analysts, Sandworm's targets extended across the Atlantic. Earlier in 2014, the US government reported that hackers had planted BlackEnergy on the networks of American power and water utilities. Working from the government's findings, FireEye had been able to pin those intrusions, too, on Sandworm.
I think I agree with most of the particulars in this blog post:
Russiagate
Some outtakes(lots of links at source):
First and foremost, the public technical evidence that Russia hacked the DNC is both completely insufficient to declare who used a simple spear-phishing attack to trick John Podesta into entering his own password and based entirely on technical data from a single firm (Crowdstrike) the DNC itself hired with the intention of blaming the hack on Russia; to this date the FBI has never been allowed to examine the "hacked" servers or made any additional efforts whatsoever to verify Crowdstrike's accusations against Russia. Although many people who are completely ignorant of even very recent history seem content to accept the declaration of American Intelligence Agencies that Russia definitely hacked the DNC for "reasons" - I myself am not comfortable taking the CIA's word for it when surely if they had more evidence of Russian hacking, they would have produced it by now (a full year into the investigation.) The simple truth is that it doesn't matter who hacked the DNC or if there was even a hack at all because the recovered Clinton campaign emails and the damning revelations found inside them were all 100% real and unaltered in any meaningful way. You cannot "rig" an election by telling people the truth and exposing the uncomfortable facts about powerful people is called journalism, not "spreading propaganda." Furthermore, the argument that such activity would represent "an act of war" or a "digital 9/11" is quite simply spurious at best when you consider the known fact that American intelligence continues to engage in cyber intrusion activities and online opinion manipulation on social media in precisely the same manner we're accusing Russia of doing today.
IIRC foreigners aren't even allowed to donate to a poltical campaign. Committing crimes to aid and abet one side is hardly likely to be something that would be tolerated in a more temperate season. And if collusion could be proved, well then we're almost into rico territory.
So, no it ain't journalism. As if most of the US media have any clue what that even means keep to the Fen Causeway
Which may not be an entirely stable situation keep to the Fen Causeway
What I don't see is why I should be outraged about any of this. If a leaker carries out the politically embarrassing office mail, the information is of public interest and it gets published in major newspapers I would have no objection at all. Even if you replace the first step with Vladimir Putin in a hoodie, there is little material change in the outcome. And US political culture already was considering journalism, as in publishing what the powerful don't want published, to be close to treason. Jumping on the McCarthy express doesn't seem helpful.
Mueller's public brief is programmed to fail.
"Meddling and interference" in "democracy" or "election process" is no where codified by U.S. Code or states' statutes. But it sure is "click bait" --the transaction that produces revenue for the person supplying publishing services to an advertiser ("content creator"). Gah bless Free Trade.
"Collusion" and "conspiracy" are not crimes, because people collude and conspire every. fucking. day. They collude or conspire to realized some group, enterprise, corporate, company, organization purpose. Gah bless Trade Secrets.
Collusion or conspiracy to commit a crime [LISTED] is defined. But meddle and interfere in democracy and election process is undefined by USC. Since Mueller has been unable as yet to pin even one of the [LIST] to any foreign or domestic, would you have him invent criminal conduct?
Or would you prefer he discover evidence of criminal conduct? Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.
The backstage talks provide a window into how those closest to Trump are bracing for a possible bloodbath in the 2018 midterms, which could obliterate the Republican congressional majorities and paralyze the president's legislative agenda. The potential for a Democratic wave has grown after Republican losses this fall in Virginia, New Jersey and Alabama, and as the president's approval ratings have plummeted to the 30s.
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