NBC Happily Parrots The CIA's Case For Escalating Cyber War With Russia

from the putting-out-fires-by-burning-the-house-down dept

As we've been noting there have been growing calls for the Obama Administration to publicly scold Russia for hacking the DNC, and to dole out some kind of righteous punishment for this unseemly behavior. Calls on this front have ranged from launching larger cyber offensives or even a brick and mortar military response. We've noted repeatedly how this is stupid for a multitude of reasons, since hacking "proof" is (if the hacker's any good) impossible to come by, with false-flag operations consistently common.

Despite the obvious dangers of escalation, the U.S. press seems pretty intent on helping the intelligence community justify doing exactly that. Countless outlets are breathlessly passing along the idea that we simply must "retaliate" for Russia's behavior, willfully ignoring that the United States wrote the book on nation state hacking and lacks the moral high ground to lecture anyone on cybersecurity. As Snowden and other whistleblowers should have made abundantly clear by now, we've been hacking allies, fiddling in Democratic elections, creating indiscriminately dangerous malware and worse for decades.

Led by our bad example, we've cultivated a global environment in which nation state operators hack one another every second of every day to keep pace with the United States. As such, the idea that the United States is an innocent daisy nobly defending its untarnished honor from uncivilized international ruffians is absurdly, indisputably false, yet this concept sits at 90% of the reporting on this subject. Case in point: eager to get the escalation ball rolling, the CIA last week used NBC to make the case for a renewed cyber-warfare campaign against Russia in the coming months:

According to the full NBC report, the CIA is cooking up a rotating platter of different proposals, most of which involve launching similar hack and leak campaigns intended to embarrass Putin and company:

"The Obama administration is contemplating an unprecedented cyber covert action against Russia in retaliation for alleged Russian interference in the American presidential election, U.S. intelligence officials told NBC News. Current and former officials with direct knowledge of the situation say the CIA has been asked to deliver options to the White House for a wide-ranging "clandestine" cyber operation designed to harass and "embarrass" the Kremlin leadership."

Again though, if you understand that the NSA and its army of private contractors are covertly probing and attacking countless nations day in and day out (allies and enemies alike), the very idea that we'd announce this single counterattack via god-damned NBC should strike you as transparently theatrical and a bit silly. And as some pointed out, the wording of the story seems to strongly suggest we've already obtained plenty of documents that could prove embarrassing to Russia:Like most news coverage of the Russian hacks, our own responsibility for global cyber war escalation is left entirely unmentioned by a media that fancies itself a truth teller, yet somehow still can't escape the grip of fevered nationalism when covering militarism and cyber warfare. And you'll note the only hesitation from most of the government sources quoted in the article is that our "retaliation" won't be vicious enough:

Sean Kanuck, who was until this spring the senior U.S. intelligence official responsible for analyzing Russian cyber capabilities, said not mounting a response would carry a cost. "If you publicly accuse someone," he said, "and don't follow it up with a responsive action, that may weaken the credible threat of your response capability." President Obama will ultimately have to decide whether he will authorize a CIA operation. Officials told NBC News that for now there are divisions at the top of the administration about whether to proceed.

Good. There should be "divisions." Escalating our cyber-offensive "strategies" resulted in the conundrum we're currently enjoying. And escalation here could prove notably fatal to many given our ongoing proxy war with Russia in Syria. But it's abundantly clear the CIA wants the green light and is getting some resistance from the current administration, encouraging NBC to suggest that escalation could protect the sanctity of the November elections:

"The CIA's cyber operation is being prepared by a team within the CIA's Center for Cyber Intelligence, documents indicate. According to officials, the team has a staff of hundreds and a budget in the hundreds of millions, they say. The covert action plan is designed to protect the U.S. election system and insure that Russian hackers can't interfere with the November vote, officials say. Another goal is to send a message to Russia that it has crossed a line, officials say."

Again though, there is no "line," and any ethical or legal lines that do exist, we obliterated years ago. We've hacked nations aggressively for decades, and are now fanning our collective faces in indignation at the idea that anybody would dare hack us back. We've contributed to escalating cyber-security tensions by being among the most badly behaved nations on Earth, consistently using the resulting threat escalation to justify our ongoing war on encryption, bloated security contractor budgets, and domestic surveillance expansion. It's a vicious, expensive ouroboros of dysfunction.

We've tried escalation as the aggressor, and it consistently makes things collectively, internationally worse, and certainly doesn't stop us from being the targets of these kinds of attacks. That's why we've noted repeatedly that the smart play here is to focus on defense, instead of letting Putin (and our own security contractors and intelligence community) goad us into more idiotic behavior than ever before.

Filed Under: cia, cybersecurity, cyberwar, escalation, russia

Obama Promises 'Proportional' Response To Russian Hacking, Ignores That We Started The Fight

from the bogus-moral-high-ground dept

We've noted several times how launching cyberwar (or real war) on Russia over the recent spike in hack attacks is a notably idiotic idea. One, the United States effectively wrote the book on hacking other countries causing all manner of harm (hello, Stuxnet), making the narrative that we're somehow defending our honor from shady international operatives foundationally incorrect. And two, any hacker worth his or her salt either doesn't leave footprints advertising their presence, or may conduct false flag operations raising the risk of attacking the wrong party.

After significant pressure from intelligence industry saber rattlers and the cybersecurity firms that profit from cyber-hysteria, President Obama this week proudly proclaimed that the U.S. government would be launching a "proportional" response to Russia's recent slate of hacking attacks:

"We obviously will ensure that a U.S. response is proportional. It is unlikely that our response would be announced in advanced. It’s certainly possible that the president could choose response options that we never announce," Earnest told reporters aboard Air Force One. "The president has talked before about the significant capabilities that the U.S. government has to both defend our systems in the United States but also carry out offensive operations in other countries," he added. "There are a range of responses that are available to the president and he will consider a response that’s proportional."

Again though, the very idea that the United States would be "responding" is fundamentally incorrect. We've been engaged in nation state hacking and election fiddling for decades, happily hacking the planet for almost as long as the internet has existed. We use submarines as underwater hacking platforms, the U.S. government and its laundry list of contractors routinely hacking and fiddling with international elections and destroying reputations when and if it's convenient to our global business interests. Our behavior in 1970s South America giving tech support to Operation Condor is the dictionary definition of villainy.

Yet somehow, once countries began hacking us back, we responded with indignant and hypocritical pouting and hand-wringing. But the reality is we are not some unique, special snowflake on the moral high ground in this equation: we've historically been the bully, and nationalism all too often blinds us to this fact. Long a nation driven to war by the weakest of supporting evidence, hacking presents those in power with a wonderful, nebulous new enemy, useful in justifying awful legislation, increased domestic surveillance authority, and any other bad idea that can be shoe-horned into the "because... cybersecurity" narrative.

And as we're witnessing in great detail, hacking has played a starring role in this nightmarish election, with Donald Trump giving every indication he intends to only ramp up nation state hacking as a core tenet of his idiocracy, and Hillary Clinton lumping Russia, hackers, and WikiLeaks into one giant, amorphous and villainous amoeba to help distract us from what leaked information might actually say about the sorry state of the republic.

We're wandering into extremely dangerous territory here. As we saw with Stuxnet's impact on companies like Chevron, the United States' hacking behavior has had very real, negative repercussions for innocent third parties around the globe. Operating from the belief that we're somehow nobly defending ourselves is a falsehood the media consistently perpetuates, making this kind of dangerous digital saber rattling easier than ever for those in power. The U.S. press and public can no longer afford to be so viciously naive as 2016 stumbles drunkenly to its welcome conclusion and hacking becomes the bogeyman du jour for the next administration.

Filed Under: cybersecurity, escalation, hacking, obama, russia, white house

Media Bias And The Death Of Intellectual Honesty, Doubling Down

from the keep-digging dept

Yesterday we wrote about the bizarre story of Newsweek reporter Kurt Eichenwald completely overselling his story about Trump repeating some misinformation that was printed by a Russian news site. I won't replay the whole thing, but the short version: WikiLeaks released a cache of Clinton campaign boss John Podesta's emails. In them was an email from Clinton friend Sidney Blumenthal, with a link and text of an Eichenwald piece. Some people -- first on Twitter, apparently, and then in an article on the Russian site Sputnik News -- misrepresented the email in two ways. First, they took a single sentence of the long article out of context and second, they attributed that one sentence to Blumenthal instead of Eichenwald. Then, Donald Trump, at a rally, repeated the false claim that Blumenthal had said this. Again, there is a story here: Trump is willing to repeat false information from sketchy sources (whether Twitter or a Russian news organization). That's interesting (though, perhaps not a new revelation).

But Eichenwald massively oversold the piece, with a massive tweetstorm repeatedly suggesting that it proved a connection between Russia and the Trump campaign -- even falsely claiming that "only" the Russians and Trump had the same info, despite it being public on WikiLeaks. He also kept claiming that this showed the email was "manipulated." Except it wasn't. It was just misrepresented, perhaps on purpose, or perhaps just being oversold by those in search of a good story -- just like Eichenwald did. Eichenwald had also suggested that this proved WikiLeaks was connected to the Russians as well, though it appears he's since deleted those tweets. Eichenwald is not backing down on this story. In fact he's doubled down, with an "update" that only seems to again show himself overselling the story. First, he "updated" his post with claims from anonymous "intel sources" basically saying the Russians engage in disinformation, and quotes from a classified letter that was sent to the intelligence committees in Congress from the Director of National Intelligence.

“Moscow appears to use monetary support in combination with other tools of Russian statecraft, including propaganda in local media, direct lobbying by the Russian Government, economic pressure, and military intimidation,’’ the letter says. “Russian trolls and other cyber actors post comments on the Internet, maintain blogs, challenge ‘pro-Western’ journalists and media narratives, and spread pro-Russian information on social media.”

Because of its important role in the Russian effort, Sputnik does not simply publish whatever it chooses, the government official tells Newsweek. Articles pertaining to politics in the United States and Europe require high-level review. It is not clear if Russian authorities conduct that review, the official says, but no article directly related to American politics would just be sloppily thrown into public view without careful consideration. (The article in question disappeared from the website shortly after Newsweek attempted to contact Sputnik about it.)

Well, duh? Of course, Russia uses misinformation. But that doesn't mean anything with respect to what Eichenwald originally claimed about Trump and the Russians coordinating. Eichenwald continues:

“The process has begun and stage has been set for the introduction of false information,’’ the national security experts wrote. “Altering stolen documents and introducing them to the public is not the stuff of spy movies. It is a proven tactic of Russian intelligence, and we expect it will happen here.”

Other altered documents have already been the basis of articles on Sputnik, the government official with knowledge of the intelligence agencies’ inquiries tells Newsweek. However, the Blumenthal email appears to be the first manipulated record to be publicly identified.

Except that the Blumenthal email was not manipulated. It was just misrepresented -- this is a big difference -- just as Eichenwald is now misrepresenting what Sputnik did.

Eichenwald doubles down even further, arguing after a bunch of reporters pointed to a tweet that went out way before the Sputnik article, making the same claim (and which may have been the source for both the Sputnik article and the Trump statement), that this is fine because he's sure that the Tweet may be a Russian ploy too.

After Newsweek first published its article on Sputnik and the Blumenthal email, some reporters suggested that a tweet from an anonymous account may have been the source of the Russian article or Trump’s statement. An image attached to the tweet showed the sentences in question, but provided no indication that it came from an email. Based on the information from the government official with knowledge of the intelligence inquiries, Sputnik would never base a story it portrayed as the “October surprise” in the American election on a tweet with which it had no connection. The account in question is also quite unusual: It has put out an average of 285 tweets a day about American politics since it was created in February. (The account deleted the Blumenthal tweet on Monday.) The image from the tweet could have been anonymous propaganda by someone who searched through thousands of words to find sentences to attribute to Blumenthal. More troubling, it could have been distributed over social media as a step in the Russian effort to quote an altered email in Sputnik; that would match the tactics described by the government official who spoke to Newsweek.

Again, this is pure conjecture and not evidence. And a lot of it is based on what some random unnamed "government official" claimed. Yes, it's entirely possible that the Russians were behind the hack, the tweet and the Sputnik article. But merely saying so without proof is not good journalism. It's really bad journalism. Especially when Eichenwald keeps insisting that the email was "manipulated."

And, of course, Eichenwald went back to overselling his "update" too. I'm posting screenshots in case Eichenwald starts magically deleting tweets again: Again, there is a real story here: it's Trump falling for false information. It's entirely possible that Russia is pushing propaganda here. Or it's possible that Russians misread something and accidentally misrepresented it. Eichenwald can't say. But he pretends he's able to claim it on authority that it's happening, without providing any of the proof. And, on top of that, he's still insisting that the document was "manipulated." It was not. He's misrepresenting just as much as Sputnik misrepresented things.

And, I mean, given how quickly Eichenwald is willing to connect the dots to a big Russian propaganda campaign, it seems worth pointing out that his own publication, Newsweek, has similarly been accused of some sketchy connections via its ownership. But, of course, Eichenwald would insist that's totally unconnected to his reporting. Yet he refuses to give the same benefit of the doubt to others. Odd.

And here's the real problem with all of this: in misrepresenting the story and over-claiming what it's about, Eichenwald discredits the actual story. It's easy for people to dismiss the entire story because Eichenwald is overselling the Russian involvement here. He has no proof, and because of that, the thing he does have proof of -- that Trump stupidly relies on badly sourced information -- gets missed. He's so focused on "the Russian connection" that it kills what would otherwise be an interesting story.

But he can't let go. Meanwhile, other publications are pointing out that the claims that WikiLeaks is connected to the Russians is not actually supported by the evidence and other "intelligence sources" don't believe it's true. Now why should we believe those other sources more than Eichenwald's "sources"? We shouldn't. But at least the second one admits a lack of evidence. Eichenwald's takes a "this is how Russians have been known to act" and turns it into "proof" that they're "manipulating" info and getting it into Trump's hands.

Meanwhile, on his Twitter feed, Eichenwald has defaulted to two separate defenses: first, the old "just asking questions" defense, and second (falsely) denying that he ever was concerned about WikiLeaks, despite the now deleted tweets that we show above. Separately, he's also angrily threatening to "wreck" and "destroy" the lives of people he claims are "going after" his wife and kids (and he's right that if people are doing that, that's despicable and uncalled for -- though his discussions about how he "wrecks people lives for fun" and lawsuit threats are pretty ridiculous). Again, there's a marginally interesting story in here, but it's not about Russian disinformation -- at least without more actual proof. You'd think that an accomplished reporter like Eichenwald would get that. But he seems too invested in the story to recognize that it doesn't hold up, and his overselling of it actually undermines the stuff that's actually interesting.

Filed Under: donald trump, intellectual honesty, kurt eichenwald, media bias, overselling, russia
Companies: newsweek

Media, Politics & The Death Of Intellectual Honesty

from the what-just-happened dept

Yeah, so I get that it's political silly season, and people like to throw around all kinds of arguments of "bias" -- especially towards the media. I've been on the receiving end of those accusations, but for the most part, I think claims of media bias are silly and over-hyped. What's true, though, is that it's all too easy to be sloppy in reporting and to try to hype up a nothing story into a something story. Here's a story where no one comes out of it looking very good and the end result is a complete mess. It starts with Newsweek reporter Kurt Eichenwald. Last night I saw a marginally interesting story by Eichenwald about how a Russian government connected news website, Sputnik, misread an email leaked via Wikileaks from Hillary Clinton pal Sidney Blumenthal to campaign chief John Podesta. The email contained a link and full text to a much earlier Eichnwald story about Benghazi and Clinton. The Sputnik story incorrectly stated that the text in the email was by Blumenthal, and not by Eichenwald. It took one sentence out of this longer article, and falsely claimed that Blumenthal was admitting that the mess in Benghazi was "preventable." As Eichenwald notes, this is wrong:

Those words sounded really, really familiar. Really familiar. Like, so familiar they struck me as something I wrote. Because they were something I wrote.

The Russians were quoting two sentences from a 10,000-word piece I wrote for Newsweek, which Blumenthal had emailed to Podesta. There was no mistaking that Blumenthal was citing Newsweek—the magazine’s name and citations for photographs appeared throughout the attached article.

Okay. So that's actually kind of interesting. This Russian source was so eager to get a story out of the leaked emails that it misrepresented them -- either by accident or on purpose. That's marginally interesting, and certainly a fun thing to report on. What happened next is where things really go off the rails. While Sputnik pulled down its story once Eichenwald pointed out the error, a few hours later, Donald Trump mentioned the story at a rally as if it were true:

At a rally in Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania, Trump spoke while holding a document in his hand. He told the assembled crowd that it was an email from Blumenthal, whom he called “sleazy Sidney.”

“This just came out a little while ago,’’ Trump said. “I have to tell you this.” And then he read the words from my article.  

“He’s now admitting they could have done something about Benghazi,’’ Trump said, dropping the document to the floor. “This just came out a little while ago.”

Okay. So we've still got a story here, and the story is this: holy shit, Donald Trump is willing to take very, very unreliable sources and broadcast them as fact. But that's not the story that Eichenwald started pushing. He went on something of a Twitter rampage making a bunch of claims that were not supported at all by the story, claiming variably that (1) the leaked emails were doctored (2) that Wikileaks was responsible for this (3) that the Russians and Wikileaks are in cahoots and (4) that Trump and the Russians are in cahoots. Now, any of these might actually be true. But none of them are actually supported by any actual evidence. Eichenwald just makes the logical leaps from what's written above, assuming that only the Russians could have given Trump that news -- ignoring that the story on Sputnik was getting passed around on social media (again: real story: Trump relies on unreliable sources for news). Here are just a few of Eichenwald's many, many tweets promoting his own article (and note how most have tons of retweets): Note that he insists that the only way Trump could have gotten this is from the Russians. But that's clearly not true. The Sputnik story was up and lots of people saw it, and it was discussed on Twitter and elsewhere. It makes perfect sense that someone who saw it either works for the Trump campaign or knew someone there and sent it over. Again: that's the real story: Trump relies on sketchy sources found online.

This morning lots of people were pointing out the problems with Eichenwald's exaggerations about his story, including the Washington Post, NY Magazine and Glenn Greenwald at the Intercept. Greenwald's account highlights that many Hillary Clinton supporters keep saying that the Podesta leaks include faked emails, but no one has pointed out a single one.

Eichenwald, for his part, keeps insisting that the original Sputnik report involved a "manipulated" email, which implies that the email was faked or doctored. This is flat out wrong. The email was misrepresented. It's entirely possible that it was misrepresented on purpose to make Clinton look bad. But misrepresented is different than doctored. Here, let me prove it to you: Eichenwald misrepresented who could have possibly seen the Sputnik piece. He did not doctor that information.

I don't think -- as some are claiming -- that this is evidence of "media bias" on Eichenwald's part. I honestly think that he's guilty of the same thing that probably happened with Sputnik. He saw what seemed to be a really great story, and oversold it. Sputnik did the same. Both look bad.

And, honestly, almost everyone comes out of this looking bad. Eichenwald and Newsweek oversold a story. Various Clinton supporters look bad for buying the claims in the story without reading them or checking them carefully. Trump, of course, looks bad for relying on a Russian government site for unreliable news. And, basically, everyone looks at this story and sees from it what they want. Trump supporters can see more examples of media bias. Clinton supporters believe there's more support for the idea that Russia is supporting Trump. Wikileaks haters get more ammo claiming that the site is working with the Russians and/or that it's releasing fake emails (though it does not appear to be doing so). Again: many of these things may actually be true, but this story only supports the single claim of Trump relying on bad info.

But this is the state of things today. 2016 can't end fast enough. Hopefully 2017 is better.

Filed Under: benghazi, donald trump, hillary clinton, john podesta, kurt eichenwald, media bias, misrepresentation, politics, russia, sidney blumenthal
Companies: wikileaks

US Gov't Officially Accuses Russia Of Hacking... Question Is What Happens Next

from the this-is-unlikely-to-end-well dept

It's been quite a crazy Friday, and in the midst of it all, the US government finally came out with an official accusation that Russia is behind various hack attacks concerning the US election:

The U.S. Intelligence Community (USIC) is confident that the Russian Government directed the recent compromises of e-mails from US persons and institutions, including from US political organizations. The recent disclosures of alleged hacked e-mails on sites like DCLeaks.com and WikiLeaks and by the Guccifer 2.0 online persona are consistent with the methods and motivations of Russian-directed efforts. These thefts and disclosures are intended to interfere with the US election process. Such activity is not new to Moscow—the Russians have used similar tactics and techniques across Europe and Eurasia, for example, to influence public opinion there. We believe, based on the scope and sensitivity of these efforts, that only Russia's senior-most officials could have authorized these activities.

The same report says that they don't (yet) have enough information to also accuse Russia of the recent hacks on state election computers:

Some states have also recently seen scanning and probing of their election-related systems, which in most cases originated from servers operated by a Russian company. However, we are not now in a position to attribute this activity to the Russian Government.

But they also stick with the party line that actually hacking the election would be difficult:

The USIC and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) assess that it would be extremely difficult for someone, including a nation-state actor, to alter actual ballot counts or election results by cyber attack or intrusion. This assessment is based on the decentralized nature of our election system in this country and the number of protections state and local election officials have in place. States ensure that voting machines are not connected to the Internet, and there are numerous checks and balances as well as extensive oversight at multiple levels built into our election process.

Of course, people have been pointing the finger at Russia over these hacks for a while, and according to various reports there's been widespread debate within the Obama administration about making a public accusation. There are two main issues here:

1. Attribution for computer attacks is really really difficult. No one knows for sure, and there are ways to spoof where attacks come from. There does appear to be quite a lot of evidence pointing back at Russia for these hacks, so it does seem like a safe bet. But that doesn't mean it's definitely them. It would be nice if people gave actual confidence values when they make statements like these, but no one in politics ever does that these days.
2. The much bigger question is what comes next. There are political benefits and costs to naming Russia. But the big thing here is that by naming Russia, it gives the US government more leeway to do something in response. And, as we warned many months ago, this is a horrifically bad idea. It will only escalate matters and make things worse overall.

As I noted just the other day, cybersecurity should be a defensive game. Going offensive is really, really dangerous, because things will get worse, and we really don't know what the capabilities of the other side(s) truly are. Focus on protecting critical infrastructure, not on some meaingless symbolic strike back.

But, of course, in this day and age, people seem to feel that every action requires some sort of reaction, and in a computer security realm, that's just stupid. But it seems to be where we're inevitably heading. The cybersecurity firms will get wonderfully rich off of this. But almost everyone will be less safe as a result.

Filed Under: cybersecurity, cyberwar, dhs, hacking, nsa, russia

Not Content With Silencing Human Critics, Russia Has Now Arrested A Robot

from the beep-boop-boop dept

You might be forgiven if you were under the impression that the Russian government is a bit behind the times when it comes to modern technology and its never ending desire to stifle every last bit of dissent possible. Between the bouts its had with internet censorship and some strange claims about how binge-watching streaming services are a form of United States mind-control, it would be quite easy to be left with the notion that this is all for comedy. Alas, blunders and conspiracy theories aside, much of this technological blundering is mere cover for the very real iron grip the Russians place upon free speech, with all manner of examples in technology used as excuses to silence its critics.

And now it's no longer just human beings that need fear the Russian government, it seems. Just this past week, a robot was arrested at a political rally. And, yes, I really do mean a robot, and, yes, I really do mean arrested.

A robot has been detained by police at a political rally in Moscow, with authorities attempting to handcuff the machine. The rally was for Valery Kalachev, a candidate for the Russian Parliament, who had rented the robot for his campaign.

Police have not confirmed why they detained the machine named Promobot, but local media was reporting the company behind the robot said police were called because it was "recording voters' opinions on [a] variety of topics for further processing and analysis by the candidate's team".

In other words, it sounds like the robot was acting as something of an automated pollster at a political rally. Given how much pollster data is fed directly into computers and machines upon its gathering, a robotic pollster is probably something of a natural next step. But not if the Russian government has its way, apparently. Yes, the same government that is busy happily hacking into all the things outside its country is busy keeping a robot from doing a menial task within it.

Based on my quick research, I'm not absolutely certain that this is the first formal arrest of a robot in history, but I can't seem to find any others. In which case it seems perfectly on point for that historic moment to be achieved by the Russian government and the fact that they tried to slap handcuffs on iRobot is absolutely perfect. Free Promobot!

Filed Under: protests, robot, russia

Pressure Mounts to Punish Russia For Hacking Without Evidence And Before Investigations Are Concluded

from the evidence-is-for-sissies dept

While it's certainly possible Russia has been busy using hackers to meddle in (or at least stoke the idiot pyres burning beneath) the U.S. elections, we've noted how actual evidence of this is hard to come by. At the moment, most of this evidence consists of either comments by anonymous government officials, or murky proclamations from security firms that have everything to gain financially from stoking cybersecurity tensions. Of course, transparent evidence is hard to come by when talking about hackers capable of false flag operations while obfuscating their footprints completely.

Granted that hasn't stopped people from demanding a cyber or real world attack on Russia, both idiotic ideas for what should be obvious reasons. But with no hard evidence forthcoming, those looking for perceived justice are apparently getting a little punchy. The Washington Post notes that the government continues to conduct an investigation into the DNC hacks, but the whole "obtaining actual evidence before doing anything stupid" thing is clearly frustrating the 1980's action movie sect of the intelligence community:

"The White House’s and some Cabinet officials’ insistence on awaiting the probe’s results has frustrated some officials at the FBI, the Justice Department and within the intelligence community, who favor holding Moscow accountable. The White House’s continued requests for more evidence, said one official, is “to delay — purposely delay” a public attribution."

Again, it's not like you're going to find a goddamned memo linking Russia to the DNC hacks, and any hacker worth his or her salt isn't going to leave evidence of the hack or their ties to a nation state. There's also the ongoing reality that the leading country when it comes to nation state hacking has generally been the United States, making any vocal moral repudiation kind of laughable. Still, that doesn't seem to be stopping folks like Senator Ben Sasse, who insists that we should just skip the whole actual evidence thing and proceed to lambasting Russia for doing what the United States has done for decades:

"Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.), a member of the Homeland Security committee, said President Obama should publicly name Russia and do so before the November election. A failure to do so will only encourage further cyber intrusions and meddling in the U.S. election, he said.

“If the Obama administration has a reason for not clearly attributing these hacks to Russia, it contradicts their own cyber strategy,” Sasse said. “If they’re silent because it would invite response, that suggests that we’re operating from a position of weakness — in other words, we know that we need to aggressively deter cyberattacks, but we are too vulnerable to do it. Neither scenario is reassuring."

But again, what good is publicly shaming Russia for hacking when you've spent decades doing the same thing -- or worse? The only net outcome is you wind up looking like a giant, blithering hypocrite to the global community. The entire article stumbles on like this, quoting various officials on and off the record demanding we do everything from impose sanctions to start leaking Putin's dirty laundry:

"The National Security Agency, for instance, could disrupt a Russian computer system in a way that leaves no doubt who did it and that warns the Russians “to knock it off,” one former intelligence official said. Or the CIA could leak documents that are embarrassing in some way to Russian President Vladi­mir Putin."

Attack! Attack! Who needs evidence? Who needs the moral high ground? Generally, the press-driven public dialogue on cybersecurity and intelligence is so far from what's actually happening in the wild (as intelligence whistleblowers illustrate every few years) that one really should treat press reports on the subject as creative fiction. Combine that with the way nationalism leads to hypocrisy and the fact that most of these "former intelligence officials" don't even know what a gigabyte is, and you've got a recipe for keystone-cops-esque high comedy.

Again, none of this is to suggest that Russia isn't hacking the United States. But to ignore that all nation states are hacking each other all the time is myopic, and suggesting the DNC attack constitutes some rare breach of international ethics is hysterically naive given what we know about the States' own hacking attacks. The real danger here remains the threat of false flag hacking attacks and misinformation campaigns designed to prompt countries to dramatic action without substantive proof. The smarter path is to focus this energy on securing, upgrading and patching government systems to protect against intrusion, even though that's certainly a lot less fun than starting a new world war just because you think hard evidence is for sissies.

Filed Under: cybersecurity, dod, doj, hacking, politics, response, russia, us government

Pokemon Go The Latest Tool For Russian Government To Silence Speakers It Doesn't Like

from the putin-me-on dept

On the list of countries I've always wanted to visit but would be somewhat scared if I did, Russia is probably near the top. While there are certainly more dangerous parts of the world for any variety of reasons, I've found that the thing that gets me in the most trouble is my big mouth -- and the Russian government has made a habit of coming down on any kind of speech it doesn't like with a hand heavier than a Russian bear. This government uses its own laws in perverse ways to accomplish this, notably its laws that make it illegal to offend others on religious grounds, as seen chiefly in its treatment of punk band Pussy Riot.

This use of religious protectionism has proceeded to the present. The Russian government recently announced that it was locking up a noted atheist blogger for two months. His crime? Playing Pokemon Go in a church.

On Saturday, Russian officials announced that atheist vlogger Ruslan Sokolovsky has been detained for two months for “inciting hatred” and “insulting religious feelings” after posting a video of himself playing Pokémon Go inside a historic cathedral. He reportedly faces up to five years in jail if convicted.

Now, the sensible amongst you are surely wondering how simply playing a mobile game in a church rises to the level of inciting hatred or insulting religious feelings. It doesn't, generally, and even those benefiting from the actions of the Russian government admit as much in their forward justification of the Russian government's heavy-handed action.

According to Meduza, police began investigating Sokolovsky soon after, finally detaining the 22-year-old vlogger this weekend. In a statement, Russian Orthodox Church spokesman Vladimir Legoyda claimed it was the provocative nature of Sokolovsky’s video—and not playing the game itself—that led to his arrest.

“It is clear that Mr. Sokolovsky was not a casual passerby, who in a fit of gaming passion went into the temple, but rather a well-known young blogger in the city, who works in the style of Charlie Hebdo,” wrote Vladimir Legoyda on Facebook.

In other words, it wasn't the game that made Sokolovsky a target; it was who he was and what he's said. Not content to keep its religious citizenry from having to endure direct confrontational speech, instead the government has decided that indirect speech that it doesn't like, in this case posted on social media, is fair game under the law as well. And, while Sokolovsky knowingly flouted the law as a protest, that should be terrifying to anyone who holds free speech as an ideal, because now this government is suggesting that it can jail people for speech it decides is offensive, even when the speech wasn't directed at the supposedly offended.

And that's an open license for a government to simply lock up anyone it wants. While we rightly point out when western governments get questions of free speech incorrect, and they do, it's helpful to remember there are places where it's much, much worse.

Filed Under: censorship, free speech, pokemon go, russia

Russia's Hackathon Continues, Targeting The New York Times And Other News Agencies

from the all-up-in-the...-everything dept

If this keeps up, the list of entities not hacked by Russian intelligence will be shorter than the list of those who have. [Caution: autoplay annoyance ahead.]

Hackers thought to be working for Russian intelligence have carried out a series of cyber breaches targeting reporters at the New York Times and other US news organizations, according to US officials briefed on the matter.

The New York Times has brought in investigators to "assess the damage." If anything truly damaging was obtained during the hack, there's a good chance we'll all get a chance to see it. While national security investigators are theorizing that the Russian hackers' targeting of non-government organizations is designed to give them a look at the government's inner workings without actually having to breach a government server, there's also the possibility that this hacking is more aligned with the focus of the Democratic National Committee hack: to find something potentially embarrassing and publish it for the world to see.

According to the CNN article, Clinton's campaign believes the DNC hack was politically-motivated. Hardly unsurprising, considering most Russian hacking attempts are propelled by politics. The claim that Russia wants Trump to win the election isn't an entirely outlandish theory. If so, the hacking of news agencies may be similarly motivated. The press hasn't been shy about pointing out Trump's lies and bad behavior, so it could be hackers are seeking communications pointing to an anti-Trump conspiracy.

It's likely they'll find evidence that fits this description, but it's hardly a conspiracy, no matter how theorists choose to spin it. Donald Trump is an exceptional presidential candidate -- and not in the most favorable definition of that term. While most candidates would at least pay lip service to presenting a unified front, Trump has been intentionally divisive, setting up "us vs. them" narratives that go beyond simple Republican vs. Democrat terms and deep into the party he supposedly represents.

Beyond the alleged backing of Trump, there's more to be gained than simply pointing out the media's transparent disdain for the Republican candidate. There are also leaked -- but unreleased -- documents stored on agencies' servers.

News organizations are considered top targets because they can yield valuable intelligence on reporter contacts in the government, as well as communications and unpublished works with sensitive information, US government officials believe.

It could very well be that the Russian government is seeking to provoke a cyberwar, utilizing hackers to fire its opening salvos. There's also money to be made -- on both sides -- from a variety of cybersecurity firms who will do all they can to turn high-profile hacking into a multi-decade cyber-Cold War that will provide them with plenty of lucrative contracts. So, instead of seeing these attacks as a very normal state of affairs, hyperbolic theorizing will take precedence over more measured responses.

Filed Under: hacking, journalism, russia
Companies: ny times

'Wish I Had The Power' To Hack Enemies' Emails, Says Man Very Close To Having Such Power

from the maybe-time-to-pull-back-nsa-powers dept

This weird presidential election continues to get weirder. Donald Trump, perhaps upset about being overshadowed this week by the Democratic Convention, held a press conference on Wednesday morning where he said a whole bunch of completely nutty stuff. A lot of the attention is being placed on his weird possibly half-joking request that Russia hack into Hillary Clinton's emails and reveal the 33,000 that were deleted (or maybe just give them to the FBI, as he later said in a tweet). That was bizarre on a number of levels, including coming right after denying he had any connection to Russia and the possibility that they had hacked the Democratic National Committee's computer system.

But it was his follow up comment that should be a hell of a lot more terrifying. He claimed that he "wished" he had the power to hack her emails:

"Honestly, I wish I had that power," Trump responded. "I’d love to have that power."

Now, again, there's an argument that this comment was sarcastic in the same manner as the "please, Russia" comment that everyone's been focusing on.

But here's the thing: in just a few months he very well might have that power. The NSA certainly has the ability to hack into just about anyone's emails should they want to. And no matter what we feel about whether or not the NSA has or is currently abusing that power, at the very least the level of abuses aren't nearly as bad as they could be in the hands of someone who just doesn't seem to give a fuck about the Constitution or the law.

As we noted a few months ago, surveillance powers should be designed as if the person you least trust in the world had control over the systems. Whether -- to you -- that's Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton or someone else entirely doesn't really matter. It's a pretty clear reason that we should be massively curtailing the surveillance powers granted by the US government to both the intelligence community and the law enforcement community.

Here we have the nominated presidential candidate joking that he'd make use of the power -- which he'd have -- to hack into the communications of political enemies. And while some will argue this is yet another on the long checklist of reasons why Trump is not fit for the job, it's even more a condemnation of our surveillance powers today. Whatever people think of the candidates, it seems like the one thing we should agree on is vastly limiting the surveillance powers.

Filed Under: donald trump, emails, hacking, hillary clinton, nsa, power, russia, surveillance