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Congressional Leaders Were Briefed a Year Ago on Hacking of Democrats
Reuters is reporting that US intelligence officials were aware a year ago that Russian efforts were being made to attack the Democratic Party. Moreover, they informed top congressional leaders who were prevented from telling the targets about the attack because the information was so secret.
From the article:
The disclosure of the Top Secret information would have revealed that U.S. intelligence agencies were continuing to monitor the hacking, as well as the sensitive intelligence sources and the methods they were using to do it.
The material was marked with additional restrictions and assigned a unique codeword, limiting access to a small number of officials who needed to know that U.S. spy agencies had concluded that two Russian intelligence agencies or their proxies were targeting the Democratic National Committee, the central organizing body of the Democratic Party.
The National Security Agency and other intelligence agencies sometimes delay informing targets of foreign intelligence activities under similar circumstances, officials have said.
The alleged hacking of the Democrats and the Russian connection did not become public until late last month when the FBI said it was investigating a cyber attack at the DNC. The DNC did not respond to a request for comment for this story.
Hacker Releases Personal Data of Around 200 Congressional Democrats
There has been another leak of U.S. Democratic Party data, this time including the personal phone numbers and email addresses of House Democrats. Memos and opposition research were also included:
The hacker known as Guccifer 2.0 dumped the personal contact info of House Democrats on his website Friday, part of the latest batch of documents from a widespread breach of Democratic groups.
The document was obtained from the cyberattack on the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC). The hacker also published DCCC shared passwords to several online databases and news networks.
The release has been listed at https://cryptome.org/.
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 14 2016, @02:35PM
Former NSA analyst John Schindler [observer.com] has been attacking Trump relentlessly in the New York Observer (a weekly) over his pro-Putin tendencies, and for having several top aides with Russian ties.
From an op-ed published yesterday [observer.com]:
The news keeps getting worse. Alarming evidence of how deep the Kremlin’s got its tentacles in Washington mounts by the day. Large-scale hacking by Russian cyber-warriors didn’t just hit the Democratic National Committee, it stole emails from a wide array of top power-players, including the Supreme Allied Commander Europe, NATO’s military boss.
...
Make no mistake about what Moscow’s up to here. This is a brazen effort to intimidate American elected officials, showing the Kremlin’s secret power over our country’s politics. In the Cold War we called this subversion, meaning trying to undermine our political system, and what Putin’s doing right now is nothing less than a direct, albeit covert, attack on our democracy.
...
The central role of the Donald Trump presidential campaign must be acknowledged here. As I’ve explained in column after column, the GOP nominee has surrounded himself with advisors who possess troubling ties to Moscow, some of whom are on the Kremlin payroll. It’s therefore no surprise that Trump is now mouthing crude Russian propaganda on the campaign trail, including his outrageous smear of President Obama as the “founder” of the Islamic State, which has been a staple of Russian Active Measures for a couple years now.
...
Like clockwork, Roger Stone pointed a finger at the Clintons in Seth Rich’s unsolved murder. Stone has blamed the Clinton machine for countless crimes, including homicide, so this was nothing new. Except that this particular Active Measure is coordinated with Kremlin fronts like Wikileaks for political effect—to hurt the Democrats to Moscow’s benefit.
Clinton is not spared from Schindler's tongue-lashing:
To say nothing of her awful security lapses in EmailGate, which have rendered the country and her campaign vulnerable to espionage and blackmail. There’s every reason to believe that the Kremlin has her emails from her time as secretary of state, even the 30,000 deleted ones, while NSA experts I know think many of the subsequent hacks of the DNC can be traced back to Hillary’s slipshod computer security during Obama’s first term. Putin now possesses a vast trove of compromising materials, what the Russians term kompromat, on Hillary and her party thanks to her inattention to basic security.
Another tough piece from Shindler on Trump and Putinhere. [observer.com].
The funny thing is that Trump's son-in-law (Ivanka's husband Jared Kushner) is now the publisher of the Observer, as the disclaimer notes at the bottom of the article.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by takyon on Sunday August 14 2016, @02:47PM
Putin has won the US election.
Because as we all know, Trump has a huuuuuuuuge lead in the polls:
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2016/president/us/general_election_trump_vs_clinton-5491.html [realclearpolitics.com]
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2016/president/fl/florida_trump_vs_clinton-5635.html [realclearpolitics.com]
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2016/president/oh/ohio_trump_vs_clinton-5634.html [realclearpolitics.com]
(feel free to link a better site, I don't track em every day)
Sure, even if Clinton wins, Putin has a nice trove of material to work with, but I doubt it will do as much as having the guy who wants to respect Russia's sphere of influence as President.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 14 2016, @02:59PM
Polls and county-by-county historical analysis are of limited value when someone like Trump is running. Brexit was an example of what could happen.
Hillary might be better off if Trump actually comes out ahead in some polls a week before the election, then people will think about what a Trump Presidency would bring.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 14 2016, @03:18PM
> There’s every reason to believe that the Kremlin has her emails from her time as secretary of state,
And whether she used a private server or a government one makes no difference. What's more valuable than the email of the Secretary of State? The email of the entire State Department. [reuters.com]
Any high-value system on the internet is compromised because the economics are just so lop-sided that a consistent defense is effectively impossible. The only question is how long have hackers been in the system without being detected?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 14 2016, @10:25PM
I'm not voting for her, but just to be a devil's advocate, I'm not so sure about that. Is Clinton's email, which contained classified information, really worth less than all the unclassified emails in the entire State Department?