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To date, the only public evidence that the Russian government was responsible for hacks of the DNC and key Democratic figures has been circumstantial and far short of conclusive, courtesy of private research firms with a financial stake in such claims. Multiple federal agencies now claim certainty about the Kremlin connection, but they have yet to make public the basis for their beliefs.
Now, a never-before-published top-secret document provided by whistleblower Edward Snowden suggests the NSA has a way of collecting evidence of Russian hacks, because the agency tracked a similar hack before in the case of a prominent Russian journalist, who was also a U.S. citizen.
[...] NSA whistleblowers have so far given the best idea of what the NSA's signals intelligence on Russia, today or in 2005, could look like. Earlier this year, Snowden tweeted that if the Russian government was indeed behind the hacking of the Democrats, the NSA most likely has the goods, noting that XKEYSCORE, a sort of global SIGINT search engine, "makes following exfiltrated data easy. I did this personally against Chinese ops." Snowden went so far as to say that nailing down this sort of SIGINT hacker attribution "is the only case in which mass surveillance has actually proven effective."
(Score: 2) by jelizondo on Saturday December 31 2016, @07:38PM
I suspect that there are things going on deep inside the government apparatus, things we will never learn. (Or in the best case, they will be made public after we are dead.)
According to the news [vice.com], Podesta was hacked back in March 2016 and a report [secureworks.com] about it was published in June, 2016. Why the hell wait until after the elections to impose sanctions?
Once Wikileaks started releasing the emails in October, 2016 I would understand that some might be cautious about disrupting the election but back in June or March, it could have been done with enough time to repair any damage to the electoral process.
Now Snowden (God bless him) comes out saying the agencies have a way of following exfiltrated data but the report linked previously, clearly states that the hackers were careless and left some active accounts which were used to track them. What gives? Did the CIA use some secret process to identify them or were they simply careless and were easily identified?
Perhaps they were careless on purpose?
(Score: 3, Funny) by Ethanol-fueled on Saturday December 31 2016, @07:54PM
One of my favorite theories is that there is an internal power-struggle in progress and that Snowden was a CIA op to discredit and put public pressure on the NSA (I came up with this theory before obscure LARPer High Level Insider revealed it in the asshole of the internet, although I do not recall if I posted it beforehand.)
Anyway, the reason why I believe this is because what happened with Petraeus smelled funny. Two silly bitches get in a tiff involving fucking nothing and then one just runs to the FBI for something that, on the surface, would be a waste of time even for common beat-cops. The FBI then says, "Okay, since a random woman in a petty jealousy spat ran to us claiming internet harassment, which is a most heinous crime which never ever occurs, we're just gonna go through all their e-mails for the fuck of it."
Then Petraeus was magically removed from the CIA and slapped on the wrist for providing classified info to his creepy-looking mistress who is probably a spy. And if you saw Petraeus' wife, you'd totally understand why he's a cheater.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 31 2016, @08:06PM
Your journal?
(Score: 4, Funny) by takyon on Saturday December 31 2016, @09:16PM
I like your theory and I modded up.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 31 2016, @07:58PM
> Why the hell wait until after the elections to impose sanctions?
Have you seen how the tweeter in chief has reacted to the entire issue?
He's made it all about him. So much so that you'd be forgiven for thinking that maybe there was some kind of collusion going on there and he's insecure about it being found out. Its bizarre.
If Obama had followed through before the election, Trump would have used it as 'proof' that Obama was meddling in the election to help Clinton. So he made the rational decision of holding back on it until after the election - if Clinton won the sanctions would have been completely uncontroversial. Since trump won he's throwing a tantrum anyway, so at worst same result as taking action before the election.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 31 2016, @08:02PM
Presumably because the DNC hack had nothing whatsoever to do with Russia, neither is their any evidence of election tampering. These sanctions [twimg.com] came only after Russia defeated US backed terrorist organisations in Syria.