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posted by Fnord666 on Saturday December 31 2016, @07:13PM   Printer-friendly
from the who-knew-what-when dept.

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."

https://theintercept.com/2016/12/29/top-secret-snowden-document-reveals-what-the-nsa-knew-about-previous-russian-hacking/


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  • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 01 2017, @01:10AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 01 2017, @01:10AM (#448002)

    > How many times does Julian Assange have to say it was an inside leak?

    Since he's never said that, how is that relevant?

    No, seriously. He's never said it was an insider. All he's said is that wikileaks did not receive it from the russian government.
    Which, duh, of course not. They'd be dumbasses not to use a cut-out.
    Guccifer 2.0 publiclly claimed to have sent the info to wikileaks before wikileaks published it.
    And Guccifer 2.0 is pretty clearly russian trying to fake being romanian. But even if Guccifer 2.0 is romanian, there aren't many romanian DNC insiders.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 01 2017, @01:32AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 01 2017, @01:32AM (#448008)

    Well, unless there's solid evidence that it was Russia or any other specific country or entity, I lack a belief that it was. It also doesn't even matter; the content that was leaked is more important.

    • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 01 2017, @02:42AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 01 2017, @02:42AM (#448020)

      > Well, unless there's solid evidence that it was Russia or any other specific country or entity, I lack a belief that it was.

      Fortunately the definition of "solid evidence" is so completely fluid that it can be adjusted to dismiss any actual evidence. Kinda like the way all those geeks rationalized Hans Reiser's innocence.
      Even when a senior russian insider admits to russia's complicity, [ibtimes.co.uk] that's still not solid enough, amirite? ofcourseiam!

      > the content that was leaked is more important.

      Yeah releasing oppo-research and campaign strategies was pretty damn important.

  • (Score: 2) by jmorris on Sunday January 01 2017, @06:44PM

    by jmorris (4844) on Sunday January 01 2017, @06:44PM (#448204)

    Well this is what he did say, what do you think he means:

    --- Begin Transcript ---
    Hannity: I know you follow the news closely, I know you see the narrative, now, there is a big brouhaha in the United States, the same media by the way, that Wikileaks exposed as colluding with Hillary Clinton's campaign. With near hysteria getting up to the president and John Podesta with Hillary's campaign, claiming over and over and over again, that it's clear, the CIA says so, even though there's no new evidence whatsoever that we didn't have prior to the election, and that the FBI contradicts, and James Clapper, the National Director of Intelligence contradicts. That in fact the Russian's tried to influence the elections and this hacked information came from them. And you're saying that is outright false. That's a falsehood.

    Assange: Our source is not the Russian government.

    Hannity: So in other words, let me be clear, Russia did not give you the Podesta documents or anything from the DNC?

    Assange: That's correct.

    Hannity: Can you confirm whether or not you have information involving hacked info from the RNC?

    Assange: We received about 3 pages of information to do with the RNC and Trump, but it was already public somewhere else.

    Hannity: Okay so in other words it was nothing significant, there was nothing comparable to what happened, so what Reince Priebus said on NBC to Chuck Todd this weekend was true and NBC had it wrong.

    Assange: Well as far as we're aware of.

    Hannity: As far as you're aware of.

    Assange: Yea.

    ..... [snippage]

    Hannity: So, you can't confirm or deny if this information came from within the United States?

    Assange: We're unhappy that we felt we needed to even say that it wasn't a state party, normally we say nothing at all, but we have a conflict of interest. We have an excellent reputation and strong interest in protecting our sources, and so never saying anything about them, never ruling anyone in or anyone out, we sometimes do it, we don't like to do it, we have another interest which is maximizing the impact of our publications. Uh, and...

    (interrupted) Hannity: Could you. Let me ask you this then.

    Assange: And so here, here in order to prevent a distraction attack against our publications, we've had to come out and say 'No, it's not a State party, stop trying to distract in that way, pay attention to the content of the publication'.

    Hannity: So in other words, when you say State party, it wasn't another State like Russia or some other country.

    Assange: Correct.
    --- End Transcript ---

    Combine with the statement of Craig Murray who says, on the record, he took possession of the leaked (not hacked) emails in Washington DC, the cold dead body of Seth Rich and Assange bringing attention to the murder and offering a reward for information and it doesn't take a rocket surgeon to figure out what Wikileaks is trying to say without saying.