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posted by martyb on Tuesday August 15 2017, @05:43PM   Printer-friendly
from the who-you-gonna-believe? dept.

We had two submissions on reports that maybe the Russians were not behind the hack of the DNC (Democratic National Committee):

Evidence that Undermines the "Election Hack" Narrative Should get More Attention

Bloomberg reports:

The Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) have been investigating the now conventional wisdom that last year's leaks of Democratic National Committee files were the result of Russian hacks. What they found instead is evidence to the contrary.

[...] The VIPS theory relies on forensic findings by independent researchers who go by the pseudonyms "Forensicator" and "Adam Carter." The former found that 1,976 MB of Guccifer's files were copied from a DNC server on July 5 in just 87 seconds, implying a transfer rate of 22.6 megabytes per second -- or, converted to a measure most people use, about 180 megabits per second, a speed not commonly available from U.S. internet providers. Downloading such files this quickly over the internet, especially over a VPN (most hackers would use one), would have been all but impossible because the network infrastructure through which the traffic would have to pass would further slow the traffic. However, as Forensicator has pointed out, the files could have been copied to a thumb drive -- something only an insider could have done -- at about that speed.

Adam Carter, the pseudonym for the other analyst, showed that the content of the Guccifer files was at some point cut and pasted into Microsoft Word templates that used the Russian language. Carter laid out all the available evidence and his answers to numerous critics in a long post earlier this month.

A New Report Raises Big Questions About Last Year's DNC Hack

The Nation reports:

Former NSA experts say it wasn't a hack at all, but a leak—an inside job by someone with access to the DNC's system.

[...] On the evening of July 5, 2016, 1,976 megabytes of data were downloaded from the DNC's server. The operation took 87 seconds. This yields a transfer rate of 22.7 megabytes per second. These statistics are matters of record and essential to disproving the hack theory. No Internet service provider, such as a hacker would have had to use in mid-2016, was capable of downloading data at this speed.

[...] "A speed of 22.7 megabytes [per second] is simply unobtainable, especially if we are talking about a transoceanic data transfer," Folden said. "Based on the data we now have, what we've been calling a hack is impossible." Last week Forensicator reported on a speed test he conducted more recently. It tightens the case considerably. "Transfer rates of 23 MB/s (Mega Bytes per second) are not just highly unlikely, but effectively impossible to accomplish when communicating over the Internet at any significant distance," he wrote. "Further, local copy speeds are measured, demonstrating that 23 MB/s is a typical transfer rate when using a USB–2 flash device (thumb drive)."

[...] "It's clear," another forensics investigator wrote, "that metadata was deliberately altered and documents were deliberately pasted into a Russianified [W]ord document with Russian language settings and style headings."

[...] By any balanced reckoning, the official case purporting to assign a systematic hacking effort to Russia, the events of mid-June and July 5 last year being the foundation of this case, is shabby to the point taxpayers should ask for their money back.

[...] Editor's note: After publication, the Democratic National Committee contacted The Nation with a response, writing, "U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded the Russian government hacked the DNC in an attempt to interfere in the election. Any suggestion otherwise is false and is just another conspiracy theory like those pushed by Trump and his administration. It's unfortunate that The Nation has decided to join the conspiracy theorists to push this narrative."


Original Submission #1 Original Submission #2

 
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  • (Score: 5, Informative) by bob_super on Tuesday August 15 2017, @05:54PM (18 children)

    by bob_super (1357) on Tuesday August 15 2017, @05:54PM (#554357)

    > from the who-you-gonna-believe? dept.

    True, who are you going to believe? The NSA, the head of the FBI who helped ruin Clinton's campaign, testifying under oath that the Russians interfered in Trump's favor, or something someone told someone on the Internet about someone doing something shady?

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  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by fustakrakich on Tuesday August 15 2017, @06:53PM (17 children)

    by fustakrakich (6150) on Tuesday August 15 2017, @06:53PM (#554376) Journal

    Since we already know the NSA, etc. lie to congress and the public, who should we believe?

    And of course the DNC doesn't like it when someone rains on their narrative. After reading some of the emails, I sure as hell am not going to believe them. They are engaging in pure distraction with this Russian thing.

    --
    La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
    • (Score: 2, Insightful) by i286NiNJA on Tuesday August 15 2017, @07:25PM (7 children)

      by i286NiNJA (2768) on Tuesday August 15 2017, @07:25PM (#554385)

      Yeah exactly who should you believe?

      You can find your own non-government indications of russian interference if you care so much. But you don't actually care so you should stop having opinions because you're confusing our nation's many idiots with your bullshit.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 15 2017, @08:33PM (5 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 15 2017, @08:33PM (#554418)

        Where is this concrete evidence of Russian interference?

        • (Score: 3, Insightful) by HiThere on Tuesday August 15 2017, @09:08PM (3 children)

          by HiThere (866) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday August 15 2017, @09:08PM (#554435) Journal

          There's no real evidence either way, and why would you expect there to be such evidence? Copying files isn't a one-time action, it can happen multiple times, and you'll only get the time stamp from the clock on the system with the final time. (So you can't even trust the data for the decade in which it first happened, much less the millisecond.)

          This post is clearly PR. So was the one blaming the Russians. There's a bit of evidence (not proof) that someone using a Russian IP address was involved. Whoopie. It's not as if everyone using a Russian IP address works for the government, nor even as if it's particularly hard to fake an IP address.

          FWIW, I do tend to feel that some Russian hackers were involved. No proof, just a feeling. I've not even a feeling to cause me to think they worked for the government. There are supposed to be lots of hackers in Russia available for hire.

          P.S.: Notice how the word crackers never really caught on. Not even on this site.

          --
          Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
          • (Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 16 2017, @09:09AM (2 children)

            by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 16 2017, @09:09AM (#554621)
            Even so just because some russian hackers hacked the DNC doesn't mean the _election_ itself was hacked which is the narrative many are trying to push - especially "The election was hacked by the Russians (so we should discard the result which we don't like)".

            I don't see any evidence of vote or vote count tampering by the Russians.

            If the voters were influenced by the Russians helping to get that info published so what? Fox News, CNN, etc were also trying to do the same.

            It's as silly as saying CNN hacked the election thus making it invalid just because one of their sources hacked a party's server and CNN published stories based on the info. Even more so if the info was published without significant alteration to its meaning and context.

            tldr; at most so far I see just illegal "journalism". For real election hacking please look at the gerrymandering by the various guilty parties and voter intimidation etc.
            • (Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday August 16 2017, @04:25PM (1 child)

              by DeathMonkey (1380) on Wednesday August 16 2017, @04:25PM (#554770) Journal

              Even so just because some russian hackers hacked the DNC doesn't mean the _election_ itself was hacked which is the narrative many are trying to push - especially "The election was hacked by the Russians (so we should discard the result which we don't like)".

              That's a strawman argument. Nobody is saying we should ignore the election results.

              We're saying that if Donald Trump colluded with the Russians and knowingly benefited from a criminal hacking operation, he should be tried in a court of law per the constitution.

              • (Score: 2) by Justin Case on Wednesday August 16 2017, @11:17PM

                by Justin Case (4239) on Wednesday August 16 2017, @11:17PM (#555023) Journal

                We're saying that if Donald Trump colluded with the Russians...

                Yes and if you stole a car and robbed a liquor store you should go to jail. But I have no evidence of that.

                Nearly a year in, is there any evidence of this alleged collusion? Or just a hundred thousand news stories repeating the same speculation?

        • (Score: 1) by i286NiNJA on Tuesday August 15 2017, @11:30PM

          by i286NiNJA (2768) on Tuesday August 15 2017, @11:30PM (#554486)

          I never said there was anything concrete but you can clearly observe the collaboration of FSB and right wing media you can see putin himself making sarcastic remarks about our election well before russian interference was a news topic way back when trump was still a joke.
          Hacking the DNC is exactly the sort of stuff that is observed by exit node operators... the dnc ran a bad shop it's almost a foregone conclusion that russia and china were going to hack them I don't even understand how the topic could be up for debate.
          Let's say that right now bernie sanders was president.... and it came to light that the DNC IT infrastructure was laughably bad (Par for the course when politicians are in charge of IT).... I would have been surprised if you told me that neither china or russia had hacked them.

      • (Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Wednesday August 16 2017, @06:19PM

        by fustakrakich (6150) on Wednesday August 16 2017, @06:19PM (#554833) Journal

        Your strong opinion is noted. However, not all bias comes from the government.

        --
        La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
    • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 16 2017, @01:23AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 16 2017, @01:23AM (#554516)

      The definition of the character required to be a spy is: someone who is duplicitous, underhanded, secretive, and above all, the ability to lie, subvert, misdirect and conceal whilst maintaining anonymity, and if caught, a straight face.

      Putting your trust in these kinds of people is foolish at best.

    • (Score: 5, Insightful) by hemocyanin on Wednesday August 16 2017, @04:05AM (2 children)

      by hemocyanin (186) on Wednesday August 16 2017, @04:05AM (#554554) Journal

      The DNC, after annointing HRC in a biased primary, needed to shift the blame for losing to Trump (*). Unfortunately, they want to shift the blame so much they're willing to start global thermonuclear armageddon over the fact that their hand-picked warmongering wall street shill lost. Throw in the fact that the FBI and NSA are about the least trustworthy organizations in all the free world, and you know what? Fuck DNC. I don't care if they got hacked by Russia or not. It isn't who did the leaking or hacking, it's the fucking CONTENT.

      (*) The fact that Democrats could lose to Trump and still keep that whole retarded cabal in power at the DNC, shows how lost the party is. A dog turd could have beat Trump, but no, they just had to have Hillary.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 16 2017, @04:24AM (1 child)

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 16 2017, @04:24AM (#554558)

        DWS was fired and they had a whole big process of replacing her that was widely covered in the news? New minority leader in the senate, etc?

        • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 16 2017, @04:49PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 16 2017, @04:49PM (#554784)

          ... and prompted to a Nationwide position in Hillary's campaign, which she probably already had truth be told.

    • (Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 16 2017, @04:22AM (4 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 16 2017, @04:22AM (#554557)

      The DNC is using a republican investigator nominated by a republican DOJ official to distract? That's some real 5d chess they pulled off

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 16 2017, @06:24AM (2 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 16 2017, @06:24AM (#554585)

        Yeah, and the voters are playing checkers... King me!

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 16 2017, @12:47PM (1 child)

          by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 16 2017, @12:47PM (#554683)

          Yeah, and the voters are playing checkers... King me!

          That's what Trump said...

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 16 2017, @06:42PM

            by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 16 2017, @06:42PM (#554849)

            That's what Trump said...

            Heh... That would be so cool if he really did!

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 16 2017, @05:50PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 16 2017, @05:50PM (#554808)

        I think we're up to 13D chess