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The Associated Press has found evidence that five military wives who received death threats from the self-styled CyberCaliphate were targeted not by jihadists but by the same Russian hacking group, APT28 aka FancyBear, that intervened in the American election and exposed the emails of Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign chairman, John Podesta.
The false flag is a case study in the difficulty of assigning blame in a world where hackers routinely borrow one another's identities to throw investigators off track. The operation also parallels the online disinformation campaign by Russian trolls in the months leading up to the U.S. election in 2016.
Links between CyberCaliphate and the Russian hackers — typically nicknamed Fancy Bear or APT28 — have been documented previously. On both sides of the Atlantic, the consensus is that the two groups are closely related.
But that consensus never filtered through to the women involved, many of whom were convinced they had been targeted by Islamic State sympathizers right up until the AP contacted them.
"Never in a million years did I think that it was the Russians," said Ricketts, an author and advocate for veterans and military families. She called the revelation "mind blowing."
"It feels so hilarious and insidious at the same time."
(Score: 4, Interesting) by ledow on Friday May 11 2018, @11:30AM (5 children)
Which is why any "we're seeing cyber-attacks from China" thing is an absolute load of nonsense without proof.
Not just "the packet came from an IP registered in China" but actually proof that the author / instigator of the attack was somehow a Chinese state actor.
We've had people in the Whitehouse say that cyber-attacks are a valid reason for a retaliation starting a war, for instance. We have to have a burden of proof on that. Not just that some bored teenager, or some third-party state, or even some random small group of terrorists inside that country and acting against it, might have decided to do and make it look like the Chinese did it.
I can send you a packet now, today, from just about any nation state in the world, given enough time and resources. Even North Korea. It doesn't mean that country is responsible for it.
And once you start down the line of nation-states DELIBERATELY obscuring their origins, intentions, allegiances, etc. to extract and disseminate information and cover up other actions, then you have to be able to dig through that.
Sorry but if you wouldn't say it was a Chinese missile that exploded on your territory until properly investigated, then you should be applying the same level of care to things like "It was the Russians / ISIS who phoned up US military wives" or "it was China that hacked our website".
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 11 2018, @12:39PM (2 children)
And that's precisely why we need to STOP the Mueller investigation.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Thexalon on Friday May 11 2018, @04:49PM
That's a non sequitur.
If the primary evidence Mueller was investigating were packets sent from Russia, then yes, I'd say that's the issue. But as far as I can tell he's mostly been following chains of conversations and cash between individuals, which is (A) unrelated to GP's point, and (B) a lot more solid ground than "somebody sent a packet from somewhere".
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Friday May 11 2018, @07:05PM
Even if it turned out that there never was any interaction whatsoever between Trump and Russia ... Mueller is actually draining the swamp and scaring politicos.
We need more Mueller investigations: Tell him to review the Capitol Cafeteria menu for potential Zimbabwean influence, and we'll end up with ten Congressmen pleading guilty of various criminal offenses.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by DeathMonkey on Friday May 11 2018, @03:50PM (1 child)
I can send you a packet now, today, from just about any nation state in the world,
Yes, but only if you remember to turn on your VPN!
Guccifer 2.0 Outed As Russian Spy By VPN Slip Up: Report [ibtimes.com]
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 11 2018, @06:25PM
Will not comment on whether the article is fake news or not, but I do not discriminate based on the nationality of anyone who lets me know that my "masters" are breaking the law.