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Russia: We did not hack the US Democrats. But if we did, we're immune from prosecution:
The Russian government has denied having anything to do with hacking the US Democratic party in 2016, although in a court filing this week stressed that even if it did break into the DNC's servers, it is immune from prosecution.
And furthermore the Kremlin claimed America is "one of the most prolific practitioners of cyberattacks and cyber-intrusions on the planet." So, nerr!
"The [Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act] FSIA provides that foreign sovereign states enjoy absolute jurisdictional immunity from suit unless a plaintiff can demonstrate that one of the FSIA's enumerated 'exceptions' applies," argued [PDF] the Russian government this week in a New York court in response to a lawsuit from the DNC.
The DNC claims that it was subject to a "military attack" by Kremlin intelligence, causing Russia to argue back that any act of its military is a sovereign action and so therefore it can't be sued for it.
It's an amazing defense though one the DNC foresaw. It argued in its initial court paperwork [PDF] that "Russia is not entitled to sovereign immunity because the DNC's claims arise out of Russia's trespass onto the DNC's private servers - a tort allegedly committed in the United States.
"In addition, Russia committed the trespass in order to steal trade secrets and commit economic espionage, two forms of commercial activity undertaken in and directly affecting the United States."
Of course this being 2018 and Russia, the Putin administration can't leave it at that, and takes the opportunity to troll the US government by pointing out that the immunity provision is also heavily relied upon by Uncle Sam and its officials abroad.
"The United States benefits significantly from the sovereign immunity that it enjoys (and US officials enjoy) in foreign courts around the world with respect to the United States' frequency acts of cyber intrusion and political interference," Russia's response reads. "As current and former US officials have acknowledged on many occasion, the United States - acting primarily through the National Security Agency (NSA) with the US Department of Defense - is one of the most prolific practitioners of cyberattacks and cyber-intrusions on the planet."
Pot calling the kettle black?
(Score: 2) by mobydisk on Thursday November 15 2018, @06:00PM (4 children)
That article jumps to a conclusion without supporting evidence. It shows a string obfuscator that supports Unicode. It shows a test of the obfuscator, using multiple languages with a variety of unicode characters. The author then concludes that the purpose of this tool is to impersonate foreign authorship. But that doesn't make sense: If they wanted to impersonate foreign authorship, they would not obfuscate the other languages, they would only obfuscate English.
This is not to say that the CIA and/or NSA are not impersonating foreigners. It would be foolish for a state-based hacking not to do that. But this certainly is not evidence of it.
(Score: 2) by loonycyborg on Thursday November 15 2018, @06:37PM (2 children)
This shows that there can be no meaningful evidence because all "hackers" tend to reuse tools from any source and tools are not tied to any particular nationality, government structure or corporation. All this DNC hack bullshit is made from pure russophobia and can be taken at face value only by people not proficient with technology.
(Score: 2) by mobydisk on Thursday November 15 2018, @10:42PM (1 child)
Yeah, but he "Russia hacked the DNC" thing doesn't come from analysis of the malware. That's probably the weakest possible evidence for exactly the reasons you say. It comes from the source IPs used to launch the attacks, plus the timing and targets of the attacks, plus the Russians posting anti-Hillary ads on Facebook, plus the fact that Russia called Trump's son and said "Yo, we got some dirt on the DNC." All but the last of this is circumstantial, but there is nothing unbelievable about it. The question we all should ask is "Why would Russia *not* want to hack the DNC?" Since they claim immunity to it, there's literally no downside to trying.
(Score: 2) by loonycyborg on Friday November 16 2018, @08:49AM
Current Russian gov is basically still same pro-US faction that won in 1990s using US's PR support. So I don't even see a reason they would do something like this. Given nature of this evidence making they can make case against anyone and the fact that they chose Russia for this just cultivates and exploits anti-Russian prejudice. It's the same story as with Snowden who they've sent into Russia on purpose to discredit him. And honestly I, as well as many other Russians, see this as blatant betrayal. First they setup puppet government here but then still keep exploiting cold war prejudices to cover their own failures. I understand that those stories would make Putin more popular in Russia painting him as mastermind manipulating American jerks and they're not against supporting their puppet like this too but I'm against such dishonesty on principle.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Friday November 16 2018, @06:16AM
But this certainly is not evidence of it.
Still provides more than enough reasonable doubt. This whole thing is a manufactured distraction from a tiny bit of truth that powers the political process from behind closed doors. I don't care who did it. A person/organization/whatever that reveals the truth should be rewarded, not sanctioned.
And IP addresses aren't reliable either. And timing? C'mon, too easy to fake with any two machines bouncing gibberish (looking like encryption) back and forth.
Sorry, government conspiracy theories are well produced, good writers, cinematography, etc, but no more believable than any of the other wackos. What I'm seeing is an appeal to authority.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..