June 16, 2016 The Next "Russian Government Cyber Attack" May Be A Gulf of Tonkin Fake Yesterday the Washington Post published a piece that smelled of bullshit from the first line to the last: Russian government hackers penetrated DNC, stole opposition research on Trump. Russian government hackers penetrated the computer network of the Democratic National Committee and gained access to the entire database of opposition research on GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump, according to committee officials and security experts who responded to the breach.

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The intrusion into the DNC was one of several targeting American political organizations. The networks of presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump were also targeted by Russian spies, as were the computers of some Republican political action committees, U.S. officials said. But details on those cases were not available.

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Some of the hackers had access to the DNC network for about a year, but all were expelled over the past weekend in a major computer cleanup campaign, the committee officials and experts said. Why the f*** would Russia want to steal oppo research about Trump when it can read such in Politico and the Washington Post every day? Why start A YEAR AGO to hack something for Trump data? Who would have thought A YEAR AGO that Trump would be relevant? This was obvious nonsense. But some snakeoil salesmen convinced the Washington Post know-nothing reporter and the DNC that it all must be true: The DNC said that no financial, donor or personal information appears to have been accessed or taken, suggesting that the breach was traditional espionage, not the work of criminal hackers. If there was a hacker breaking some servers for over a year how the hell would anyone know what s/he accessed? There is no assured way to know what files were touched. And to conclude from what was probably taken to "must thereby have been Russia" is plainly stupid. “It’s the job of every foreign intelligence service to collect intelligence against their adversaries,” said Shawn Henry, president of CrowdStrike, the cyber firm called in to handle the DNC breach and a former head of the FBI’s cyber division. He noted that it is extremely difficult for a civilian organization to protect itself from a skilled and determined state such as Russia.

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The firm identified two separate hacker groups, both working for the Russian government, that had infiltrated the network, said Dmitri Alperovitch, CrowdStrike co-founder and chief technology officer. The firm had analyzed other breaches by both groups over the past two years. All one might see in a breach, if anything, is some pattern of action that may seem typical for one adversary. But anyone else can imitate such a pattern as soon as it is known. That is why there is NEVER a clear attribution in such cases. Anyone claiming otherwise is lying or has no idea what s/he is speaking of. Russia denied to have anything to do with that alleged hack. That did not prevent the Washington Post to come with a listical about Five more hacks the West has tied to Russia none of which is likely to have any Russian origin. Trump for one claims that the DNC "hacked" itself to be able to publish their claims against him. But now for the fun. A hacker calling himself Guccifer 2.0 just published a blogpost with documents from the hack of the DNC server. Worldwide known cyber security company CrowdStrike announced that the Democratic National Committee (DNC) servers had been hacked by “sophisticated” hacker groups. I’m very pleased the company appreciated my skills so highly))) But in fact, it was easy, very easy. Guccifer may have been the first one who penetrated Hillary Clinton’s and other Democrats’ mail servers. But he certainly wasn’t the last. No wonder any other hacker could easily get access to the DNC’s servers. Shame on CrowdStrike: Do you think I’ve been in the DNC’s networks for almost a year and saved only 2 documents? Do you really believe it? Here are just a few docs from many thousands I extracted when hacking into DNC’s network. Not astonishingly the published documents include those with "financial, donor or personal information" which the DNC unconvincingly claimed had not be accessed. Guccifer 2.0 writes that most of the documents will soon be published via Wikileaks. The whole story in the Washington Post was a anti-Russia nonsense based on self-promotion of an obviously incompetent cyber security company. But it is dangerous. I am afraid that such propaganda will one day be used as another Gulf of Tonkin fake to start a war. NATO is already preparing the public for such a move: NATO may react to future cyber attacks by deploying conventional weapons, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said in an interview published by Germany's Bild newspaper on Thursday. "A severe cyber attack may be classified as a case for the alliance. Then NATO can and must react," the newspaper quoted Stoltenberg as saying. "How, that will depend on the severity of the attack." One wonders if the Washington Post scaremongering about alleged Russian cyber abilities was coordinated with that NATO announcement. To even think of such conventional retribution for a cyber attack is lunatic. No cyber attack is ever attributable with any certainty. The U.S. National Security Agency, as well as other state sponsored entities, would have no trouble to fake a "Russian cyber attack". If one lone hacker in the U.S., where Guccifer 2.0 seems to reside, can do such how much more convincing would any intentional, government sponsored fake be? Posted by b on June 16, 2016 at 8:03 UTC | Permalink Comments next page » next page »