http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/03/06/trump-putin-and-the-new-cold-war
Fascinating read. Russia is scary as fuck and not to be underestimated.
They have hijacked our electoral process.
It's hard for me to even know what to excerpt there is so much here. If anyone wants to help please do so.
Ok excerpt 1:
What we have is a situation in which the strong leader of a relatively weak state is acting in opposition to weak leaders of relatively strong states, General Sir Richard Shirreff, the former Deputy Supreme Allied Commander of nato, said. And that strong leader is Putin. He is calling the shots at the moment.
Excerpt 2:
In the fall of 2014, a hacking group known as the Dukes entered an unclassified computer system at the U.S. State Department and gained enough control so that, as one official put it, they owned the system. In security circles, the Dukesalso referred to as Cozy Bearwere believed to be directed by the Russian government. Very little is known about the size and composition of Russias team of state cyberwarriors.
Excerpt 3:
By March, 2016, the threat was unmistakable. Cybersecurity experts detected a second group of Russian hackers, known as Fancy Bear, who used spear-phishing messages to break into accounts belonging to John Podesta and other Democratic officials. Like Cozy Bear, Fancy Bear had left a trail around the globe, with its technical signature visible in cyberattacks against the German parliament, Ukrainian artillery systems, and the World Anti-Doping Agency. Ive never seen a group that doesnt change its style of work after it has been detected, Ilya Sachkov, who runs a leading cybersecurity firm in Moscow, said. What logic led them to not adjust their methods? Charles Carmakal, a specialist at FireEye, a cybersecurity organization that had previously studied the hacking groups implicated in the election operation, said that sophisticated hackers often leave forensic trails. Even the best teams make mistakes, and, a lot of times, the guys who are great at hacking are not forensics guys who also know how to do investigations and understand all the artifacts that theyre leaving on a machine.
Ultimately, the attack didnt require an enormous amount of expertise. Gaining access to an e-mail account through spear-phishing is more akin to breaking into a car with a clothes hanger than to building a complex cyberweapon like Stuxnet. Oleg Demidov, the information-security expert, said that, from a technical perspective, the hacking was mediocretypical, totally standard, nothing outstanding. The achievement, from Demidovs perspective, was the knowledge of what to do with this information once it had been obtained.
On July 22nd, three days before the Democratic National Convention, WikiLeaks released nearly twenty thousand e-mails, the most damaging of which suggested that the D.N.C., though formally impartial, was trying to undermine Bernie Sanderss campaign. In one e-mail, the D.N.C. chair, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, said of Sanders, He isnt going to be President. Her resignation did little to tamp down public anger that was fuelled by the themes of secrecy, populism, and privilegealready a part of Trumps arsenal against Clinton. Months later, Wasserman Schultz reproached the F.B.I. for not reacting more aggressively to the hacking. How do they spend months only communicating by phone with an I.T. contractor? she said in an interview. How was that their protocol? Something has to change, because this isnt the last weve seen of this.
Excerpt 4:
By mid-February, law-enforcement and intelligence agencies had accumulated multiple examples of contacts between Russians and Trumps associates, according to three current and former U.S. officials. Intercepted communications among Russian intelligence figures are said to include frequent reference to Paul Manafort, Trumps campaign chairman for several months in 2016, who had previously worked as a political consultant in Ukraine. Whether he knew it or not, Manafort was around Russian intelligence all the time, one of the officials said. Investigators are likely to examine Trump and a range of his associatesManafort; Flynn; Stone; a foreign policy adviser, Carter Page; the lawyer Michael Cohenfor potential illegal or unethical entanglements with Russian government or business representatives.
Fascinating read. Russia is scary as fuck and not to be underestimated.
They have hijacked our electoral process.
It's hard for me to even know what to excerpt there is so much here. If anyone wants to help please do so.
Ok excerpt 1:
What we have is a situation in which the strong leader of a relatively weak state is acting in opposition to weak leaders of relatively strong states, General Sir Richard Shirreff, the former Deputy Supreme Allied Commander of nato, said. And that strong leader is Putin. He is calling the shots at the moment.
Excerpt 2:
In the fall of 2014, a hacking group known as the Dukes entered an unclassified computer system at the U.S. State Department and gained enough control so that, as one official put it, they owned the system. In security circles, the Dukesalso referred to as Cozy Bearwere believed to be directed by the Russian government. Very little is known about the size and composition of Russias team of state cyberwarriors.
Excerpt 3:
By March, 2016, the threat was unmistakable. Cybersecurity experts detected a second group of Russian hackers, known as Fancy Bear, who used spear-phishing messages to break into accounts belonging to John Podesta and other Democratic officials. Like Cozy Bear, Fancy Bear had left a trail around the globe, with its technical signature visible in cyberattacks against the German parliament, Ukrainian artillery systems, and the World Anti-Doping Agency. Ive never seen a group that doesnt change its style of work after it has been detected, Ilya Sachkov, who runs a leading cybersecurity firm in Moscow, said. What logic led them to not adjust their methods? Charles Carmakal, a specialist at FireEye, a cybersecurity organization that had previously studied the hacking groups implicated in the election operation, said that sophisticated hackers often leave forensic trails. Even the best teams make mistakes, and, a lot of times, the guys who are great at hacking are not forensics guys who also know how to do investigations and understand all the artifacts that theyre leaving on a machine.
Ultimately, the attack didnt require an enormous amount of expertise. Gaining access to an e-mail account through spear-phishing is more akin to breaking into a car with a clothes hanger than to building a complex cyberweapon like Stuxnet. Oleg Demidov, the information-security expert, said that, from a technical perspective, the hacking was mediocretypical, totally standard, nothing outstanding. The achievement, from Demidovs perspective, was the knowledge of what to do with this information once it had been obtained.
On July 22nd, three days before the Democratic National Convention, WikiLeaks released nearly twenty thousand e-mails, the most damaging of which suggested that the D.N.C., though formally impartial, was trying to undermine Bernie Sanderss campaign. In one e-mail, the D.N.C. chair, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, said of Sanders, He isnt going to be President. Her resignation did little to tamp down public anger that was fuelled by the themes of secrecy, populism, and privilegealready a part of Trumps arsenal against Clinton. Months later, Wasserman Schultz reproached the F.B.I. for not reacting more aggressively to the hacking. How do they spend months only communicating by phone with an I.T. contractor? she said in an interview. How was that their protocol? Something has to change, because this isnt the last weve seen of this.
Excerpt 4:
By mid-February, law-enforcement and intelligence agencies had accumulated multiple examples of contacts between Russians and Trumps associates, according to three current and former U.S. officials. Intercepted communications among Russian intelligence figures are said to include frequent reference to Paul Manafort, Trumps campaign chairman for several months in 2016, who had previously worked as a political consultant in Ukraine. Whether he knew it or not, Manafort was around Russian intelligence all the time, one of the officials said. Investigators are likely to examine Trump and a range of his associatesManafort; Flynn; Stone; a foreign policy adviser, Carter Page; the lawyer Michael Cohenfor potential illegal or unethical entanglements with Russian government or business representatives.
