One reasonable reason for why they would lie is that their jobs are somewhat political and the person being targeted is likely going to be their boss soon. Claiming Russia is behind the hacks draws attention away from the hacks themselves, the shady campaign finance allegations they brought to light and the fact that Clinton was storing classified data in her home (I know the hacks were not of that particular server, but the two are still related.)
In a world where James Clapper is willing to egregiously lie, under oath, to congress, the default assumption that these people can be trusted to automatically tell the truth is suspect.
So far, the main evidence that I can find that links the hacks to the Russian government are two things:
1. Some of the documents had Russian metadata added to them. 2. The timing of the attacks seems to follow public holiday schedules for the Russian government.
These are both reasonable items of circumstantial evidence but it doesn't seem to be enough to accuse a foreign government directly.
Since this event has national political implications, and since the people making the statements have good reasons for being less than truthful, I am happy waiting for better evidence before making a decision one way or the other.
As well as, from the private sector:
Various forms of infrastructure correlation analysis [1]
Correlation with past Fancy Bear breaches [2]
Very similar phishing tactic of link shorteners to steal email credentials (see for details) [3]
Similar RATs and C&C protocols [4]
Google independently correlating attacks with what they believe to be state-sponsored TTPs [5]
Correlation between all targets associated with a shared set of indicators, and the Russian government's geopolitical goals [6]
Additionally, Kaspersky, a Russian infosec firm founded by Eugene Kaspersky (Kaspersky is highly suspected to have had Russian intelligence ties, so of anyone he would want to challenge the US's story here) and who broke several stories about NSA's attacks and tools, names one of the groups as CozyDuke. [7] They do not explicitly say they're Russian, but they agree that they are one of the groups responsible for attacks against the US government. Crowdstrike calls this same group Cozy Bear (Kaspersky named them CozyDuke after Crowdstrike already established Cozy Bear) and other firms strongly believe them to be tied to the Russian government. They do not provide any evidence confirming or denying attribution either way. If they had even the slightest inclination that it wasn't Russia, I imagine they'd be pushing it hard.
Plus, probably a whole bunch of classified information gathered by US intelligence agencies if they're willing to make this claim publicly now.
And anecdotally, everyone else I know in the infosec industry agrees it's probably Russia. No company in the US or in countries with governments that oppose the US have provided differing stories. Admittedly, the fact that it's mostly US companies tying it to Russia should cause you to be skeptical, but you can read their actual analyses and fact-check them easily. No competing firms or competing countries have questioned their facts.
That's not necessarily proof Russia is trying to influence the election, sure, but they're definitely trying to piss in the US government's cheerios at the least. And I wouldn't doubt NSA has made plenty of Russian infiltrations of their own in the past; probably how Kaspersky got their hands on some of their tools in the first place.
[1] https://www.threatconnect.com/blog/tapping-into-democratic-n...
[2] https://www.threatconnect.com/blog/fancy-bear-it-itch-they-c...
[3] https://www.threatconnect.com/blog/guccifer-2-0-dnc-breach/
[4] https://www.crowdstrike.com/blog/bears-midst-intrusion-democ...
[5] http://arstechnica.com/security/2016/08/dnc-staffer-got-pop-...
[6] https://debugged.wilsoncenter.org/evaluating-the-dnc-hack-b0...
[7] https://securelist.com/blog/research/69731/the-cozyduke-apt/
When they're willing to lie to our face under oath, trying to sell us secret evidence isn't going to buy much.
All signs point to Russia; no signs (currently) point away from Russia; the public and private sector are in agreement; Obama is ballsy enough to call them out on it to their face; Russia has plenty of motive and more than enough talent to do it; it's probably Russia.
I'm not saying I trust the current administration or the intelligence community at all. I also wouldn't put it past Clapper to lie to other countries about various matters (just as he repeatedly lied and probably will continue to lie to the American public and Congress). Their job is to lie. I'm sure they lie about a lot of things.
But it would be dumb of them to make this particular accusation formal without pretty good proof, and all other independent analyses published support the accusation.
Doesn't that sound just a tad wild even for a conspiracy theory?
The server was a simple 'mistake' anyone could 'accidentally' make; I honestly think people don't understand how easy it is to accidentally configure a mailserver, happened to me just this morning.
>Doesn't that sound just a tad wild even for a conspiracy theory?
Sadly, it doesn't sound wild at all.
Should be "... how easy it is to accidentally configure a Sendmail server..."
Frankly, it's hard to do that in a post-Snowden, post-Comey world.
I'd say it's completely impossible to do that :)
I'll repeat the question:
> Why would they lie? What gives you reason to think they (not the DNC!) be that colossally stupid?
This is ridiculous. Why would they not lie? The US intelligence community appears to lie reflexively about everything. Why would anyone take their words at face value?
Are you joking? Do you not see the massive political motivation there?
And of course, the US government has a great track record with telling the truth about security issues.
No one who gets any position that requires Senate confirmation is "not really a politician" (and, yes, that includes general/flag officers in the military) -- they may be purely bureaucratic rather than electoral politicians, but they are politicians nonetheless.
But, yeah, I don't see a lot of evidence that Clapper is a Democratic (or other) partisan.
> What gives you reason to think they (not the DNC!) be that colossally stupid?
The political motivation is what would make lying here colossally stupid.
Technically all officers also have this treatment but Senate oversight and intervention is much lower, and the batches are much bigger.
I am aware of no commonly used definition of "political appointee" that does not include (among others) all officers of government that go through the appointment-by-the-President-and-confirmation-by-the-Senate process that applies to -- as well as to officials that get more media attention for this process -- all military officers (and with notably more personal attention in the process to 1-star and higher ranks -- generals and admirals.)
(There's almost no chance there is a conspiracy here. I think it is probably Russia.)
- To distract us from their own incompetence. - To avoid talking about the content of those leaks (from memory, the WaPo is an arm of the DNC that they hold illicit fundraisers with, the DNC funneled all of the money to Hillary from the outset so Bernie never had a shot, etc.) - To paint Trump as an agent of a foreign power (he's bad enough even after you filter out the nonsense).
They turned off logging on those servers to avoid transparency. If they want me to believe claims like this, I'll need to see the full server logs from the email server. Oh, wait, they destroyed those. How convenient.
My thoughts are that the elections will continue to get worse as long as we keep voting for lizards to keep the wrong lizard from winning. Anyone who tells you you're limited to the choices made for you on the ballot bears some personal responsibility for the mess.
Why would they lie? What gives you reason to think they (not the DNC!) be that colossally stupid? Why would you do anything other than take allegations of yet another Kremlin attempt to interfere in fair elections as seriously as the people of Europe and Ukraine have learned, the hard way, that they must?