"two competing cybersecurity companies, Mandiant (part of FireEye) and Fidelis, confirmed CrowdStrike’s initial findings that Russian intelligence indeed hacked the DNC. The forensic evidence that links network breaches to known groups is solid... etc etc"
http://motherboard.vice.com/read/all-signs-point-to-russia-b...
I don't know how good the two security firms are and whether they could actually identify something like this, though.
1) It is "sophisticated", because it uses public services like Twitter/Github and embeds command & control scripts into images. Any mid-level application developer could write a similar virus in a weekend.
2) The work required to keep the virus operating (registering Github/Twitter accounts, posting messages) was done during the Russian workday. Because the Russian hackers are highly sophisticated enough to write this virus but incompetent enough to not cover their tracks.
This is the clearest, most blatant example of the US propaganda machine at work. With no concrete evidence whatsoever they have accused a nuclear power of performing these attacks, and the media and a bunch of "infosec researchers" (who most in tech recognize as charlatans) fell in line.
"a reused command-and-control address—176.31.112[.]10—that was hard coded in a piece of malware found both in the German parliament as well as on the DNC’s servers. Russian military intelligence was identified by the German domestic security agency BfV as the actor responsible for the Bundestag breach. "
Also, occam's razor.
Then how about these: because Iraq was framed as having WMDs, then the Titanic was actually the Olympic rebadged and sunk as insurance fraud. The Moon? Man didn't walk on it, that's just an American lie because no WMDs. It's also a hologram, because Iraq didn't have WMDs!
Foreign policy on the other hand continues to reveal events that occur not as they were originally described.
Kinda like how 'terrorists' were responsible for every drop of spilled milk in the early 2000s, Russia is now responsible for hacking every system in the west.
Not that I care one iota for Russia, but being influenced to distrust and hate feels really underhanded.
If Russia had not released the DNC emails (or had somehow done so surreptitiously) to queer the US election, there would be no story to report on.
But it could be anyone! China! Or a 400 lb kid living with his parents. /s
What Iraq and those WMDs? Or Iran that has been just a few months away from getting Nukes for like 20 years. Or nearly all the 9/11 hijackers were from Saudi Arabia, but apparently they are our friends.
Foreign policy continues to reveal events that occur not as they were originally described.
The real question "Are we certain enough to take actions that could lead to war?" because that is where are government is going with this. http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/does-government-know-hac...
Why do you think so? First of all, there are countless "enemies" that would want to hack the US/DNC (North Korea comes to mind, who was accused of hacking Sony some time ago, as does Iran, who was itself victim of US hacking). All of those seem equally likely. Second, it's possible that there was a leak, not a hack.
This is the same kind of 'truth' that led us to war in Iraq over WMDs.
Is it just me or is Trump making conspiracy theories great again? There's always a fringe that is happy to see a conspiracy in everything (and sometimes they're actually true), but it seems that this sort of thinking is everywhere at the moment.
What Snowden confirmed was more the scale. The details honestly shouldn't have been terribly surprising for anyone who had followed computer news for the last decade, unfortunately.
As far as Russia hacking the DNC is concerned, what I know is there are several cybersecurity companies that have confirmed that Russian hackers were involved, publishing white papers with a fair bit of evidence. I personally haven't seen a single cybersecurity company so far refute that information.
I do welcome a technical refutation of the white papers or a point to a cybersecurity company that disagrees! Counterpoints however have to be data-oriented to be interesting. I consider random commentators posturing that all this is just US propaganda with little evidence to be merely cheerleading, sorry, that's not interesting to me...