Quite obviously the military-industrial complex on all sides has gotten rather bored of the relative peace we saw for sometime after the fall of the USSR, so we need another cold-war potentially building up into contained, localised conflicts again, so we can expect allegations like these fly thick and fast now and in the future. Quite obviously nation states of all hues have stopped protecting or even representing the welfare of the majority of their people but instead work for the powerful minority, be it a fuedal clan or a sophisticated network of big business or anything in between. And these are served well by continuing conflicts and poverty and localised war. The only thing they don't want is an all out global war but they don't realise they have to be careful what they wish for, as history has shown repeatedly.

I think the economic, military and political power behind NATO would consider a military confrontation that might escalate into a third world war if they determine that without such a war world events would lead to an existential threat to there existence.

A four or eight year Detente between the United States and Russia combined with an integration of Eurasian defence strategy could see a dramatic obsolescence of an organisation that is no longer politically relevant nor operationally capable to fulfill its mandate.

Currently both of those trends are moving forward.

Those who (reasonably!) question the lack of actual evidence presented by the US intelligence community over the US hacks would do well to read the 2014 FireEye paper on APT28 (the group involved). It's pretty compelling, even if it doesn't address the specific allegations around the election(s). The TL;DR is that there is significant circumstantial evidence that this group is government backed, and also evidence against it being a false flag operation.

Note that the date of the report should provide some protection against allegations it is politically motivated.

See https://www.fireeye.com/blog/threat-research/2014/10/apt28-a...

Should also read this, too:

http://blog.erratasec.com/2017/01/dear-obama-from-infosec.ht...

Sure, that is all pretty valid criticism of the terrible report the intel groups put out. It doesn't do anything to show the background, which Errata are taking as assumed knowledge. The first paragraph is basically a "we think it's true" and the rest is "that doesn't actually explain anything"

Right, it's meant as a summary of everything to date. They've covered pretty much everything before.

Honest question: what is the greater cause of this situation we're now in: the five eye's obsession with all things offensive "cyber" over offering even the most primitive defense to industry or Russia ruining the fun by deciding to exploit this overtly rather than just for covert information gathering/polticial advantage like everyone else?

Mostly neither (I wouldn't accept the premise of the question), but if one had to choose one I would say the second.

The Podesta hack was a social engineering phishing attack on his Gmail account. Gmail probably has the best security of any email hosting provider, and it's difficult to imagine what capacity any five eyes agency could have helped.

Whether or not the DNC was hacked by the Russians or someone else, or it wasn't a hack at all, but a leak instead is less important to me than the fact that because of this incident we all were made aware (with proof) of the shit-show and corruption that exists in our government. The DNC chief worked against a candidate to bring forth another - honestly, I'm glad this incident occurred to highlight the mess.

This is exactly how I feel about the situation. These types of covert games have just decided to become overt in hopes of riling up populations; they've been going on since the birth of nation states. However, Russia didn't actually do anything particularly damning to the DNC: the DNC did it to themselves. If they weren't internally corrupt they wouldn't have had any issue.

Political parties and government shouldn't have anything to hide, so what do they have to fear, right? That's what they say to us.

While this is serious we do need to make sure it does not become "Putin's hackers help everyone I don't like".

I'm curious, does anyone have concrete evidence about these things or are people just saying that "on the evidence which we are gathering"

I guess solid evidence is hard to put forward. Suppose I follow a chain of forwarders back to a Russian government hacking organization. What evidence would convince you that it happened? A PDF report listing the IPs? Screenshots? Print outs? An independent third party (and how would I convince them?)

Add to that the secrecy of the agencies gathering this evidence (completely unnecessary IMO) and the partisan/scepticism of the recipients, it's a hard problem.

Hack one of them and release their email/recordings/etc. showing the plot.

Maybe you'd burn some sources or methods, but if the alternative is that you get taken over, is that not worth it?

Except that will be disclaimed as being faked, and it will be impossible to prove otherwise.

There are many ways to corroborate evidence from 3rd party sources. It's done in courtrooms every single day.

Take, for example, the leaked emails. They can be shown to have DKIM signatures which are signed by both Google & Hillary's email servers and these can be validated. Or in the physical world, you can show that people were in the right place in the right time. You can find multiple, named witnesses who have proof of being in the right place at the right time and other corroborating evidence.

Sure, it will be disclaimed as being faked. But then you end up like Donna Brazille:

- First you show her denying this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Izl0e4xvgGA

- Now you show a DKIM validated email: https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/5205

- Now you show how to perform the validation: http://blog.erratasec.com/2016/10/yes-we-can-validate-wikile...

At this point, they can deny however they like. It only makes them look more guilty.

Well it depends on the evidence, right? I'd imagine that the FSB has reasonable OpSec, and APT28 too.

Turn that around to see why there's always a weak link somewhere. I'd expect the NSA to have reasonable OpSec too, but there's Snowden.

And they protect the US Secretary of State, too, but look at how hard Colin Powell made their job:

https://wikileaks.org/clinton-emails/emailid/30324

It's in the PDF attached to that. There's always a weak link somewhere. When you have people like this in power, even the smartest spies can't protect them --

"Now, the real issue had to do with PDAs, as we called them a few years ago before BlackBerry became a noun. And the issue was DS would not allow them into the secure spaces, especially up your way. When I asked why not they gave me all kinds of nonsense about how they gave out signals that could be read by spies, etc. Same reason they tried to keep mobile phones out of the suite. I had numerous meetings with them. We even opened one up for them to try to explain to me why it was more dangerous than say, a remote control for one of the many tvs in the suite. Or something embedded in my shoe heel. They never satisfied me and NSA/CIA wouldn't back off. So, we just went about our business and stopped asking. I had an ancient version of a PDA and used it. In general, the suite was so sealed that it is hard to get signals in or out wirelessly."

>What evidence would convince you that it happened?

Exact thought process they used to figure out they were russian hackers would be good. I need to understand. Screenshots, ips, print outs do not explain\prove anything.

Everyone aware of how cyber security works is aware that it is next to impossible to prove with absolute certainty about being hacked by someone, but yes, if I claim bob hacked my servers, I'd have to conclude that based on some data, I'd love to see that some data :-D (Sometimes I watch RT and you won't believe how differently they represent all the news :-D) (p.s. I am not a US or Russian citizen)

Don't think any concrete evidence exists, but the fact that the politicians (across the aisle) that were briefed on the hackings are universally accepting that Russia hacked the DNC is pretty good indication that the claims are true. Well, either that or there's a huge conspiracy going on, or gross incompetence.

Considering recent news articles it definitely is a gross incompetence.

Germany is next with this years elections.

It's absolutely hilarious that obvious lies and propaganda are creating this much tension.

It was a lie, and there will be more lies. Putin, the evil emperor.

Bullshit for the simple minded.