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VANITY: IT Experts Please Help Sort Out Intel Claims of Russian Hack
https://www.threatconnect.com/blog/does-a-bear-leak-in-the-woods/ ^

Posted on 10/19/2016 8:44:17 PM PDT by butterdezillion

It keeps being said that US intel says Wikileaks is from Russian hackers. The article at https://www.threatconnect.com/blog/does-a-bear-leak-in-the-woods/ gives some of the "evidence". I know nothing about this, but if some Freepers with knowledge could weigh in on the validity of this assessment I would appreciate it.

Please use language appropriate for a computer idiot. =)


TOPICS: Computers/Internet; Politics; Science
KEYWORDS: intelagencies; russianhacker
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To: Celerity

Are you able to tell a techno-idiot like me how it really did go down, and how you know it went down that way?

And I do mean “able”, because my son is a techno-stud and sometimes he tries explaining things but there’s just too much to unpack, so I understand if it’s not possible.


41 posted on 10/19/2016 10:34:36 PM PDT by butterdezillion
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To: butterdezillion

Well, Assange does have protection from the FSB.


42 posted on 10/19/2016 10:49:53 PM PDT by TBP (0bama lies, Granny dies.)
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To: butterdezillion

Aren’t these emails stolen property?


43 posted on 10/19/2016 10:49:53 PM PDT by TBP (0bama lies, Granny dies.)
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To: Mariner

Identifying the source doesn’t require tracing the original attack vector backwards.

For argument’s sake, let’s assume a made up country we’ll call Wussia decides they want to conduct some information warfare. The Wussians have some variant of human command & control that directs some asset to infiltrate networks of some other sovereign nation we’ll call “America” to retrieve information for whatever reason. That Wussian C&C doesn’t operate in a black hole. They have a budget, a geographic footprint, administrative overhead, in other words they’re connected to all sorts of other nodes within the Wussian government.

Given that broader network, should “America” become aware of the intrusion, it might simply be a matter of deploying “America’s” own packages through some vector into one of those nodes and sniffing around for any information indicating Wussian responsibility for the initial intrusion. They may do this at multiple nodes in multiple countries with whom “America” has a history.

Purely hypothetical.


44 posted on 10/19/2016 10:49:53 PM PDT by delete306
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To: Ken H

Or chain VPNs, use TOR, pay cash for burner phones with removable batteries, only have throwaway emails, use unique random character passwords, stay off social media, never register credit cards online, and only use wifi when you have access to a public hotspot and the laptop you bought on Craigslist with cash.

But maybe I’m just being paranoid


45 posted on 10/19/2016 10:53:50 PM PDT by delete306
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To: TBP

FSB?


46 posted on 10/19/2016 10:55:32 PM PDT by butterdezillion
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To: TBP

The emails that the NSA has, the emails that Wikileaks has, or both?


47 posted on 10/19/2016 11:02:32 PM PDT by butterdezillion
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To: butterdezillion

There’s an interesting article over at the Times:

Trove of Stolen Data Included Top-Secret U.S. Hacking Tools
5 / 21/2016
The New York Times
By SCOTT SHANE, MATT APUZZO and JO BECKER


48 posted on 10/19/2016 11:15:12 PM PDT by piasa
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To: Mariner
Yes, every SMTP relay in the chain has record of where it's inbound mail comes from.

Not necessarily.

49 posted on 10/19/2016 11:38:15 PM PDT by FredZarguna (And what Rough Beast, its hour come round at last, slouches toward Fifth Avenue to be born?)
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To: butterdezillion
Here's the ONE THING you have to know to answer anyone making this claim: Are the revelations coming from WikiLeaks true, or are they not true? Nothing else matters, and everything else is a distraction.

Now, if you want to know for the sake of your curiosity: a) Unless the routing trace route is fully known -- IN REAL TIME -- NO ONE, I repeat, NO ONE -- can definitively say what the source of the hack is. b) The US intelligence agencies who claim to know this, did not have real time access to the information. Therefore, they cannot know this information for certain. c) The "intelligence" agencies making this claim work for Barack 0bama. Not the American People, not you and me, Brack 0bama; and they are the same members of the apparat who take orders from people like James "Jimmy The Weasel" Comey.

It doesn't matter if there are 17 agencies, or 99. They're ALL part of the problem, and they will all lie to get Hillary elected.

50 posted on 10/19/2016 11:46:03 PM PDT by FredZarguna (And what Rough Beast, its hour come round at last, slouches toward Fifth Avenue to be born?)
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To: Cboldt
You are leaving out the fact that very sophisticated hacks can spoof the IP address to match any originator and MAC address they want. And there will be no issue (no collisions) with this if you control one or more of the servers in the domain name system. In that case, the header will match perfectly, and what is more, incriminate the wrong person if that is what the hacker wants to do.

Not easy to do for non-State actors (but possible.)

And if NSA (for example) wants to make this look like a chain of possession that belongs to the Russians, they can.

51 posted on 10/19/2016 11:53:26 PM PDT by FredZarguna (And what Rough Beast, its hour come round at last, slouches toward Fifth Avenue to be born?)
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To: butterdezillion

Russian Federation equivalent of the KGB.


52 posted on 10/19/2016 11:54:14 PM PDT by FredZarguna (And what Rough Beast, its hour come round at last, slouches toward Fifth Avenue to be born?)
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To: delete306
For arguments sake, let's say agency "N" in America goes to those nodes and plants the evidence, later found by agency "C" in America.

Just hypothetically, of course.

53 posted on 10/19/2016 11:57:24 PM PDT by FredZarguna (And what Rough Beast, its hour come round at last, slouches toward Fifth Avenue to be born?)
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To: butterdezillion

It is easy to imagine state actors from all over have compromised our online security. I am sure the US has proof of that, both advesary (Russia et al) and friendly. What we do not have is proof of Wikileak sources. I do believe the Clinton camp has moles, the Clintons are just too awful for someone not to grow a conscience. And the Clintons and their surrogates have a proven track record of terrible security practices, for example, Podesta shared his password via email, it was (common word + 4 digits). That pattern is terribly weak. And he used it for multiple accounts as proven when someone used it to log into his Twitter to post a “Vote Trump”. With that given, compromise of any site he used will lead to a chain reaction of compromises, and open the door for easy phising.

The way I see it, the WL source could literally be anyone. And remember, it doesn’t take a state sponsor to do a high-level crack. Recently a 16 yo was arrested for hacking the CIA Director.


54 posted on 10/20/2016 1:02:33 AM PDT by John Robinson (I am a twit @_John_Robinson)
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To: butterdezillion

I agree with you, Putin has been warning that WWIII seems to be their goal. I have no idea other than getting rid of us useless eaters, it seems in the end a more evil nutjob will take them out. Hillary is clearly off her rocker and seems to be doing their bidding. In the end no one will win WWIII.

I think it was Einstein who said, “I can’t tell you what WWIII will be fought with but WWIV will be fought with sticks and stones.


55 posted on 10/20/2016 2:51:28 AM PDT by Foundahardheadedwoman (God don't have a statute of limitations)
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To: butterdezillion

I’m 100% qualified to assess all of the claims made by ThreatConnect (and have more experience in the field).

I’ve seen better logical arguments from random people on the Internet whom I previously knew to be less than fully mentally intact, than I see in this ThreatConnect assessment.

My attempts to figure out where this company came from and why it is suddenly being treated as an authority when it’s actually a tiny company of no repute, that is actually quite a bit more interesting that their claims of Russian involvement.


56 posted on 10/20/2016 3:19:25 AM PDT by thoughtomator (This election is a referendum on the Rule of Law)
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To: butterdezillion

Of course Russia hacked and is doing some hacking. Same with China, N. Korea and a host of others - they just try to focus on Russia because they have been such dupes and Putin has made them look like the fools they are.


57 posted on 10/20/2016 4:33:03 AM PDT by trebb (Where in the the hell has my country gone?)
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To: butterdezillion

It’s macavelian.

Hillary and Bill, the DNC, they always have a villain to distract.

Bill used Iraq every time he got in trouble. Hillary now uses Russia.

These people are manipulative scum.


58 posted on 10/20/2016 4:33:55 AM PDT by PA-RIVER
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To: butterdezillion

When a lot of people say “hacking”, most of the world imagines dimly lit rooms, young kids with pierced noses listening to techno in front of 10 screens banging away at a keyboard while animated boxes fly all around.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

If someone has a password on their machine, you can talk about a million computers taking a million years to guess it or you can simply crack the password holder over the head with a board until he gives it to you.

The latter is technically the correct solution.

When the VA lost it’s patient records in the early 2000s I was actually part of the medical group that ran that internal investigation and I got the true story of what happened.

A doctor copied patient records onto his laptop and then left the laptop behind at a restaurant.

That’s it. They called it a hack.


59 posted on 10/20/2016 6:51:24 AM PDT by Celerity
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To: butterdezillion

The FSB is the successor to the KGB.


60 posted on 10/20/2016 9:45:21 AM PDT by TBP (0bama lies, Granny dies.)
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