In a press briefing just two weeks ago, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein announced that the grand jury assembled by Special Counsel Robert Mueller had returned an indictment against 12 officers of Russia’s Main Intelligence Directorate of the Russian General Staff (better known as Glavnoye razvedyvatel’noye upravleniye, or GRU). The indictment was for conducting “active cyber operations with the intent of interfering in the 2016 presidential election.”
[…]
The allegations are backed up by data collected from service provider logs, Bitcoin transaction tracing, and additional forensics. The DOJ also relied on information collected by US (and likely foreign) intelligence and law enforcement agencies. Reading between the lines, the indictment reveals that the Mueller team and other US investigators likely gained access to things like Twitter direct messages and hosting company business records and logs, and they obtained or directly monitored email messages associated with the GRU (and possibly WikiLeaks). It also appears that the investigation ultimately had some level of access to internal activities of two GRU offices.
[…]
Yet, after a summit meeting with Russia’s President Vladimir Putin just days following the indictment, Trump publicly expressed doubt that Russia was involved. The president has said that Putin strongly denied any interference in the election – even as the United States’ own director of national Iintelligence, Dan Coats, reiterated the conclusion that Russia was responsible for the attacks. With such rhetoric, Trump has continued to send mixed messages about the findings of his own intelligence and law enforcement teams, while seeming to put more stock in Putin’s insistence that the Russian government had nothing to do with any of this.
After digging into this latest indictment, the evidence suggests Trump may not have made a very good call on this matter. But his blaming of the victims of the attacks for failing to have good enough security, while misguided, does strike on a certain truth: the Clinton campaign, the DNC, and DCC were poorly prepared for this sort of attack, failed to learn lessons from history, and ignored advice from some very knowledgeable third parties they enlisted for help.
A detailed look at how Russia attacked the United States election process. Sadly, this being the internet, we probably won’t be able to keep the discussion focused on the technical process, but can we all promise to at least try? Regardless of political affiliation, all of us should be worried about the election process of the most powerful country on earth being this easily manipulated by external forces.
Give us a break, do we really have to have this nonsense here as well. If there was any justice Clinton and the rest would be in jail for this treasonous hoax. I hate Trump too…so don’t claim I’m trying to support him.
I’m no Trump supporter either, but I don’t think Clinton would be president right now if it hadn’t been for the Russians. People are doing nothing but circle jerking in their echo chambers, and reaffirming to themselves that the other side is the enemy and the ENTIRE problem, so I doubt even God himself could change their minds.
Hillary Clinton would be in jail because Russians meddled in our election? How is it a “hoax”? Mueller’s investigation has already indicted over two dozen Russians involved in the election meddling. Our intelligence agencies have investigated and concluded, unanimously, that Russia was behind attacks on DNC email servers, was behind misleading social media ads seen by millions of Americans, and was behind fake news (e.g. Pope endorses Trump, Hillary is running a child sex ring in a pizza restaurant, etc.).
Because it’s all Fake News!!!!! /s
Hopefully other countries are learning to both have measures in place to prevent the technical side of election hacking, and the procedural democratic process to have a do-over election in case there’s any question as to the legitimacy of the elections with paper ballots instead.
USA does not have that at all.
Heck, USA doesn’t even make Election Day a holiday where people can take time off from work to vote.
I recently voted in a provincial election here in Canada and, though a machine was used for automated tabulation, paper ballots were used and retained specifically for this reason.
The GOP wants to make it hard for Democratic leaning voters to cast ballots. They like the idea that someone in an inner city who takes a subway and bus to work can’t get to the polls. In Texas, you can vote with a concealed carry handgun license, but not a student ID. A North Carolina law, struck down by the courts, rejected the forms of identification used disproportionately by blacks, including IDs issued to government employees, students and people receiving public assistance. In Florida, early voting was allowed in “assisted living” homes but not on college campuses (that was struck down by a federal judge just a few days ago).
The Republican wet dream for voting is drive-through voting booths at every Cracker Barrel, Piggly Wiggly, gun range, and NASCAR race, and four hour lines in the rain at inner city polls, which would be few in number and located as far from subway and bus stops as is physically possible. The money shot for them would be to require that out-of-state college students physically return to their home states to vote.
Trolling your politics is against the forum rules.
Please grow up.
I am a mature adult born well before the Internet, or its predecessor, the Arpanet, existed. I am quite ‘grown up.’ You would to well to heed your own advice.
Edited 2018-07-28 20:19 UTC
Your words are devoid of honesty. Your calling out Republicans for things that are just irrational. Your obnoxious description of real human being, treating them as if they are mindless. You really need to conduct a self inventory. Your political ideology lost the election with the 30% independent voters. Obviously when you fail to inspire the independent minds, its time to explore why. Moaning about it is not mulling over it.
Why not simply have election days on Sundays? That’s what my place does… (and I believe most or all of the EU) Also, since voting places are open from 8 o’clock till 22, even if you work on that day you’ll probably be able to cast a vote.
Edited 2018-07-31 19:31 UTC
That Middle U.S. Blue collar workers form Farm communities Still have the clout to pick a president without the backing of the big metro areas. That is why Trump was elected was the Angry dyeing middle class getting to the poles and vetoing or someone who was outside of the Political establishment that sold their Jobs to the lowest bidder.
You can play all the Blame game you want but it boils down to Joe Punch press operator is angry that his son or daughter is going to have it worse than him he is tired of his neighbors who used to Traded a honest day of labor at a Plant or mill for a Wage that he could support a family with, is now working for peanuts at McDonald’s.
End of the day we have a government who failed to protect The guy with his name on his shirt and he is going to vote against the clowns who sold him out every chance he gets.
It boils down to conservatives blaming everyone but themselves for everything wrong in their lives. Everything is the fault of the government, liberals, Mexicans, other people being able to get abortions, gay weddings, Affirmative Action, Muslims, EPA regulations, unions, NFL players taking a knee, transgender bathroom usage, taxes, nutrition programs for poor kids, the liberal universities, Hollywood elites… The list is seemingly endless.
Their lousy lives have nothing to to with not having gone to college, not learning a new trade, and not being willing to relocate to where the jobs are. Just ask them.
If Joe Punch press operator’s son or daughter gets a college degree and is willing to relocate to where the jobs are, they will likely have a better life than he does. That is, if we can reverse the Trump administration policies that are destined to increase pollution, worsen climate change, balloon the national debt, and drive up costs for businesses and consumers through ill-conceived trade policies.
Look at it in the broader context. Around the world, people are getting fed up with the status quo and that’s driving countries to whichever candidate appears the most populist, whether it’s left-wing or right-wing.
Trump got in with all sorts of anti-elite claims and populist promises that he’s now breaking.
Even then, he was always deeply unpopular. It’s just that Hillary Clinton was also hugely unpopular and the U.S.’s electoral college voting system swung things in Trump’s favour despite Clinton winning the popular vote.
That’s a narrative viewpoint not shared broadly. The sooner you realize the reality, and its not about any one viewpoint, the sooner the grieving process can run its course. Honestly, the populist sentiment spent over a generation living a false economic lie and just plain rejected it. There is a reason money is focused into fewer hands and it has everything to do with protectionism by the exact same class of people crying about protectionisms.
As much as I agree with this and your other posts, IMHO this sentence exposes an important reason and lesson why certain people in the US and elsewhere vote for anti-democratic populist movements and politicians: They were perfectly happy with their life and didn’t see any reason to change.
In their observation certain groups benefited more than others from this new globalized world and by extension they feel it are those people — and the ideas they stand for — that forced them into the adapt-or-die situation they now find themselves in. And as much as I disagree with them, they are not totally wrong in that observation. For them people like Putin or Trump are leaders that level the playing field again, that step on the brakes and take away the ‘unfair’ benefits some groups gained in this new world.
These people will keep voting for Trump and other populist leaders until we can arrange our democratic society in a way that includes them and their wish to lead a ‘normal’ slow-changing life in a meaningful way as well.
I sort of agree with this because I think it’d be helpful, but I honestly don’t really believe there is any real solution, let alone one so simple. I definitely think that calling these sort of people/Trump supporters “deplorable” or “racist” isn’t going to win their votes (even if they really are). Democracy and politics in general simply cannot solve every social problem, and I don’t know that it should even try to. Ask the African-Americans old enough to remember the Civil Rights Era about how much a political solution solved their problems with economic/social/political equality and integration into white American society. Sometimes, something as simple as talking to your neighbor is more important than passing laws, exactly because no one (including government) can really compel you to do so.
On the tech side of things, I don’t consider it victim-blaming to fault the DNC for their shoddy security practices. I have 0 doubt that the U.S. and other nations constantly hack/spy on each other and run interference on all sorts of things when they feel it’s worth it. Several years back there was a story about the US tapping Angela Merkel’s personal cellphone, and Germany is a close friend and ally to the US. The U.S. almost undoubtedly had a major role in Stuxnet. I’ve heard a lot of American’s claim that there isn’t any moral equivalency between the U.S. and Russia, but I think their point of view is a little skewed.
Another question is who is best suited to handle/fix the security of U.S. elections. Should the U.S. government really be involved in managing network/IT security for political parties and/or individual candidates?? They seem to really suck at it (Snowden, OPM, Shadow Brokers, etc). At what level (national, state, local)?? Would their responsibility extend to primary elections or just general ones?
I would say the current system is fine. Let candidates and parties worry about their own information security. The FBI tried to warn the DNC at least a month in advance of the big email hack, and they ignored it. As noted in the article, “the Clinton campaign, the DNC, and DCC were poorly prepared for this sort of attack, failed to learn lessons from history, and ignored advice from some very knowledgeable third parties they enlisted for help.”
I couldn’t care less if Russia conducts espionage and misinformation campaigns or plays these sort of little games. It’s what nations (even friendly ones) do to each other, and I expect it to happen. I am genuinely concerned about the security of (or lack thereof) voting machines, there has been no evidence of actual ballot tampering or vote rigging. One positive outcome of all this, is that the U.S. government and public are now genuinely concerned with maintaining the security and credibility of our elections.
Edited 2018-07-29 15:58 UTC
I can’t agree with that sentiment at all. When Russia successfully uses misinformation and espionage to propel someone like Trump into the Presidency, the suffering and potential loss of human life is incalculable.
I’m not being overly dramatic. Just to cite one example, we lost over 4,600 U.S. citizens in Puerto Rico after the hurricanes, largely because of the weak, underfunded response by the Trump administration. Trump was happy to buy votes by pouring federal resources into hurricane relief into Texas and Florida, but he resented what little aid he was pressured into providing Puerto Rico, where they are brown people who have no vote. Unlike Texas and Florida, the federal government is insisting that Puerto Rico must pay back the aid money it received. So when the Trump administration finally deigned to fork over a fraction of the aide needed so that American citizens in Peurto Rico could have power and running water again, he only did so as a loan, forcing the already debt-saddled Puerto Rican government to pay reimbursements that aren’t being demanded of Florida, Texas, or any place primarily inhabited by white people.
Wait a second…So it’s Trump and the government’s responsibility to help Puerto Rico after a hurricane, but if you live in a mining town and jobs dry up that’s your own problem? I don’t live anywhere near where hurricanes could possibly affect my life, so why should I care about how they affect yours or Puerto Rico’s? Maybe Puerto Rico wouldn’t need federal government aid so much if they just left their island and moved to where there are no hurricanes. I will take some inspiration from your own words here:
I have limited sympathy for someone (Puerto Rico) who mopes around in a dying coal town (hurricane ravaged island), angry at the world (Trump) for their fate.
What do you think?
[edit] For the record, I would like for the US government to help Puerto Rico rebuild. It is our civic duty to do so, and I think it is the morally right thing to do as well (as simple humans, not just Americans). I think your bias is very clear.
Edited 2018-07-31 01:35 UTC
You’re the one displaying bias, not me. You’ve twisted yourself into a logical pretzel to try to draw false equivalences between natural disasters that strike suddenly and industries contracting over decades.
I said that disaster relief to Peurto Rico should have been treated the same as disaster relief for Florida and Texas. It should have been just as robust and it should not have been treated as a “loan” that had to be repayed, in contrast to the “free” disaster relief provided to Florida and Texas. So how is that biased?
I didn’t suggest that the government should prop up failing industries in Puerto Rico but not prop them up in West Virginia or Tennessee. So how is that biased?
Edited 2018-07-31 04:04 UTC
I had to cut your quote a bit for space. I think it is biased to say we have an OBLIGATION to economically help in natural disaster recovery, but not help others when faced by other types of disasters.
If there is better availability of federal aid after a hurricane in Florida or Texas, your logic tells me you should move there. Just like people should move when industries collapse. You’ll still probably have to face some other kind of disaster (natural or otherwise) at some point, but at least you wouldn’t feel so neglected. I have more to add, but I’m outta room.
We don’t have infinite resources. Nor do we have support from the public or our elected officials to implement the kind of progressive tax rates that would be needed to provide career counseling, retraining, stipends, relocation services, and subsidized housing to people who had decades of time to prepare themselves for the inevitable.
Coal mining jobs peaked at 832K in the early 1920s. By 1950, it was less than half of that. By 2016, there were a tenth as many jobs. It isn’t like a natural disaster that strikes with little warning. I don’t want to tell someone who has lost everything to a tornado that we’re out of money because we spent it all on coal miners who stubbornly refused to learn new job skills or relocate prior to the mines shutting down.
I, too, am out of space…
Although we differ in some opinions, overall you have a lucid viewpoint.
It is safe to say you’ve demonstrated the exact behavior you claim to not invoke. It’s unhealthy. But, guy, keep tilting at windmills.
It’s a bit unfair to tell a poor person to go to college, no?
And even if they get scholarships, will everyone have a fair shot at them? Community college grads don’t exactly get poached by google or the likes either. They are destined to work low level tech jobs for 50k/yr, maybe upward of 100k if they get in a union or a really good shop.
And lets be honest here, it’s really elitist and even dickish to tell joe punch press operator that he/his kids should just get a college degree of they want to make money. That’s the same asshole attitude that got Trump elected in the first place. That was joe and jane punch press operator’s big “Fuck you” to being told to go to college and move to a city to make money.
The real story is Joe punch press operator had his job sold to the lowest bidder in another country by people who voted for the same candidates. They’re slitting their own throats and don’t care or arent smart enough to figure it out. Joe punch press operators embracing of selfish boot strapper capitalism, faux libertarian conservatism, and stedfast stubbornness has allowed him to become content with having their job sold off. News flash Joe: you voted your own job away. You didn’t want the nanny state to protect your jobs because that flies in the face of your boot strapper capitalism. Better luck next election, eh? Maybe you can find a new person to blame your self created problems on.
And on that, we agree. When Joe punch press operator goes to Walmart and buys Stanley tools made in China, clothes made in India, food grown and packaged in Brazil, and a big screen television made in Malaysia, he doesn’t think about the American workers and farmers being hurt by that.
You realize your candidate lost the independent, self-made entrepreneur class of voters, not just the uneducated and college educated. There is your sign that your own narrative is full of holes.
And the world didn’t complain if the US will interfere somebody in order to introduce their brand of democracy?
Were ballot boxes hacked ?
Was the vote counting hacked ?
Were the voting booths hacked ?
Were the electoral officers hacked ?
No to all of the above.
We had Hillary Clinton (the “butcher of Libya”) and we had Trump (the ego-ist). The former should have been tried as a war criminal, for crimes against the Libyan nation/people.
Thank God a war criminal was not made POTUS.
To believe inconvenient truths/statements reaching the public arena are deemed as “election hacking”, then “election hacking” has been used as a tool for many decades by American, European, Australian, Asian, etc. governments. It’s human nature.
Freedom/release of interesting information during an election cycle is not something new and is expected. Individuals are expected to exercise their brains through critical thinking and this leads to clarity where foreign propaganda (let’s say, false statements) can be potentially negated by the critical thinker. Unfortunately, “sheeple” mentalities do exist across broad cross sections of society and provides a route for the bypass of individualistic-based critical thinking.
The fact of the matter is that during the Clinton vs Trump presidential debates, Clinton with her ~30 years of political experience had problems strongly defeating the political-newbie Trump. Clinton’s flaws were evident long before any possible meddling by foreign social media related entities through freedom-of-information practices.
Too many stupid (i.e. lack of reason) people in America were less worried about “war criminal” Hillary Clinton and more worried about the Donald Trump that did not have the discipline to close his mouth concerning descriptions of the female gender. Of course it was obvious what Trump’s character was all about but, at least, he did not have “blood on his hands”; the “blood” from war.
The European/US-backed aggression against the sovereign Syrian nation (don’t start with terrorist A,B,C … just wake up and follow the “blood trail”) has led to at least ~200,000 civilian deaths. Ths number would have been too low if Hillary Clinton was POTUS.
Wake up !
All this stuff with Trump is a distraction.
A distraction from the crimes against humanity that is multi-year-bloated-blowback-driven American-foreign-policy coupled with strategic nudging by USA’s European friends.
Shame on you.
No, you should be ashamed for your baseless personal attacks, lies, and distortions.
The same things that you claim that Russia is guilty of is the very things that the US has been doing in other parts of the world. If voters want to believe such utter rubbish, they will, even if the Internet does not exist. We’ve had our elections early this year and there were many who chose to believe utter factless lies just because of hate for the previous administration. They are regretting it now, but I doubt they have learnt their lesson. Expect history to repeat itself again.
But the Internet is how such rubbish is efficiently disseminated to the hate-filled and ignorant.
The usa has been no democracy anymore for many years now.
The influence of citizens on the way the state is run has diminished to practically zero.
Seeing who runs this state, one can only conclude that the acusations “the russians did it” is just part of a weird political game.
Since the usa still claim to be the best in ICT it is highly discutable that some foreigner can hack elections and leave clear traces.
I do not trust any politician for lying is there business.
The first rule of hacking is social engineering
The downvoters obviously missed your reference.
For this being a geek site, those geeks lost their man card with the downvote. It’s pretty obvious we have a few people around here that honestly weren’t geeks in the 90’s.
So Gru is Russian after all! Goes with the accent. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CeOsRggJO4s
Don’t forget the minions. LoL.
The main problem in the US is that the 30% of the American population who love trump, agree with the result, so they are in no hurry to either fix the issue or work to prevent it from happening again.
As someone who was paying attention, not-so-much to weird trolls on facebook, but to radio, tv and major news stations, I find the blame Russia narrative ridiculous. American media pumped up Trump like crazy all throughout the Republican primaries. He was everywhere on TV. The American broadcast media had this weird love-fest with Donald Trump right up until the moment he was the candidate. The only people against Trump were a tiny few right wing pundits. If anything the Left was a victim of their own fake news. They destroyed the Republican candidate field by hyper-promoting Trump, and then discovered, when they tried to turn on him, that he was essentially impossible to embarrass. They must have thought it was a joke, and they could pull the rug out later if he won the nomination… or maybe Mrs Clinton was just a really terrible candidate as well.
Sadly, Thom, you hit the nail on the head. The commentators have gone off on a “it’s all fake news”/”No it isn’t” game of ping pong. (Meh… If I say “Somewhere in between, both sides have some people making ridiculous comments”, I probably just about count on that score)
Ignoring that, I suppose if it proves one thing, blockchain has come in useful for helping people to follow the money.
On the front of being well prepared – there would be the option of giving the political parties (Not just the US) some legal obligation to seek some security (Possibly physical as well as computer) help.
They’re politicians, typically not computer security experts, but they do have access to some sensitive details. (Even if it’s just a party membership list)
Possibly with the optional guidance from the security services of the country involved? I can see why parties may want to divorce themselves from the security services – even if the security services should be impartial.
I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that most people, organisations and nations are vulnerable to state-level hacking.
However, the impression I got from the article is that a lot of fairly basic security advice was ignored. I wonder if the ubiquity of social media platforms have fed a complacent attitude towards security. The need to exchange information quickly overrides all else.
As an example, on Facebook I’ve seen people share image texts like “Bring back the death penalty for pedophiles – share if you agree” without realising it comes from an extremist source because it takes time to check these things whereas it take a one or two seconds to click “share”. To expect these people to check the origins of phishing emails, and expecting these people to use 2FA is probably a lost cause.
1. Behave as if everything you will become public.
When it comes to surveillance state the proponents say, ‘Only criminals have got stuff to hide’.
How about simply having nothing to hide, rather than bitching about witch hunts or leaks.
2. Electronic voting is not worth the risk.
Does it matter if the result comes in a few hours/days later than if it was paper?
Paper is hard to ‘hack’ on a large scale. While if I had access to a electronic set of votes I could work out wha t the smallest change I would need to make in order to change the election result – just a few votes in key swing seats.
Forget clever technological solutions – the problem with electronic systems is it puts the power in a few hands by nature – paper is inherently distributed – two many people involved to easily run wholesale cheating.
Paper also has the advantage of needing people to actively be involved in the democratic process – volunteers running polling stations, counting votes. Just the simple act of walking down to the polling site with others.
3. Have a problem with stupid people believing made up stuff?
Try investing in good quality, populating wide education.
If you see a good education as something you can give your kids so they have an advantage of those that don’t , then don’t complain if somebody manipulates those under educated people against *your* interests.
What goes around comes around.