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Caucasus/Russia/Central Asia
How the Kremlin Hacked Its Way Into a Crisis
2016-10-13
Last Friday the U.S. Intelligence Community (USIC) publicly named the Russian government for directing "the recent compromises of emails from U.S. persons and institutions, including from U.S. political organizations." It claimed that the disclosures of hacked emails "on sites like DCLeaks.com and WikiLeaks and by the Guccifer 2.0 online persona are intended to interfere with the U.S. election process", while "only Russia’s most senior officials could have authorized these activities."

President Vladimir Putin in a recent interview to Bloomberg denied that Russia on a state level had anything to do with the email hacks, but his claim that "the important thing is the content that was given to the public, and not the search for who did it" suggested more than a cursory knowledge of the matter. His further claim that the Russian government did not possess the kind of sophisticated sense of U.S. domestic politics to pull off such a tricky game sounded lame. The Russian Foreign Ministry maintains a granular understanding of the intricate details of U.S. presidential and party politics. The Russian Embassy in Washington keeps about a dozen diplomats on the beat. It is not, as some claim, that the Russians suddenly discovered the DNC last year.

While the publicly available evidence linking Russian intelligence to the hacks is inconclusive and may even suggest a false flag operation to entangle Moscow in a brawl with Washington, the U.S. Intelligence Community had a high degree of confidence in Russian involvement even in July and the fact that they publicly named Russian intelligence as perpetrators suggests that they have definitive proof.
'The greatest threat to the U.S. is Russia.' And the Obama response was ?
Posted by:Pappy

#8  The Russian education system is very good at technical subjects and they have always produced good engineers. It's no surprise they have some of the best hackers.

My guess is that the Russian authorities got involved after the hacks occurred when the hackers were shopping around for a buyer for the material.
Posted by: phil_b   2016-10-13 19:30  

#7  Russians are the perfect choice because everyone is still fine-tuned from the cold war to not question them as villains.

I do suspect Russia is ramping up military tensions with the election in mind though.
Posted by: rjschwarz   2016-10-13 16:45  

#6  A naive question, but did somebody actually provide any evidence that it's Russians?

I'm skeptical. A lot of leaks came out before the end of the democrat primary; my first thought was pissed Bernie supporters, then deflect and say it was Those Russians! because an inside job would be embarrassing.

Now, if something like that was the case and I were Russia being thrown under the bus, I could see why then they would get active.

As for the Hillary server, I would guess, who didn't hack it?
Posted by: swksvolFF   2016-10-13 16:23  

#5  If NBC only cared.
Posted by: Bobby   2016-10-13 13:41  

#4  Why don't you morons secure your servers?

These people can't manage an email server but they want to run the country. If NBC only knew...
Posted by: Abu Uluque   2016-10-13 12:15  

#3  My question, too. Not to imply the U.S. Intelligence Community (USIC) is the bagful of crap weasels they are, but this has all the makings of an engineered media controversy.

This also raises the question: Why don't you morons secure your servers? If you leave the front door open, don't be surprised when a raccoon walks in.
Posted by: SteveS   2016-10-13 11:50  

#2  A naive question, but did somebody actually provide any evidence that it's Russians?
Posted by: g(r)omgoru   2016-10-13 11:30  

#1  Diversionary invention
Posted by: Skidmark   2016-10-13 09:11  

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