Russia's Rise To Cyberwar Superpower (dailydot.com) 79
"The Russians are top notch," says Chris Finan, an ex-director at DARPA for cyberwar research, now a CEO at security firm Manifold Technology, and a former director of cybersecurity legislation in the Obama administration. "They are some of the best in the world... " Slashdot reader blottsie quotes an article which argues the DNC hack "may simply be the icing on the cyberwar cake": In a flurry of action over the last decade, Russia has established itself as one of the world's great and most active cyber powers. The focus this week is on the leak of nearly 20,000 emails from the Democratic National Committee... The evidence -- plainly not definitive but clearly substantial -- has found support among a wide range of security professionals. The Russian link is further supported by U.S. intelligence officials, who reportedly have "high confidence" that Russia is behind the attack...
Beyond the forensic evidence that points to Russia, however, is the specter of President Vladimir Putin. Feeling encircled by the West and its expanding NATO alliance, the Kremlin's expected modus operandi is to strike across borders with cyberwar and other means to send strong messages to other nations that are a real or perceived threat.
The article notes the massive denial of service attack against Estonia in 2007 and the "historic and precedent-setting" cyberattacks during the Russian-Georgian War. "Hackers took out Georgian news and government websites exactly in locales where the Russian military attacked, cutting out a key communication mode between the Georgian state and citizens directly in the path of the fight."
Beyond the forensic evidence that points to Russia, however, is the specter of President Vladimir Putin. Feeling encircled by the West and its expanding NATO alliance, the Kremlin's expected modus operandi is to strike across borders with cyberwar and other means to send strong messages to other nations that are a real or perceived threat.
The article notes the massive denial of service attack against Estonia in 2007 and the "historic and precedent-setting" cyberattacks during the Russian-Georgian War. "Hackers took out Georgian news and government websites exactly in locales where the Russian military attacked, cutting out a key communication mode between the Georgian state and citizens directly in the path of the fight."
Absolute Nonsense (Score:2)
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Just use the right tools, time of day and the perfect ip will always be stumbled upon by consultants to run to the press with.
Meanwhile.... (Score:2)
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Meanwhile, in the real world, the USA is the first country which has developed and deployed a first-strike cyber-weapon.
That is known of by the masses. And it failed in the fact that the creators relied on the date setting of the computer to delete itself. Had they done a better job, no one would have ever heard of Stuxnet. Who knows what else preceeded it.
OK OK just take my freedoms already (Score:1, Flamebait)
Oh noes, the scary Russians want to hack our computers and steal our data. For our own protection, we must give up all our freedoms and give our data to the NSA. The children who must be thought of, the terrorists, the druggies, and the pedophiles welcome scary Russian hackers into the fold.
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No one was using the Russian hacker menace for anything when I posted that, but based on history I expected that any potential threat with that much media attention would be used for political gain. Check out our totally justified counterattack: russian-government-gets-hacked-back-attacks-possibly-launched-by-the-nsa [slashdot.org]
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By coincidence, I see a lot of spammers....
Says AC...
Not China, because China gave at the offiice (Score:1)
The Democrats can't blame their own crappy practices for their problems, so they blame Russia. They can't blame China because China has given Clinton too much money.
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You don't "blame" the Russians for being "top notch". They aren't. They just have a lot of people working at it, and we are just sloppy in the security department, or pretending to be so to create kind of an attractive honeypot. This isn't just another "Red Scare". We are dealing with real sociopaths, and we kinda have to be one to know one. This is today's problem, and solution. And I have to admit, the democrats are better at the game. At least they know the art of subtlety when facing the public. The rep
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Which one?
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Which one?
The Democrats. The Republicans are safe because they haven't figured out how to use computers yet.
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And yet, they're only four or five points behind. Who needs a computer when you can connect directly to the brain stem using just a microphone?
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Vote for the grownup in the room. Petulance [deviantart.net] can be a big problem in this line of work.
Approved Story by the Clinton Campaign. (Score:1, Troll)
ABC,CBS,CNN,NBC,NYTIMES and Politico were all colluding with DNC but you're going to cite Politico on basically the same story.
Fuck sakes the Slashdot editors posted a orange story about Michael Moore going off on Trump but not a red hot story
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I approve this message
DNC was not hacked by Russian officials (Score:1)
For A) Clintons' computers are a joke for running on Windows 95 with NO antivirus and NO firewall, protected only by a good-hope faith (they're too cheap to buy a real one), and for B) Russians have always been very well educated in mathematics, a matter most hated by all of north-american students (when not flipping hamburgers for a penny per hour, they prefer softie humanistic gender studies where strict logic is unnecessary and only positive emotions are needed in order to graduate). For C) I choose "cy
Didn't this already happen? (Score:2)
We thought russia hacked air force one and then it turned out later it was just some guy named George Lasco?
DNC Preparing for Hacked Clintons Server (Score:1)
All just a smoke screen to stem the outrage when it is revealed Hillary Clinton's email server was, indeed, hacked by Russians as well. Hell, her server was an open smorgasbord of secrets for the worlds state funded cyber-units.
When that happens it will be "See, see, see Trump and the Russians are against po' whittle Hillary. Those awful terrible White Men!" (But let's not mention the 143 MILLION dollars Putin gave the Clinton's in exchange for uranium. Look it up.) ~
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When Trump was letting the religious nutjobs rape the Republican platform committee, the only place his campaign put their foot down was on one item that opposed Russian interests in the Ukraine. So, there's ample reason for suspicion.
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Reagan would be proud of his old party (Score:3)
Dems are shown to be a bunch of corrupt elitist assholes - and they deflect from that by blaming Russia with the same gravely serious tones they used to tell you about Saddam's WMD's.
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The only think really damaging in the DNC hack was the doxing of the small dollar donors. Everything else was already known. DWS was already being pushed out; this was just an excuse.
The real issue is Wikileaks promoting itself instead of facilitating leaks, undermining the trust that we have placed in that org. This data had already been out for over a month. That is why there was time for find the Russian groups behind the "Guccifer 2.0" front. Wikileaks had sat on it to try make a big splash at the conve
And this is why we should cripple encryption (Score:4, Insightful)
God, I love politics. On one hand we got the FBI and cronies wanting encryption weaken to make their job easier, and on the other hand, we got a big cyber threat from Russia/China.
Which one is it you fuckers?
Putin knows exactly what he is doing (Score:3)
And what most people in the West don't realize is that the vast majority of Russians side with him on this.
Russia has been invaded over and over again. It informs the national mindset, and fundamentally ingrains the urge to have a strong Russian military, and to retain bordering nations as neutral buffer states.
Mountain pointing fingers at molehill (Score:2)
The people to fear here are the Western Exceptionalist Five Eyes. [wikipedia.org] They're the ones trying to tap every communication from every person on the planet, not the Russians.
Good reason to spend a trillion of public money (Score:2, Interesting)
"The Russians are top notch," says Chris ...
Russia can not even produce a computer or a smartphone. These fairy tales are being generated by lobbying firms to justify spending of billions on cyber-war crap-ware. American people are so gullible.
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So what is the story going to be? A super power with super skills that have never been caught in the past decades got detected by consultants talking to the media this one time?
Or an ip range and tool set was left all over the network to be recovered later.... that conveniently points straight to another nation vi
Re: Good reason to spend a trillion of public mone (Score:1)
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If creating hardware were required to demonstrate skill, the self-image of 99% of Slashdot's users would be irreparably harmed. ;-)
They all do it (Score:2)
Every state is attacking every other state. Some are attacking themselves.
It's the ultimate assymetrical warfare. And hugely successful.
Insert anti-Russian cyber BS .. (Score:1)
There is no evidence that the DNC hack was carried out by the 'Russians'.
I see how this works (Score:2)
So, Mitt Romney was an idiot for calling Russia a threat 4 years ago. But now, we have a new narrative to push: the Russians are helping Donald Trump beat Hillary Clinton by releasing emails from the DNC. As part of that, now we have to push the idea that Russia has a badass hacking army that's a threat to the US. Is that about right?