Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/01/26/aivd.html
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Waiting for a follow-up report to reveal that this story was exposed by hackers who hacked the hackers who hacked the hackers who hacked the hacks at the DNC.
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If true, this is incontrovertible proof that every time Trump said, after the elections, that we couldn’t know Russians were behind it, it was a lie. I mean, we knew that already, but this would be proof positive.
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Well, it was uniquely Russian malware used to hack the DNC. And it followed all the procedures already being observed of that particular hacking group, which had been under observation by security companies for a long time.
People who like to say, “well, anyone could run the code” don’t understand that it was a lot more than that. Even the leaked equation group tools which claim to scramble a binary to make it look like it came from another nation state I bet wouldn’t hold up under any kind of scrutiny. (It probably swaps out a bunch of strings, and hopes the thing runs without crashing–and then they billed out development of it for a cool million bucks)
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Or, as the Dutch would say: “De muren hebben oren.” (“The walls have ears.”)
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Chances of camera(s) pointed at a hackers screen probably nearer to less than zero.
However, taking over a PTZ nearby, plausible.
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The Dutch are vicious!
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Apparently this is something that was bouncing around people in the know for a while:
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Meanwhile in Russia…
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Yeah, it was already true, but the tech issues were alien enough to most people that Trump and his supporters could obfuscate the fact; now this indicates they actually had video of specific people behind the hacks who were known Russian operatives, on top of everything else. There’s just no way to argue with that*.
*Although, obviously Trump and Trumpers argue with inarguable facts all the time; it’s just that now in this case it can’t be done without explicitly rejecting the concept of objective reality.
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But - did they get a copy of the pee tape?
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We really do live in a crappy cyberpunk novel, don´t we?
Wait… Make that a crappy parody of a cyberpunk novel.
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I eagerly await @anon30760835’s denials of this libelous story against the great and peace-loving realm of the Great Shirtless Saviour.
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I never been to Branford, sound like work of… you know.
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Not at all.
But never underestimate them.
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I think this story is wrong, perhaps due to a misreading of a poor translation. The original article discusses an incident in 2014 where the AIVD supposedly infiltrated a Russian hacking unit (including cameras) and passed intelligence to the Americans. It further claims that they maintained access to this unit for between 1 and 2.5 years.
Nowhere in the story is it claimed that they got direct evidence of the 2016 DNC hacking or communicated it to the NSA; even the claim that this group IS Cozy Bear (a fuzzy entity which may or may not coincide with whatever group the Dutch hacked into) is not established.
In other words, while it appears, from this story, that Dutch intelligence did have some encounter with Russian intelligence in 2014-2015 and helped the NSA fight some hacking attacks, EVEN IF THIS IS TRUE, it has nothing to do with the 2016 DNC story OTHER THAN the presumption that this Russian group is the same “Cozy Bear” that purportedly hacked the DNC. Nowhere is it claimed that the Dutch observed the 2016 DNC attacks in progress or that they have direct evidence this same group was responsible.
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You hack!
Assuming Trump knew.
If you were preparing a report for Trump, whom if he isn’t an actual Russian asset, has lips looser than a gr 5’s shoe laces, are you going to tell him that the Dutch are actively watching the Russian’s webcam?
I suspect they found a way to make the case without that particular tidbit.
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Not saying it couldn’t be the Dutch, but in my twisted mind I find it more likely that someone else did it, then pinned it on the AIVD, with their agreement, just to muddy the waters, to blur the tracks (and possibly keep the cover of one informer or more).
If you can hack into it, it’s not a closed circuit.
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