Clearly it was Obama who was working behind the scenes with Russia to attack Clinton and back Trump. So obvious once Bolton said it.
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Lets do a step by step. Maybe this will shed a little more light.
I dont follow this argument. How does the metadata in the docs make more sense if the Russians leaked it rather than someone in the US? Is the idea that someone who exfiltrates data from the DNC is more likely to call their computer in Felix Edmundovitch? I just struggle a bit to think dedicated Russian state hackers name their computers stuff like that. Same with regard to default keyboard setting. But maybe you are right. Maybe its more likely that top GRU hackers name their computers after the founder of the Cheka than say US leakers. I speak a little Russian and can read cyrillic. It doesnt prove that I am Russian, or based in Russia. Is there other metadata that I am not aware of?
Murray says he met the leaker. Your point is that the metadata is conclusive and therefore it doesnt matter what anyone else says. Arnt you assuming your conclusion?[quote=“nemomen, post:182, topic:90927”]
True. We have very solid evidence that both the GRU (based on the crypto keys and C&C IPs, that’s a slam dunk) and the FSB. The docs themselves have metadata that tied them to the Russians, and the Guccifer 2.0 cover story of a lone Romanian hacker attacking the DNC and passing the data to Wikileaks fell apart almost instantly, and has quite a lot pointing it as a front for the Russians trying to cover their asses after they got caught. You can start here, but keep researching, there’s much, much more:
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So Im confused about this.
Thomas Rid wrote the following.
One of the strongest pieces of evidence linking GRU to the DNC hack is the equivalent of identical fingerprints found in two burglarized buildings: a reused command-and-control address — 176.31.112[.]10 — that was hard coded in a piece of malware found both in the German parliament as well as on the DNC’s servers. Russian military intelligence was identified by the German domestic security agency BfV as the actor responsible for the Bundestag breach. The infrastructure behind the fake MIS Department domain was also linked to the Berlin intrusion through at least one other element, a shared SSL certificate.
But the IP address 176.31.112 used in the Bundestag breach as a C&C server has never been conclusively connected to the Russian intelligence services. In fact, Claudio Guarnieri, whose technical analysis was referenced by Rid, stated that “no evidence allows to tie the attacks to governments of any particular country.”
While attribution of malware attacks is rarely simple or conclusive, during the course of this investigation I uncovered evidence that suggests the attacker might be affiliated with the state-sponsored group known as Sofacy Group (also known as APT28 or Operation Pawn Storm). Although we are unable to provide details in support of such attribution, previous work by security vendor FireEye suggests the group might be of Russian origin, however no evidence allows to tie the attacks to governments of any particular country.
The Command & Control server (176.31.112.10) was using an outdated version of OpenSSL vulnerable to Heartbleed attacks. The existence of a known security vulnerability that’s trivial to exploit opens the door to a range of possibilities, none of which lend themselves to easy attribution.
The BfV attribution itself was based on a guess.
… “Many of these attack campaigns have each other on technical similarities, such as malicious software families, and infrastructure — these are important indicators of the same authorship. It is assumed that both the Russian domestic intelligence service FSB and the military foreign intelligence service GRU run cyber operations.”
Dmitri Alperovich used the following language
"Extensive targeting of defense ministries and other military victims has been observed, the profile of which closely mirrors the strategic interests of the Russian government, "
The Fidelis report on the malware didn’t mention the GRU or FSB at all. Their technical analysis only confirmed the APT groups involved:
When it came to attributing the attack to the Russian intelligence services, Fidelis’ Mike Buratowski told reporter Michael Heller: “In a situation like this, we can’t say 100% that it was this person in this unit, but what you can say is it’s more probable than not that it was this group of people or this actor set.”
My understanding is that threat groups are collections of technical indicators which include tools, techniques, procedures, target choices, countries of origin, and of course, people. Since most bad actors operate covertly, we are highly dependent on the forensics. Since many of the tools used are shared, and other indicators easily subverted, the forensics can be unreliable.
So I have a problem with this because there are guesses everywhere and each guess is being used to back up the next one. The FBI which is responsible for the case has made no statement about it being the Russian state.The DNI did make an announcement. Maybe thats cos the FBI is hopelessly biased. Or maybe the DNI is getting involved in politics. I dont know. But in terms of “economy”, you ask me to believe that Assange is lying. Murray is lying. That a state hacking group signs its work. That apt 28 is a state actor and that the Russian state sanctioned passing the material to wikileaks.
I just think it is a misrepresentation of the available data to suggest this is obvious. I know that irritates you and I apologize for that. Im sure that next week something will come out that proves me to be entirely wrong and you entirely right. However right now I just dont see thats you made that case.
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Sorry, I’m over my Nobby_Stiles comment reading/replying quota for this thread. I assume your comment said you re-read the thread, spent some time researching, discovered a number of important knowledge gaps you were suffering from, and realized there were a few misunderstandings you had, then you explained these, so I’m proud of you. I wish I could read or reply, though, alas. Those darn quotas. You know how it goes.
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Oh great - John Bolton agrees with me. I give up.
I did indeed!
No fucking shit. Hear! Hear!
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Oh great - John Bolton agrees with me.
You’re consorting with a basket of deplorables!
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This is so scary ( my country shares a border with Russia )
Assuming Russia did hack and the proof is strong enough, I suppose there is a discussion now with regards to how to deal with it in the White House. With the amount of false news, low/no-information voters, misinformation/propaganda and perceived division in the US population they might fear the consequence of stopping Trump from taking office.
But if they do it, what will be the response to Russia? Could they invoke NATO defense pact, reasoning that this affair constitutes an attack on the US? I read a comment by Gen. Philip Breedlove, former NATO supreme allied commander for Europe and head of the U.S. European Command
“What does our tolerance say? What does our action or inaction say as it relates to everything from cyber in an election to continually meddling in the borders in South Ossetia? Where are we setting the bar as it relates to this conflict below the lines or below the thresholds, and what, again, does inaction mean?” Breedlove asked.
The retired general recommended that the next U.S. administration consider using a more “balanced” combination of diplomatic, information, military, and economic tools to deal with Russian aggression, rather than the Obama administration’s current approach of using economic sanctions and pursuing diplomatic relations to turn a corner with Moscow.
This could escalate very quickly…
I know the 19th December the EC may in theory give it to Clinton, is this likely?
Do people here expect Trump to take office, or do you expect that the hacking case will be used to stop him? And if so, when would be the last opportunity to do so?
Finally! Something I can address with confidence (if not knowledge).
The EC will deliver the win to Trump. There is no doubt (in my mind, at least). There is an approximately 0.0% chance (+/- 0%) that the EC will elect Hillary Clinton.
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I don’t even know what outcome I should hope for…
Kinda damned if you do, damned if you don’t
But if they have this evidence how can they NOT do anything?
There is absolutely fuck-all chance of the EC doing anything except confirming Trump as President. The hacking will have no impact on this at all.
In about a month’s time, the USA will swear in a fascist president, who is also a Russian pawn (whether he realises it or not). The only question now is how to respond to that.
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Because realpolitik rules the day.
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China just flew a nuclear bomber over the South Pacific to shake a stick at Taiwan and Trump. Donald “I’m, like, a smart person” Trump will eventually find out about this when he eventually deigns to attend an intelligence briefing.
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I like to imagine that there’s a small-but-non-zero chance that the EC will fail to deliver enough votes to elect Trump (this would require 37 faithless electors, out of his 306, to vote for some other Republican candidate instead of Trump, as a very small handful have declared they plan to do). Realistically, no, that’s not going to happen. But if it did, the vote for President would go to Congress, who would proceed to confirm Trump. Because honestly, this election has already been catastrophic for confidence in the US’s democracy, and I can’t even imagine how much worse it would get if congress didn’t defer to the will of the people (according to the rules in the Constitution, and yes, I’m aware of the popular vote. I voted for Clinton, personally; I’m part of those extra millions of votes from California in Clinton’s surplus.)
Much more likely to have an impact at this stage would be that if news of something sufficiently unsupportable-by-the-right comes out (no idea what this would be. Sex scandal? Personally implicated in the whole Russia thing?), then Trump could find himself being impeached very quickly after entering office. (Although I expect they’d wait until after he nominated a supreme court judge) All of which would leave us with President Pence. Whether that would be better or worse than President Trump, I’ll leave to somebody who knows more about the dramatis personae in this little farce.
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I think just about anyone would be better than Donald Trump. Pence is a bigot and has the wrong views on LGBT issues. Trump provokes foreign countries to launch nuclear bombers by his ignorant tweeting and phone calls. He ignores his own intelligence briefings and derides the CIA when it tells him the uncomfortable truth that Putin helped leak against the democrats, because it suits Russia to have an intellectually weak ‘leader’ with kleptocratic tendencies in the USA. He claims that “no one really knows” about climate change in the same way that he claims “no one really knows” that the Russians hacked the DNC. Just a way of dismissing inconvenient facts. How can anyone take that man seriously as a leader?
Trump is just not interested in keeping up with the responsibilities of the job.
The man is just dangerously ignorant and fundamentally unsuitable to hold office. If the Electoral College exists for any reason, it is to handle precisely this corner case.
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This is the other big worry in this whole mess.
I don’t pretend to know much of how real the dangers are, but find the increasingly aggressive rhetoric worrisome, not to mention the military posturing. Being a pessimist i foresee/imagine either Trump starting a war with China if he gets to steer the ship, especially after seeing “The coming war with China”, anti-war documentary by John Pilger released recently.
Or as mentioned above, a reaction to Russia’s activities that is so heavy handed that continued escalation is all but impossible.
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And Murray is famously a conspiracy theorist, who blogs alongside the likes of Alex Jones. Please stop quoting him as if he has any credibility.
(For example, he is a masthead contributor to this batshit crazy website which has never met a conspiracy - pizzagate, sandy hook, etc - it didn’t like.)
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Or -and this is just a wild possibility I throw out there- they don’t have any evidence which will withstand scrutiny.
It’s not like they have been shy about hitting Russia or Russians they object to with sanctions. Why the sudden strange reticence?
Seems pretty clear that that particular batshit crazy site grabs material from wherever it can find it and republishes it without permission. I think it’s a bit unfair to blame either Craig Murray or Paul Craig Roberts for that.
We didn’t elect Trump as President. We just elected Mike Pence as President, and Donald Trump as lightning rod -in-chief.
That Carrier deal in Indiana? Trump didn’t orchestrate it, Pence did. Pence is attending all the intelligence briefings while Trump is sitting on his golden toilet and planning the next season of The Apprentice.
We already know that when Trump approached Kasich, he told him that he didn’t really want to be president. He offered to put him in charge of all domestic and foreign policy. You have to know that he made the same offer to Pence, and Pence took it.
There’s a reason why every seat being filled on the cabinet is being filled by people who are against choice, voting rights, and gay rights, and pro-privatization. That’s Pence’s agenda. And although they floated names like Guiliani and Palin, that’s just to grab headlines to distract you.
Everything Trump tweets, like flag burning and Hamilton, is just to distract you. None of it amounts to anything but to make the press, and hence the rest of us, chase it.
Meanwhile, Pence is quietly back stage, pulling all of the strings and setting up the most conservative agenda in a generation.
Edited to add:
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