Above Image: The Kremlin, the Russian government’s power center[hr]
This story was first published on Dec. 31, 2016[hr]
There’s no standing allegation by U.S. officials that the Russians (or anyone else) “hacked” into our elections system or altered vote counts.
So what are the allegations and facts as we know them?[hr]
The FBI and DHS released a brief joint report Thursday describing “Russian Malicious Cyber Activity.” It doesn’t include forensic proof of Russian government involvement in hacking efforts, but the administration is rushing a detailed, classified report to be delivered, at President Obama’s request, prior to President Trump taking office January 20.
The joint report can be summarized this way:
- The U.S. believes two hacking groups tied to the Russian government are involved.
- The U.S. has nicknamed the hacking groups “APT28” or “Fancy Bear,” and “APT29” or “Cozy Bear.” APT stands for “Advanced Persistent Threat.”
- The U.S. believes the GRU, Russia’s military service, is behind APT28.
- The U.S. believes the FSB, Russia’s counterintelligence agency headquartered in the building of the former KGB, is behind APT29.
- The U.S. believes the groups accessed “a political party” by sending emails that tricked users into clicking links that planted malware or directed them to Russian servers.
- The U.S. believes APT29 entered into “the party’s systems” in summer 2015, and APT28 in spring 2016.
- The U.S. believes APT28 provided the stolen emails to WikiLeaks, which WikiLeaks denies.
Most of the 13-page joint report provides advice on how to secure computer networks.
Read the “Russian Malicious Cyber Activity” report
Eight Facts on the Hacks
1. The claim that the “election was hacked” is a bit of a misnomer. There’s no standing allegation by U.S. officials that the Russians (or anyone else) “hacked” into our elections system or altered vote counts. Instead, U.S. officials allege hackers connected to the government of Russian President Vladimir Putin, under his direction, stole internal emails from the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and Hillary campaign chairman John Podesta and provided them to WikiLeaks. (However, the U.S. joint report issued Thursday doesn’t mention the DNC, Podesta or WikiLeaks by name.)
[button link=”https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/” size=”medium” style=”tick” color=”silver”]Podesta Emails on WikiLeaks[/button]
[button link=”https://wikileaks.org/dnc-emails/” size=”medium” style=”tick” color=”silver”]DNC Emails on WikiLeaks[/button]
2. U.S. officials have not alleged that anyone falsified the emails provided to WikiLeaks.
3. U.S. intel officials have named the Russian hacking campaign “Grizzly Steppe.”
4. It seems a difficult task to prove the hacks somehow “affected the election” or “helped Donald Trump win.” For example:
- One would have to show that tens of thousands of Trump voters were planning to vote for Clinton but changed their mind based solely on the WikiLeaks emails.
- One would have to believe the emails somehow managed to only affect the electoral vote but not the popular vote (which Clinton won).
- One would have to believe the emails somehow selectively swayed voters in key swing states, but not voters in states where Clinton won.
5. WikiLeaks disputes the U.S. assessment blaming Russia for the DNC leaks. WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange says: “Our source is not the Russian government… We have U.S. intelligence saying that say they know how we got our stuff and when we got it, and us saying we didn’t get it from a state.” Former British ambassador Craig Murray backs up Assange’s version: “I know who leaked them. I’ve met the person who leaked them, and they are certainly not Russian and it’s an insider. It’s a leak, not a hack; the two are different things.”
6. The private cyber firm Crowd Strike had already determined last June that Russian agencies were behind the DNC cyberattacks.
7. There have been many serious cyberattacks reported against U.S. government institutions, but no comparable news coverage or announced U.S. retaliatory measures. For example:
- In 2015, Russian hackers attacked the State Department email system in what was called the “worst ever” cyberattack against a federal agency.
- Also in 2015, the U.S. Office of Personnel Management reported 5.6 million Americans’ fingerprints were stolen in a malicious cyberattack.
- The GAO reports that between 2006 and 2015, the number of cyberattacks climbed 1,300 percent — from 5,500 to over 77,000 a year at 24 federal agencies.
- Last March, China government hackers continued a malicious pattern of cyber attacks on U.S. government and private networks, according to U.S. Cyber Command chief Mike Rogers. China has been linked by U.S. intelligence agencies to wide-ranging cyber attacks aimed at stealing information and mapping critical computer networks for future attacks in a crisis or conflict. [quote]Despite the Chinese hacking activity, the Obama administration has taken no action against China for years of large-scale cyber attacks that officials say have cost the nation billions of dollars in stolen intellectual property and compromised networks.[/quote]
Additionally, there have been no publicly-known retaliatory actions taken by the U.S. for hostile, non-cyber foreign threats such as Chinese fighter jets buzzing U.S. warships and spy planes, and Iran detaining 10 U.S. sailors. (However, the U.S. punished the sailors.)
8. The New York Times recently quoted anonymous U.S. officials who said they concluded Russians hacked the Republican National Committee (RNC), but did not release the information to WikiLeaks, proving that the intent was to help Trump. However, the RNC states that its network systems were not successfully hacked. The Times also anonymously quoted a senior government official who said attempts to penetrate the RNC were not successful.[hr]
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The bit of fact that can’t be gotten around is that, if the Russians really affected the outcome of the election, why only in some states and not others? This story’s purpose is to keep people out of jail. And Obama is involved. At the least, he sent emails under an alias to Clinton’s private server. That he knew he was doing wrong is proven by the fact that they were from an alias account.
refreshing to get to read an article that has NO political bias to it. Being very familiar with Cyber security and ‘hacking’ and internet security, these items shown reflect the facts of how things actually function. Wish we had more honest, factual journalists out there, we are in a very short supply.
What makes Sharyl an authority? A TV program, an author? There was NOT one fact in the supposed 8 “facts” in the article. This is reporting? Pityful! If indeed there has been a hack of the RNC, as has been widely reported, that information is/will/can be used as blackmail against our newly elected president. Can you imagine what RNC emails looked like when the entire Republican establishment was out to defeat Trump? This could get very interesting if Trump agitates Putin.
PS If the Clinton emails put our security in jeopardy, then lets’s get them released so we can all read them, and not just the Russians.
Podestas actually was compromised twice. The 2nd time he left his phone in a DC cab and never changed his password which was in the first Podesta wikileak and in his smugness got compromised again, lol. They posted on his Twitter: I’ve switched sides voting for Trump /hi pol. Screen ahoots of tweet and other proof available.
Sharyl, a lot of reasonable points here but I’m going to quibble over the idea that we should be arguing the three hypotheses under item #4. None are necessary, and they dilute the argument.
1. “tens of thousands of Trump voters were planning to vote for Clinton but changed their mind based solely on the WikiLeaks emails.”
2. “emails somehow managed to only affect the electoral vote but not the popular vote”
3. “selectively swayed voters in key swing states, but not voters in states where Clinton won.”
On point #1, the more reasonable explanation is that the WikiLeaks revelations didn’t change many people’s mind from Clinton to Trump, it simply discouraged some small fraction of weakly-aligned Clinton supporters from voting at all. Basically convincing a few people to switch from “they’re both terrible, but Trump is worse, I’ll go vote” to “why even bother, I’ll stay home”.
On point #2, not true — a uniform bump to Trump numbers (or drop to Hillary’s, see above) across all states fits the data just fine. Who’s to say that, the popular vote difference (which ended up at about 2.1%) wouldn’t have been even higher? Perhaps 3.5% or 4%.
3. On point #3, how can we tell the difference? I certainly saw malaise among my Democrat acquaintances in CA, MA etc, just as much as in the rest of the country. Suppose an additional 1% of them decided not to waste their time voting — didn’t matter, Trump lost by 61/33 instead of 62/33. On the other hand, in Michigan and Wisconsin that 1% was enough to turn the tide, and in Florida and Pennsylvania 1% would have put the results damn close.
The rest of the chain of argument stands — but I think it’s very clear that the leaked material “affected the election” and “helped Donald Trump win”. We shouldn’t dispute that point.
The e-mails did not depress Hillary’s voters or turnout. She did. Mook’s computer models were based on Obama’s data and though they knew the enthusiasm was not there for Hillary, they nonetheless took as a given the assumed to be blue firewall states which Trump flipped to victory. Despite ballot stuffing in Detroit and other ‘rat enclaves, she was a lousy candidate and inspired no one. Furthermore, Hillary was relying on low information voters who believed the 91% negative press against Trump and didn’t have a clue about this whole DNC/Podesta e-mail kerfuffle, being focused on Kim Kardashian’s butt. If she lost any potential voters, it was some Bernbots that did pay attention and were pissed at her cheating and collusion with the DNC. Finally, what is the viewership of RT? They had no role in the election. This
Russian Hack” garbage is as fraudulent as the “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot” meme out of Ferguson. Sheesh.
“The rest of the chain of argument stands — but I think it’s very clear that the leaked material “affected the election” and “helped Donald Trump win”. We shouldn’t dispute that point.”
As an outside observer with a keen interest in the US Presidential election I would say rather that the leaked material helped Hillary lose, rather than helping Donald Trump ‘win’.
Despite the full support of the main-stream media for her candidacy, the truth about Hillary and the DNC that came out was appalling and must have put off many died-in-the-wool Democrats from voting for her. The authenticity of the evidence was never denied, just attributed to a ‘Russian hack’ as if that invalidated the evidence.
The fact that both alleged attempts by the Russians to ‘hack’ the election started well before there was any recognizable chance that Trump could even be selected as the Republican candidate, strongly argues against any Russian desire to ‘help Trump’.
Furthermore, the nature of the matters revealed by publishing the DNC and Podesta emails strongly suggest that someone, with inside knowledge of the damaging materials that they contained and a less-than-100% commitment to getting Hillary elected by **any** means, leaked the emails and that no hack was involved.
I believe the reason for the retaliation in this case was because it was an attempt to influence an election (whether it actually affected the results or not). As for other non- election related acking events, I am sure that the US is also actively involved in hacking Russian and Chinese agencies. Since the article dealt with hacking, not sure why you included the buzzing of our ships by Chinese jets.
Sharyl, I’ve worked in the intel field for over 30 years. To me, the “tell” here is that the FBI and CIA refuse to brief Congress. That indicates to me that they know that their full analysis would fall apart under the microscope of members such as Trey Gowdy et al.
This is a political hit job by Obama.
To quote an old refrain… “This is much ado about nothing”. As far as Russian’s hacking our government and political sites… what would one expect? It’s what “intelligence” gathering is all about. Seems everyone has forgotten or ignoring the incident where our intelligence agencies, under Obama, were hacking Angela Merkel’s party and the German government. And they’re supposed to be an ally! Mea culpa Obama said… Baloney!
Just another example of elitists refusing to admit that it wasn’t the Russians… but a flawed, demonstrably dishonest, mendacious and possibly criminal candidate for the Presidency. Instead of admitting the obvious… they resort to the Flip Wilson defense…”Devil made them do it”.
Time for them to “Move On”. Elections have consequences as stated by Obama… Time to pay the piper, of course they know that, that’s why they’re grasping at straws.
Since most of this CIA assesment is based on opinions and not forensics, I have an opinion for ya’
President Obama has never liked Benjamin Netanyahu, and as the media reported, Obama had interfered in Israeli elections and attempted to unseat Netanyahu.
Russia had humiliated Obama by holding-off the US after Obama’s infamous ‘red-line’ threat to Assad by positioning a Russian ship off the Syrian coast. Putin also started to attack and defeat the terrorist/rebels that Obama had been arming and supporting to overthrow Assad.
When the DNC and Podesta hacks occurred, the security firms involved discovered Russian code on their systems ..Obama already had an agenda against Russia and rushed to judgement calling-out Russia and his Agencies emphasized the ‘Russian code’ and they based their opinions on that code to support Obama’s narative.
With that in mind ..what if was actually the Israeli Mossad that had used the Russian Code to target Democrats and damage their chances of remaining in power ..as retaliation? Leaving the Russian Code behind would direct the FBI’s attention towards Moscow and their known hacker groups, while Netanyahu could sit back and watch the headlines.
Only after publicly targeting Russia for months the US realizes anyone could’ve used they Russian code, or perhaps forensic evidence did develop later leading them to Israel.
Obama was in a position to either publicly apologize to Putin and humiliate himself again, or listen to the groundswell demanding he act against Russia ..which he did.
But after learning it was likely Israel that had committed the hacking, Obama decided to seek revenge and used the UN to drive a knife in Netanyahu’s back to send him a personal message.
Ms. Attkisson, your forthright ambition and success to provide the truth, whichever way it may cut is such a tremendous help in forming rational insights. I have a very staunch conservative philosophy, but I have as much animosity toward establishment Republicans as I have toward socialist minded Democrats. Your straight forward reporting, provides a beacon for me to build a “balanced” opinion.
I would really appreciate hearing you speak, if you do those types of Engagements?
WINNING RHETORIC – NOT
Hillary Clinton did not “win” the popular vote. And Trump did not “lose” it. The popular vote for president is not a contest. Neither candidate raced to beat the other in this way. Find another consolation prize for the loser.
She should get a Participation Trophy.
Thanks Sharly–
There are some great points here but I’m unclear on two of the points made regarding how the election may have been affected.
In one point you say “One would have to believe the emails somehow managed to only affect the electoral vote but not the popular vote (which Clinton won).” But isn’t it entirely possible that it affected both? That Clinton would have won the popular vote by an even larger margin if not for the proposed leaks? Has anyone even proposed that the popular vote was not affected? (In the end, it doesn’t matter, as the popular vote is not how elections are determined.)
You also say “One would have to believe the emails somehow selectively swayed voters in key swing states, but not voters in states where Clinton won.” Similar to the point above, there is no reason to assume that only key states were affected. Logically, it would have affected all states, but not necessarily to a degree that would cause Clinton to lose in all states.
Just curious to hear your thoughts on this. Thanks.
Yes you are correct and there are many more scenarios and possibilities, such as that Trump was affected far more negatively by the much more widespread mainstream media coverage that included the false reporting that his wife once worked here illegally or the allegations by the NYT cover story about his treatment of women that the very women quoted disputed. The point was that these sorts of things would have to be proven to “KNOW” that “Russia affected our election,” and these matters seem fairly difficult to prove–and so far nobody has claimed to have done so.
Are there rumblings about the intelligence community sandbagging Trump? Look at Schumer’s remark about what they could do if Trump doesn’t get in line.
Thanks so much for the summary and for the clarity of it. So helpful.
Good summary, but for a deep dive into why the government’s JAR report is anything but convincing please also read this tech report https://www.wordfence.com/blog/2016/12/russia-malware-ip-hack/
In this article you will read that the malware example provided in the JAR as evidence of a Russian hack is actually an old version of Ukranian malware available for sale online. In other words, anyone could have purchased this malware. The IP list provided is also a red herring. Most of those are located in the US.
Ideologies, religions and money ensure people think inside a matchbox. Just one small spark and BooooooooM.
Great piece all the same.
https://hat4uk.wordpress.com/2016/12/28/chandelon-autopsy-notes-on-the-application-of-whitewash-in-journalism/
Nice summary. Thanks again.
Thank you, Sharyl, for writing on this important subject. As I began reading the article it occurred to me that you are one of the very few sources I trust nowadays. Thanks for that more than anything.
As the media leaps to the “Russia influenced election results” meme, it leaves the false impression that the hack involves our government. Our government was not hacked or the victim of leakage (on this issue, anyway).
If there indeed was a hack (certainly debatable), it was a hack into a political party (DNC/HRC campaign), which is not an arm of government (even if Democrats think it is).
So a sloppily run political party wanted to take charge of an inefficiently run very large government. And the sloppiness disclosed distasteful things including dirty tricks, cheating and subterfuge. So voters said no. Redirecting blame fools nobody.
” the RNC states that its network systems were not successfully hacked. The [New York] Times also anonymously quoted a senior government official who said attempts to penetrate the RNC were not successful.”
So only the the DNC – my party, the Party of Smart – was hacked? Say it ain’t so!!
Ms. Attkisson is almost the sole source of real news amidst a tsunami of fake news by liberal “journalists” who just can’t get over the fact that Trump won in large part because We the People no longer trust their biased and in fact treasonous “reporting”.