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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Man, she is so hot, I would totally bang her like a broken screen door in a texas tornado!
Someone is lying–When Senator Chuck Grassley questioned James Clapper and Sally Yates last week, the Senator asked Clapper about the FBI informing the DNC that the Russians had hacked their network in AUGUST 2015. The DNC did nothing about it, apparently, because when the DNC finally told the press about being hacked on June 13, 2016, they claimed that they found the hack in April and responded immediately, according to the report by Ellen Nakashima in the June 14, 2016 article in the Washington Post. The Crowd Strike Group allegedly eliminated the Russian hackers in the DNC network during the first weekend in June 2016.
One item the DNC management mentioned a lot in all of the press releases was about how their donors’ personal information was not touched by the hackers. This was critical to the DNC. They could not have allowed hackers of any kind–Russian or otherwise–have free access to their network for 8 months (August 2015 until May 2016) and maintain a whole lot of confidence in their donors, especially those who permit the DNC to save their credit card numbers stored on their infiltrated network. The DNC management had to let the donors know that:
1. They reacted timely to the hack, and even found it themselves. The DNC management did not tell Ellen Nakashima about the FBI warning and the FBI’s first request to have access to the network to expel the hackers. The DNC refused the FBI’s offer to help back in August 2015, if such a contact was even made.
2. The donor information was not exfiltrated from the network and was safe.
Either the FBI or the DNC is lying about the Russian hack. The DNC might not have let the FBI in their network in August 2015, but they knew enough to call Crowd Strike in April 2016. They HAD to do something in August 2015 in order to protect the donors, or there was no confirmation of the hack reported by the FBI. Note: The NSA would have told the FBI about the hack in the first place, so the answer is there if there was a hack.
Assange was talking to British television on June 12, 2016, and said the DNC emails would be published in July, close to the Democratic Convention in Philadelphia.
The DNC made the “Russian hack” public on July 13, 2016.
The alleged Orlando-Pulse Gay Nightclub shooting in Orlando, Florida took place on the early morning hours of June 12, 2016. This incident dominated the media for days, providing smoke for the DNC while most people were distracted by the alleged mass shooting.
Either the FBI is telling the truth and did report the hack in August, and either the DNC properly responded to the FBI report and arranged to have the hackers expelled, or they did nothing for whatever reason and endangered donor information. When Assange announced that he had the DNC emails, sometime before his June 12th appearance on British television, the DNC management knew they had to lie to make the donors believe that, it was Russia’s fault, not the DNC’s, and the DNC will make it right. This MIGHT be the genesis of the Russian hack story. It has morphed since then, but when you read Nakashima’s article on the Washington Post site, you will find it hard to believe that so many intelligence professionals thought the whole affair was not big deal.
Senator Grassley’s questions to Clapper and Yates are on YouTube and easy to find.
Additional facts:
– DNC Staffer killed in an alley with nothing stolen, was reportedly reaching out to Wikileaks
– Security firm employed by DNC has strong ties to Ukraine. Their report that tied the “hacking” to Russian interests is very weak and based on the type of malware used. This would be the same as suggesting someone is German because they drive an Audi. Using existing malware is quite common, so this really proves nothing.
We have the president that the Russians wanted. How do I know this? Because they didn’t hack into any of the Republicans emails and then disclose to the world what they found. It was a smear and disinformation campaign and it worked.
My dear Ms Peter,
You are wrong. They DID attempt to “hack” into Republian headquarter emails. The Republicans had much better internet security than your brilliant, immoral, dishonest,disingenuous MsHillary Clinton and the 2-faced Democrats, especially Wasserman-Schultz, who tried to undermine Bernie Sanders.
The “smear”, in Hillary’s case and from your obviously Democrat supporting, is called
TRUTH. Hillary lost because she is as I described above, as well as a sick inabler of her sick spouse Bill. Anyone watching the developments of Benghazi, and the lies coming out of Hillary’s State Dept. and Obama’s minions, as well as Whitewater, and many, many other illegal, immoral behaviors on her part, say TRUTH FINALLY CAUGHT UP WITH HILLARY! You Dems think the rest of us in the “fly-over zone” are too stupid to see through all the smear you and your leftist, dishonest “news” (fake) have been pushing on us for well over 20 years. WE HAVE HAD ENOUGH OF YOU ALL.
Fact #4 is, in fact, not a fact at all. 538 showed that Clinton’s lead in the polls started to erode at the same time that the Wikileaks reports emerged.
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/wikileaks-hillary-clinton/
Of course, nothing happens in a test tube sterile environment; there were multiple factors that played into the election results. But Clinton’s sizable lead began to erode at that point, and by the end, it eroded to the point that several states (Michigan, Florida, Ohio, etc.) that previously were leaning solidly to Clinton flipped narrowly to Trump.
Some curious aspects of this whole thing: 1) There have been countless hacking attempts by many nations, many proxies, and many individuals–why the indignant response by the administration now?; 2) Considering Obama himself tried to interfere with elections in Israel, it seems the pot is calling the kettle black; 3) In testimony before Congress Clapper appears to have already perjured himself by declaring that communications of Americans were not “hacked” by the government, without warrant or probable cause–is he really a credible witness in this case?; 4) What was revealed is what good investigative reporting would have revealed, if most of them were not totally in the tank for Clinton; 5) The primary purpose of this seems twofold: a) Try to discredit and diminish Trump; b) Drive Clinton scandals and ineptitude out of the news cycle.
“U.S. officials have not alleged that anyone falsified the emails provided to WikiLeaks.””One would have to believe the emails somehow selectively swayed voters in key swing states, but not voters in states where Clinton won.” So Hillary is a scum sucking bottom feeder and, if you live in CA or NY, you might be, too. Apologies to Issa and King, though.
There is no mention of WikiLeaks in the 13 page document. There is …
“The U.S. Government assesses that information was leaked to the press and publicly disclosed.”
… but that is a far cry from proof or an allegation of proof, so I have to dispute your last bullet summarizing the joint report.
csmats: Research it for yourself. If that’s too onerous, read her book, Stonewalled. Ms. Attkisson looks for truth and has not exactly been a friend to the Obama administration.
That the Obama admin. would take the type of retaliatory measures they have against Russia, only now, speaks very strongly to the possibility of nothing more than political motivation. They were reticent to act in the face of real cyber aggression but are acting now to shore up a political narrative.
Only continued reporting by real reporters will shed light on the truth. Thanks Sharyl.
Well, one thing we know for sure. Attkisson has more credibility than anyone in Russia and the Democrat party.
The RNC computers were probably hardened to prevent the DNC from hacking them rather than the Russians, as that would be expected and normal operations for the Progressives.
The Democrats need to take their Prozac and get over it.
Ms. Attkisson (thanks, by the way)….It’s refreshing to read your work and see you in TV news discussions (I wish you were on more)….thanks for offering nonpartisan, in depth, excellent journalism. I wish more people could read the 8 points you offer….It’d be so good get back to honest journalism and wake people up to the truth.
With Attkinsson logic talks, BS walks.
With regards to your point 4, you state:
“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.”
They wouldn’t have to be Trump voters necessarily; they may have been Hillary voters prior to the leak, but they stayed home on Election Day because they didn’t care for either candidate after the information was revealed.