NBC Report: Russian Hackers Behind Attack On Pentagon Mail System

New submitter packetspike alerts us to a story at CNBC, according to which U.S. officials have told NBC News that Russian hackers are behind a "sophisticated cyberattack" against the unclassified email system used by the Pentagon's Joint Staff , which has since been shut down and taken off line. "According to the officials, the "sophisticated cyber intrusion" occurred sometime around July 25 and affected some 4,000 military and civilian personnel work for the Joint Chiefs of Staff." The story claims that it's unclear whether the mail-system's attackers were backed by the Russian government. (Expect more to come on this story.)

Comments

"sources," eh? "US officials" you say?

[r-diddly]

On the one hand, this type of attack happens all the time and is entirely plausible. On the other hand, the US continues to try to antagonize Russia and propagandize US citizens, and unnamed sources don't exactly speak well for journalistic quality.

Re:"sources," eh? "US officials" you say?

[TWX]

Russia has been in an antagonistic relationship with "The West" for hundreds of years. For a time it was France. For a time it was the United Kingdom. For a time it was the Nordic countries. This current round of antagonism goes back to WWII and Russia getting the crap beat out of it by Germany before the US and the UK opened a second front.

Foreign leaders often end up as propaganda. In my relatively short time on this earth I've seen Arafat, Papa Doc, Manuel Noriega, Khomeini, Saddam Hussein, Milosevic, and probably others that I can't remember used by the media to drive ratings. If you randomly sampled Americans you'd probably find they only know Hussein, but it took two wars and a long occupation for that connection to be made.

Vladimir Putin will probably be just as forgotten to Americans as most of the rest of these men.

Re:"sources," eh? "US officials" you say?

[ScentCone]

On the other hand, the US continues to try to antagonize Russia

It's true. Russia normally wouldn't feel the need to roll tanks into and kill people in Ukraine, but they just can't help it. They're so stressed out over being antagonized. Luckily for us, we had a stellar person as our nation's top diplomat, and she had a big red plastic "reset" button that she brought with her to Russia to make everything better. And if the Russians DID hack into DoD mail servers, at least we know they could never have hacked into her mail server, in her house ... because, she knows a guy who told her it was all nice and secure, not to worry.

Re:"sources," eh? "US officials" you say?

[Desiree Hindenburg]

Actually, that was an “overload” button, not a “reset” button.

Re:"sources," eh? "US officials" you say?

[Princeofcups]

This current round of antagonism goes back to WWII and Russia getting the crap beat out of it by Germany before the US and the UK opened a second front.

And you complain about THEM believing the propaganda? We may have helped the war in Eastern Europe end sooner, but after summer 1943, the eventual victor was never in doubt.

Re:"sources," eh? "US officials" you say?

[KatchooNJ]

I certainly hope you are right about Putin being forgoten in years. Because of his Ukraine shenanigans, there is still a chance for WWIII to break out; NATO is required to respond if there is a full invasion and that would be far from good. People are worried about ISIS when maybe they should be more worried about our old Cold War rival moreso. I just hope Putin isn't truly as loose of a canon as he seems to be.

Re:"sources," eh? "US officials" you say?

[TWX]

How many people know who Nikita Khrushchev is? He put nuclear missiles in Cuba and addressed the UN literally stating that he would bury the West. Putin is no Khrushchev.

Re:"sources," eh? "US officials" you say?

[rogoshen1]

but didn't the US put missiles in Turkey? ....Kind of seems.. fair doesn't it?

Re:"sources," eh? "US officials" you say?

[TWX]

Never the less, Stalin was very, very angry with the United States and with the United Kingdom as his country lost territory and people to the Germans while he perceived the US and UK as not helping with the war itself. He was also very angry that technical assistance to the Soviet Union was limited; heavy bombers and other large war machines were not sent to the Soviet Union.

In some ways I can't really blame the West. Stalin played realpolitik with the Germans to try to gain territory located between the two of them; Russia also dropped-out of WWI after becoming a Soviet state. Looking at that timeline, Russia started out as antagonist to Germany in WWI, became neutral/friendly to them by the end of WWI, and remained neutral/friendly throughout the 20s and 30s until the hostilities that became WWII got going, where it allied with them to occupy Poland et al. Stalin may well have intended to betray the Germans, but until they attacked Russia and pushed so far into Russian territory there wasn't much reason for the West to look favorably upon the Soviet Union.

Re: "sources," eh? "US officials" you say?

[jmac_the_man]

The secrecy was a ploy. The missiles Kennedy agreed to remove from Turkey were outdated and on the chopping block anyway. The American government demanded secrecy to convince the Soviets that the missiles in Turkey were more powerful than they really were.

Re:"sources," eh? "US officials" you say?

[nofx911]

Odd how everyone makes a big deal of the russians shooting down a commercial airliner... the Americans did the exact same thing with USS Vincennes.

The USS Vincennes incident is also "indisputable" but thankfully was explained away by "scenario completion syndrome"

The USA Government did acknowledge that it shot down the aircraft and did agree to pay compensation to the families. "As part of the settlement, the United States did not admit legal liability but agreed to pay on an ex gratia basis US$61.8 million, amounting to $213,103.45 per passenger, in compensation to the families of the Iranian victims."

Source:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Re:"sources," eh? "US officials" you say?

[s.petry]

It's incredible a place like slashdot would have people so ignorant of history.

One may think that 'News for Nerds" would attract the best and brightest but I gave up this notion long ago. No different here than anywhere else in the US at least. The majority does not want their beliefs challenged, and tends to jump from bandwagon to bandwagon. Some fight tooth and nail to retain their delusion and ignorance, and can be modded +5 for doing so if it happens to be the "right" side of a bias.

Re:"sources," eh? "US officials" you say?

[techno-vampire]

ICBW, but my understanding is that he was referring to an old Russian saying and that what he meant by that was that the Soviets would outlive the West. (That's why they'd be burying us; we'd have died out and there wouldn't be anybody else left to bury what was left.)

And, Khrushchev had nothing but praise for the Lend/Lease equipment that the US supplied via the Murmansk Run and across the Pacific. (After Pearl Harbor, of course, it was all shipped on Soviet freighters because the Japanese were very, very careful to leave them alone.)

Re:"sources," eh? "US officials" you say?

[CrimsonAvenger]

He was also very angry that technical assistance to the Soviet Union was limited; heavy bombers and other large war machines were not sent to the Soviet Union.

A couple of things:

The USA sent more tanks to the USSR than they did to the UK.

Oddly, even though the USSR built an enormous number of reasonably well-designed tanks (T-34/76 had some really superior features, as well as a couple of really sucky ones, such as the commander having to load the gun, T-34/85 fixed most of those problems, but introduced its own set of issues (the chassis really wasn't up to supporting the enlarged turret)), they never sent any of them to the UK in the early part of the war when it would have been easier for the USSR to do so than it was for the USA to do so...

The USSR had no real use for heavy bombers, since it requires an enormous amount of trained manpower to make them effective, which the Russians never had. Note that it was enormously difficult for US to do it, and we had the industrial base already in place. As is, we DID send them some tens of thousands of ground-attack planes.

Oddly, even though the Russians produced some pretty decent Frontal Aviation (ground attack) planes themselves, they never sent any to the UK.

In other words, frankly, the logic that said that we owed the Russians support in their war against Germany is...interesting. But it's a pile of steaming...something.

Re:"sources," eh? "US officials" you say?

[rogoshen1]

Not so much removing them.. but having them there in the first place. They were basically a knife put to Russia's throat, their moving missiles to Cuba was a totally rational and proportionate response.

If you bring a gun to a knife fight, and the other guy goes and gets himself a gun, well.. what the fuck did you expect?

Re:"sources," eh? "US officials" you say?

[TWX]

So to get this straight, you're saying that the German advance into the Soviet Union, starting in 1941, that occupied Belarus, the Baltic states, Russia's half of divided Poland, Ukraine, Crimea, and the western portion of Russia, to the point that it besieged Leningrad, destroyed Stalingrad, and reached the outskirts of Moscow, was not the Soviet Union getting the crap beat out of it by Germany?

Don't get me wrong, I am certainly not discounting the Soviet Union in World War 2, as they committed the most men and the most effort to defeating Germany and they took the most German territory as the two fronts approached each other. I'm merely pointing out that they suffered heavy casualties, territorial loss, and materiel losses before the tide turned and they were able to repel the Germans and take territory themselves. Pretending like the Soviet Union didn't suffer horrific losses is discounting the suffering of those at minimum twenty million dead.

Re:"sources," eh? "US officials" you say?

[qpqp]

NATO is required to respond if there is a full invasion and that would be far from good

And why would that be exactly? Care to explain?

Re:"sources," eh? "US officials" you say?

[qpqp]

I think the GP was referring to: "before the US and the UK opened a second front" which was minuscule in comparison to the eastern one.

Re:"sources," eh? "US officials" you say?

[TWX]

Of course it was smaller than the Eastern Front. On the other hand it also forced resources that would have been sent to fight Russia to go back to securing what was previously thought to be conquered territory.

I'm kind of wondering what would have happened if Germany hadn't attacked the UK after the evacuation at Dunkirk. The evacuation was in May of 1940. Air attacks on Britain began in July 1940. The US Lend-Lease Act was passed in March 1941, mostly as a measure to assist the UK, but that later was applied to assist the Soviet Union. Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union was in June 1941. Lend-lease support of the Soviet Union began in October 1941 and ramped-up in-earnest in 1942. Had Lend-lease not been passed then possibly the Soviet Union would have fared worse in the war as they probably couldn't have afforded to purchase-outright the materials that they obtained through Lend-lease.

Re:"sources," eh? "US officials" you say?

[qpqp]

I'm just glad the UK did not form an alliance with Hitler (http://aangirfan.blogspot.de/2008/08/churchill-and-alliance-with-hitler.html). Now that would have sucked!

Re:"sources," eh? "US officials" you say?

[Dutch Gun]

Not to mention that heavy bombing was the ONLY real way we had to prosecute the war in a way that directly affected Germany in the early part of the war (while the eastern front was an ideal tank battleground). As a matter of fact, both the UK and US suffered appalling losses attempting to do this - especially the US with their insistence on daylight precision raids. Being in a bomber crew was far riskier than being an infantryman in WWII.

Certainly Russia suffered the most among the "big four" victors, and it was Russia who really defeated the Germans. But you have to look at everything in context. America not only had a second front of enormous proportions (the entire Pacific ocean, essentially), we had to gear up for a massive cross-channel invasion to start the real European war, and there was simply no way to get around the fact that it took a massive amount of time to prepare for that. Additionally, all the re-inforcements Hitler kept all along the entire coastline (even including places like Norway) kept those troops from fighting in the eastern front.

Russia came damn close to losing the war, and one could argue that help from the west may have been a significant factor. Yes, we kept bombers for ourselves, but we sent a staggering amount of food, weapons, vehicles, and other war supplies to Russia.

I grew up with the Soviet Union as the "evil empire", and was actually quite pleased when it looked like they could become real allies - maybe it was the "former enemies make the coolest allies" sort of thing, but I always had a lot of respect for the Russians. It sort of saddens me to see relations deteriorating.

Re:"sources," eh? "US officials" you say?

[Xest]

"Never the less, Stalin was very, very angry with the United States and with the United Kingdom as his country lost territory and people to the Germans while he perceived the US and UK as not helping with the war itself. He was also very angry that technical assistance to the Soviet Union was limited; heavy bombers and other large war machines were not sent to the Soviet Union. "

Um, no:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

The USSR received a phenomenal amount of support from Britain and the US. As anyone who has read my posts on this topic knows I'm incredibly critical of modern day Russia, but to give the Russian's credit where it's due, they even recognise this to this day, even under the current staunchly anti-Western regime:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-e...

The Arctic convoys and equipment delivered is something that Russia has always been deeply grateful for and is one of the few things that is actually not a bone of contention between America/Britain and Russia.

In fact, even after the war, relations weren't terribly bad, and this led to one of the biggest mistakes we in the UK made before things turned sour - we sold Russia our world leading jet engine technology, allowing them to create the MiG-15.

Most of the tension between Russia and the West came about with the way Russia was managing territory it had seized after World War II, the politics of the early UN and the whole Korea thing rather than anything that happened before Germany and Japan's surrender.

Re:"sources," eh? "US officials" you say?

[houghi]

Who needs justice if you have money.

Re:"sources," eh? "US officials" you say?

[mcswell]

I'm no expert on WWII, but I believe you're spot on about the U-boats. The German Navy revised their Enigma system several times during the war, leading to a ten month period in 1942, and a ten day period in 1943, when the Allies were unable to break Enigma--and the convoy losses to U-boats soared. Had Bletchley Park not been able to read the Enigma, the Battle of the Atlantic might have gone a lot differently, and it would have taken far longer to build up Allied forces for that invasion. (I have though wondered why the Germans didn't draw any conclusion from the timing of their successes, just after they changed the Enigma system, that the Allies had broken it.)

Joe Isuzu

[Anonymous Coward]

Russian... because it's America's newest great satan.

Sophisticated... because no script kid could poke through very smart protections.

Broklyn Bridge... because I can sell it to you for a very good price.

We should believe this when...

[s.petry]

We see facts to back their position. In fairness, I did not read TFA or do any of my own research on this _yet_. That said, I have seen so many lies from so many politicians and department heads that I simply refuse to believe anything they say any longer. I'd give you the list of known liars but it is probably shorter to list the people I do trust holding a Government position (appointed or elected).

1.

Wow, that was easy!

Re:We should believe this when...

[Vokkyt]

I'd say you should read the article, but then you'd post complaining I owe you 20 seconds of your time back.

The article is incredibly shallow and leaves absolutely everything to be desired. There are no details on the attack, no explanation as to why government officials think it's Russia. In fact, as the result of either a confused spokesperson or poor journalism (both?), the article isn't even clear if the Government thinks it's government sanctioned or not.

The officials say its not clear whether the attack was sanctioned by the Russian government or conducted by individuals. But, given the scope of the attack, "It was clearly the work of a state actor," the officials say.[entire quote sic]

The article just lacks any substance whatsoever and the quotes from the government give no justification for the term "sophisticated cyber intrusion", as they stated.

You don't even need to bring biases and suspicion/distrust of the US government into it to question the validity of the article, as it says very little on its own. There are no facts presented, just claims by the US Government and some fun descriptions by a bored copywriter at NBC.

Personally, I believe it to just be a propaganda fluff piece; the word choices used are similar to statements made about Flame/Stuxnet and their kin when researching pointed the finger at the US/Israel. The article ends with some exaggerated description "...took the aggressive step of shutting down the entire Joint Staff unclassified email system", which is a weird way to say they took the system down for cleansing. The article plays up the sophistication of the attack to make it seem like a serious threat, only to slip in a sucker punch of "...but they didn't get anything important! Don't worry!".

Re:We should believe this when...

[s.petry]

Nah, if I post I deserve to take some heat for not reading TFA. I did go read the article after I posted and had to laugh. As you point out very well there are zero facts, no evidence, nothing that I can see other than a wild accusation about using encrypted social media accounts.

That last one did give me quite a chuckle though.

Re:We should believe this when...

[Guy From V]

We still are waiting on the "evidence" that it was China behind the OPM hack. I doubt we'll get anything clearer here.

Re:We should believe this when...

[Earthquake Retrofit]

We still are waiting on the "evidence" that it was China behind the OPM hack. I doubt we'll get anything clearer here.

Inspector general Patrick E. McFarland said that OPM’s Office of the Chief Information Officer, or OCIO, has “hindered and interfered with” his office’s oversight and “has created an environment of mistrust by providing my office with incorrect and/or misleading information.” http://www.washingtonpost.com/...

Yea sure

[Anonymous Coward]

Yea sure they are. The media is doing anything they can to provoke justification for a war with Russia. I don't believe a word of what comes out of corporate media. I'd be surprised if there was ever a hack at all.
http://youtu.be/4tTMMNTisBM

Just switch to Hillary's mail server . . .

[PolygamousRanchKid]

The Pentagon should just switch to using Hillary's mail server . . . it is the most secure mail server in the world . . . because Hillary said so!

Ever wonder...

[wardrich86]

We always hear about all these hacks on the US, but have you ever wondered how many times the US has successfully hacked these other countries? Never really thought about it until now.

Re:Ever wonder...

[Anonymous Coward]

The US and GB have the internet pretty much tapped. The don't really need to hack into other countries' systems.

Re:Ever wonder...

[AHuxley]

Re:these other countries?
The US and UK "are" the networks in other nations. The crypto standards for interconnects, telco equipment, low peering costs and distant pipes.
When a few nations have methods like Quantum Insert http://www.wired.com/2015/04/r... no traditional ip trail exists
Some data about ip, time zone, data storage is found, its probably not the nation of origin anymore with todays more creative data moving methods.

As for some "sophisticated cyber intrusion" been able to "rapidly [gather] massive amounts of data" over gov and mil networks without been noticed and ending up "distributed" over the internet?
The US and UK use all mil/gov internet systems open to the internet as pure honeypots.
Disinformation left to be found is created with a trackable "stain" on all network facing systems.
Thats the magic. The trick is letting the people who moved the "data" think its real, their access was productive and lasted a long time.
Russia has placed enough staff within the US and UK military industrial complex over many decades to just stay in place and knows to avoid any such issues.
Tests are often run on new US mil staff, low level staff and new contractors by other more skilled US clandestine services to see how fast they respond, who responds and if faked social media information used by NGO's, front companies, faith groups and charities is still safe globally.
An internal test of an "unclassified" system, "massive amounts" of data been allowed to move over time and "social media" could have been leaked by other staff, contractors to the press as the work of another nation.
To any outsiders watching the data moving out, logs would reads as real but be a US staff loyalty simulation or test. Did they respond with all tools and methods as expected to a network event?
Another everyday secure, cleared US "training operation" was picked up by the US press as a "real" event.
Makes for good 'press' and gets clicks.

Re:Ever wonder...

[AHuxley]

Russia, China, UK military networks do not exist as networks would in the US.
They have sites, factory, base, military or science city. Walled, sealed. If expert staff want data, they request it with paperwork and it is delivered via a big sneaker net to a internal secure server site.
The UK and US sent SIGINT missions (shipping containers) deep into China and found nothing but consumer product lines.
No interesting networks exist in way the US has been sold on massive mil secure networks by contractors.
When the UK was looking at all Irish legal, human rights, banking, funding it did understand one issue in the 1970-80's. Emerging digital networks where a huge part of gathering information. The UK ensued it was more protected from the same methods.
Is it "Maybe they have better security?" More a better understanding of what networks can gather and less pressure from contractors to spend on 'networking'.

Exremely uncredible source

[Anonymous Coward]

Not 1 citation or 1 bit of concrete proof it was Russia

The Rothschild controlled boogeymen will say anything in their western owned media

For all we know it was a Mr. Robot type

Clinton's email

[Puppet Master]

Watch Clinton's email be totally unaffected and more secure :)