Slashdot Mirror
Russia's Rise To Cyberwar Superpower (dailydot.com)
"The Russians are top notch," says Chris Finan, an ex-director at DARPA for cyberwar research, now a CEO at security firm Manifold Technology, and a former director of cybersecurity legislation in the Obama administration. "They are some of the best in the world... " Slashdot reader blottsie quotes an article which argues the DNC hack "may simply be the icing on the cyberwar cake": In a flurry of action over the last decade, Russia has established itself as one of the world's great and most active cyber powers. The focus this week is on the leak of nearly 20,000 emails from the Democratic National Committee... The evidence -- plainly not definitive but clearly substantial -- has found support among a wide range of security professionals. The Russian link is further supported by U.S. intelligence officials, who reportedly have "high confidence" that Russia is behind the attack...
Beyond the forensic evidence that points to Russia, however, is the specter of President Vladimir Putin. Feeling encircled by the West and its expanding NATO alliance, the Kremlin's expected modus operandi is to strike across borders with cyberwar and other means to send strong messages to other nations that are a real or perceived threat.
The article notes the massive denial of service attack against Estonia in 2007 and the "historic and precedent-setting" cyberattacks during the Russian-Georgian War. "Hackers took out Georgian news and government websites exactly in locales where the Russian military attacked, cutting out a key communication mode between the Georgian state and citizens directly in the path of the fight."
Beyond the forensic evidence that points to Russia, however, is the specter of President Vladimir Putin. Feeling encircled by the West and its expanding NATO alliance, the Kremlin's expected modus operandi is to strike across borders with cyberwar and other means to send strong messages to other nations that are a real or perceived threat.
The article notes the massive denial of service attack against Estonia in 2007 and the "historic and precedent-setting" cyberattacks during the Russian-Georgian War. "Hackers took out Georgian news and government websites exactly in locales where the Russian military attacked, cutting out a key communication mode between the Georgian state and citizens directly in the path of the fight."
But, it fits a narrative I suppose. Lots of security companies who have a narrative they want to sell and lots of Twitter accounts who try to appear credible retweeting it wildly for the same. But of course, we all know an IP address can be mapped to a particular identity.
In the US, we talk about getting rid of our defensive agencies- the NSA is about half in charge of cyberdefense- and don't even consider attack. My proposal is we offer a $1 billion bounty to anybody that can blow the Great Firewall open. That'll show them.
Meanwhile, in the real world, the USA is the first country which has developed and deployed a first-strike cyber-weapon.
That is known of by the masses. And it failed in the fact that the creators relied on the date setting of the computer to delete itself. Had they done a better job, no one would have ever heard of Stuxnet. Who knows what else preceeded it.
Oh noes, the scary Russians want to hack our computers and steal our data. For our own protection, we must give up all our freedoms and give our data to the NSA. The children who must be thought of, the terrorists, the druggies, and the pedophiles welcome scary Russian hackers into the fold.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
I came here for news for nerds, not to read the latest press release from the Clinton campaign. This is pretty much the 5th story ,correction 8th or 9th that is directly in line with press releases from the Clinton campaign https://slashdot.org/index2.pl... .
ABC,CBS,CNN,NBC,NYTIMES and Politico were all colluding with DNC but you're going to cite Politico on basically the same story.
Fuck sakes the Slashdot editors posted a orange story about Michael Moore going off on Trump but not a red hot story about twitter killing the hashtag #dncleaks?
For A) Clintons' computers are a joke for running on Windows 95 with NO antivirus and NO firewall, protected only by a good-hope faith (they're too cheap to buy a real one), and for B) Russians have always been very well educated in mathematics, a matter most hated by all of north-american students (when not flipping hamburgers for a penny per hour, they prefer softie humanistic gender studies where strict logic is unnecessary and only positive emotions are needed in order to graduate). For C) I choose "cyrillic" hacking keyboard, which can be found being used anywhere from Ukraine, over Bulgaria up to Serbia.
List of countries using "russian" hacking keyboards:
Belarus
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Bulgaria
Kazakhstan
Kyrgyzstan
Macedonia
Mongolia
Montenegro
Russia
Serbia
Tajikistan
Ukraine
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyrillic_script
We thought russia hacked air force one and then it turned out later it was just some guy named George Lasco?
Minimum threshold fixed. Thanks!
You don't "blame" the Russians for being "top notch". They aren't. They just have a lot of people working at it, and we are just sloppy in the security department, or pretending to be so to create kind of an attractive honeypot. This isn't just another "Red Scare". We are dealing with real sociopaths, and we kinda have to be one to know one. This is today's problem, and solution. And I have to admit, the democrats are better at the game. At least they know the art of subtlety when facing the public. The republicans are laying all their cards on the table face up. But they are both horrible in containment of the war to the war zone.
Is it still safe to use Kaspersky products?
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
All just a smoke screen to stem the outrage when it is revealed Hillary Clinton's email server was, indeed, hacked by Russians as well. Hell, her server was an open smorgasbord of secrets for the worlds state funded cyber-units.
When that happens it will be "See, see, see Trump and the Russians are against po' whittle Hillary. Those awful terrible White Men!" (But let's not mention the 143 MILLION dollars Putin gave the Clinton's in exchange for uranium. Look it up.) ~
Which one?
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
"You push news you don't want out of the news cycle by flooding it with other, irrelevant news." And it helps when much of the press is simply an extension of your organization.
Which one?
The Democrats. The Republicans are safe because they haven't figured out how to use computers yet.
God, I love politics. On one hand we got the FBI and cronies wanting encryption weaken to make their job easier, and on the other hand, we got a big cyber threat from Russia/China.
Which one is it you fuckers?
Be seeing you...
And what most people in the West don't realize is that the vast majority of Russians side with him on this.
Russia has been invaded over and over again. It informs the national mindset, and fundamentally ingrains the urge to have a strong Russian military, and to retain bordering nations as neutral buffer states.
Dems are shown to be a bunch of corrupt elitist assholes - and they deflect from that by blaming Russia with the same gravely serious tones they used to tell you about Saddam's WMD's.
And yet, they're only four or five points behind. Who needs a computer when you can connect directly to the brain stem using just a microphone?
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
The people to fear here are the Western Exceptionalist Five Eyes. They're the ones trying to tap every communication from every person on the planet, not the Russians.
"The Russians are top notch," says Chris ...
Russia can not even produce a computer or a smartphone. These fairy tales are being generated by lobbying firms to justify spending of billions on cyber-war crap-ware. American people are so gullible.
Every state is attacking every other state. Some are attacking themselves.
It's the ultimate assymetrical warfare. And hugely successful.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
'Slashdot reader blottsie quotes an article which argues the DNC hack "may simply be the icing on the cyberwar cake"'
There is no evidence that the DNC hack was carried out by the 'Russians'.
The most of security crapware is made by Russians...
So, Mitt Romney was an idiot for calling Russia a threat 4 years ago. But now, we have a new narrative to push: the Russians are helping Donald Trump beat Hillary Clinton by releasing emails from the DNC. As part of that, now we have to push the idea that Russia has a badass hacking army that's a threat to the US. Is that about right?
Do you have ESP?
By coincidence, I see a lot of spammers....
Says AC...
The only think really damaging in the DNC hack was the doxing of the small dollar donors. Everything else was already known. DWS was already being pushed out; this was just an excuse.
The real issue is Wikileaks promoting itself instead of facilitating leaks, undermining the trust that we have placed in that org. This data had already been out for over a month. That is why there was time for find the Russian groups behind the "Guccifer 2.0" front. Wikileaks had sat on it to try make a big splash at the convention, but either never bothered to look at what it had or didn't realize that doxing was not a scoop.
Vote for the grownup in the room. Petulance can be a big problem in this line of work.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”