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Hack of Democrats' Accounts Was Wider Than Believed, Officials Say (nymag.com)
A Russian cyberattack that targeted Democratic politicians was bigger than it first appeared and breached private email accounts of more than 100 party officials and groups (could be paywalled; alternate source), reports The New York Times, citing officials with knowledge of the case. From the report: The widening scope of the attack has prompted the F.B.I. to broaden its investigation, and agents have begun notifying a long list of Democratic officials that the Russians may have breached their personal accounts. The main targets appear to have been the personal email accounts of Hillary Clinton's campaign officials and party operatives, along with a number of party organizations. Officials have acknowledged that the Russian hackers gained access to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which is the fund-raising arm for House Democrats, and to the Democratic National Committee, including a D.N.C. voter analytics program used by Mrs. Clinton's presidential campaign.
This wouldn't happen to Republicans, because they're so old. They'd get competent sysadmins to run the servers, proficient clerks to print out their emails each morning, and they'd dictate their replies to a transcriptionist who can remember her fucking password.
There used to be a time when the press acted as investigative journalists, and worked with whistleblowers to expose political corruption and hold politicians accountable for their actions (think Watergate). This was lauded as necessary for the function of the country. Now, this function has been outsourced to the FSB, and the corruption they reveal is denigrated as "interfering with the sanctity of the electoral process". How about the press goes back to being watch dogs instead of lap dogs, shake off the "Democrats with bylines" label,expose the corruption themselves, and undermine the FSB?
Maybe I missed publication of some definitive proof, but this story kind of says the Russians did this, unqualified. We've seen some similarly confident attributions in the past that turned out to be wrong. Convenient, but wrong.
If I were Putin, and I had dirt on Clinton, I'd hang on to it until she were President. Much more leverage that way.
The story says unnamed American intelligence officials have "high confidence" it was the Russians.
However, I don't know how they've determined that. The only analysis I've seen was from the private security firm hired by the DNC to investigate after the attack. They found circumstantial evidence the hack originated from Russia (Cyrillic letters in metadata, timestamps that correspond with waking hours in Russia, etc). However, that doesn't mean it was state sponsored. There are lots of hackers in Russia and not all of them are getting rubles from Putin.
What we know: circumstantial evidence the hack originated in Russia.
What the media's running with: Trump is a secret agent taking orders from Putin who personally haxx0red the DNC and if you don't elect Hillary Clinton then Trump is going to take orders from Putin and invade Europe and/or nuke everyone.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.