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How Hackers Broke Into John Podesta and Colin Powell's Gmail Accounts (vice.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: On March 19 of this year, Hillary Clinton's campaign chairman John Podesta received an alarming email that appeared to come from Google. The email, however, didn't come from the internet giant. It was actually an attempt to hack into his personal account. In fact, the message came from a group of hackers that security researchers, as well as the U.S. government, believe are spies working for the Russian government. At the time, however, Podesta didn't know any of this, and he clicked on the malicious link contained in the email, giving hackers access to his account. The data linking a group of Russian hackers -- known as Fancy Bear, APT28, or Sofacy -- to the hack on Podesta is also yet another piece in a growing heap of evidence pointing toward the Kremlin. And it also shows a clear thread between apparently separate and independent leaks that have appeared on a website called DC Leaks, such as that of Colin Powell's emails; and the Podesta leak, which was publicized on WikiLeaks. All these hacks were done using the same tool: malicious short URLs hidden in fake Gmail messages. And those URLs, according to a security firm that's tracked them for a year, were created with Bitly account linked to a domain under the control of Fancy Bear. The phishing email that Podesta received on March 19 contained a URL, created with the popular Bitly shortening service, pointing to a longer URL that, to an untrained eye, looked like a Google link. Inside that long URL, there's a 30-character string that looks like gibberish but is actually the encoded Gmail address of John Podesta. According to Bitly's own statistics, that link, which has never been published, was clicked two times in March. That's the link that opened Podesta's account to the hackers, a source close to the investigation into the hack confirmed to Motherboard. That link is only one of almost 9,000 links Fancy Bear used to target almost 4,000 individuals from October 2015 to May 2016. Each one of these URLs contained the email and name of the actual target. The hackers created them with with two Bitly accounts in their control, but forgot to set those accounts to private, according to SecureWorks, a security firm that's been tracking Fancy Bear for the last year. Bitly allowed "third parties to see their entire campaign including all their targets -- something you'd want to keep secret," Tom Finney, a researcher at SecureWorks, told Motherboard. Thomas Rid, a professor at King's College who studied the case extensively, wrote a new piece about it in Esquire.
If the DNC, Podesta, and Media, State Department, DOJ, FBI, and Hillary camp did nothing wrong there would be nothing to expose.
It really truly matters little "who" did the hacking. DNC colluded with media to install a candidate of their choosing. Super-PACs are colluding with the DNC. Clinton Foundation is mostly a front for pay-for-play and benefiting Hillary. Hillary is not the mild tempered person the media has been trying to portray her as, lies to the public, and is in it for personal power. Nothing we didn't already believe but now we have validation.
It does not matter if it was Russia, a 400lb guy in the basement, or a disgruntled staff member (still my most likely suspect) the actions described in the emails are illegal.
Russia, guilty or not, is being used as a way to white wash the conversation.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Circumstantial may mean there's a question mark, but it doesn't mean "no evidence at all". Certainly Russia would gain greatly from a President who was less willing to stand behind the US's European allies, and who, all in all, would likely represent a more inward-gazing US. Russia has no hope in hell of ever militarily dominating the West, but if it can divide, then it gains a great deal of strategic space.
Clinton's victory means the general policy towards Russia that has, by and large, been the US's strategy since the Truman Administration, remains intact, so it is clearly in Russia's interest to try to help the person that at least might represent a break with that strategy.
Yes, it is circumstantial, and there is a possible counterargument that not even Putin actually would want someone as potentially unpredictable as Donald Trump in the White House, but I still lean towards Russia wanting a more isolationist Administration in the White House, much as it wants the European Union and NATO to be weakened. These three entities; the US, the EU and NATO represent significant checks on Russia's ability to project its power, and if any or all of them can be weakened or eliminated, it is of enormous strategic advantage to Russia.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
I would say they're both as are most people in computer security these days. You cannot identify a state-level attacker, only guess. The Stuxnet is a great example, it's "probably" the US or Israel but you can't say for certain because it leaves no trace.
I must assume given the transparency of the attack this is just a corporate-level hacking group that happened to stumble upon the motherload and probably didn't even realize for months what they had.
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