US Releases Declassified Report On Russian Hacking, Concludes That Putin 'Developed a Clear Preference' For Trump (theverge.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: The Office of the Director of National Intelligence has released its unclassified report on Russian hacking operations in the United States. "We assess Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the U.S. presidential election," according to the report. "Russia's goals were to undermine public faith in the U.S. democratic process, denigrate Secretary Clinton, and harm her electability and potential presidency. We further assess Putin and the Russian Government developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump." The report, titled "Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent U.S. Elections," details the successful hack of the Democratic National Committee. "The Kremlin's campaign aimed at the U.S. election featured disclosures of data obtained through Russian cyber operations; intrusions into U.S. state and local electoral boards; and overt propaganda," according to the report. The report states that Russian intelligence services made cyber-attacks against "both major U.S. political parties" to influence the 2016 election. The report also publicly names Guccifer 2.0 and DCLeaks.com, two sources of stolen information released to the public, as Russian operatives working on behalf of the country's military intelligence unit, the GRU. Officials from the organization were recently the target of U.S. sanctions. WikiLeaks is also cited as a recipient of stolen information. The report also notes that the U.S. has determined Russia "accessed elements of multiple state or local electoral boards," though no vote-tallying processes were tampered with. The FBI and CIA have "high confidence" the election tampering was ordered by Putin to help then-candidate Trump, according to the report. NSA has "moderate confidence" in the assessment. bongey writes: The declassified DNI report offers no direct evidence of Russia hacking DNC or Podesta emails. Exactly half of the report (subtract blank and TOC) 9 of 18 is just devoted to going after RT.com by claiming they have close ties to Russia and therefore a propaganda arm, trying to imply that rt.com is related to the hacking. "Many of the key judgments in this assessment rely on a body of reporting from multiple sources that are consistent with our understanding of Russian behavior. Insights into Russian efforts -- including specific cyber operations -- and Russian views of key U.S. players derive from multiple corroborating sources. Some of our judgments about Kremlin preferences and intent are drawn from the behavior of Kremlin loyal political figures, state media, and pro-Kremlin social media actors, all of whom the Kremlin either directly uses to convey messages or who are answerable to the Kremlin." UPDATE 1/6/17: President-elect Donald Trump met with U.S. intelligence officials Friday, calling the meeting "constructive" and offering praise for intel officials. "While Russia, China, other countries, outside groups and people are consistently trying to break through the cyber infrastructure of our governmental institutions, businesses and organizations including the Democrat National Committee, there was absolutely no effect on the outcome of the election, including the fact that there was no tampering whatsoever with voting machines," Trump said in a statement after the meeting.

Comments

Re:Gee, I wonder...

[grcumb]

Let's compare/contrast the historical veracity of information released by Assange/WikiLeaks with that of any US intelligence service, shall we?

Anyone who claims that the Podesta emails were not real is delusional. There's no real dispute over that.

Anyone who believes that Assange isn't biased against Clinton is also delusional. He also shows a disturbingly willful blindness to find any problems with the state of civil liberties and human rights in Russia—which, again, is not really subject to controversy.

Anyone who believes that Assange can be certain about the origin of the Podesta emails doesn't understand chain of custody. His de facto imprisonment in the Peruvian Embassy makes it physically impossible for him to objectively, empirically verify any claims of provenance. If this were evidence for the courts, he wouldn't be allowed to testify as to the provenance of the emails.

Anyone who has examined the pattern of overt and covert activities as already detailed by public domain sources that has been judged with a high or a moderate level to confidence to originate from the Russian state would be foolish to deny that there isn't a strong preponderance of evidence that yes, Russia conducted an anti-Clinton (dis)information campaign.

On the record print and TV interviews with avowed state-paid Russian trolls who profess a strong preference for Trump is probitive of a classic old-school dezinformatsiya effort. It's something that both sides used frequently in the Cold War. RT's overt anti-Clinton editorial slant is obvious, but in itself only contributory, not probitive. Assange's frequent appearances on the channel are evidence of nothing more than a bit of narcissism on his part.

The fact that the APT28 modus operandi is consistent with well-documented spying activities against the Bundestag as well as the TV5 cyber-attack is one plank. The fact that APT28 code was almost exclusively developed in a Russian language build environment, in the Moscow time zone is damning. The fact that that they used of bit.ly as an URL-obfuscator—and then committed a rooky OPSEC slip-up that allowed investigators to see what other individuals were targeted by the same account—is compelling. The fact that APT28 source has been found in the wild doesn't diminish the likelihood that this particular use of it originated from the Russian state. The use of encryption keys and certs pretty much makes it impossible for third parties to use the software without significant—and obvious—re-engineering. There is no evidence of such changes. In fact, at least one cert used in the Bundestag hacks was re-used in this effort.

The evidence suggesting that Guccifer 2.0 is almost certainly not Romanian, and is probably a Russian speaker, is not probitive, but it's strongly contributory to a conclusion that the account is a sock puppet, probably linked to a Russian source.

The USA intelligence community lacks credibility. It has relied far too much on its own much-sullied authority to make its arguments. But its credibility is laughable, and its patent insincerity and systematic dishonesty is demonstrated by a mountain of evidence. The fact that their assertions are consistent with open-source evidence indicates, however, that they're not lying about everything—this time. That does nothing to diminish the fact that they're driving a clear agenda, possibly because they don't trust Donald Trump and they feel he's compromised, or at least willing to put personal interest before national interest.

Conclusion: It's not necessary to believe the CIA/NSA/FBI to conclude that there is a concerted Russian effort to subvert the integrity of key aspects of American democratic institutions, including the US Presidential election. The Russian state has motive, means, opportunity and there is sufficient evidence to suggest that, in absence of any more compelling explanation, they have probably be