Dutch Intelligence Agents Watched Russia Hack the DNC (volkskrant.nl)

Long-time Slashdot readers Agilulf, Sara Chan, and wiredmikey -- plus an anonymous reader -- all submitted the same story. Agilulf writes: Dutch hackers from AIVD (their intelligence agency) infiltrated Russian hackers, had access to their CCTV system, and followed them for more than a year, watched their attack on the DNC, provided the proof to the U.S. intelligence community that Russia was behind those hacks and the stolen emails, and were disappointed with the response from the U.S.
The Dutch agents also watched Russian agents breach a non-classified network at the U.S. State Department in 2014, where the Russians then sent a phishing email to the White House, successfully stole login credentials, and then accessed email from embassies and diplomats.

"Three American intelligence services state with 'high confidence' that the Kremlin was behind the attack on the Democratic Party," according to the article, which adds that that certainty "is derived from the AIVD hackers having had access to the office-like space in the center of Moscow for years."

Comments

Referendum

[Njovich]

There is a referendum upcoming in the Netherlands about massively expanding what the intelligence agencies are allowed to do. Any information about Dutch intelligence in the coming months should be viewed in that light. The government is trying to paint them in as positive light as possible. Given that nothing they say can be verified, be careful what you believe.

Re:Donald Trump collaborated the Russians

[Shaix]

If Trump gets impeached, we will not be getting Hillary... We will get Mike Pence, who is probably 100x worse than Trump.... So be careful what you wish for.... You should look up presidential line of succession. It would be Mike Pence -> Paul Ryan -> Orrin Hatch. All nice gems in themselves. Also it's highly unlikely there was any collaboration. What probably happened was some hackers obviously did hack the DNC, then gave that info to someone, then that someone who possibly was Russian, approached Trump team and said hey I have juicy emails showing DNC corruption, would you like it? And Trump said, hell yeah, let me see. Collaboration would have to show that they were working together on the plan and execution. Which clearly was not the case.

Re:Why believe any of it?

[AmiMoJo]

Cosy Bear, the group involved here, is well documented by multiple parties in multiple countries. Several anti-virus/security vendors have identified their malware and examined it in detail including Kaspersky (!), Symantec and F-Secure. So Russian, Finnish and American companies all reaching the same conclusions. Multiple law enforcement and security services have detected their attacks too.

At this point their existence and activities are not really in question. They are known to attack politicians in other countries, seemingly with the goal of causing disruption to governments and democratic processes.

If you want to read more then the Wikipedia article is a good jumping off point, with lots of references and links to analysis of their malware and operations. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...