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Were Russian Hackers Deterred From Interfering In America's Election? (omaha.com)
"Despite probing and trolling, a Russian cyberattack is the dog that did not bark in Tuesday's midterm elections," writes national security columnist Eli Lake.
This is the assessment of the Department of Homeland Security, which says there were no signs of a coordinated campaign to disrupt U.S. voting. This welcome news raises a relevant and important question: Were cyber adversaries actually deterred from infiltrating voter databases and changing election results...?
In September the White House unveiled a new policy aimed at deterring Russia, China, Iran and North Korea from hacking U.S. computer networks in general and the midterms in particular. National security adviser John Bolton acknowledged as much last week when he said the U.S. government was undertaking "offensive cyber operations" aimed at "defending the integrity of our electoral process." There aren't many details. Reportedly this entailed sending texts, pop-ups, emails and direct messages warning Russian trolls and military hackers not to disrupt the midterms. U.S. officials tell me much more is going on that remains classified. It is part of a new approach from the Trump administration that purports to unleash U.S. Cyber Command to hack the hackers back, to fight them in their networks as opposed to America's.
Bolton has said the policy reverses previous restrictions on military hackers to disrupt the networks from which rival powers attack the U.S. Sometimes this is called "persistent engagement" or "defend forward." And it represents a shift in the broader U.S. approach to engaging adversaries in cyberspace.... The difference now is that America's cyber warriors will routinely try to disrupt cyberattacks before they begin... The object of cyberdeterrence is not to get an adversary to never use cyberweapons. It's to prevent attacks of certain critical systems such as voter registration databases, electrical grids and missile command-and-control systems. The theory, at least, is to force adversaries to devote resources they would otherwise use to attack the U.S. to better secure their own networks.
Jason Healey, a historian of cyber conflicts at Columbia University's School for International and Public Affairs, asks "How much of cyberspace will survive the war?" warning that "persistent engagement" could lead to a dangerous miscalculation by an adversarial nation-state -- or even worse, a spiral of escalation, with other state's following America's lead, changing the open Internet into more of a battleground.
In September the White House unveiled a new policy aimed at deterring Russia, China, Iran and North Korea from hacking U.S. computer networks in general and the midterms in particular. National security adviser John Bolton acknowledged as much last week when he said the U.S. government was undertaking "offensive cyber operations" aimed at "defending the integrity of our electoral process." There aren't many details. Reportedly this entailed sending texts, pop-ups, emails and direct messages warning Russian trolls and military hackers not to disrupt the midterms. U.S. officials tell me much more is going on that remains classified. It is part of a new approach from the Trump administration that purports to unleash U.S. Cyber Command to hack the hackers back, to fight them in their networks as opposed to America's.
Bolton has said the policy reverses previous restrictions on military hackers to disrupt the networks from which rival powers attack the U.S. Sometimes this is called "persistent engagement" or "defend forward." And it represents a shift in the broader U.S. approach to engaging adversaries in cyberspace.... The difference now is that America's cyber warriors will routinely try to disrupt cyberattacks before they begin... The object of cyberdeterrence is not to get an adversary to never use cyberweapons. It's to prevent attacks of certain critical systems such as voter registration databases, electrical grids and missile command-and-control systems. The theory, at least, is to force adversaries to devote resources they would otherwise use to attack the U.S. to better secure their own networks.
Jason Healey, a historian of cyber conflicts at Columbia University's School for International and Public Affairs, asks "How much of cyberspace will survive the war?" warning that "persistent engagement" could lead to a dangerous miscalculation by an adversarial nation-state -- or even worse, a spiral of escalation, with other state's following America's lead, changing the open Internet into more of a battleground.
National security adviser John Bolton acknowledged as much last week when he said the U.S. government was undertaking "offensive cyber operations" aimed at "defending the integrity of our electoral process." There aren't many details. Reportedly this entailed sending texts, pop-ups, emails and direct messages warning Russian trolls and military hackers not to disrupt the midterms.
Clearly, Russian trolls' and military hackers' personal kryptonite is US government pop-ups and direct warning messages.... Just the one question: why did we wait until this election cycle to break out the big guns?
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
Dims had it all:
- Fake news collusion
- Ballot stuffing
- Illegal votes
The far left and the media have been beating this drum for multiple years.
If one were to take all the claims at face value, you would think that there's Russians in the bloody toaster. They're everywhere! Doing all the bad things, they ran the election, they hacked servers, "they" are every single account on social media that doesn't mean heavily left.
If you disagree with anything, you're not real, probably a Russian bot! Or a Nazi, clearly!
They wonder why people are voting differently to how they actually poll publically...
As an ex far lefty, they're getting downright embarrassing.
Posting from Moscow,.... Obviously.
"missile command-and-control systems on the public internet?
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
Russia had no significant motivation to hack the midterm elections. They're not republicans. They supported Trump to a degree as a practical matter because they have a degree of hold over him. Their ad buys have mostly been centered around stirring up hatred between Americans via conspiracy theories, not about supporting one party or the other. A split government is really the best for them. All that matters is that we keep attacking each other until we're not longer a threat to them.
To be clear, I don't begrudge Russia for it considering how much worse the CIA has done around the world. It's not like they're going after an innocent nation. What Russia is doing is simply trying to weaken a nation which has insisted on making a mission of prying satellite states out of Russia's sphere of influence and promoting democracy to Russia itself. If the USA didn't make a career of threatening Russia, it wouldn't be targeted.
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The US is divided like I wasn't since the civil war. Why bother investing any more effort? Every AAA-gunner will tell you, when the enemy plane is already coming down in flames you can stop shooting.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
the entire American Intelligence community is beating this drum. There's no one outside the right wing that isn't saying that Russia interfered with our last election, and virtually everyone (again everyone outside the right wing) says the interference was largely successful.
We're a weaker and more divided nation since the last election. That our President had an advert that multiple networks refused to run this last election speaks volumes to how how much of a mess things are right now.
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First we are said without proof that Russians made the 2016 presidential elections. Then we are told without proof that they were stopped from influencing the 2018 midterm elections.
Alternative explanation: Russians try to influence all US elections with negligible impact, and democrats lost in 2016 because they chose the wrong candidate.
I'm pretty sure that Russia - which has never abandoned their goal to rebuild the Soviet Union - has no particular interest in any candidate, but desires to cause the maximum in hate, discontent. and confusion. They don't even have to DO anything; just CLAIM that they did.
And members of both parties, but the Democrats especially, are digging as deep a hole as they can. They think that they can make partisan gains by destroying the OTHER party more than they are damaging their own.
stopped agents entrenched in the USA from renting out VMs and dedicated servers to tunnel attacks through locally.
The same policies probably acted as a much better IDS too, stopped payloads in their tracks as they brushed up against the small print getting routed to /dev/null
The problem with slashdot is that most of its users were bullied and stuffed into lockers as kids!
Super Russians? Who managed to sink the only floating drydock capable of refurbishing their decrepit and corroding "aircraft carrier", the Kuznetsov? Well, at least the American plot to sink the Kuznetsov when they scuttled the floating drydock didn't ENTIRELY succeed. THOSE "super Russians"?
The Russians never hacked the election; they just told Hillary that they HAD, after she lost. The only thing the Russians have ever done well was vodka and psychological warfare. And you, you abysmal AC, are either one of them or a dupe.
Was super expert last time but not expert this time?
Time to look for another cyber story?
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Or Door #3; the Russians did nothing productive other than manufacturing hate and discontent by lying to EVERYONE.
I appreciate that we finally have someone who pushes back.
... is America itself.
I'm a 72 year old retired IT guy and it's all I can do to minimize my goddam footprint on this goddam Internet.
I'm not afraid of obvious threats. What scares me is the boiling frog.
Advertisers are the water and we are the frogs.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
So that means there was no interference. Just like nobody ever interfered with our elections in all of history and fake news didn't exist until 2016.
Gregory (Scotland Yard detective): "Is there any other point to which you would wish to draw my attention?"
Holmes: "To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time."
Gregory: "The dog did nothing in the night-time."
Holmes: "That was the curious incident.
While CNN and Fox have USians fighting ourselves, China and Mexico are laughing their asses off.
Your enemy is not the racist republican nor the communist libtard. It is the media, controlled by vested foreign interests that has you hating your fellow citizen. Republicans are not racist, nor are liberal lazy drug users living off the government. Hate those that want you to hate your fellow countrymen. Ask yourself who is to gain from division.
Everytime you rage against those lazy liberals or those racist republican, China and Mexico gooble up your future.
Dont be like the Native American that fought amongst themselves while the Europeans took over America. UNITE and fight with your fellow citizens to resist the foreign invaders.
Its either that or teach your daughters to speak Chinese or Spanish so they can make a feeble living in a Mexican or Chinese brothel.
Because the only way to defend a network is to think like an attacker, and far better, be an attacker. Every time we PWN an adversary, someone will ask, "Would that have worked against us?" And the answer will be, "Yeah, they've PWNed us for years with that."
Celebrate failure, and then learn from it - Nolan Bushnell
Vote in 2 more years?
These are the publicly known US intelligence agencies:
Twenty-Fifth Air Force
Army Intelligence and Security Command
Central Intelligence Agency
Coast Guard Intelligence
Defense Intelligence Agency
Dept of Energy Office of Intelligence and Counterintelligence
Homeland Security Department Office of Intelligence and Analysis
State Department Bureau of Intelligence and Research
Treasury Department Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence
Drug Enforcement Administration Office of National Security Intelligence
Federal Bureau of Investigation Intelligence Branch
Marine Corps Intelligence Activity
National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency
National Reconnaissance Office
National Security Agency
Office of Naval Intelligence
Just how many of these were actually investigating "Russian Hacking" of Hillary's e-mail servers, John Podesta's Gmail account, or Russian clickbait ads on Facebook???
Here's the answer: NONE. John Brennan (the actual communist that Barack Obama made into the head of the CIA) and his pals Clapper and Comey were all deeply anti-Trump and fully comitted to getting Hillary elected (and their continued job security) and THEY started speading the word that "all seventeen intelligence agencies agreed". In testimony under oath before congress over a year ago, however, Comey admitted that what really happened was that non of those agencies dissented from the claim made by these three POLITICAL APPOINTEES.
The NRO spends its time on watching other countries with spy satellites. Naval intelligence spends its resources watching the Russian and Chinese navies. Coast Guard intel spends its resources watching for seaborne drug and human smiggling activities. Treasury intel watches for international currency fraud activity (like North Korea counterfirring US currency), and so forth. All those agencies are NOT wasting time watching Facebook and anybody claiming they are is doing the same thing as Trump when he says he has "the biggest brain" (political hyperbole and carnival barking).
The Russians have no need for farther intrusions. They successfully installed their trojan horse in 2016 and it's been working brilliantly obstructing, jamming, overturning and breaking administration systems ever since.
The list of people interested in the election results is very, very long. Russia certainly is on that list somewhere, but most likely not near the top. There are many others more interested and more motivated to play around.
Russians can be assumed to not be totally stupid. As such they would understand how much theatre US politics is and how little it actually matters who sits in what chair, a few special chairs exempted. Too many decisions are made behind the scenes anyways, but non-elected officials. Too many decisions are influenced by money and lobbyists.
If I were tasked with influencing politics in Washington, hacking an election would be among the last things on my mind. Buying out or planting my people in some of the large lobbying organisations would be much, much higher. And bribing politicians with pictures of that whore they met, or that gay adventure they had would be far above buying Facebook ads.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
What the fuck does a dry dock have to do with elections? You spent too much time under a crystal observing the interconnection of all things.
See here. Heck, the wikipedia artcile has tons of sources.
And if you think a national election where the winning candidate lost the popular vote by 3 million and won the electoral collect by about 100,000 votes wasn't impacted by a wide scale campaign from an ex-KGB guy who specialized in information warfare, well, I don't even know if I should call that naive. There needs to be a stronger word for it. Perhaps something German?
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because nobody expected Trump to win except 538 and a few folks on the far left sounding the gone (notably Secular Talk on Youtube) because of how pissed off the working class was.
Trump was a failed business man (albeit a successful actor). This came out in numerous lawsuits, notably when he sued a journalist who (rightly as it turned out) pointed out that Trump wasn't a billionaire. He had a mountain of lawsuits against him and had made a career of using his brand to sell cheap merchandise and defraud people with his phony school. He had a raft of sex scandals and was running with the party of family values. Finally he had decades of mob ties he wouldn't want drugged out into the light and was likely to run a self destructive campaign.
Trump won because the Dems ignored the working class (same reason Brexit passed). Hilary bought into the "Blue Wall". Meanwhile Trump ran as a left wing populist. That said, the election was close. Damn close. The Dems ignored that. The Russians didn't. The watched the polls and threw in for Trump. It's likely they were a deciding factor.
Don't get me wrong, getting a president as bad as Trump is a total and complete breakdown of this country's systems. But that wasn't lost on the Russians. This time around folks are taking that shit seriously.
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Oh, please. Just like YOU and everyone else, the Russians thought that the Clintons would be returning to power. Their entire motivation was to stir the pot and create an angry cultural/media landscape to diminish the effectiveness of the incoming Hillary administration. This is their playbook in countries all around the world, and has been since Soviet days. They didn't start spending a handful of cash more seriously until AFTER the election was over, when they did some immediate hard changes in their tone and direction ... because they were just as shocked that the Clintons they actually wanted (weakly) in power lost despite all of the structural, financial, and media advantages they assumed - just like you and everyone else - would be unstoppable. Your TDS is preventing you from any sort of rational processing of events.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Do you bother kneecapping someone whose head you just blew off?