The New York Times did an about face with their reporting on Russia, hacking and the Trump campaign
www.nytimes.com/…
His [Special Agent Adrian Hawkins] message was brief, if alarming. At least one computer system belonging to the D.N.C. had been compromised by hackers federal investigators had named “the Dukes,” a cyberespionage team linked to the Russian government.
The F.B.I. knew it well: The bureau had spent the last few years trying to kick the Dukes out of the unclassified email systems of the White House, the State Department and even the Joint Chiefs of Staff, one of the government’s best-protected networks.
Alas, for the DNC, the person fielding the call had no clue with how to deal with cyberattacks and he didn’t know if Hawkins was real or a phony FBI agent. The DNC handled this poorly as did the FBI — I feel that the FBI should have made a visit to the DNC and helped them beef up their security. Especially when Hawkins didn’t get return phone calls and saw that the hacking was ramping up on the DNC servers.
It is strange to me that they didn’t visit them or contact someone who could have taken this more seriously at the time in 2015. The FBI is only ½ mile from the DNC headquarters. The NYT’s calls the FBI’s approach “low key” and I would agree with that. At the same time, the DNC tech help, Mr Tamene, should have not taken this so lightly. It is SO damning that this man didn’t quite grasp the severity of the situation.
And we should expect more from Russia
For Russia, with an enfeebled economy and a nuclear arsenal it cannot use short of all-out war, cyberpower proved the perfect weapon: cheap, hard to see coming, hard to trace. “There shouldn’t be any doubt in anybody’s mind,” Adm. Michael S. Rogers, the director of the National Security Agency and commander of United States Cyber Command said at a postelection conference. “This was not something that was done casually, this was not something that was done by chance, this was not a target that was selected purely arbitrarily,” he said. “This was a conscious effort by a nation-state to attempt to achieve a specific effect.”
The stupidity of the some of those in the DNC also just amazes me. I work in IT and we are always sending out notifications NOT to click on links in emails that tell you to change your password, if you haven’t initiated that request. Another reason why the hackers were so successful was due to just that. Bill Rinehart, who was working for Hillary’s campaign, got an email stating that someone had hacked into his google account and to change his password. And he did just that, by clicking on the button in the email, thus giving his new password to the Russian hackers.
The DNC tried to get the FBI to announce to the public that the Russians have hacked into their system back in June. The FBI sat on this so the DNC decided to go public with it… Then wikileaks, led by Assange, whose only goal was revenge on Hillary Clinton, did a massive dump in October. The US government also went on the record (finally) that the Russians were behind in the hackings. Despite Trump’s kitty grabber comment, the drip.drip.drip of really what amounted to normal communications and strategies, with the normal in-fighting, were released to the public and the media just ate it up. Making the most mundane statements into a “OMG WE CAN’T TRUST HER” meme, over and over again.
The Clinton Foundation, a sterling A rated charity, was dragged thru the mud, while The Trump Foundation, a complete joke, was allowed to skate thru virtually unharmed. And how did the Trump campaign know about Wikileaks plans in advance? Roger Stone has boasted thru tweets that he knew days before the first Podesta email release.
This is an act of foreign espionage and yet, only the Democratic party was calling that. The RNC and even the WH, didn’t condemn this attacks. Donna Brazile even tried to have Reince Priebus to join her in condemning these attacks, which he refused to do so. The media preferred to focus on the gossip office chatter in the emails instead of calling it an act of foreign espionage designed to affect our election.
I hope this is the beginning of some serious reporting on this matter. This is a very long article but it is well worth the read and I highly recommend it — as this won’t stop
But Russia’s cybertsars have by no means forgotten the American target. On the day after the presidential election, the cybersecurity company Volexity reported five new waves of phishing emails, evidently from Cozy Bear, aimed at think tanks and nonprofits in the United States. One of them purported to be from Harvard University, attaching a fake paper. Its title: “Why American Elections Are Flawed.”