The Russians hacking the US

Soldato
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Way I see it is that (Like the world over)

The US "Liberals" are soo convinced of the righteousness of their position that they simply cannot believe that the vote of the general public went against them.

Therefore, the loss of the election (See also Brexit, etc) Must have been as a result of some sort of dark conspiracy to manipulate the vote.

This being the case, it must have been the Russians.
 
Soldato
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Way I see it is that (Like the world over)

The US "Liberals" are soo convinced of the righteousness of their position that they simply cannot believe that the vote of the general public went against them.

Therefore, the loss of the election (See also Brexit, etc) Must have been as a result of some sort of dark conspiracy to manipulate the vote.

This being the case, it must have been the Russians.

You're saying the US administration is expelling Russian diplomats because they're feelings are hurt and they're sore losers?
 
Soldato
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White House announces retaliation against Russia: Sanctions, ejecting diplomats

I'm aware there's a thread on this but I pose the question: Where does the US government and media alike get this rubbish from? Which analyst within the security services comes to the conclusion that Russia has hacked the US polls and which evidence, if any?

Also, given there's an abundance of techies here, I'd like to understand the technicalities of this; how can a government body in Russia find, hack into the network of and manipulate poll results from the motherland? I haven't looked into this too deeply but isn't it a manual counting exercise, every town/state have independent systems submitting results?

I remember reading an article in 2014 when The Interview movie was released. Sony got hacked - what was the immediate reaction? North Korea did it! Ok... I won't even start on this one as it was eventually found out to be rubbish, I believe and carried out by disgruntled employees.

I thought this was worth a discussion, as I said given it's a board of techies and I'm seeing 'we've been hacked by the Russians' more and more in the headlines.

Firstly, "hacking" is a terrible phrasing for this. Wikileaks and a former UK ambassador are stating that the emails were a leak from an insider, not a hack. Secondly, the case where John Podesta fell for a phishing scam where he followed a link in an email telling him he needed to reset his password, does not constitute hacking. A fifteen year old kid could have done it (example drawn from the Irish boy who hacked TalkTalk). It hardly requires a state actor to pull this off. First rule of dealing with the media on a specialist subject, is to check whether the terms they are using are actually accurate. They are not.

Secondly, evidence of it being Russia is shaky. If I wanted to hack somewhere, I could do it "from Russia" pretty easily. Proxies, VPNs... The CIA claim it was done from Russia and that the people who did it have known links to the Kremlin. Not really a smoking gun even if true, but the CIA are refusing to provide actual evidence. Not only to the public, but to the Chair of the House Intelligence Committee in their own government. The CIA have previously liked to a Congressional Enquiry about their use of torture. They are known to have lied about things on numerous occasions and have interfered in the selection of governments in multiple countries including Australia! It's the CIA, after all. They used to run drugs to fund their own operations independent of US government funding. None of this is "Conspiracy Theory", you can look it up easily enough. The head of the FBI has declined to prosecute Hillary Clinton for known criminal acts.

Against that, you have Julian Assange and Wikileaks who, though hated by many, have consistently disseminated true information and not been caught out lying to my knowledge. If one holds to logic, precedence and motive, their statement that it is not Russia beats the CIA's claims of "we found some evidence, trust us. No we wont show it to you but hey, we're American so we're honest, right?"

And I'm sure Saddam's WMD will be found any day now, too.

The Democrat party are attempting to force their geopolitical agenda through quickly before Trump - who favours reconciliation - takes office. Essentially, imo, a philosophy of "start the fire now so it can't be put out", which is why Trump is taking the unprecedented step for a President Elect of direct international communication prior to taking office. That's not normally done for good reason, but I'd say the hand is being forced in this instance given the current executive's determination to start down a road that can't be easily backed out of before someone else gets their turn at the wheel.

And finally, let us all remember that we're not talking about altering voting machine records or similar. We're talking about the US public finding out what the DNC and Hillary actually said and thought. From a democracy point of view, that's a good thing. The same doesn't apply to Trump because he can't be embarrassed and all the awful things he said are already out there. The DNC and Hillary, however, did have something to lose by their corruption being exposed.

My guess is that the KGB paid some independent hacker to hack the DNP servers.[/URL]

KGB was dismantled seventeen years ago. It had too much power and was broken up. A lesson the USA could benefit from with the NSA and CIA.
 
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Soldato
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I don't think anyone is suggesting that Russia "hacked" the actual vote, rather used subversion and "hacking" to influence the vote.

Which is what I can't get my head around. All they did, allegedly, was leak information. But the media phrases it as they "hacked the election". No, they released information that happened to be true. Allegedly.
 
Soldato
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I was following this a couple weeks ago, people were saying on the cyber security subreddit what evidence actually is there so far which we would be aware of?

Guy came in wrote a pretty detailed post listing top security firms all saying that the evidence is pointing to Russia.

Now I don't think there is any concrete proof though however.... i'd need to read more into this.

But that was the jist of it reddit.

Edit: The problem is this issue has been clouded beyond recognition because all people want to think is it's just "lefties" being salty because trump won.... which is clearly not the case.
 
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Soldato
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The Americans interfere literally every where in the world, basically on the whim of a nutty congressman or two.

Obama's true colours are coming out now not a particularly nice man but talks a good talk like Bill.

They don't like it so it must have been the bad guys,
 
Soldato
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In the end there wasn't really anything juicy in them, but you can't say it wasn't an attempt to influence the election.

Finding out that the Democratic National Congress which was supposedly neutral was actually aiding Hillary Clinton in her bid to beat Sanders is "juicy", imo. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, head of the DNC had to resign when it was found out she was actively working on Clinton's behalf to get her the candidacy over Sanders.

I'd say things like reviewing lists of donors for appointment to federal positions is "juicy".

Clinton's soul is black as pitch. Yes, it was an attempt to influence the election. But isn't revealing the truth to the electorate and exposing dishonesty a legitimate way of influencing an election? And the people who provided the emails to the public (and therefore are in an unquestioned position to know rather than CIA with their suppositions about 'have been associated with the Kremlin') are adamant that it was a leak from someone in the party itself. Which given the sabotage of Sanders and evident corruption in the emails, is extremely plausible.
 
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Soldato
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Wasn't this hack a simple phishing email from '[email protected]' asking them to click on the link to rest their password? You can hardly call it hacking and you hardly need a secret service and Putins approval for that

Yes. What's especially terrible about it is that John Podesta actually flagged up the email to an IT contact and said (paraphrasing as I don't feel like going through his emails), 'this sounds really urgent but a bit suspicious. Is it real or not?' and got the reply back 'yes, that's genuine - you need to do it right now'. :( :confused: :rolleyes: :(
 
Soldato
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There are also a number of people saying that they personally know the person responsible for the leak and it was from someone in the DNC.
sure thats only their word but its as much evidence as the CIA has.
(wikileaks has also constantly been accused of being a front for russia, again with no evidence)
Notably the FBI thinks its BS.
 
Associate
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They're all at it; be naïve to think otherwise. Guess this is a case of who'd have the most to gain from the democrats dirty laundry being aired in such a way literally days before a major election?

I certainly don't think such actions are beyond Mr Putin! Although some on here seem to think the man is a Saint and beyond reproach.

I'm actually quite liking the outgoing "I don't give a ****" Obama. Giving the middle finger to all and sundry including the Israelis getting a long overdue slap at the UN.
 
Associate
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if there was real actual evidence it was russia the yanks would trot it out in a heartbeat as they love to think they are always on the side of the righteous.

They are just mad with the russians because unlike afghanistan, iraq, libya et al, russia actually has a decent military and nukes so the good ol USA cant push them around and fill their country with more bases from which they can drone strike civilians
 
Soldato
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This is nothing more than last minute sabotage. It happens in this country too when the PM post switches between parties. Obama is trying to make it hard for Trump, who wants to build bridges with Russia. Politicians are scumbags the world over.

I think Russia is a bit foolish to take the bait and respond.
 
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Caporegime
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This is nothing more than last minute sabotage. It happens in this country too when the PM post switches between parties. Obama is trying to make it hard for Trump, who wants to build bridges with Russia. Politicians are scumbags the world over.

I think Russia is a bit foolish to take the bait and respond.

Nah Russia knows what it's doing, if they didnt do the same, then it would much harder for Trump to "fix it".
 
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