[Peace-discuss] FW: A Pandemic of 'Russian Hacking'

[David Johnson]

From: David Sladky [mailto:tanstl at hotmail.com] 
Sent: Sunday, December 20, 2020 9:59 AM
To: David Johnson; Mike Schaefer
Subject: A Pandemic of 'Russian Hacking'

 

 

 

 


A Pandemic of 'Russian Hacking'


December 19, 2020

https://consortiumnews.com/2020/12/19/a-pandemic-of-russian-hacking/


 <https://consortiumnews.com/2020/12/19/a-pandemic-of-russian-hacking/>
Image removed by sender.

 <https://consortiumnews.com/2020/12/19/a-pandemic-of-russian-hacking/> A
Pandemic of 'Russian Hacking' - Consortiumnews

The hyperbolic, evidence-free media reports on the "fresh outbreak" of the
Russian-hacking disease seems an obvious attempt by intelligence to handcuff
President-elect Joe Biden into a strong ...

consortiumnews.com





Neither the actor, nor the motive, nor the damage done is known for certain
in this latest scare story, write Ray McGovern and Joe Lauria.

 <https://consortiumnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/SVR.jpg> Image
removed by sender.

Headquarters of the SVR, Russian foreign intelligence service, which is
being blamed for the hack. (Alex Saveliev/Wikipedia)

By Ray McGovern <https://consortiumnews.com/tag/ray-mcgovern/>  and
<https://consortiumnews.com/tag/joe-lauria/> Joe Lauria
Special to Consortium News

 <https://consortiumnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/0.jpg> Image removed
by sender.
<https://consortiumnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Joe_Lauria-serious-1.
png> Image removed by sender.The hyperbolic, evidence-free media reports on
the "fresh outbreak" of the Russian-hacking disease seems an obvious attempt
by intelligence to handcuff President-elect Joe Biden into a strong
anti-Russian posture as he prepares to enter the White House.

Biden might well need to be inoculated against the Russophobe fever.

There are obvious Biden intentions worrying the intelligence agencies, such
as renewing the Iran nuclear deal and restarting talks on strategic arms
limitation with Russia. Both carry the inherent "risk" of thawing the new
Cold War.

Instead, New Cold Warriors are bent on preventing any such rapprochement
with strong support from the intelligence community's mouthpiece media. U.S.
hardliners are clearly still on the rise.

Interestingly, this latest hack story came out a day before the Electoral
College formally elected Biden, and after the intelligence community,
despite numerous previous warnings, said nothing about Russia interfering in
the election. One wonders whether that would have been the assessment had
Trump won.

Instead Russia decided to hack the U.S. government.

Except there is (typically) no hard evidence pinning it on Moscow.

Uncertainties

The official
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/russian-government-spies-a
re-behind-a-broad-hacking-campaign-that-has-breached-us-agencies-and-a-top-c
yber-firm/2020/12/13/d5a53b88-3d7d-11eb-9453-fc36ba051781_story.html?utm_sou
rce=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=newsletter_axiossneakpeek&strea
m=top> story is Russia hacked into U.S. "government networks, including in
the Treasury and Commerce Departments," as David Sanger of The New York
Times
<https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/13/us/politics/russian-hackers-us-governmen
t-treasury-commerce.html?searchResultPosition=1> reported.

But plenty of things are uncertain. First, Sanger wrote last Sunday that
"hackers have had free rein for much of the year, though it is not clear how
many email and other systems they chose to enter."

The motive of the hack is uncertain, as well what damage may have been done.

"The motive for the attack on the agency and the Treasury Department remains
elusive, two people familiar with the matter said," Sanger reported. "One
government official said it was too soon to tell how damaging the attacks
were and how much material was lost."

 
<https://consortiumnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/David_E._Sanger_2011_
05.jpg> Image removed by sender.

Sanger. (Wikimedia Commons)

On Friday, five days after the story first broke, in an
<https://www.cnbc.com/2020/12/18/suspected-russian-hack-on-us-is-much-worse-
than-first-feared.html>  article misleadingly headlined, "Suspected Russian
hack is much worse than first feared," NBC News admitted:

"At this stage, it's not clear what the hackers have done beyond accessing
top-secret government networks and monitoring data."

Who conducted the hack is also not certain.

NBC reported that the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency
"has not said who it thinks is the 'advanced persistent threat actor' behind
the 'significant and ongoing' campaign, but many experts are pointing to
Russia."

At first Sanger was certain in his piece that Russia was behind the attack.
He refers to FireEye, "a computer security firm that first raised the alarm
about the Russian campaign after its own systems were pierced."

But later in the same piece, Sanger loses his certainty: "If the Russia
connection is confirmed," he writes.

In the absence of firm evidence that damage has been done, this may well be
an intrusion into other governments' networks routinely carried out by
intelligence agencies around the world, including, if not chiefly, by the
United States. It is what spies do.

So neither the actor, nor the motive, nor the damage done is known for
certain.

Yet across the vast networks of powerful U.S. media the story has been
portrayed as a major crisis brought on by a sinister Russian attack putting
the security of the American people at risk.

In a second piece on Wednesday, Sanger
<https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/16/us/politics/russia-hack-putin-trump-bide
n.html?searchResultPosition=10>  added to the alarm by saying the hack
"ranks among the greatest intelligence failures of modern times." And on
Friday Secretary of State Mike Pompeo
<https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/530962-pompeo-russia-pretty-cle
arly-behind-massive-cyberattack.> claimed Russia was "pretty clearly" behind
the cyber attacks. But he cautioned: ". we're still unpacking precisely what
it is, and I'm sure  some of it will remain classified." In other words,
trust us.

Ed Loomis, a former NSA technical director, believes the suspect list should
extend beyond Russia to include China, Iran, and North Korea. Loomis also
says the commercial cyber-security firms that have been studying the latest
"attacks" have not been able to pinpoint the source.

 
<https://consortiumnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Tom_Bossert_official_
photo.jpg> Image removed by sender.

Tom Bossert (Office of U.S. Executive)

In a New York Times  <https://archive.is/2vsFx#selection-587.159-591.80>
op-ed, former Trump domestic security adviser Thomas Bossert on Wednesday
called on Trump to "use whatever leverage he can muster to protect the
United States and severely punish the Russians." And he said Biden "must
begin his planning to take charge of this crisis."

[On Friday, Biden talked tough. He promised there would be "costs" and said:
"A good defense isn't enough; we need to disrupt and deter our adversaries
from undertaking significant cyberattacks in the first place. I will not
stand idly by in the face of cyber-assaults on our nation."]

While asserting throughout his piece that, without question, Russia now
"controls" U.S. government computer networks, Bossert's confidence suddenly
evaporates by slipping in at one point, "If it is Russia."

The analysis the corporate press has relied on came from the private
cyber-security firm FireEye. This question should be raised: Why has a
private contractor at extra taxpayer expense carried out this cyber analysis
rather than the already publicly-funded National Security Agency?

Similarly, why did the private firm CrowdStrike, rather than the FBI,
analyze the Democratic National Committee servers in 2016?

Could it be to give government agencies plausible deniability if these
analyses, as in the case of CrowdStrike, and very likely in this latest case
of Russian "hacking," turn out to be wrong? This is a question someone on
the intelligence committees should be asking.

Sanger is as active in blaming the Kremlin for hacking, as he and his
erstwhile NYT colleague, neocon hero Judith Miller, were in insisting on the
presence of (non-existent) weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, helping to
facilitate a major invasion with mass loss of life.

The Military-Industrial-Congressional-Intelligence-MEDIA-Academia-Think-Tank
complex (MICIMATT, for short) needs credible "enemies" to justify
unprecedentedly huge expenditures for arms - the more so at a time when it
is clearer than ever, that that the money would be far better spent at home.
(MEDIA is in all caps because it is the sine-qua-non, the cornerstone to
making the MICIMATT enterprise work.)

Bad Flashback

In this latest media flurry, Sanger and other intel leakers' favorites are
including as "flat fact" what "everybody knows": namely, that Russia hacked
the infamous Hillary Clinton-damaging emails from the Democratic National
Committee in 2016.

Sanger wrote:

".the same group of [Russian] hackers went on to invade the systems of the
Democratic National Committee and top officials in Hillary Clinton's
campaign, touching off investigations and fears that permeated both the 2016
and 2020 contests. Another, more disruptive Russian intelligence agency, the
G.R.U., is believed to be responsible for then making public the hacked
emails at the D.N.C."

That accusation was devised as a magnificent distraction after the Clinton
campaign learned that WikiLeaks was about to publish emails that showed how
Clinton and the DNC had stacked the deck against Bernie Sanders. It was an
emergency solution, but it had uncommon success.

There was no denying the authenticity of those DNC emails published by
WikiLeaks. So the Democrats mounted an artful campaign, very strongly
supported by Establishment media, to divert attention from the content of
the emails. How to do that? Blame Russian "hacking." And for good measure,
persuade then Senator John McCain to call it an "act of war."

One experienced observer, Consortium News columnist Patrick Lawrence,
<https://raymcgovern.com/2019/04/18/dnc-gate-patrick-lawrence-saw-through-it
-from-the-start/> saw through the Democratic blame-Russia offensive from the
start.

Artful as the blame-Russia maneuver was, many voters apparently saw through
this clever and widely successful diversion, learned enough about the
emails' contents, and decided not to vote for Hillary Clinton.

4 Years & 7 Days Ago

On Dec. 12, 2016, Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) used
sensitive intelligence revealed by Edward Snowden, the expertise of former
NSA technical directors, and basic principles of physics to show that
accusations that Russia hacked those embarrassing DNC emails were
fraudulent.

A year later, on Dec. 5, 2017, the head of CrowdStrike, the cyber firm hired
by the DNC to do the forensics,
<https://consortiumnews.com/2020/05/09/ray-mcgovern-new-house-documents-sow-
further-doubt-that-russia-hacked-the-dnc/> testified under oath that there
was no technical evidence that the emails had been "exfiltrated"; that is,
hacked from the DNC.

His testimony was kept hidden by House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam
Schiff until Schiff was forced to release it on May 7, 2020. That
<https://intelligence.house.gov/uploadedfiles/sh21.pdf> testimony is still
being kept under wraps by Establishment media.

What VIPS wrote four years ago is worth re-reading - particularly for those
who still believe in science and have trusted the experienced intelligence
professionals of VIPS with the group's unblemished, no-axes-to-grind record.

Most of the
<https://consortiumnews.com/2016/12/12/us-intel-vets-dispute-russia-hacking-
claims/> Memorandum's embedded links are to TOP SECRET charts that Snowden
made available - icing on the cake - and, as far as VIPS's former NSA
technical directors were concerned, precisely what was to be demonstrated
QED.

Many Democrats unfortunately still believe-or profess to believe-the hacking
and the Trump campaign-Russia conspiracy story, the former debunked by
Henry's testimony and the latter by Special Counsel Robert Mueller. Both
were legally obligated to tell the truth, while the intelligence agencies
were not.

Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical
Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington. He was a Russian specialist
and presidential briefer during his 27 years as a CIA analyst. In retirement
he co-created Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).

Joe Lauria is editor-in-chief of Consortium News and a former UN
correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe, and numerous other
newspapers. He was an investigative reporter for the Sunday Times of London
and began his professional career as a stringer for The New York Times.  He
can be reached at  <mailto:joelauria at consortiumnews.com>
joelauria at consortiumnews.com and followed on Twitter
<https://twitter.com/unjoe> @unjoe . 

 

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