U.S. sweeping up Russian hackers in a broad global dragnet

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/national/national-security/article141997444.html

by mzs • 9 years ago

44 26 9 years ago

mcclatchydc.com

oneobservation• 9 years ago

What about a discussion of how they were caught?

Implicated• 9 years ago

Or why they're just now being 'swept up' as opposed to prior.

mirimir2• 9 years ago

Yes, I'd find that far more interesting than conspiracy theories and moralizing.

itchyjunk2• 9 years ago

I see two major possibility.

a] Russians hackers are the biggest problem on the internet causing billions of dollars in loss and are possibly being guided by the Russian state.

b] A narrative is being passed to justify all the negative publicity certain agencies have been getting. (We keep internet safe)

Of course, the story might be something else and the author of the article wanted to make it seem that way. But I think the choke hold on the internet has been getting tighter.

Maybe the power struggle that always existed is now shifting to the virtual world and I'm witnessing that.

Edit: Is HN fimiliar with phrack zine? Noticed today that it went bye bye as well. [0] phrack.org

trendia• 9 years ago

What amazes me is the focus on Russian hackers when the much bigger threat is Chinese ones. They have a larger budget, a bigger incentive to steal American IP, and sense a huge threat from Trump that would justify spying to get a leg up in negotiations.

So why the focus on Russia?

pizza• 9 years ago

Enemy of my enemy leads to very odd coalitions. E.g. liberals + intelligence community against WH vs liberals against intelligence community post-9/11 (and before). I think this covers that type of phenomenon [0]. "Russian hacker" is just the new nightmare of the mode.

Also, Xi Jinping is visiting Mar a Lago soon. Would probably strain talks to play that move before the meet.

[0] https://libcom.org/library/when-insurrections-die

itchyjunk2• 9 years ago

Yes, I also wonder why? "Russian hackers" is popular catch phrase. Reinforces that idea that this is more play on the same notion.

But on the other hand, maybe they were always a bigger problem and out of reach, and the agencies finally have an excuse to nab some while there is all the hype going on.

JabrZer0• 9 years ago

It was recently put to me like this (I'm not sure I agree with the analysis completely, but I think there's some truth to it, at least in the perceptions of the two countries):

While the Chinese are certainly sometimes nefarious in their online activities, their goal, as you mentioned, seems to usually be gaining IP. The perception is that Russian hacking is usually more (a) directed at stealing directly from the populace (credit card phishing, etc), or (b) directed towards political ends (see recent American politics for examples). These effects are both more visible to the general public and politically damaging. Thus they receive more focus on the political stage.

To me, (b) seems like the real differentiating factor.

tyingq• 9 years ago

The article is somewhat odd in that it implies this is a new thing, or even recent.

At least one of the stories and featured photos (guy with the yellow car) is of a Russian hacker the US picked up in July of 2014.

There's a news story from 2015, but it mentions the guy was picked up from the Maldives a year earlier.

http://www.businessinsider.com/notorious-russian-hacker-kidn...

akhilcacharya• 9 years ago

Because one's objectives are business related, the others government related. That simple.

I think the latter is far more concerning.

839083• 9 years ago

Another user mentioned stealing IP, maybe the US is involved in similar activities (not necessarily targeting China) and doesn't want to be caught pointing fingers.

But politically, we had the Contras and Cuban exiles. It's not as if the US has clean hands.

petre• 9 years ago

Because they screwed with the politicians?

kartan• 9 years ago

So why the focus on Russia?

China vs USA is a business competition. Both think that can get an advantage out of it.

Russia vs USA is a struggle for power and influence in Europe. If USA losses the EU it is isolated. If USA becomes Russian ally it is a major shift in the world power and will bring with it a lot of instability, and that means lose money.

Brexit can be an example of the late. Brexit movement foundation relays on the so called fake-news. It is a big shift in power, but not so big as the UK was never well integrated into the EU. The monetary loss is immense.

api• 9 years ago

These two are not mutually exclusive.

mtgx2• 9 years ago

Yeah, but the real story is "NSA's dragnet surveillance is catching all hacking Russians....+ all civilian Russians + all other foreigners + all U.S. citizens, too."

The fact that it only focuses on "Russian hackers" shows that it's U.S. intelligence propaganda. It's one of those "you're lying with the truth by omitting much of the context" kind of things. It's actually a strategy agencies like the FBI have used for a long time. They always give that one child porn case as an example of why they need to backdoor all encryption, for instance.

The truth is far more nuanced than they make it seem it is, but they use it in a very specific context to obtain the powers they want.

"What are people more afraid of now? Oh, Russia. Okay - our spying powers are totally saving you from Russia. Now gives us more!".

This pretty much covers all of their arguments before passing a new surveillance law, even though it's often a lie (like when they said mass surveillance stopped terrorists, and then an actual audit showed it never happened), or at best highly misleading, as I already mentioned.

They did the same when they wanted to pass their "cybersecurity" laws like CISA. And later this year (I believe June), the FISA Amendments Act needs to be renewed. FISA probably accounts for like 70% of all the mass surveillance NSA does, especially since it's virtually rubber stamped by the 11 Republican judges in the FISA Court.

mtgx2• 9 years ago

It's most definitely #2.

The FISA Amendments Act, which enables much of both foreign, but also domestic "backdoor" mass surveillance, needs to be renewed this year. You'll be hearing a lot more about how "useful" mass surveillance is this year because of that.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/09/senator-ron-wy...

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/05/way-nsa-uses-section-7...

lobotryas• 9 years ago

Of course it's a narrative. How much do you remember hearing about Russian hackers in the MSM before H2 of 2016?

Me personally? Not much at all. Some of the crimes these people were found guilty of or allegedly committed happened over the span of years. It's true that persecution can be slow in such complex cases, however I find it hard to believe that all these bills are coming due right around the same time.

I also agree with another poster who responded below RE: Chinese hackers. Both Russian and Chinese hackers appear to be state sponsored (at least in part), however I always got the sense that the identified Chinese attacks were more systemic and set to specifically target US business interests. Wonder when we'll start arresting and extraditing hackers from Unit 61398.

atmosx• 9 years ago

From the article:

Rubio says Russian hackers targeted his presidential campaign

... do yourself a favor and skip this thread, it's nonsense.

Edit: Is HN fimiliar with phrack zine? Noticed today that it went bye bye as well. [0] phrack.org

It's April's fool today. I would wait another 24h see if that notice goes down.

tekromancr• 9 years ago

they always seem to get seized this time of year.

guelo• 9 years ago

Nice unfounded conspiracy theories you have there but people don't plead guilty to 5 years in jail if they are innocent.

yorwba• 9 years ago

I looked at one of the guilty pleas linked in the article (https://media.scmagazine.com/documents/290/vartanyan_guilty_...), hoping that it might contain more details concerning how he was caught.

Unfortunately, that information is not included. However, the plea has a section about "removal from the united states" (on page 4). I found this highly amusing, considering they went to great lengths to get him to the US in the first place.

U.S. sweeping up Russian hackers in a broad global dragnet

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