RUSSIA 🇷🇺 Thread: Wikileaks=FSB front, UKRAINE?, SNOWED LIED; NATO Aggression; Trump = Putins B!tch
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U.S. Believes Hackers Are Shielded by Russia to Hide Its Role in Cyberintrusions
Officials are increasingly confident that the Russian government is intensifying a campaign to steal U.S. computer records and leak damaging information to the American public
By
Damian Paletta
Sept. 28, 2016 6:33 a.m. ET
The Democratic National Committee headquarters in Washington. Thousands of stolen Democratic Party documents have been posted on WikiLeaks, DCLeaks.com and a blog run by the hacker Guccifer 2.0. Photo: Alex Brandon/Associated Press
WASHINGTON—U.S. officials are increasingly confident that the hacker Guccifer 2.0 is part of a network of individuals and groups kept at arm’s length by Russia to mask its involvement in cyberintrusions such as the theft of thousands of Democratic Party documents, according to people familiar with the matter.
While the hacker denies working on behalf of the Russian government, U.S. officials and independent security experts say the syndicate is one of the most striking elements of what looks like an intensifying Russian campaign to target prominent American athletes, party officials and military leaders.
A fuller picture of the operation has come into focus in the past several weeks. U.S. officials believe that at least two hacking groups with ties to the Russian government, known as Fancy Bear and Cozy Bear, are involved in the escalating data-theft efforts, according to people briefed on the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s probe of the cyberattacks.
Following successful breaches, the stolen data are apparently transferred to three different websites for publication, these people say. The websites—WikiLeaks, DCLeaks.com and a blog run by Guccifer 2.0—have posted batches of stolen data at least 42 times from April to last week.
WikiLeaks has published U.S. secrets for years but has recently taken an overtly adversarial tone toward Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.Cybersecurity experts believe that DCLeaks.com and Guccifer 2.0 often work together and have direct ties to Russian hackers.
Debbie Wasserman Schultz, shown at a July 23 rally for Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, resigned the next day as Democratic National Committee chairwoman after the disclosure of emails showing that DNC officials tried to undermine the campaign of Sen. Bernie Sanders. Photo: Scott Audette/Reuters/Zuma Press
Guccifer 2.0 said in a Twitter direct message sent to The Wall Street Journal that he wants to expose corruption in politics and shine light on how companies influence policy. The hacker said he also hopes to expose “global electronization.”
“I think I won’t have a better opportunity to promote my ideas than this year,” Guccifer 2.0 added in a long exchange with a Journal reporter.
The Journal cannot verify the identity of the person sending messages on behalf of Guccifer 2.0, but the account is the same one that was used to publish personal information about Democrats. A posting on a blog run by Guccifer 2.0 says he is a man who was born in Eastern Europe, has been a hacker for years and fears for his safety.
Related Video
Private cyber-security experts hired to investigate the DNC server hack believe it’s likely the work of two sophisticated Russian-linked hacking groups that they have labelled “Fancy Bear” and “Cozy Bear.”
“I think u’ve never felt that feeling when u r crazy eager to shout: look everyone, this is me, this is me who’d done it,” the hacker wrote to the Journal. “but u can’t.”
WikiLeaks officials didn’t respond to requests for comment on whether Russia fed them the stolen files published by WikiLeaks in July. A representative for DCLeaks.com asked the Journal to submit questions via email but hasn’t responded to them.
Last week, U.S. intelligence chief James Clapper said it “shouldn’t come as a big shock to people” that Russia is behind the hacking operation. While Russia has tried to interfere in U.S. elections since at least the 1960s by spying and funneling money to particular political groups, “I think it’s more dramatic maybe because now they have the cyber tools,” he said.
Earlier this month, leaked emails from former Secretary of State Colin Powell on DCLeaks.com revealed him calling Republican presidential nominee Donald Trumpa “national disgrace” and accusing Mrs. Clinton of “unbridled ambition” and being “greedy, not transformational.”
German officials said last week that hackers have sought to infiltrate computer systems of several German political parties. Two officials familiar with the investigation say there is evidence Fancy Bear was involved in the attempted German hack.
Longtime Russia analysts say its goal in the U.S. might be to attack the basic credibility and reputation of institutions such as the military, election system, political parties and the federal government more broadly.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has said disclosure of U.S. records is a public service. He has denied involvement in the hacks, and Russian officials have said they don’t interfere in the democratic process in other countries.
In August, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said critics were falsely trying to pin offenses on Moscow.
“We can hear and see Russophobia, which is off the charts in the U.S. media,” Mr. Lavrov said. “We are portrayed as a global villain and the enemy of the United States and the entire progressive world.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin has denied involvement in cyberattacks but has said disclosure of U.S. records is a public service. Photo: Aleksey Nikolskyi/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
Signs of an escalating strategy emerged in April when DCLeaks.com published batches of emails stolen from U.S. Air Force Gen. Philip Breedlove, then the top military commander of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
Gen. Breedlove was one of the U.S. government’s biggest Russia critics, warning openly about the country’s aggression toward Ukraine and the West while other U.S. leaders were taking a lower-key approach.
He realized his Facebook, LinkedIn and Gmail accounts had been hacked when friends started receiving strange messages purporting to be from him. Then he found out that DCLeaks.com posted dozens of his emails.
From the start, Gen. Breedlove had little doubt that Russia was behind the intrusion. “A major world power has turned its cyber force onto private individuals and is now pouring out private accounts and emails to affect U.S. policy,” he said in an interview with the Journal. He retired this summer.
In June, cybersecurity company CrowdStrike Inc. said Fancy Bear and Cozy Bear had penetrated the Democratic National Committee. The next day, Guccifer 2.0 published stolen records from the DNC. Three days later, the hacker disclosed DNC financial reports and donor data.
WikiLeaks published more than 19,000 DNC emails in July. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a Florida congresswoman, resigned as chairwoman of the DNC after some of the emails showed DNC officials had worked to undermine the underdog presidential campaign of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders.
Democratic Party officials say they expect more leaks before Election Day.
ENLARGE
A woman is silhouetted against a projected image of the Democratic National Committee logo in Washington. Photo: JASON REED/REUTERS
“This is the continuity of spy games and trolling and phishing for what the Russians call kompromat—compromising information—that has gone on for decades,” says Matthew Rojansky, director of the Kennan Institute at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.
U.S. and European officials say they believe Russia is mastering a form of “hybrid warfare” that includes military tactics, disinformation, secret operatives and cyberattacks. Last week’s comments by Mr. Clapper could represent an initial step by the Obama administration to confront Russia more directly about the government’s suspected involvement in cyberintrusions.
While Russia has a long history of meddling in elections and other operations of neighboring countries, some longtime Russia analysts have been surprised by Moscow’s apparent brazenness to target America.
But other analysts and experts said hacking is just a new way for countries around the world to try to gain an advantage.
“If it is Putin who is responsible, this is the way governments operate,” said Harlan Ullman, a member of the advisory board to the Supreme Allied Commander Europe, NATO’s military leader in the region. Some of his emails to Gen. Breedlove were leaked by DCLeaks.com in April.
U.S. Believes Hackers Are Shielded by Russia to Hide Its Role in Cyberintrusions
Officials are increasingly confident that the Russian government is intensifying a campaign to steal U.S. computer records and leak damaging information to the American public
By
Damian Paletta
Sept. 28, 2016 6:33 a.m. ET
The Democratic National Committee headquarters in Washington. Thousands of stolen Democratic Party documents have been posted on WikiLeaks, DCLeaks.com and a blog run by the hacker Guccifer 2.0. Photo: Alex Brandon/Associated Press
WASHINGTON—U.S. officials are increasingly confident that the hacker Guccifer 2.0 is part of a network of individuals and groups kept at arm’s length by Russia to mask its involvement in cyberintrusions such as the theft of thousands of Democratic Party documents, according to people familiar with the matter.
While the hacker denies working on behalf of the Russian government, U.S. officials and independent security experts say the syndicate is one of the most striking elements of what looks like an intensifying Russian campaign to target prominent American athletes, party officials and military leaders.
A fuller picture of the operation has come into focus in the past several weeks. U.S. officials believe that at least two hacking groups with ties to the Russian government, known as Fancy Bear and Cozy Bear, are involved in the escalating data-theft efforts, according to people briefed on the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s probe of the cyberattacks.
Following successful breaches, the stolen data are apparently transferred to three different websites for publication, these people say. The websites—WikiLeaks, DCLeaks.com and a blog run by Guccifer 2.0—have posted batches of stolen data at least 42 times from April to last week.
WikiLeaks has published U.S. secrets for years but has recently taken an overtly adversarial tone toward Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.Cybersecurity experts believe that DCLeaks.com and Guccifer 2.0 often work together and have direct ties to Russian hackers.
Debbie Wasserman Schultz, shown at a July 23 rally for Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, resigned the next day as Democratic National Committee chairwoman after the disclosure of emails showing that DNC officials tried to undermine the campaign of Sen. Bernie Sanders. Photo: Scott Audette/Reuters/Zuma Press
Guccifer 2.0 said in a Twitter direct message sent to The Wall Street Journal that he wants to expose corruption in politics and shine light on how companies influence policy. The hacker said he also hopes to expose “global electronization.”
“I think I won’t have a better opportunity to promote my ideas than this year,” Guccifer 2.0 added in a long exchange with a Journal reporter.
The Journal cannot verify the identity of the person sending messages on behalf of Guccifer 2.0, but the account is the same one that was used to publish personal information about Democrats. A posting on a blog run by Guccifer 2.0 says he is a man who was born in Eastern Europe, has been a hacker for years and fears for his safety.
Related Video
Private cyber-security experts hired to investigate the DNC server hack believe it’s likely the work of two sophisticated Russian-linked hacking groups that they have labelled “Fancy Bear” and “Cozy Bear.”
“I think u’ve never felt that feeling when u r crazy eager to shout: look everyone, this is me, this is me who’d done it,” the hacker wrote to the Journal. “but u can’t.”
WikiLeaks officials didn’t respond to requests for comment on whether Russia fed them the stolen files published by WikiLeaks in July. A representative for DCLeaks.com asked the Journal to submit questions via email but hasn’t responded to them.
Last week, U.S. intelligence chief James Clapper said it “shouldn’t come as a big shock to people” that Russia is behind the hacking operation. While Russia has tried to interfere in U.S. elections since at least the 1960s by spying and funneling money to particular political groups, “I think it’s more dramatic maybe because now they have the cyber tools,” he said.
Earlier this month, leaked emails from former Secretary of State Colin Powell on DCLeaks.com revealed him calling Republican presidential nominee Donald Trumpa “national disgrace” and accusing Mrs. Clinton of “unbridled ambition” and being “greedy, not transformational.”
German officials said last week that hackers have sought to infiltrate computer systems of several German political parties. Two officials familiar with the investigation say there is evidence Fancy Bear was involved in the attempted German hack.
Longtime Russia analysts say its goal in the U.S. might be to attack the basic credibility and reputation of institutions such as the military, election system, political parties and the federal government more broadly.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has said disclosure of U.S. records is a public service. He has denied involvement in the hacks, and Russian officials have said they don’t interfere in the democratic process in other countries.
In August, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said critics were falsely trying to pin offenses on Moscow.
“We can hear and see Russophobia, which is off the charts in the U.S. media,” Mr. Lavrov said. “We are portrayed as a global villain and the enemy of the United States and the entire progressive world.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin has denied involvement in cyberattacks but has said disclosure of U.S. records is a public service. Photo: Aleksey Nikolskyi/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
Signs of an escalating strategy emerged in April when DCLeaks.com published batches of emails stolen from U.S. Air Force Gen. Philip Breedlove, then the top military commander of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
Gen. Breedlove was one of the U.S. government’s biggest Russia critics, warning openly about the country’s aggression toward Ukraine and the West while other U.S. leaders were taking a lower-key approach.
He realized his Facebook, LinkedIn and Gmail accounts had been hacked when friends started receiving strange messages purporting to be from him. Then he found out that DCLeaks.com posted dozens of his emails.
From the start, Gen. Breedlove had little doubt that Russia was behind the intrusion. “A major world power has turned its cyber force onto private individuals and is now pouring out private accounts and emails to affect U.S. policy,” he said in an interview with the Journal. He retired this summer.
In June, cybersecurity company CrowdStrike Inc. said Fancy Bear and Cozy Bear had penetrated the Democratic National Committee. The next day, Guccifer 2.0 published stolen records from the DNC. Three days later, the hacker disclosed DNC financial reports and donor data.
WikiLeaks published more than 19,000 DNC emails in July. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a Florida congresswoman, resigned as chairwoman of the DNC after some of the emails showed DNC officials had worked to undermine the underdog presidential campaign of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders.
Democratic Party officials say they expect more leaks before Election Day.
A woman is silhouetted against a projected image of the Democratic National Committee logo in Washington. Photo: JASON REED/REUTERS
“This is the continuity of spy games and trolling and phishing for what the Russians call kompromat—compromising information—that has gone on for decades,” says Matthew Rojansky, director of the Kennan Institute at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.
U.S. and European officials say they believe Russia is mastering a form of “hybrid warfare” that includes military tactics, disinformation, secret operatives and cyberattacks. Last week’s comments by Mr. Clapper could represent an initial step by the Obama administration to confront Russia more directly about the government’s suspected involvement in cyberintrusions.
While Russia has a long history of meddling in elections and other operations of neighboring countries, some longtime Russia analysts have been surprised by Moscow’s apparent brazenness to target America.
But other analysts and experts said hacking is just a new way for countries around the world to try to gain an advantage.
“If it is Putin who is responsible, this is the way governments operate,” said Harlan Ullman, a member of the advisory board to the Supreme Allied Commander Europe, NATO’s military leader in the region. Some of his emails to Gen. Breedlove were leaked by DCLeaks.com in April.
Pull Up the Roots
I have a good time when I go out of my mind..
It's annoying how so many people are treating this as if it isn't a big deal. They're hacking voter registration sites and it's going mostly ignored.
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What Is Russia Up To, and Is It Time to Draw the Line?
By DAVID E. SANGERSEPT. 29, 2016
Photo
President Obama and President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia failed to resolve their differences, including Syria, after 90 minutes together at a meeting in Hangzhou, China, on Sept. 5. CreditAlexei Druzhinin/Sputnik, via Reuters
WASHINGTON — Escalating airstrikes in Syria. Sophisticated cyberattacks, apparently intended to influence the American election. New evidence of complicity in shooting down a civilian airliner.
The behavior of Russia in the last few weeks has echoes of some of the uglier moments of the Cold War, an era of proxy battles that ended in 1991 with the collapse of the Soviet Union. President Obama, fresh from a meeting with President Vladimir V. Putin this month, wondered aloud whether the Russian leader was content living with a “constant, low-grade conflict.” His reference was to Ukraine, but he could have been addressing any of the arenas where Mr. Putin has reveled in his new role as the great disrupter of American plans around the globe.
“It seems to me we have Mr. Putin’s answer,” said Richard Haass, the president of the Council on Foreign Relations and the author of a coming book, “A World in Disarray.” “He’s answered in the affirmative. Low-grade conflict is his thing. And the question is how directly or indirectly we introduce costs.”
None of these conflicts have, in fact, cost Mr. Putin very much. Cyberpower in particular is tailor-made for a country in Russia’s circumstances — a declining economy with the gross domestic product of Italy. It is dirt cheap, hard to trace to a specific aggressor and perfect for sowing confusion, which may be the limits of Mr. Putin’s goals.
The bigger question confronting American intelligence officials, though, is whether the Russian president has a grander scheme at work. So far, their conclusion is probably not. Mr. Putin’s moves, they argue in background conversations, are largely tactical, intended to bolster his international image at a moment he has plenty of troubles back home.
For a year now, the White House has argued that these escalating clashes, while worrisome, do not constitute a new Cold War. There is no great ideological struggle underway. No one is brandishing nuclear weapons, though after two decades of reducing their forces, each is now racing to modernize them. Syria is a humanitarian disaster of barely imaginable scope, but it is not a fundamental strategic threat to American interests.
Yet the few veterans of that era still in senior posts see similarities. “It shouldn’t come as a big shock to people,” James R. Clapper Jr., the director of national intelligence, said about the “information warfare” that has been put to sophisticated use from Kiev, Ukraine, to Washington. “I think it’s more dramatic maybe because now they have the cybertools.”
Continue reading the main story
‘Gaps of Trust’ With Russia Bar a Syrian Truce, Obama Says SEPT. 5, 2016
Mr. Clapper’s colleagues go a step further in less public conversations. They argue that Mr. Putin has played his hand skillfully, stringing along Secretary of State John Kerry in a yearlong negotiation over cease-fires and political transitions in Syria, all the while bolstering their proxy, President Bashar al-Assad. Mr. Kerry’s efforts in Syria all but collapsed this week in waves of Russian and Syrian government airstrikes.
The deal in Ukraine is hanging on, but just barely: Russia conveniently ignores many of the commitments it signed and has denied involvement in the downing two years ago of a Malaysia Airlines jet flying over Ukraine that killed 298 people.
The theft of voter rolls in Arizona and Illinois — and “poking around” in the networks of other states, as James B. Comey, the F.B.I. director, described it to Congress this week without naming the Russians as perpetrators — may be intended to rattle the United States, rather than change votes.
Photo
“It shouldn’t come as a big shock to people,” said James R. Clapper Jr., the director of national intelligence, on Russia’s use of “information warfare.” CreditKevin Lamarque/Reuters
“It’s probably not real, real clear whether there’s influence in terms of an outcome,” Mr. Clapper said. “What I worry about more — frankly — is just sowing the seeds of doubt, where doubt is cast on the whole process.”
So far, the American response has been decidedly mixed. The West’s sanctions against Russia for the annexation of Crimea have clearly stung; Russian officials make no effort to hide their desire to get them lifted. But the White House has not publicly blamed Russia for the hacking of the Democratic National Committee, the theft of the Arizona and Illinois voter registration rolls, or breaking into the cellphones of Democratic operatives.
Mr. Obama pulled Mr. Putin aside in China for a conversation that officials decline to recount, and Mr. Kerry has done the same with his counterpart during the long effort to find common ground in bringing peace to Syria.
The president’s reluctance to publicly blame the Russians — born of concern that taking on Mr. Putin head-on would only invite him to escalate — has led to something of an uprising in parts of the White House and the State Department. A range of cyberstrategists and younger diplomats have complained over the past nine months that the failure to draw lines has encouraged Mr. Putin to see what else he can accomplish, especially at a time of political transition in the United States.
Few in the American intelligence community predicted much of this. Intelligence assets have been so focused for the past 15 years on counterterrorism that traditional targets have taken something of a back seat — they have not been ignored, one senior intelligence official said recently, but only lately have they begun to receive new resources.
Perhaps that contributed to some misjudgments. It was more than a year ago that Mr. Obama said Russia would find itself in a “quagmire” in Syria; it may yet, but so far Mr. Putin’s air war has propped up Mr. Assad, though at such a horrific human cost in the city of Aleppo that the United Nations’ humanitarian chief, Stephen O’Brien, told the Security Council on Thursdaythat it had become a “merciless abyss of humanitarian catastrophe.”
Mr. Kerry threatened earlier this week to cut off all negotiations with the Russians. The Russian Foreign Ministry responded that the United States was in an “emotional breakdown” and rejected the effort to restore a seven-day pause in hostilities, the first step in an agreement Mr. Kerry reached with his counterpart, Sergey V. Lavrov, on Sept. 9.
That was mild compared with what the spokesman for the Russian Ministry of Defense, Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov, said. He called the opposition leaders the United States has been not-so-covertly arming in Syria “a U.S.-controlled terrorist international,” using a phrase that was a throwback to Soviet times.
And he warned that “should any attempt be made to carry out any threats against Russia or Russian servicemen in Syria, it is far from guaranteed” that the American-backed militias would have enough body bags.
So far, though, Mr. Putin has shown some caution. While he has tried to intimidate NATO nations with overflights of bombers, nuclear submarine runs along coasts and military exercises near the borders of Estonia and Latvia, he has been careful to stay on his side of the boundaries.
“These are all occurring in gray-zone locations with gray-zone tactics,” said Robert Kagan, a historian at the Brookings Institution who has written on the return of geopolitical conflict. The question the United States will have to face, he added, is “Are we willing to operate in the gray area, too?”
A version of this article appears in print on September 30, 2016, on page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: It’s No Cold War, but Putin Relishes His Role as Disrupter. Order Reprints| Today's Paper|Subscribe