Kodeord for kodeord
På Danmarks Radio kan man læse at Trump måske endelig accepterer at russerne har hacket (DR skriver også at der sidste år blev “registreret over 100.000 hackerangreb mod Sverige fra fremmede magter“) det amerikanske valg, men at han stadig “kritiseres af både demokrater og republikanere for ikke klart at støtte efterretningstjenesternes konklusioner“. Men der er ikke gode grunde til klart at stole på de amerikanske efterretningstjenester, som Andrew McCarthy skriver på National Review,
Here, we are talking about a community whose own analysts have complained that their superiors distort their reports for political purposes. In just the past few years, they have told us that they had “high confidence” that Iran suspended its nuclear weapons programs in 2003; that the NSA was not collecting metadata on millions of Americans; and that the Muslim Brotherhood is a moderate, “largely secular” organization. We have learned that the Obama administration intentionally perpetrated a disinformation campaign — complete with a compliant media “echo chamber” — to sell the public on the Iran nuclear deal (and the fiction that Iran’s regime was moderating). We have seen U.S. intelligence and law enforcement complicit in the Obama administration’s schemes to convince the public that “violent extremism,” not radical Islam, is the explanation for terrorist attacks; that a jihadist mass-murder attack targeting soldiers about to deploy to Afghanistan was “workplace violence”; that al-Qaeda had been “decimated”; that the threat of the ISIS “jayvee” team was exaggerated; and that the Benghazi massacre was not really a terrorist attack but a “protest” gone awry over an anti-Muslim video.
Overfor dette står Julian Assanges ord om at Wikileaks ikke fik nogle emails fra russerne, men fra utilfredse medarbejde blandt Demokraterne. Hvis Assange taler sandt har russerne ingen indflydelse haft på det amerikanske valg af præsident, da alle historier i medierne ikke tog udgangspunkt i hvad russerne angiveligt havde fundet ud af, men hvad Wikileaks afslørede. Og Det var altså ikke løgne eller fake news, men afsløringer.
Og, som McCarthy videre skriver, så nævnes formanden for Demokraterne, John Podesta ikke med et ord i hverken rapporten fra CIA, FBI eller NSA. Det var ellers hans emails der blev ‘phished’, dvs at han blev lokket til selv at afsløre at hans password var “password” til uvedkommende. Og det var i Podestas emails, at man kunne læse, hvorledes Demokraternes ledelse snød Bernie Sanders til fordel for Hillary Clinton i primærvalget og hvorledes Clintons stab arbejdede tæt sammen med store dele af medierne.
Som Charles Krauthammer mindede om i National Review, så er russernes påståede indblanding sket på Obamas vagt, mens han belærte alle om, hvor sikkert det amerikanske system var og at 80erne gerne ville beholde deres udenrigspolitik. Så hvorledes kunne det ske? Ronald Deibart, der mener at Obamas forsøg på at skabe en diplomatisk krise mellem USA og Rusland “may be an admirable motive“, forklarer på Just Security, hvad der er galt med FBIs analyse
The DHS/FBI Joint Analysis Report on Russian information operations, which the administration refers to as “Grizzly Steppe,” is a disappointing and counterproductive document. The problems with the report are numerous and have been well documented by professionals in the computer security area. But the culture of secrecy and the lack of independent sources of verification that gave rise to it are far more pervasive.
Among the problems in the report: Instead of clearly mapping out the evidence linking the cyber espionage operations to Russia, the report provides generic charts on tradecraft and phishing techniques that apply to just about every cyber espionage campaign I and others have ever studied.
At the centre of the report (page 4) is a table that unhelpfully lumps together, without explanation, several different names attributed to Russian-associated cyber espionage campaigns alongside names of malicious software and exploits that have little or no direct link to Russia.
An appendix includes a spreadsheet meant to provide “Indicators of Compromise,” long lists of technical details supposedly associated with the espionage campaign. These include IP addresses, malware signatures, and command and control infrastructure, which network defenders are supposed to use to ward off Russian-backed espionage, and which would ostensibly be used to “fingerprint” Russia as the culprit. Unfortunately, many of these are out of date or irrelevant, or are used by multiple cyber espionage campaigns and not ones exclusively associated with Russia. To give just one example, journalist Micah Lee analyzed the IP addresses contained in the appendix, and found over 40 percent of them are exit nodes of the anonymizer Tor (meaning anyone in the world using Tor could be associated with these IP addresses). It is a disservice to both the general public and expert researchers to not clarify the degrees of confidence associated with each indicator. Without proper categorization or context, the indicators satisfy neither aim of helping network defenders or proving attribution.
Herunder forklarer John McAfee (!) til russisk TV (!) at “hacket” ligner amatørarbejde
Man husker nok valgkampen, hvor det vakte stor forargelse at Trump ikke ville forhåndsgodkende valgresultatet, skulle det gå imod ham. Antidemokratisk, blev det kaldt og en trussel imod demokratiet. Nu fyger der beskyldninger om at Trumps valg ikke blot ikke er legitimt, men at han er en russisk marionet, indsat ved noget der ligner et statskup. Helvede kender ingen vrede som en vraget venstrefløj.