There's a goblin under every bed, and a boogie man in every closet.
So far I've survived the Commie Red Scare, the bomb shelter fad, the
Domino Theory, Water Gate, Bush II, and now I'm working my way through
Trump's Temper Tantrums.
But this Eternal War on Terror is beginning to bug me. I don't mean
to get pissy, but if we are so Great and Wonderful, how come nobody
likes us?
Carl Jarvis
On 7/5/17, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Truthdig
A Rising Tide of Alarmist Assumptions About Russia in Hacking Inquiries
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/foisting_blame_on_russia_for_hacking_201
70704/
Posted on Jul 4, 2017
By Gareth Porter / Consortium News
(https://consortiumnews.com/2017/07/02/foisting-blame-for-cyber-hacking-on-r
ussia/)
Traditional Russian wooden dolls in a Moscow shop. (Pavel Golovkin / AP
(http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Russia-2016-US-Election/c8269c881767
455db1d46f405fd1e293/3/0) )
Recent hearings by the Senate and House Intelligence Committees reflected
the rising tide of Russian-election-hacking hysteria and contributed
further
to it. Both Democrats and Republicans on the two committees appeared to
share the alarmist assumptions about Russian hacking, and the officials who
testified did nothing to discourage the politicians.
On June 21, Samuel Liles, acting director of the Intelligence and Analysis
Office's Cyber Division at the Department of Homeland Security, and
Jeanette
Manfra, acting deputy undersecretary for cyber-security and communications,
provided the main story line for the day
(https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/us-officials-underscore-russia-thre
at-to-2016-elections/2017/06/21/325e913a-56eb-11e7-840b-512026319da7_story.h
tml?utm_term=.e0fb6aa1a7bf) in testimony before the Senate committee -
that
efforts to hack into election databases had been found in 21 states.
Former DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson and FBI counter-intelligence chief Bill
Priestap also endorsed the narrative of Russian government responsibility
for the intrusions on U.S. voter registration databases.
But none of those who testified offered any evidence to support this
suspicion nor were they pushed to do so. And beneath the seemingly
unanimous
embrace of that narrative lies a very different story.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has a record of spreading false
stories about alleged Russian hacking into U.S. infrastructure
(https://consortiumnews.com/2017/01/13/mainstream-medias-russian-bogeymen/)
, such as the tale of a Russian intrusion into the Burlington, Vermont
electrical utility in December 2016 that DHS later admitted was untrue.
There was another bogus DHS story about Russia hacking into a Springfield,
Illinois water pump in November 2011.
So, there's a pattern here. Plus, investigators, assessing the notion that
Russia hacked into state electoral databases, rejected that suspicion as
false months ago. Last September, Assistant Secretary of DHS for
Cybersecurity Andy Ozment and state officials explained that the intrusions
were not carried out by Russian intelligence but by criminal hackers
seeking
personal information to sell on the Internet.
Both Ozment and state officials responsible for the state databases
revealed
that those databases have been the object of attempted intrusions for
years.
The FBI provided information to at least one state official indicating that
the culprits in the hacking of the state's voter registration database were
cyber-criminals.
Illinois is the one state where hackers succeeded in breaking into a voter
registration database last summer. The crucial fact about the Illinois
hacking, however, was that the hackers extracted personal information on
roughly 90,000 registered voters, and that none of the information was
expunged or altered.
The Actions of Cybercriminals
That was an obvious clue to the motive behind the hack. Assistant DHS
Secretary Ozment testified before the House Subcommittee on Information
Technology on Sept. 28 (at 01:02.30 of the video
(https://www.c-span.org/video/?415978-1/hearing-focuses-cybersecurity-us-ele
ction-system) ) that the apparent interest of the hackers in copying the
data suggested that the hacking was "possibly for the purpose of selling
personal information."
Ozment 's testimony provides the only credible motive for the large number
of states found to have experienced what the intelligence community has
called "scanning and probing" of computers to gain access to their
electoral
databases: the personal information involved - even e-mail addresses - is
commercially valuable to the cybercriminal underworld.
That same testimony also explains why so many more states reported evidence
of attempts to hack their electoral databases last summer and fall. After
hackers had gone after the Illinois and Arizona databases, Ozment said, DHS
had provided assistance to many states in detecting attempts to hack their
voter registration and other databases.
"Any time you more carefully monitor a system you're going to see more bad
guys poking and prodding at it," he observed, "because they're always
poking
and prodding." [Emphasis added.]
State election officials have confirmed Ozment's observation. Ken Menzel,
the general counsel for the Illinois Secretary of State, told this writer,
"What's new about what happened last year is not that someone tried to get
into our system but that they finally succeeded in getting in." Menzel said
hackers "have been trying constantly to get into it since 2006."
And it's not just state voter registration databases that cybercriminals
are
after, according to Menzel. "Every governmental data base - driver's
licenses, health care, you name it - has people trying to get into it," he
said.
Arizona Secretary of State Michele Reagan told Mother Jones
(http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/10/state-election-hacks-undermine-
voters-confidence/) that her I.T. specialists had detected 193,000
distinct
attempts to get into the state's website in September 2016 alone and 11,000
appeared to be trying to "do harm."
Reagan further revealed that she had learned from the FBI that hackers had
gotten a user name and password for their electoral database, and that it
was being sold on the "dark web" - an encrypted network used by cyber
criminals to buy and sell their wares. In fact, she said, the FBI told her
that the probe of Arizona's database was the work of a "known hacker" who
had been closely monitored "frequently."
James Comey's Role
The sequence of events indicates that the main person behind the narrative
of Russian hacking state election databases from the beginning was former
FBI Director James Comey. In testimony to the House Judiciary Committee on
Sept. 28, Comey suggested that the Russian government was behind efforts to
penetrate voter databases, but never said so directly.
Comey told the committee
(http://abcnews.go.com/US/russian-hackers-targeted-half-states-voter-registr
ation-systems/story?id=42435822) that FBI Counterintelligence was working
to "understand just what mischief Russia is up to with regard to our
elections." Then he referred to "a variety of scanning activities" and
"attempted intrusions" into election-related computers "beyond what we knew
about in July and August," encouraging the inference that it had been done
by Russian agents.
The media then suddenly found unnamed sources ready to accuse Russia of
hacking election data even while admitting that they lacked evidence. The
day after Comey's testimony ABC headlined, "Russia Hacking Targeted Nearly
Half of States' Voter Registration Systems, Successfully Infiltrating 4."
The story itself revealed, however, that it was merely a suspicion held by
"knowledgeable" sources.
Similarly, NBC News headline announced, "Russians Hacked Two U.S. Voter
Databases, Officials Say." But those who actually read the story closely
learned that in fact none of the unnamed sources it cited were actually
attributing the hacking to the Russians.
It didn't take long for Democrats to turn the Comey teaser - and these
anonymously sourced stories with misleading headlines about Russian
database
hacking - into an established fact. A few days later, the ranking Democrat
on the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Adam Schiff declared
(http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-cyber-idUSKCN1220SL) that
there was "no doubt" Russia was behind the hacks on state electoral
databases.
On Oct. 7, DHS and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence
issued a joint statement
(https://www.dhs.gov/news/2016/10/07/joint-statement-department-homeland-sec
urity-and-office-director-national) that they were "not in a position to
attribute this activity to the Russian government." But only a few weeks
later, DHS participated with FBI in issuing a "Joint Analysis Report" on
"Russian malicious cyber activity"
(https://www.us-cert.gov/sites/default/files/publications/JAR_16-20296A_GRIZ
ZLY%20STEPPE-2016-1229.pdf) that did not refer directly to scanning and
spearphishing aimed of state electoral databases but attributed all hacks
related to the election to "actors likely associated with RIS [Russian
Intelligence Services]."
Suspect Claims
But that claim of a "likely" link between the hackers and Russia was not
only speculative but highly suspect. The authors of the DHS-ODNI report
claimed the link was "supported by technical indicators from the U.S.
intelligence community, DHS, FBI, the private sector and other entities."
They cited a list of hundreds of I.P. addresses and other such "indicators"
used by hackers they called "Grizzly Steppe" who were supposedly linked to
Russian intelligence.
But as I reported
(https://consortiumnews.com/2017/01/13/mainstream-medias-russian-bogeymen/)
last January, the staff of Dragos Security, whose CEO Rob Lee, had been the
architect of a U.S. government system for defense against cyber attack,
pointed out that the vast majority of those indicators would certainly have
produced "false positives."
Then, on Jan. 6 came the "intelligence community assessment
(https://www.dni.gov/files/documents/ICA_2017_01.pdf) " - produced by
selected analysts from CIA, FBI and National Security Agency and devoted
almost entirely to the hacking of e-mail of the Democratic National
Committee and Hillary Clinton's campaign chairman John Podesta. But it
included a statement that "Russian intelligence obtained and maintained
access to elements of multiple state or local election boards." Still, no
evidence was evinced on this alleged link between the hackers and Russian
intelligence.
Over the following months, the narrative of hacked voter registration
databases receded into the background as the drumbeat of media accounts
about contacts between figures associated with the Trump campaign and
Russians built to a crescendo, albeit without any actual evidence of
collusion regarding the e-mail disclosures.
But a June 5 story
(https://theintercept.com/2017/06/05/top-secret-nsa-report-details-russian-h
acking-effort-days-before-2016-election/) brought the voter-data story
back
into the headlines. The story, published by The Intercept, accepted at face
value an NSA report dated May 5, 2017
(https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3766950-NSA-Report-on-Russia-Spearp
hishing.html#document/p1) that asserted Russia's military intelligence
agency, the GRU, had carried out a spear-phishing attack on a U.S. company
providing election-related software and had sent e-mails with a
malware-carrying word document to 122 addresses believed to be local
government organizations.
But the highly classified NSA report made no reference to any evidence
supporting such an attribution. The absence of any hint of signals
intelligence supporting its conclusion makes it clear that the NSA report
was based on nothing more than the same kind of inconclusive "indicators"
that had been used to establish the original narrative of Russians hacking
electoral databases.
A Checkered History
So, the history of the U.S. government's claim that Russian intelligence
hacked into election databases reveals it to be a clear case of politically
motivated analysis by the DHS and the Intelligence Community. Not only was
the claim based on nothing more than inherently inconclusive technical
indicators but no credible motive for Russian intelligence wanting personal
information on registered voters was ever suggested.
Russian intelligence certainly has an interest in acquiring intelligence
related to the likely outcome of American elections, but it would make no
sense for Russia's spies to acquire personal voting information about
90,000
registered voters in Illinois.
When FBI Counter-intelligence chief Priestap was asked at the June 21
hearing how Moscow might use such personal data, his tortured effort at an
explanation
(https://www.c-span.org/video/?430128-1/senate-intel-panel-told-21-states-ta
rgeted-russia-2016-election) clearly indicated that he was totally
unprepared to answer the question.
"They took the data to understand what it consisted of," said Priestap, "so
they can affect better understanding and plan accordingly in regards to
possibly impacting future election by knowing what is there and studying
it."
In contrast to that befuddled non-explanation, there is highly credible
evidence that the FBI was well aware that the actual hackers in the cases
of
both Illinois and Arizona were motivated by the hope of personal gain.
Gareth Porter is an independent investigative journalist and winner of the
2012 Gellhorn Prize for journalism. He is the author of the newly published
Manufactured Crisis: The Untold Story of the Iran Nuclear Scare.
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