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The sophistication cited by CrowdStrike was the actions taken on the DNC servers, not the initial penetration.

Exactly, why burn zero-days when you're targeting a technologically unsophisticated adversary with a huge organizational attack surface?

Sure, HDD firmware hacks are cool, but in terms of R&D time far less efficient if you're willing to spam attempts to get in the front door. And I'd say they chose the appropriate level of sophistication given the success of the penetration.

The DNC isn't exactly an air-gapped Iranian nuclear centrifuge.

Exactly, why burn zero-days when you're targeting a technologically unsophisticated adversary with a huge organizational attack surface?

Then how is this evidence of a 'state-sponsored actor'?

And how did the narrative of this story ever get derailed from what it should have been, which was, "The DNC, and John Podesta in particular who had both his gmail and his Twitter accounts hacked, are incompetent", to "this is Russian interference in a US election"?

There are a lot of people who would benefit from the latter conclusion and not a lot of people who would benefit from the former.

> not a lot of people

There are many Republicans.

Republicans as such don't have a lot of motivation to prove DNC incompetence by them being hacked, now that Republicans won the election - that would be much larger claim that DNC is less than competent than being hacked.

Your assertion does not persuade me.

That some people are unfamiliar with computer security is not news. I have known a fair number of big-shot executives and politicians, all of whom I'd expect would click on suspicious links in their email (if they read the email) and double-click on attachments.

The news is why that particular person was targeted.

> The news is why that particular person was targeted.

For which no proof is being presented. Lots of stuff about hacking tools, nothing really about identifying hackers. Lots of anonymous high level sources offering vague assurances and excuses for why we can't present info...

I can think of two general possibilities. Either (1) there is a conspiracy to mislead the public or (2) showing the proof would reduce our security in some way. I find the latter explanation more plausible.

this is Russian interference in a US election

Although the media and many in politics are saying this, it's plainly false. There is no serious claim that the Russians interfered in our election.

The claims are that the Russians interfered in a presidential campaign. There's a huge difference between the process of campaigning, versus the election process of casting and counting votes.

Sowing this confusion is useful on at least two levels. Most obviously, it serves to undermine the legitimacy of the incoming President. But it's also useful in setting stage for future debate about campaign finance laws. It's important in that debate to keep separate the ideas of election - which the government must protect to ensure its faithfulness to the voters - versus the idea of campaigning, which the government may never interfere with, which is the primary purpose of the First Amendment.

It requires some serious mental gymnastics to split those hairs.

Could you elaborate? Once you have a password shouldn't it be as easy as just downloading all the emails? Any email client should have the functionality built in.

edit: seeing some reports they used "sophisticated" SQL injection... okay...I mean for a lay person it seems sophisticated, sure. But for anyone in the industry it's one of the oldest and easiest tricks in the book.

I really suspect news sources are knowingly exaggerating about the sophistication of this "hack" in order to make up-play Russia's role and downplay the DNC's culpability.

You can read about the backdoors they used here:

https://www.crowdstrike.com/blog/bears-midst-intrusion-democ...

The summary: One used Powershell modules and Windows Scheduler to run scripts. Another used a combination of Twitter and public sites like Github/Dropbox for command and control.

In my opinion, neither is impressively sophisticated, and a skilled application developer could whip up something similar in a week or two. Using popular sites like Twitter/Dropbox for C&C has been common for years, and you can purchase similar backdoors/RATs for less than $100.

edit: Another interesting point from the link above: the two exploits stole exactly the same info once inside the DNC network. This would obviously be a big no-no for a sophisticated state actor as it doubles your chance of being compromised, but the author explains it away by claiming that Russia's intelligence agencies are disorganized and adversarial.

I have personally written that exact tool while learning Python. A RAT using Twitter for C & C. Uses PGP for encryption and verification. The twitter handles for the C & C change based on a hash of Googles lastest Doodle so you can access it without fear of account deletion.

TIL I'm as good as a state level intelligence team.

Hey CIA/NSA we know you are reading this, my contact info is in my profile. Hire me.

Tomorrow: "Cyberhacker admits to Russian hacker tools"

> Yesterday, an Internet cyber hacker using the alias "cmdrfred" claimed on "HackerNews", an elite underground hacker site, that he or she personally built the hacking tools used by Russia to breach the DNC email servers and change the outcome of the recent election.

> "I have personally written that exact tool [it] uses ... encryption ... so you can access [the DNC] without fear."

> "I'm as good as a state level intelligence team."

> cmdrfred went on to taunt American intelligence agencies while admitting that he was aware that elite anti-cyberhacking teams from the NSA and CIA were monitoring his operations.

> The owner of HackerNews Paul Graham -- venture capitalist, flamboyant playboy, and known Russian sympathizer -- could not be reached for comment.

> TIL I'm as good as a state level intelligence team.

Not to totally ignore the pithiness, but I feel like your comment touches on something I see a ton here (and elsewhere): an offhand dismissal of the 'state level' intelligence capacity.

At the end of the day, the systems were exploited. That more sophisticated methods went unused should be a measure of efficiency and not necessarily execution. Why break out the trick play if your opponent can't keep from you running it up the middle?

True. But the absence of sophistication constitutes evidence neither in favor nor against the "State Actor" hypothesis.

Until a Russian name or IP address is provided, the accusations fail to hold water. An incomplete proof is equivalent to "'cause we said so"

Spoofing ips is absurdly easy.

I agree that IP addresses aren't good evidence but it isn't really possible to spoof TCP in practice.

http://security.stackexchange.com/questions/55279/how-easy-i...

If you are targeting a US political entity, using a staging server in Russia probably isn't the worst idea, so unless the IP address directly ties to the Russian government/intelligence services, it's still only weak evidence of Russia's involvement.

>hat more sophisticated methods went unused should be a measure of efficiency and not necessarily execution. Why break out the trick play if your opponent can't keep from you running it up the middle?

I question how efficient it is to get caught red handed in the cookie jar of the worlds only super power.

Sure Vladimir Putin could invite President Obama to a state dinner and then proceed to blow his head off with an AK-47 but that would lack the subterfuge I expect from "state level actors". If this is indeed the Russians, they are as laughably incompetent as our elected officials in regards to infosec and thus a threat to no one.

Publicly assassinating the president of a country is slightly different then pilfering clumsily guarded emails of campaigning politicians. One starts world wars. The other doesn't.

I'd like to believe that it won't.

Your "summary" leaves out the key points. The SeaDaddy, X-Agent, and X-Tunnel tools used in these attacks have only been used by two groups, using the same control servers each time, on European, American, and World Anti-Doping Agency targets that the Russians had strong motive to attack, with some of the attacks being attributed to Russia by multiple other means.

If it turned out that Russia was not behind these attacks, the scale of the bad publicity for Crowdstrike, Fidelis, Palo Alto Networks, etc. would nearly put them out of business. Unlike you, they have skin in the game and don't make these claims lightly.

The problem with relying upon motive and established MO exclusively is that anyone is therefore capable of framing whomever they like.

This is the next generation of warfare, attribution is simply impossible. Even if there existed actual forensic evidence it could not be relied upon.

Reacting to purported attacks at face value will leave you like a 1-layer chess player, potentially acting on behalf of your adversary.

As I said above, the attribution does not rely solely on motive. All private security firms that analyzed the attack have attributed it to Russia, and they would not stake their reputations on such a flimsy argument.

all private security firms ? name one, please

I named three in my first comment above. There are also Mandiant (FireEye) and SecureWorks. Previous attacks with the same malware were attributed to Russia by Threatconnect and Microsoft, who calls the "Fancy Bear" group "Strontium."

> X-Tunnel

That one is more likely to be used by the Chinese: https://www.invincea.com/2016/07/tunnel-of-gov-dnc-hack-and-...

That document is yet another example of laughably poor security analysis.

The Chinese implementation of the XTunnel protocol is in Java (the GitHub project is written in Java, and you can see an embedded JRE in your blog post's link to the Chinese tool in the strings here: https://cynomix.invincea.com/sample/e2101519714f8a4056a9de18...). The FancyBear implementation is not (no embedded JRE here: https://cynomix.invincea.com/sample/f09780ba9eb7f7426f93126b...).

If you want to see how professionals do it, take a look at https://www.eset.com/int/about/newsroom/research/dissection-....

RNC got hacked but nothing was leaked.

Source?

“We now have high confidence that they hacked the D.N.C. and the R.N.C., and conspicuously released no documents” from the Republican organization, one senior administration official said, referring to the Russians. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/09/us/obama-russia-election-h...

The article is very unclear. Here's another quote in the same article that says the hacks against the RNC failed. The NY Times is basically telling us that they received conflicting reports from different anonymous and similarly credible sources.

"One senior government official, who had been briefed on an F.B.I. investigation into the matter, said that while there were attempts to penetrate the Republican committee’s systems, they were not successful."

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