Cozy Bear and Fancy Bear
So, yeah, apparently it is the case that we have this rampaging idiot monster preparing to destroy everything because Putin put his elbow on the scale.
American intelligence agencies have concluded with “high confidence” that Russia acted covertly in the latter stages of the presidential campaign to harm Hillary Clinton’s chances and promote Donald J. Trump, according to senior administration officials.
They based that conclusion, in part, on another finding — which they say was also reached with high confidence — that the Russians hacked the Republican National Committee’s computer systems in addition to their attacks on Democratic organizations, but did not release whatever information they gleaned from the Republican networks.
In the months before the election, it was largely documents from Democratic Party systems that were leaked to the public. Intelligence agencies have concluded that the Russians gave the Democrats’ documents to WikiLeaks.
I remember that. I remember it vividly. Especially after the “grab them by the pussy” video came out – it looked as if that had cooked his goose to charcoal, then along came WikiLeaks, drip drip drip.
Mr. Trump’s transition office issued a statement Friday evening reflecting the deep divisions that emerged between his campaign and the intelligence agencies over Russian meddling in the election. “These are the same people that said Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction,” the statement said. “The election ended a long time ago in one of the biggest Electoral College victories in history. It’s now time to move on and ‘Make America Great Again.’”
The election didn’t end “a long time ago.” November 8 is not “a long time ago.” It wasn’t one of the biggest EC victories in history. It’s not “time to move on” if Russia interfered with the election. What Trump is doing is not going to make America great, again or for the first time or at all.
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.
But the intelligence agencies’ conclusions that the hacking efforts were successful, which have been presented to President Obama and other senior officials, add a complex wrinkle to the question of what the Kremlin’s evolving objectives were in intervening in the American presidential election.
What could the objectives possibly have been? To weaken a rival power, obviously. To make a rival power a laughingstock to the world. To render the US basically irrelevant for at least four years.
It is unclear how many files were stolen from the Republican committee; in some cases, investigators never get a clear picture. It is also far from clear that Russia’s original intent was to support Mr. Trump, and many intelligence officials — and former officials in Mrs. Clinton’s campaign — believe that the primary motive of the Russians was to simply disrupt the campaign and undercut confidence in the integrity of the vote.
The Russians were as surprised as everyone else at Mr. Trump’s victory, intelligence officials said. Had Mrs. Clinton won, they believe, emails stolen from the Democratic committee and from senior members of her campaign could have been used to undercut her legitimacy. The intelligence agencies’ conclusion that Russia tried to help Mr. Trump was first reported by The Washington Post.
I suppose we could view it as the revenge of Mossadegh and Allende and quite a few others.
Intelligence officials and private cybersecurity companies believe that the Democratic National Committee was hacked by two different Russian cyberunits. One, called “Cozy Bear” or “A.P.T. 29” by some Western security experts, is believed to have spent months inside the D.N.C. computer network, as well as other government and political institutions, but never made public any of the documents it took. (A.P.T. stands for “Advanced Persistent Threat,” which usually describes a sophisticated state-sponsored cyberintruder.)
The other, the G.R.U.-controlled unit known as “Fancy Bear,” or “A.P.T. 28,” is believed to have created two outlets on the internet, Guccifer 2.0 and DCLeaks, to make Democratic documents public. Many of the documents were also provided to WikiLeaks, which released them over many weeks before the Nov. 8 election.
Make America great again.
Maybe Russia interpreted MAGA as “Make America Go Away”
Or, even more terrifyingly, to make the world quite a lot less stable. Instability generates opportunities for people and powers willing to exploit it. I’ve no idea what, if any, exploits Putin might have in mind but given how easily Trump can be goaded on Twitter it’s not hard to come up with some suggestions. When the president-elect chooses to attack individuals on Twitter – probably understanding how it’s likely to hurt that individual – how easy is it going to be to manipulate him via his ego?
It’s that easy with a tweet. We’ve seen how potentially easy it is with Important People picking up the phone.
I’ve worked in cybersecurity for far longer than it’s been called that. Over the decades I’ve learned a lot about how to find vulnerabilities in systems. It’s become a kind of spider-sense; when I look at security arrangements my experience causes me to feel in my body when something is wrong, when there’s a point where everything could break, even when I don’t quite know why or how it might be exploited. It’s just a slightly more specialised version of the same bullshit radar everyone here has.
That spider-sense triggers non-stop whenever I look at Trump’s behaviour. The biggest threat to the security of the United States is Trump’s ego. Normally in governments the civil service prevents some types of idiocy from occurring. If you haven’t watched Yes Minister or Yes Prime Minister (not the new version, which was awful) you should. It was a brilliant satirical British show about how the idealism of politicians confronts the stoicism of the civil service and reminds us decades later of how checks and balances are largely institutional artifacts rather than legal or constitutional ones.
I doubt this will work under Trump’s administration. He’s already trying to identify those staff who are educated in the subject of climate change. I think we know why. He has already shown that he fails to understand why checks and balances are necessary and that he ignores by instinct any advice that might curb his dalliance of the day. He has already demonstrated that his supposed principles will crumble under the slightest hint of flattery.
Here in the UK we currently have the most terrifying dictatorial Prime Minister since and possibly including Margret Thatcher. She has already done some horrifying things which mark the UK as a terrible place to live. No democratic country has ever enacted such awful, draconian laws regarding personal privacy and security. No democratic country has ever subjected its citizens to such genuinely terrifying measures or the inevitable thickening of the wedge.
But at least we have our bureaucracy to slow everything down, maybe it will win. My concern about the US is that Trump is ignoring and will continue to ignore much of the equivalent bureaucracy. The country doesn’t seem to know how to stop him.