Report: Massive Russian Hack Effort Breached DHS, State Department And NIH | Talking Points Memo

Is it only the FBI, though? There’s a larger intelligence community in which any competent member would’ve seen through this a long time ago.

It’s what we get when Trump staffed the intelligence committee with hacks and unqualified personnel.

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Cybersecurity firms always hire or pay hackers to try and exploit systems. It’s an uneasy relationship to say the least.

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I think we can safely assume that these folks weren’t on our team.

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I’m looking forward to the day that US cybersecurity and the NSA throttle down Russian oligarchs’ internet access to 2800-baud modem speeds.

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And yet, it’s likely they were hired and paid by SolarWinds.

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And what precisely does the U.S. propose to do in response? I’m no hawk but I think a bit of tit for tat here would be a useful deterrent.

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Close friend has been with one renowned firm of this type for the past 20 years. While I can’t wait to get his take on this? Fairly sure the gist of the attack was this:

‘Hackers stole potent cyberattack tools that FireEye used for research purposes.’

One thing to breach and rifle data. But nabbing a cache of unique tools is a real prize.

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Close friend (sometime advisor) is central in one said firm.
Based on what I do know of his group-- he’s going to stay busy through the holidays.

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Think: Edward Snowden, contractor.

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Was THIS Donnie’s last act of insanity??? Scream, taunt, plead for money and votes…berate, smear and insult this country so Putin had a ‘chance’ to do his last desperate spying? TRUMP MOSCOW coming soon?

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And each time a Republicon was in charge of the FBI. Maybe the Russians compromised the Republicons a long time ago. One thing is certain, Russia must pay for this act of war with more than some stern words and finger-wagging.

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You mean … 2012? When Romney and the complicit REPUBLICANS taunted Obama for not ‘believing’ that Russia was out ‘#1 enemy’???

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Did any Republican say anything about this?

Gosh not a peep from them?

I wonder why…could it be the Kompromat Putin has on them?

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Based on the information, they compromised a software patch which is HUGE. When I rolled out patches they fully replaced modules on a very rudimentary level. I’m sure these are much more complicated. I would think it takes having the patch and then having significant knowledge of patch architecture and Solar Winds software construction to do it properly. But that’s just a guess.

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So to make sure I understand, you are speculating based on what we have been told that someone working for Solar Winds installed the hacking software on these routine patches that Solar Wind was sending out? Or did I misunderstand? It seems logical but it also seems way too easy - but I am probably naive, do not have huge knowledge in this area.

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Gee, I thought the Russians were our friends and we weren’t supposed to investigate them or call them out for hacking American systems or poisoning enemies. The Russians obviously were simply being playfully curious.
(Just in case /s)( or is it s/)

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Still working on my 2nd cup of coffee but does this mean:

The firm described the victims as including “government, consulting, technology, telecom and extractive entities in North America, Europe, Asia and the Middle East.”

Mining firms, industries, or dentists?

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Hacks as in someone who knows nothing, and thus just a warm body showing up and getting a salary, or it was an inside job?
Too bad a certain writer died the other day that could have set the scene so that we all could appropriately followed the storyline.

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Republicans love to cite that episode and gloat about how Romney was “right” about Russia, and President Obama was wrong, but Romney was talking about meeting national security threats by building more battleships while Obama was more focused on counterintelligence, asymmetrical warfare, and cyber capabilities - areas that described the modern battlefield.

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I am speculating about the “actual employee of SolarWinds”, yes. But either an employee of SW or someone with employee level access was able to find, or plant, a backdoor in their software and then exploit it later on after it was incorporated in a security patch.

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