Christine wrote about
the Obama administration delivering punitive sanctions against Russia for their
role in trying
to interfere with the 2016 election. As a result, Russia is mulling retaliatory
measures as well. Today, the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security
released a
13-page report showing how Russia hacked Democratic Party organizations.
That is not the same as hacking the election, which some outlets have
claimed (via The
Hill):
The FBI and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) on
Thursday released a joint report detailing how federal investigators linked the
Russian government to hacks of Democratic Party organizations.
[…]
The report, known as a “Joint Analysis Report” or JAR,
refers to the Russian hacking campaign as “Grizzly Steppe.”
It comes as part of a slate of retaliatory measures
against Russia issued Thursday by the Obama administration in response to the
hacks, and expands on a joint statement issued by the two agencies in October,
formally attributing the attacks to Russia.
In the October statement, officials described the hacks
and subsequent publication of stolen emails on WikiLeaks as an attempt to
“interfere” with the U.S. election that is “consistent with the Russian-directed
efforts,” but provided no evidence to support their assessment.
[…]
The FSB is thought to be behind the hacking group known
as APT29. A more traditional, long-range intelligence agency, the FSB lurked on
the DNC systems for over a year.
The GRU, Russia’s military intelligence service, is
thought to be behind the second group that infiltrated the DNC, known as APT28.
APT28 is also believed to have breached Podesta’s emails.
[…]
APT28 is thought to be the group responsible for
“doxxing” the DNC and Podesta by allegedly providing the stolen missives to
WikiLeaks to publish.
Wikileaks’ Julian
Assange had said that their source is
not Russian, though he could say with the same certainty regarding
documents leaked by hacker Guccifer 2.0. Regardless, we’re talking about the
DNC hack, not the election. The Obama administration said that the election
results reflected
the will of the people, while DHS noted that there was no spike in
suspicious cyber activity that would have suggested an attack on election
night.
So, the election was not
hacked, or at least not in the way that some liberal are hoping for to
discredit the legitimacy of President-elect Donald Trump’s win. Trump won.
Period.
At the same time, I’m
not against Congress looking into Russian cyber activity within the U.S. After
all, hacking occurs all the time in the U.S. and it’s not solely from Russia.
It’s just another every day aspect of the 21st century geopolitical
world. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try and guard against it.
UPDATE: In the wake of the report’s release and the sanctions,
President-elect Trump said he would meet with the intelligence community to get
“updated
on the facts.”
“It's time for our country to move on to bigger and
better things,” he said in a statement. “Nevertheless, in the interest of our
country and its great people, I will meet with leaders of the intelligence
community next week in order to be updated on the facts of this situation.”
Trump’s statement follows the White House’s announcement
of sanctions against Russia, which included the closure of two Russian
compounds and the expulsion of 35 Russian intelligence operatives.
Trump’s transition team had signaled that the
president-elect would support a congressional probe into Russia’s alleged
cyberattacks if the intelligence community provided clear evidence that the
Kremlin meddled in the presidential election.
