A collection of articles on Russia influence operations in the United States:

The threat from Russia
22 Oct 2016

How to contain Vladimir Putin’s deadly, dysfunctional empire

FOUR years ago Mitt Romney, then a Republican candidate, said that Russia was America’s “number-one geopolitical foe”. Barack Obama, among others, mocked this hilarious gaffe: “The 1980s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back, because the cold war’s been over for 20 years,” scoffed the president. How times change. With Russia hacking the American election, presiding over mass slaughter in Syria, annexing Crimea and talking casually about using nuclear weapons, Mr Romney’s view has become conventional wisdom. Almost the only American to dissent from it is today’s Republican nominee, Donald Trump.

http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21709028-how-contain-vladimir-putins-deadly-dysfunctional-empire-threat-russia

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Belching smoke through the Channel, Russian aircraft carrier so unreliable it sails with its own breakdown tug
22 Oct 2016

The ageing Russian aircraft carrier that sailed through the English Channel escorted by the Royal Navy has been plagued by years of technical problems and is accompanied everywhere by a tug in case it breaks down.

The plumbing is so bad on the 55,000 ton Admiral Kuznetsov that many of its toilets cannot be used, while it has had repeated problems with its power and a string of accidents, naval experts said.

The Soviet-era warship is leading a flotilla of eight naval vessels to the eastern Mediterranean, where its aircraft are expected to join a renewed assault on the rebel-held city of Aleppo.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/10/21/russian-carrier-plagued-by-technical-problems/

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Yes, 17 intelligence agencies really did say Russia was behind hacking
21 Oct 2016

Donald Trump’s claim that the United States has "no idea" who is behind recent email hacks is just not true.

The fact-checking website Politifact says Hillary Clinton is correct when she says 17 federal intelligence agencies have concluded that Russia is behind the hacking.

“We have 17, 17 intelligence agencies, civilian and military who have all concluded that these espionage attacks, these cyber attacks, come from the highest levels of the Kremlin. And they are designed to influence our election. I find that deeply disturbing,” Clinton said during Wednesday's presidential debate in Las Vegas.

Trump pushed back, saying that Clinton and the United States had “no idea whether it is Russia, China or anybody else.”

But Clinton is correct. On Oct. 7, the Department of Homeland Security and Office of the Director of National Intelligence issued a joint statement on behalf of the U.S. Intelligence Community. The USIC is made up of 16 agencies, in addition to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/onpolitics/2016/10/21/17-intelligence-agencies-russia-behind-hacking/92514592/

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Denying Trump’s Denial, US Intel Chief Says There’s More Evidence of Russian Hacking
21 Oct 2016

At Wednesday’s debate, Donald Trump said Hillary Clinton “has no idea whether it’s Russia” who hacked into the private networks of her campaign’s allies, then released the information to WikiLeaks and the world. “Our country has no idea.”

This morning, without calling out Trump by name, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said, um, yeah, we do.

The cybersecurity community has attributed that attack and leak to FANCY BEAR, a group also known as APT 28. Defense One asked Clapper if the intelligence community has identified specific people associated with the group? Specific buildings? Units? And how good is the attribution and how strong is the connection to nation-state backing?

http://www.nextgov.com/cybersecurity/2016/10/denying-trumps-denial-us-intel-chief-says-theres-more-evidence-russian-hacking/132535/

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Vladimir Putin's Russia: Will It Rock America's Vote?
22 Oct 2016

The presidential vote won’t be rigged, but it may well be rocked–and not just by Donald Trump’s repeated threat to dispute the results if he loses.

The Republican challenger has already benefitted from foreign hacking, persuasively attributed to Russia, of the private, and often embarrassing, emails of Hillary Clinton’s staff and the Democratic National Committee. Now, say numerous cyber analysts, Russian hackers have the ability, and perhaps motivation, to infiltrate the nation’s voting booths and deliver a stunning blow to Americans’ already wobbling belief in the integrity of the electoral process.

“You only need to mess it up a little bit, and as soon as people don't have faith in it, the whole system can start to crumble,” says Ryan Duff, a former U.S. Air Force cyber tactician now working on information security in the private realm. “You don't even need to sway it one way. You just have to make people think it could happen.”

http://www.newsweek.com/russia-hackers-putin-wikileaks-trump-clinton-sanders-kremlin-guccifer-512679

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The looming specter of cyberwar with Russia
21 Oct 2016

In the world of cyber (as in security), the question of the week seems to be, "Are we going to cyberwar with Russia?"

White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest thinks so. A week after President Obama singled out Russia as being responsible for cyberattacks on targets including the Democratic National Committee, Earnest said in a briefing that the administration would be serving a "proportional" response to Putin and the gang.

That response would be reciprocation for the very public (and not particularly sophisticated) hacking we've seen targeting the Democratic side of this particular presidential election. This includes the DNC hacks, the Guccifer 2.0 clowning around, the targeted feeding of docs to WikiLeaks. And, if we're going to include all the hacker toolsets, the unprecedented use of bots to influence opinion on social media in favor of the Republican candidate.

https://www.engadget.com/amp/2016/10/21/the-looming-spectre-of-cyberwar-with-russia/

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Evidence ties Russia to Podesta and Powell email hacks
21 Oct 2016

They appear to be part of a unified effort to disrupt the US presidential election.

Back in March, Hillary Clinton's campaign chairman John Podesta received a frantic-sounding email about his account security and clicked a shortened link that appeared to be from Google. Instead, it redirected to a spoof page that gave hackers access to his password. Half a year later, WikiLeaks started publicly releasing thousands of his emails on October 9th, a month after the seemingly unrelated leak of Gen. Colin Powell's personal messages. Security firms, journalists and a hive of independent researchers have spent the interim analyzing the digital break-ins and have arrived at the probable culprit behind these and several other hacks: Russia. But definitively attributing it to the country's intelligence services is difficult, if not impossible.

https://www.engadget.com/2016/10/21/evidence-ties-russia-to-podesta-and-powell-email-hacks/

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How Russia Pulled Off the Biggest Election Hack in U.S. History
20 Oct 2016

On an April afternoon earlier this year, Russian president Vladimir Putin headlined a gathering of some four hundred journalists, bloggers, and media executives in St. Petersburg. Dressed in a sleek navy suit, Putin looked relaxed, even comfortable, as he took questions. About an hour into the forum, a young blogger in a navy zip sweater took the microphone and asked Putin what he thought of the "so-called Panama Papers."

The blogger was referring to a cache of more than eleven million computer files that had been stolen from Mossack Fonseca, a Panamanian law firm. The leak was the largest in history, involving 2.6 terabytes of data, enough to fill more than five hundred DVDs. On April 3, four days before the St. Petersburg forum, a group of international news outlets published the first in a series of stories based on the leak, which had taken them more than a year to investigate. The series revealed corruption on a massive scale: Mossack Fonseca's legal maneuverings had been used to hide billions of dollars. A central theme of the group's reporting was the matryoshka doll of secret shell companies and proxies, worth a reported $2 billion, that belonged to Putin's inner circle and were presumed to shelter some of the Russian president's vast personal wealth.

http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a49791/russian-dnc-emails-hacked/

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Private Security Group Says Russia Was Behind John Podesta’s Email Hack
20 Oct 2016

At the start of 2014, President Obama assigned his trusted counselor, John D. Podesta, to lead a review of the digital revolution, its potential and its perils. When Mr. Podesta presented his findings five months later, he called the internet’s onslaught of big data “a historic driver of progress.” But two short years later, as chairman of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, Mr. Podesta would also become one of the internet’s most notable victims.

On Thursday, private security researchers said they had concluded that Mr. Podesta was hacked by Russia’s foreign intelligence service, the GRU, after it tricked him into clicking on a fake Google login page last March, inadvertently handing over his digital credentials.

For months, the hackers mined Mr. Podesta’s inbox for his most sensitive and potentially embarrassing correspondence, much of which has been posted on the WikiLeaks website. Additions to the collection on Thursday included three short email exchanges between Mr. Podesta and Mr. Obama himself in the days leading up to his election in 2008.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/21/us/private-security-group-says-russia-was-behind-john-podestas-email-hack.html

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NSA chief: Cyber adds 'whole other dimension' to Russia's attempts to manipulate U.S. affairs
20 Oct 2016

The head of the NSA said Thursday that Russia's hack of Democratic Party emails is consistent with its history of trying to manipulate and influence affairs in other countries — but the scope of such operations has changed dramatically.

"Cyber adds a whole other dimension to this because it now enables individuals, actors, groups, nation states to acquire data at massive scale and then divulge that," Adm. Michael S. Rogers told cyber professionals at the sixth annual Cyber Maryland Conference in Baltimore.

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/bs-md-nsa-adm-mike-rogers-20161020-story.html

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Researchers link Podesta hack to Russia
20 Oct 2016

Researchers say they now have evidence linking the hack of an email account belonging to Hillary Clinton's campaign chairman to the data breaches at Democratic groups that are believed to have been perpetrated by Russia.

Security company SecureWorks noted in a report that the cyberattack that compromised John Podesta's account used the same account on URL-shortening service Bitly as the hack of Colin Powell's email, as well as hacks of 4,000 other individuals since 2015.

http://thehill.com/policy/cybersecurity/302039-researchers-tie-podesta-hack-to-russia

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How Hackers Broke Into John Podesta and Colin Powell’s Gmail Accounts
20 Oct 2016

On March 19 of this year, Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman John Podesta received an alarming email that appeared to come from Google.

The email, however, didn’t come from the internet giant. It was actually an attempt to hack into his personal account. In fact, the message came from a group of hackers that security researchers, as well as the US government, believe are spies working for the Russian government. At the time, however, Podesta didn’t know any of this, and he clicked on the malicious link contained in the email, giving hackers access to his account.

http://motherboard.vice.com/read/how-hackers-broke-into-john-podesta-and-colin-powells-gmail-accounts

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State Dept. accuses Russia of 'PR stunt' in election-monitoring flap
20 Oct 2016

The State Department on Thursday accused Moscow of a “PR stunt” after reports emerged that the U.S. had rejected Russia's request to send delegates to “monitor” November's polls — the latest twist in a bizarre election season sullied by accusations of Russian meddling.

Kremlin-backed news outlets such as RT, sometimes citing other media, reported Thursday that representatives of Russia's Central Elections Commission had talked to the State Department about sending a delegation to watch the U.S. polls on Nov. 8.

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/10/russia-monitoring-election-pr-stunt-state-230091

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Intelligence Officials Reiterate Russian Responsibility for Recent Hacks
20 Oct 2016

‘We need to step back as a nation and think about, what are the implications of that?’ says NSA director

Two senior U.S. intelligence officials reiterated Thursday their belief that the Russian government stole and then leaked emails in an effort to interfere with the November elections, countering the repeated insistence from Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump that no one knows who carried out the attacks.

Adm. Michael Rogers, director of the National Security Agency, said at a conference in Baltimore that “we have acknowledged that the Russians were behind the penetrations,” referring to hacks carried out against the Democratic National Committee, some of its affiliates and Clinton campaign aides.

“We need to step back as a nation and think about what are the implications of that?” Adm. Rogers said. “Is that something we are comfortable with?”

http://www.wsj.com/articles/intelligence-officials-reiterate-russian-responsibility-for-recent-hacks-1476981467

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U.S. Confident It's Blocked Russia's Hacking Paths
19 Oct 2016

U.S. officials are confident that defensive measures put in place will stop Russia from hacking more emails to influence the upcoming election — for now.

A high-level intelligence source said the U.S. and its allies have choked off cyber paths that the Russians have allegedly been using to steal emails from high-profile Democrats and other prominent Americans and make them public through WikiLeaks, DCleaks and Guccifer 2.0.

The Russians, both the state actors and their proxies, are some of the most sophisticated cyber actors in the world and so it won't take them long to find ways of infiltrating and attacking new systems getting access to more data and certainly trying to use it for information, warfare or other purposes.

"I think it's credible that the U.S. government is doing everything possible to stop the cyber bleeding," said Juan Zarate, who was a top counterterrorism official from 2005 to 2009.

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/u-s-confident-it-s-blocked-russia-s-hacking-paths-n669256

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If the US hacks Russia for revenge, that could lead to cyberwar
19 Oct 2016

The US should attempt to de-escalate tensions by negotiating some form of international cyber treaty before this gets out of control

What’s the CIA’s brilliant plan for stopping Russian cyber-attacks on the US and their alleged interference with the US election? Apparently, some in the agency want to escalate tensions between the two superpowers even more and possibly do the same thing right back to them.

NBC News reported late last week that the CIA is working up blueprints for an “unprecedented cyber covert action against Russia”, and it sounds a lot like they’re planning on leaking documents on Vladimir Putin, just as the Russians are accused of doing to the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton campaign.

NBC reported that former intelligence officials said “the agency had gathered reams of documents that could expose unsavory tactics by Russian President Vladimir Putin” and another former official said the US “should … expose the financial dealings of Putin and his associates”.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/oct/19/russian-hacking-us-retaliation-cyberwar-international-treaty

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Russian Hackers Evolve to Serve the Kremlin
20 Oct 2016

Attacks on Hillary Clinton and Democratic National Committee are part of Vladimir Putin’s effort to sow instability, U.S. officials say

With the hacking of Hillary Clinton’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee, U.S. officials say Russia has unleashed a strengthened cyberwarfare weapon to sow uncertainty about the U.S. democratic process.

In doing so, Russia has transformed state-sponsored hackers known as Fancy Bear and Cozy Bear from internet spies to political tools with the power to target the country’s adversaries, according to U.S. officials and cybersecurity experts.

The attacks are the harder side of parallel campaigns in the Kremlin’s English-language media, which broadcast negative news about Western institutions and alliances and focus on issues that demonstrate or stoke instability in the West, such as Brexit. Moscow seeks particularly to weaken the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, which has expanded its defense against Russia.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/russian-hackers-evolve-to-serve-the-kremlin-1476907214

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Whodunnit? Russia and Coercion through Cyberspace
19 Oct 2016

Late in May 2014, a group calling itself CyberBerkut leaked a map of the Ukrainian Dnipropetrovsk Oblast administration’s IT resources, information on the Central Election Commission of Ukraine’s servers, and the correspondence of its staff. In the following days, which included the country’s presidential election, CyberBerkut claimed they had again compromised the election commission’s servers, leaked more confidential information, conducted a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack the commission’s website (which instructed potential voters how and where to vote), and blocked the phones of election organizers. The group also released documents implying that the recently appointed governor of the Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, Igor Kolomoisky, was complicit in pro-European Ukrainian plans to promote the “correct” candidate for president of Ukraine.

http://warontherocks.com/2016/10/whodunnit-russia-and-coercion-through-cyberspace/

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Ex-CIA chief: Russian hackers trying to 'mess with our heads'
18 Oct 2016

A former head of the CIA said Tuesday that Russian hacking of US political groups is intended to "mess with our heads" and shake confidence in the American electoral system -- rather than influence the outcome on Election Day.

Retired Gen. Michael Hayden said that he doesn't believe Russian President Vladimir Putin is trying to sway the election in favor of Republican nominee Donald Trump, but using the hacked information to disrupt the electoral process.

"This is too much of a carom shot for Putin to think he knows where that ball's going to end," Hayden said, speaking at the Heritage Foundation in Washington. "I think they're doing this to mess with our heads, to erode confidence in our political process."

http://www.cnn.com/2016/10/18/politics/hayden-russia-us-cyber-elections/

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Could Obama’s Threat of Retaliation against Russia Lead to Cyberwar?
18 Oct 2016

Online attacks are unpredictable and hard to control, leading to worries that White House cyber rattling could quickly escalate

Late last week Obama administration officials used NBC News to send Moscow a cryptic threat: The U.S. government is “contemplating an unprecedented cyber covert action” against Russia for allegedly interfering in the upcoming U.S. elections. Anonymous sources cited in the NBC story offered no details about what the U.S. might d, but said the White House has asked the CIA to cook up a “clandestine” cyber strategy “designed to harass and embarrass” Russian leadership, including Pres. Vladimir Putin.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/could-obama-s-threat-of-retaliation-against-russia-lead-to-cyberwar/

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The US plans to retaliate against Russia’s cyber-hacking campaign with a hack that Putin is sure to understand
17 Oct 2016

After three months of accusations that Russia is seeking to influence the US presidential election with a cyber-hacking campaign, the US is planning to strike back and send “a message” to Moscow with “the greatest impact.”

In an Oct. 16 interview on the NBC show Meet the Press, vice president Joe Biden said that the US retaliation against Russian cyber attacks would be covert. The United States’ two main weapons against such cyber intrusions are sanctions and a reciprocal cyber attack, but sanctions are never covert and of dubious impact. So it seems likely from Biden’s remarks that the US is planning a demonstration of cyberspace might.

One likely tactic in a US cyber attack on Russia would be to threaten or actually release detailed accounts of Russian president Vladimir Putin’s wealth, intelligence that would have been gathered by the National Security Agency. Such a strategy could rattle Putin by potentially affecting his domestic popularity without damaging any infrastructure, and thus avert a dangerous escalation of hostilities.

http://qz.com/810722/joe-biden-the-us-plans-to-retaliate-against-russias-cyber-hacking-campaign-with-a-hack-of-its-own/

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U.S. Cyber Responses to Russian Hacking of the November Election
17 Oct 2016

Recent news reports regarding Russian hacks affecting the November election suggest that the United States is preparing on possible U.S. cyber actions in response, such as revealing information to the Russian public about Putin’s financial holdings that would be embarrassing for him.  Without comment on whether this would be a wise policy move, it’s necessary to point out that such an action would not be a “cyber response” in any meaningful sense of the term.

In common parlance, the term “cyber response” would mean an action taken in cyberspace in reaction to some other action regarded as hostile.  “Response” means that the response action happens after the hostile action.  But nearly all of the information that we would reveal about Putin’s financial holdings must have been collected over a long period of time—a period that almost certainly precedes the Russian hacks.  The only actual action that would occur afterwards—that is, in response—is the revealing of the discovered information.  That’s not a “cyber response”—that would be a policy decision to reveal information that is already in the possession of U.S. intelligence community files.

https://www.lawfareblog.com/us-cyber-responses-russian-hacking-november-election

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Russia’s War With The US Isn’t A Possibility, It’s Already Here
15 Oct 2016

The first phase of Russia’s war with the U.S. is already starting, and while it is not easily visible, it’s incredibly dangerous.

After months of speculation regarding the hacking of recent political figures and organizations, the U.S. intelligence community announced last week that it is “confident” that Russia is responsible. Wikileaks, a primary publisher of the documents resulting from those hacks, is making it evidently clear that it is targeting U.S. politics. U.S. intelligence officials also acknowledge that Russia may have a hand in hacks of various state electoral systems.

http://dailycaller.com/2016/10/15/russias-war-with-the-us-isnt-a-possibility-its-already-here/

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Entire US political system ‘under attack’ by Russian hacking, experts warn
14 Oct 2016

Meanwhile, some US commentators on cybersecurity issues have suggested that these attacks are not a surprise but appear to be a new spin on an old strategy

It could have been a cold war drama. The world watched this week as accusations and counter-accusations were thrown by the American and Russian governments about documents stolen during a hack of the Democratic National Committee and the email account of Hillary Clinton’s campaign chair John Podesta.

The notion that public figures have any right to privacy appears to have been lost in the furore surrounding the story, stolen correspondence being bandied around in attempts to influence the outcome of one of the nastiest, most vitriolic US presidential campaigns in history.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/oct/14/hillary-clinton-email-hack-russia-cybersecurity

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Putin’s hope to ignite a Eurasia-style protest in the United States
16 Oct 2016

In the fall of 2004 Vladi­mir Putin suffered a blow he has never forgotten. The fraudulent election of a pro-Kremlin Ukrainian president, which Putin had directly and brazenly engineered, was overturned by a massive popular uprising. What came to be known as the “Orange Revolution” created a model for resistance to rigged elections in autocracies across Eurasia — in Kyrgyzstan, Belarus, Azerbaijan and, in 2012, Russia itself.

Most of the rebellions didn’t succeed. But Putin developed an obsession with “color revolutions,” which he is convinced are neither spontaneous nor locally organized, but orchestrated by the United States — and in the case of the Moscow protests four years ago, by Hillary Clinton herself.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/putins-hope-to-ignite-a-eurasia-style-protest-in-the-united-states/2016/10/16/0f271a60-90a4-11e6-9c85-ac42097b8cc0_story.html

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7 Ways Russia Is Telling People to Prepare for War
14 Oct 2016

With tensions between Russia and the United States at their highest since the Cold War, there have been alarming signs coming out of Moscow that suggest the country is ready for war.

Almost no one believes the Kremlin is actually preparing for a military conflict with the United States. Most analysts instead see it as a show, intended to boost support at home and to deter Western countries from intervening militarily in Syria.

There are some unsettling things Russia has done, however, to give the impression that war is looming:

http://abcnews.go.com/International/ways-russia-telling-people-prepare-war/story?id=42800992

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CIA Prepping for Possible Cyber Strike Against Russia
14 Oct 2016

The Obama administration is contemplating an unprecedented cyber covert action against Russia in retaliation for alleged Russian interference in the American presidential election, U.S. intelligence officials told NBC News.

Current and former officials with direct knowledge of the situation say the CIA has been asked to deliver options to the White House for a wide-ranging "clandestine" cyber operation designed to harass and "embarrass" the Kremlin leadership.

The sources did not elaborate on the exact measures the CIA was considering, but said the agency had already begun opening cyber doors, selecting targets and making other preparations for an operation. Former intelligence officers told NBC News that the agency had gathered reams of documents that could expose unsavory tactics by Russian President Vladimir Putin.

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/cia-prepping-possible-cyber-strike-against-russia-n666636

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US finds growing evidence Russia feeding emails to WikiLeaks
14 Oct 2016

There is mounting evidence that the Russian government is supplying WikiLeaks with hacked emails pertaining to the US presidential election, US officials familiar with the investigation have told CNN.

As WikiLeaks continues to publish emails belonging to Clinton campaign chair John Podesta, US officials told CNN that there is growing evidence that Russia is using the organization as a delivery vehicle for the messages and other stolen information.

The methods of the disclosures "suggest Moscow is at least providing the information or is possibly directly responsible for the leaks," one US official said.

http://www.cnn.com/2016/10/13/politics/russia-us-election/

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Intelligence Analyst: Russian Cyberattacks Could Roil US Elections
13 Oct 2016

Malcolm Nance is extremely worried about what might happen as U.S. votes are tallied on Nov. 8, election night.

A career U.S. counterterrorism and intelligence official with 33 years of experience, Nance said he had overwhelming evidence that Russia is seeking to interfere in U.S. elections to put "not just a finger, but their whole hand" on the scale to help Republican nominee Donald Trump and hurt Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.

Nance said a number of private companies had traced cyberattacks exposing potentially damaging Democratic Party emails and voicemails back to cyber "fingerprints" clearly identified in the past as those of Russian state hackers. He said the same fingerprints were found in what turned out to be Russian hacking of power plants in Ukraine and of the German parliament.

http://www.voanews.com/a/intelligence-analyst-russian-cyber-attacks-could-roil-elections/3550243.html

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Moscow accuses Washington of destroying U.S.-Russia relations
13 Oct 2016

The Russian Foreign Ministry accused the Obama administration of destroying relations with Moscow in the run-up to the U.S. presidential election next month, saying on Thursday that it hoped the next occupants of the White House would be better.

In comments that underline how deeply a hacking scandal and differences over Syria and Ukraine have damaged U.S.-Russia relations, Maria Zakharova, the Foreign Ministry's spokeswoman, told a news conference Washington was playing a dangerous game.

"We see with regret how Washington continues to destroy our bilateral relations," said Zakharova. "The level of Russophobic propaganda coming from the very top is now starting to go off the scale."

Calling White House accusations Russia was behind a hacking campaign against Democratic Party organizations "a lie," she accused the Obama administration of trying to make U.S. voters perceive Russia as the enemy.

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-russia-relations-idUSKCN12D1RG

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Russia, US move past Cold War to unpredictable confrontation
13 Oct 2016

It's not a new Cold War. It's not even a deep chill. It's an outright conflict.

US-Russia relations have deteriorated sharply amid a barrage of accusations and disagreements, raising the stakes on issues ranging from the countries' competing military operations in Syria, disputes over Eastern European independence and escalating cyber breaches.

"This is a conflict, there should be no doubt," said Matthew Rojansky, director of the Kennan Institute at the Wilson Center, on the US-Russia confrontation.

http://www.cnn.com/2016/10/12/politics/us-russia-tensions-cold-war/

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How to Win the Cyberwar Against Russia
12 Oct 2016

The basic facts about Russia’s election-year hacking of the American political system are clear. For more than a year, the Russian government has repeatedly infiltrated the computers of both parties’ presidential campaigns to steal data and emails to influence the outcome of the election. In response, the Obama administration has promised a “proportional” response against Russia.

What’s much less clear is what a “proportional” response could mean. This is an unprecedented situation for the American national security establishment — which means the Obama administration’s response will set a precedent for future foreign-directed cyber-plots.

The first thing the U.S. government will have to determine is whether the Russian actions rise to the level of an attack — something that would require a direct U.S. response. There are many examples of cyber-infiltration that fall short of that designation, qualifying rather as nuisance activities or even garden-variety espionage. The activities in question, however, cross an important political and operational threshold by attempting to influence the American public on behalf of one of the candidates for the presidency. Most egregiously, the release of internal Clinton campaign emails violates a wide variety of U.S. laws, and the potential release of material related to her email server investigation late in the campaign season could have extraordinary impact on the election.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/win-cyber-war-against-russia-201450459.html

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After U.S. blames Russia for hacking, what comes next?
12 Oct 2016

It came as no surprise when the U.S. government on Oct. 7  formally declared Russia was the culprit of several high-profile cyber intrusions this year, such as those into the Democratic National Committee. Several news outlets, citing anonymous intelligence officials, reported that the government had already determined Russia had directed the intrusions. With the public declaration, some wonder whether a public attribution makes a difference, and why now make the announcement now. Is this different from other incidents?

http://www.c4isrnet.com/articles/after-us-blames-russia-for-hacking-what-comes-next

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White House says Podesta email hack ‘consistent’ with Russian cyber attacks
12 Oct 2016

The White House said Wednesday that the email hacking of Hillary Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta is “consistent” with previous cyber attacks committed by Russia.

“The thing that I can tell you about the intelligence community analysis is that at least some of the disclosures in recent months, including documents that were released by Guccifer 2.0, DC Leaks and WikiLeaks, are consistent with the methods and motivations of Russian-directed efforts,” White House press secretary Josh Earnest said.

He added, “That’s a source of some concern because the intelligence community has concluded with high confidence that they’re doing so to try to destabilize our democracy, and that’s something that obviously the president takes quite seriously.”

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/oct/12/wh-podesta-email-hack-consistent-russian-attacks/

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NSA official: Russian attribution only the first step in hack response
12 Oct 2016

Stronger retaliatory action from the U.S. might be in the cards as a result of hackers breaking into various Democratic organizations.

Publicly attributing this summer’s political campaign hacks to state-directed Russian hackers is the necessary precondition for further steps against Moscow, the NSA’s deputy chief said Tuesday.

The remarks signal that stronger retaliatory action from the U.S. might be in the cards as a result of hackers breaking into various Democratic organizations, including the Democratic National Committee.

“Attribution in a context like that is something that’s a necessary precursor for any other action the government decides to take,” Rick Ledgett told an audience at the AFCEA 2016 Cybersecurity Summit.

http://fedscoop.com/nsa-official-russian-attribution-only-the-first-step-in-hack-response

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A New Weapon in Russia’s Arsenal, and It’s Inflatable
12 Oct 2016

Deep in the Russian countryside, the grass sways in a late-summer breeze. In the distance, the sun glistens off the golden spires of a village church. It is, to all appearances, a typically Russian scene of imperturbable rural tranquillity.

Until a sleek MIG-31 fighter jet suddenly appears in a field, its muscular, stubby wings spreading to reveal their trademark red star insignia. A few moments later, a missile launcher pops up beside it.

Cars on a nearby road pull over, the drivers gaping in amazement at what appear to be fearsome weapons, encountered so unexpectedly in this serene spot. And then, as quickly as they appeared, the jet and missile launcher vanish.

“If you study the major battles of history, you see that trickery wins every time,” Aleksei A. Komarov, the military engineer in charge of this sleight of hand, said with a sly smile. “Nobody ever wins honestly.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/13/world/europe/russia-decoy-weapon.html

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Russia tests ballistic missiles amid tensions with West
12 Oct 2016

Russia's military conducted a series of intercontinental ballistic missile tests on Wednesday, the latest flexing of its muscles as tensions with the US spike over Syria.

Russian forces fired a nuclear-capable rocket from a Pacific Fleet submarine in the Sea of Okhotsk north of Japan, state-run RIA Novosti reported.

A Topol missile was shot off from a submarine in the Barents Sea, and a third was launched from an inland site in the north-west of the vast country, Russian agencies reported.

http://www.spacewar.com/reports/Russia_tests_ballistic_missiles_amid_tensions_with_West_999.html

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Putin Denies Russia Behind Hacking, Says 'Hysteria' Aims to Distract U.S. Public
12 Oct 2016

President Vladimir Putin has denied Russia was behind recent hacking attacks in the U.S., calling the "hysteria" around the incidents an attempt to divert attention from the leaks themselves.

"Everyone's talking about who's done it. Does it really matter that much? What matters is what's inside this information," Putin said at an economic forum in Moscow Wednesday.

"There's nothing there benefiting Russia," he told the Russia Calling conference. "The hysteria is simply to distract the American people from the contents of what the hackers have posted."

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/putin-denies-russia-behind-hacks-says-hysteria-aims-distract-u-n665081

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Time to get real about Russia cyber war: Max Boot
12 Oct 2016

Our democracy is under attack by Russia, but almost no one is treating the situation with the gravity it deserves. President Obama is loathe to retaliate. Would-be president Donald Trump denies that any attack is happening. And the media are acting as enablers for the attackers.

The first shots were fired in June when two groups of hackers, known as Cozy Bear and Fancy Bear, penetrated the Democratic National Committee’s computers. On July 22, on the eve of the Democratic National Convention, accused rapist Julian Assange’s Wikileaks began publishing the trove of 20,000 stolen emails. The embarrassing revelations about DNC bias against Bernie Sanders forced the resignation of Debbie Wasserman Schultz as DNC chairman. U.S. intelligence and private security experts immediately identified Fancy Bear and Cozy Bear as fronts for the FSB and the GRU, the two Russian intelligence agencies, and Wikileaks as a bulletin board for them. Yet the press corps seemed to treat the content of the emails as bigger news than they way they had been revealed.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2016/10/12/russia-podesta-emails-hackers-cyber-warfare-max-boot/91940364/

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Is US Cyber Deterrence Strategy More than (Russian) Roulette?
12 Oct 2016

Following the joint statement from DHS and ODNI accusing Russia of a recent spate of hacks aimed at influencing the US election, the obvious question is what exactly the US government plans to do about it. Over the weekend, the New York Times’ David Sanger and Nicole Perlroth offered a rundown of response options and Jack lamented that the Times report suggests that the US government still does not know how it should respond to Russian interference. He notes that, in the past, the US response to malicious cyber operations has been “dithering” at best.

https://www.lawfareblog.com/us-cyber-deterrence-strategy-more-russian-roulette

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Russia orders all officials to fly home any relatives living abroad, as tensions mount over the prospect of a global war
12 Oct 2016

- Russian officials have been 'told to bring relatives home to the Motherland'
- Failure to act will put promotion chances at risk, according to local reports
- Comes amid worsening relations between Russia and US over Syria crisis
- US has pulled plug on Syria talks and accused Russia of hacking attacks
- Russia has moved nuclear-capable missiles nearer to the Polish border

Russia is ordering all of its officials to fly home any relatives living abroad amid heightened tensions over the prospect of global war, it has been claimed.

Politicians and high-ranking figures are said to have received a warning from president Vladimir Putin to bring their loved-ones home to the 'Motherland', according to local media.

It comes after Putin cancelled a planned visit to France amid a furious row over Moscow's role in the Syrian conflict and just days after it emerged the Kremlin had moved nuclear-capable missiles nearer to the Polish border.

Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev has also warned that the world is at a 'dangerous point' due to rising tensions between Russia and the US.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3833941/Russia-orders-officials-fly-home-relatives-living-abroad-tensions-mount-prospect-global-war.html

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US election: Have Russian hackers already handed Putin a win?
12 Oct 2016

Russian hackers have already scored key goals in their apparent bid to disrupt the US presidential election, according to researchers monitoring the closely fought political campaign.

Allegations of dumping sensitive data, infiltrating official servers, manipulating online blogs and even hacking voter records, say analysts, have fueled concerns Moscow is trying to influence the election outcome.

"Anything that undermines the legitimacy of the electoral process is bad news for democracy," said professor John Naughton, co-director of the Technology and Democracy Project at Cambridge University in the UK.

"Even the idea of Russian involvement could be seen by some as confirmation that the election is flawed," he told CNN.
The Kremlin categorically denies any Russian state involvement in hacking.

http://www.cnn.com/2016/10/12/politics/russia-hack-us-election/

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Lavrov denies Russian influence over US election
12 Oct 2016

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has dismissed claims that his country is interfering in the US presidential election as "ridiculous".

In an interview with CNN's Christiane Amanpour in Moscow, Lavrov said it was "flattering" that American officials think Russia is meddling in the election, but the accusations were baseless.

The US last week accused Russia of being behind a series of email hacks, including communications from the Democratic National Committee.

"It's flattering, of course, to get this kind of attention -- for a regional power, as President Obama called us some time ago," Lavrov said in the CNN interview.

"Now everybody in the United States is saying that it is Russia which is running the [US] presidential debate," he said.

"We have not seen a single fact, a single proof."

http://www.cnn.com/2016/10/12/politics/lavrov-russia-us-election/

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The Growing Danger of Military Conflict with Russia
11 Oct 2016

Once more, the circle in U.S.-Russia relations is complete. The Clinton administration took office in 1993 promising a “Bill and Boris” strategic partnership between the two countries, and ended with recriminations over the Kosovo operation, with Gen. Wesley Clark prepared to start World War III to block the arrival of Russian peacekeepers in Pristina. George W. Bush left the Ljubljana summit with Vladimir Putin in summer 2001 promising a qualitatively different U.S.-Russia relationship, which seemed to bear fruit in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, but concluded his term dealing with the Russian incursion into Georgia with calls from his own party, especially in Congress, for a forceful U.S. response. Barack Obama was going to reset relations with Russia, and now, in the weeks remaining in office, is facing demands from his own State Department and Department of Defense for drawing a line in the sand in Syria against Russian airstrikes on a besieged Aleppo—even at the risk of a face-to-face confrontation between American and Russian forces.

http://nationalinterest.org/feature/the-growing-danger-military-conflict-russia-18013

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The Best Way to Defeat the Islamic State and Succeed in Syria? Push Back on Putin.
11 Oct 2016

In the space of just one year, the West has twice made Russian President Vladimir Putin an offer too good to refuse. Or so it thought. In February 2015, under the auspices of the OSCE, negotiators in Minsk overlooked Russia’s annexation of Crimea in order to reach a cease-fire agreement for the Donbas region of Ukraine. One year later, in February 2016, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry sidestepped questions over Bashar al-Assad’s future in return for a cessation of hostilities deal for Aleppo. In effect, the United States and its allies offered Putin Crimea and a rump Syria in return for peace. Sensing weakness, the Russian president pocketed both offers and promptly violated the agreements, most egregiously in Syria.

Over the past year, Putin has focused on re-imposing Assad’s control over so-called vital Syria, stretching from Damascus to Aleppo. In the process, he has transformed the strategic landscape of the Middle East for the worse. In Latakia, Putin has established bases that include game-changing strategic weapons. In close coordination with Iran and Hezbollah, Russia has secured the Damascus to Latakia corridor, including from Homs up to the north Hama plains, and squeezed the opposition around Damascus. Now, the alliance is besieging Aleppo, Syria’s largest city, under the motto: surrender or starve.

http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/10/11/the-best-way-to-defeat-the-islamic-state-push-back-on-putin-obama-syria-war-russia/

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The US Accused Russia of Hacking. What Happens Next Will Set a Cyber War Precedent
11 Oct 2016

After blaming Russia for trying to tamper with the presidential election, the White House will want to choose its next move carefully.

Almost four months after the cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike claimed that two Russian hacker groups were behind the theft of data from computers at the Democratic National Committee and other political organizations, the U.S. government has publicly attributed the attacks to Russia. In a joint statement from the Director of National Intelligence and Department of Homeland Security, the intelligence community declared that it was “confident that the Russian Government directed the recent compromises of e-mails from US persons and institutions, including from US political organizations.” According to the statement, the hack was not the work of an individual calling himself Guccifer 2.0 or a 400 pound hacker sitting on a bed, but was: intended to interfere with the U.S. elections; consistent with other Russian efforts to influence public opinion in Europe and Eurasia; and was likely to have been authorized at the highest levels of the Russian government.

http://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2016/10/us-accused-russia-hacking-what-happens-next-will-set-cyber-war-precedent/132230/

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How Does Obama Respond to Russia’s Cyberattacks?
11 Oct 2016

The wrong choice will make things only worse for Americans.

It seems that President Obama will retaliate against Russia for hacking into American voter rolls and the Democratic Party’s emails. The question is how he’s going to retaliate. The answer isn’t at all clear. Cyberespionage and cyberconflict have been going on for decades, but the most basic issues of cyberstrategy—how to align goals, means, and national interests— remain unaddressed.

In a statement last Friday, the director of national intelligence, Gen. James Clapper, and the secretary of Homeland Security, Jeh Johnson, said that “only Russia’s senior-most officials could have authorized these activities” and that their intent was “to interfere with the U.S. election process.”

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/war_stories/2016/10/obama_might_adopt_a_wait_and_see_approach_in_response_to_russia_s_hacking.html

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Obama to consider 'proportional' response to Russia hacking
11 Oct 2016

U.S. President Barack Obama will consider a variety of responses to Russia's hacking of political party organizations and it is possible that any action may not be announced publicly, the White House said on Tuesday.

"There are a range of responses that are available to the president and he will consider a response that is proportional," White House spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters on Air Force One. "It is certainly possible that the president can choose response options that we never announce," he said.

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-cyber-russia-obama-idUSKCN12B2G0

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China, Russia blast US missile defence at regional forum
11 Oct 2016

China and Russia blasted Washington Tuesday for its decision to deploy a missile defence system in South Korea in response to Pyongyang's nuclear programme.

Speaking at the 7th annual Xiangshan regional defence forum in Beijing, top military officials from the countries said the move by Seoul and Washington represented a threat to regional stability and was a step towards a new global arms race.

The US and South Korea agreed to install the system, known as THAAD, this summer following repeated nuclear and missile tests by Beijing's wayward ally Pyongyang.

Washington was using the North's actions as a pretext to gain military superiority over China, Chinese general Cai Jun told defence officials at a briefing on the forum's sidelines.

Deploying the system in South Korea, he said, was "not conducive to the peace and stability of the Korean peninsula", he said, adding "it has increased the risk of military conflict in the region".

https://www.yahoo.com/news/china-raps-us-interventions-asia-regional-forum-060224537.html

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White House: We will respond to Russia hacks
11 Oct 2016

The White House said Tuesday it would respond to Russian hacking of US political groups, after publicly pointing the finger at Moscow for the cyberattacks last week.

The response will be "proportional," press secretary Josh Earnest said, without elaborating. He said the actions would likely not be announced ahead of time and could never be made public.

Speaking with reporters on Air Force One, Earnest said a "range" of responses were on the table.

http://www.cnn.com/2016/10/11/politics/white-house-response-russia-hacking/

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After Attributing a Cyberattack to Russia, the Most Likely Response Is Non Cyber
10 Oct 2016

Almost four months after the cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike claimed that two Russian hacker groups were behind the theft of data from computers at the Democratic National Committee and other political organizations, the U.S. government has publicly attributed the attacks to Russia. In a joint statement from the Director of National Intelligence and Department of Homeland Security, the intelligence community declared that it was “confident that the Russian Government directed the recent compromises of e-mails from US persons and institutions, including from US political organizations.” According to the statement, the hack was not the work of an individual calling himself Guccifer 2.0 or a 400 pound hacker sitting on a bed, but was: intended to interfere with the U.S. elections; consistent with other Russian efforts to influence public opinion in Europe and Eurasia; and was likely to have been authorized at the highest levels of the Russian government.

http://blogs.cfr.org/cyber/2016/10/10/after-attributing-a-cyberattack-to-russia-the-most-likely-response-is-non-cyber/

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Why the US fears Russia is hacking its presidential election
11 Oct 2016

Amidst all the heat of the presidential debate on Sunday night, hackers surfaced for a brief moment.

The two candidates clashed over a claim that hackers tied to the Russian state were trying to influence the election.

Two days earlier, on Friday, the US director of national intelligence had pointed the finger at the highest levels of the Russian state for intrusions.

Critics of Russia have argued that any role would be part of a growing trend of not just stealing information but also weaponising it.

http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-37605992

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War Talk Returns to Russian TV as U.S. Ties Hit Deep Freeze
10 Oct 2016

Russian state television is back on a war footing.

This time, the ramped-up rhetoric follows the collapse of cease-fire efforts in Syria. As the U.S. and Russia accused each other of sinking diplomacy, Moscow increased its military presence in the Mediterranean and Baltic regions, and suspended a nuclear non-proliferation treaty. A prime-time news program warned that the U.S. wants to provoke a conflict.

The sudden escalation puts the relationship back into the deep freeze it was in at the peak of the crisis over Ukraine in 2014, which also sparked a wave of hostility in state media. That anti-U.S. campaign ended as the Kremlin sought to ease Western punitive measures imposed over the Ukrainian crisis -- hopes that now seem to be in tatters.

“Offensive behavior toward Russia has a nuclear dimension,” Russian state TV presenter Dmitry Kiselyov said in his “Vesti Nedelyi” program on Sunday. “Moscow would react with nerves of iron to a Plan B,” he said, referring to any possible U.S. military strike in Syria.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-10-10/russian-tv-fans-war-hysteria-as-u-s-ties-hit-post-cold-war-low

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Putin’s all-out propaganda war against the West
10 Oct 2016

Speculation about Russian interference in the upcoming U.S. presidential election is flowing fast in the U.S. media.

Russia was widely believed to be responsible for embarrassing email hacks at the Democratic National Convention. Speculation abounds in the media that the Russian government might try to throw the U.S. election this way or that with a boldness not even seen during Soviet days.

Speculation is all we have for now, yet the Russian propagandists may feel they have accomplished quite enough. Sowing confusion in the West and presenting Russia as an innocent victim of U.S. political infighting are key elements in Russia’s information warfare.

http://www.newsweek.com/putin-all-out-propaganda-war-against-west-506814

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The Trail of Russian Hackers, Putin's Revenge in Siberia
9 Oct 2016

BIYSK, Russia — This Soviet-era industrial city with a population of roughly 200,000 in Siberia is hardly an obvious place to be connected to a cyber attack on the American election system.

Drive past apartment blocks and factories, and visitors can meet the only individual implicated so far in the hacking attack on the voter registration databases in Arizona and Illinois.

Only, Biysk is about as far away from America as you can get.

"If you take a globe, spin it 10 times and point your finger, you'd never hit Biysk," Vladimir Fomenko said of his hometown.

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/trail-russian-hackers-putin-s-revenge-siberia-n662571

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Decoding Russia's latest provocative move in Syria
8 Oct 2016

Why is Russia sending a powerful new surface-to-air missile system to Syria? There are any an array of theories.

The Russian military announced this past week that it intends to install an S-300V air defense system at the Syrian port of Tartus, where Russia maintains a Navy facility. The Russians may be worried that the U.S. will soon launch a far more aggressive air campaign that targets the Syrian regime of President Bashar al Assad. Or the Russians may be sending a political message about their intent to be a player in the Middle East.

Moscow may be concerned about Turkey, using the new missile system to intimidate its regional rival. Or it may just be that Russia wants to put its S-300V in the spotlight in the hopes of selling it on the international market.

http://www.militarytimes.com/articles/decoding-russias-latest-provocative-move-in-syria

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What Options Does the U.S. Have After Accusing Russia of Hacks?
8 Oct 2016

Now that the White House has formally accused Russia of meddling in the presidential election with cutting-edge cyberattacks and age-old information warfare, devising a response might seem fairly easy: unleash the government’s cyberwarriors to give the Kremlin a dose of its own malware.

Technologically, that would not be too difficult, American officials say. But as a matter of strategy and politics, formulating the right kind of counterstrike is not that straightforward.

President Obama’s options range from the mild — naming and shaming the Russians, as he did on Friday — to the more severe, like invoking for the first time a series of economic sanctions that he created by executive order after North Korea’s attack on Sony Pictures Entertainment. The Justice Department could indict the Russians behind the attacks on the Democratic National Committee and the email accounts of prominent individuals, as it did with members of China’s People’s Liberation Army, who have been charged with stealing industrial secrets.

Or Mr. Obama could sign a secret intelligence finding — similar to many he has issued to authorize Central Intelligence Agency efforts in Syria or drone strikes against the Islamic State — to attack and disable Russian computer servers or expose the financial dealings of President Vladimir V. Putin and his oligarch friends.

While the last option is tempting, officials say, it would carry risks with the election just a month away. Attacks on online voter registration rolls could sow chaos at polling places, and the election infrastructure has never truly been tested against a power like Russia. The system that underpins American democracy is not even listed as an element of the nation’s critical infrastructure, a list that includes movie theaters and the Jefferson Memorial, among other monuments.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/09/us/politics/what-options-does-the-us-have-after-accusing-russia-of-hacks.html

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The U.S. has just accused Russia of hacking America’s elections. That’s a very big deal.
7 Oct 2016

Obama administration security officials have formally accused Russia of interfering with the U.S. presidential election. The Director of National Intelligence and the Department of Homeland Security made a joint statement, saying that ““[t]he U.S. intelligence community is confident that the Russian government directed the recent compromises of e-mails from U.S. persons and institutions, including from U.S. political organizations.” Here’s what lies behind the accusations and here’s what happens next.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2016/10/07/the-u-s-has-just-accused-russia-of-hacking-americas-elections-thats-a-very-big-deal/

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U.S. Says Russia Directed Hacks to Influence Elections
7 Oct 2016

The Obama administration on Friday formally accused the Russian government of stealing and disclosing emails from the Democratic National Committee and a range of other institutions and prominent individuals, immediately raising the issue of whether President Obama would seek sanctions or other retaliation.

In a statement from the director of national intelligence, James R. Clapper Jr., and the Department of Homeland Security, the government said the leaked emails that have appeared on a variety of websites “are intended to interfere with the U.S. election process.”

The emails were posted on the well-known WikiLeaks site and two newer sites, DCLeaks.com and Guccifer 2.0, identified as being associated with Russian intelligence.

“We believe, based on the scope and sensitivity of these efforts, that only Russia’s senior-most officials could have authorized these activities,” the statement said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/08/us/politics/us-formally-accuses-russia-of-stealing-dnc-emails.html

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U.S. government officially accuses Russia of hacking campaign to interfere with elections
7 Oct 2016

The Obama administration on Friday officially accused Russia of attempting to interfere in the 2016 elections, including by hacking the computers of the Democratic National Committee and other political organizations.

The denunciation, made by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the Department of Homeland Security, came as pressure was growing from within the administration and some lawmakers to publicly name Moscow and hold it accountable for actions apparently aimed at sowing discord around the election.

“The U.S. Intelligence Community is confident that the Russian Government directed the recent compromises of e-mails from U.S. persons and institutions, including from U.S. political organizations,” said a joint statement from the two agencies. “. . . These thefts and disclosures are intended to interfere with the U.S. election process.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/us-government-officially-accuses-russia-of-hacking-campaign-to-influence-elections/2016/10/07/4e0b9654-8cbf-11e6-875e-2c1bfe943b66_story.html

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The Daily Vertical: Putin's Unilateral Cold War (Transcript)
6 Oct 2016

In case you missed them, here are a few data points just from the past few days.

Russia launched massive civil-defense drills this week involving 200,000 emergency personnel and the cooperation of 40 million civilians.

Those drills came after Zvezda TV, which is run by the Defense Ministry, reported that "schizophrenics from America are sharpening nuclear weapons for Moscow."

Also this week, Russia unilaterally pulled out of two nuclear agreements with the United States.

http://www.rferl.org/a/daily-vertical-putin-unilateral-cold-war-transcript/28035448.html

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Russia posts provocative tweet warning US on Syria, mocking Earnest
6 Oct 2016

The Russian government is ratcheting up warnings – on Twitter – to the U.S. government not to interfere with its military operations in Syria, even suggesting American aircraft could be targeted by its “air defense systems.”

In a provocative tweet Wednesday, the Russian embassy in Washington posted a side-by side photo of White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest and the Russian S-300 missile system.

With the military apparatus pointed toward the image of Earnest, a caption says Russia wants the system because they “never really know what kind of assistance terrorists might get.” The tweet says Russia will take “every defensive measure necessary” to protect their personnel in Syria.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2016/10/06/russia-posts-provocative-tweet-warning-us-on-syria-mocking-earnest.html

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Russia Suspends Nuclear Agreement, Ends Uranium Research Pact With United States
5 Oct 2016

“The regular renewal of sanctions against Russia ... demands the adoption of countermeasures against the U.S. side.”

Russia further curtailed its cooperation with the United States in nuclear energy on Wednesday, suspending a research agreement and terminating one on uranium conversion, two days after the Kremlin shelved a plutonium pact with Washington.

The Russian government said that as counter-measures to the U.S. sanctions imposed on Russia over Ukraine, it was putting aside a nuclear and energy-related research pact with the United States.

It also said it was terminating for the same reasons an agreement between its nuclear corporation Rosatom and the U.S. Department of Energy on feasibility studies into conversion of Russian research reactors to low-enriched uranium.

On Monday, President Vladimir Putin suspended a treaty with Washington on cleaning up weapons grade plutonium, signaling he is willing to use nuclear disarmament as a new bargaining chip in disputes with the United States over Ukraine and Syria.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/russia-suspends-nuclear-agreement_us_57f56028e4b05f39c51dfe21

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U.S. Army Leaders Warn About Russia's Bold Moves in Information Warfare
5 Oct 2016

Russia is making bold moves to both degrade U.S. military power and damage its democratic institutions, officials said Oct. 5.

What Russia is doing is taking military hard power, its use of irregular forces and marrying them with the more traditional elements of soft power, said Brig. Gen. Peter L. Jones, commandant of the Army Infantry School and the maneuver center of excellence.

The question for the the United States is what Russian intentions mean for the future of the Army and its investments, he said at the Association of the United States Army annual conference in Washington, D.C.

All domains will be contested. The old axiom that "if you can be seen, you can be hit, and if you can be hit, you can be killed," should be expanded, he said. "If you can be seen in any domain or emitting in the electro-magnetic spectrum, you can be hit, killed, spoofed, degraded, observed and watched." It all depends on what the enemy, in this case, Russia wants to do.

http://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/blog/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?List=7c996cd7%2Dcbb4%2D4018%2Dbaf8%2D8825eada7aa2&ID=2323

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What Does Putin Want?
5 Oct 2016

The United States should pursue confrontation where necessary and mutual interests without illusions where possible.

However therapeutic and tempting, especially during election season and after Russia’s direct complicity in the Syria horror, the understandable impulse to confront and isolate President Vladamir Putin’s Russia is not wise policy. Notwithstanding the many areas of altercation as well as the doomed attempt by President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to “reset” U.S.-Russia relations after the George W. Bush administration, the next president should pursue a dual strategy designed both to challenge Putin where U.S. national interests demand it but find areas of collaboration where interests coincide. The United States should pursue confrontation where necessary and mutual interests without illusions where possible.

http://nationalinterest.org/feature/what-does-putin-want-17938

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Russia Suspends Nuclear Agreement, Ends Uranium Research Pact With United States
5 Oct 2016

“The regular renewal of sanctions against Russia ... demands the adoption of countermeasures against the U.S. side.”

Russia further curtailed its cooperation with the United States in nuclear energy on Wednesday, suspending a research agreement and terminating one on uranium conversion, two days after the Kremlin shelved a plutonium pact with Washington.

The Russian government said that as counter-measures to the U.S. sanctions imposed on Russia over Ukraine, it was putting aside a nuclear and energy-related research pact with the United States.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/russia-suspends-nuclear-agreement_us_57f56028e4b05f39c51dfe21

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Russian state newspapers predict ‘direct military conflict’ with US as it compares Syria stalemate to Cuban missile crisis
5 Oct 2016

'Third World War' fears have been voiced by the newspapers over the growing tensions with the USA

A RUSSIAN newspaper fears a Third World War with the US over Syria.

Tabloid Moskovsky Komsomolets predicts a “direct military confrontation” on par with the Cuban Missile Crisis.

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/1913898/russian-state-newspapers-predict-direct-military-conflict-with-us-as-it-compares-syria-stalemate-to-cuban-missile-crisis/

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Russia’s Military Sophistication in the Arctic Sends Echoes of the Cold War
4 Oct 2016

Norwegian, NATO and U.S. officials express concerns over Moscow’s increased sophistication in region

When the U.S. wants to learn what Russia is doing in the Arctic, it often turns to the Norwegian military, which has been conducting operations for decades from this Arctic town amid the fiords.

These days, it isn’t the volume of Russian military activity in the region that concerns Norway and its North Atlantic Treaty Organization allies. Adm. Haakon Bruun-Hanssen, Norway’s chief of defense, says Russian military activity in the Barents Sea has grown in recent years but still pales in comparison to Cold War levels.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/russia-upgrades-military-prowess-in-arctic-1475624748

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Amid Deteriorating U.S.-Russia Relations, Questions Grow About Cyberwar
4 Oct 2016

Just when you thought U.S.-Russia relations couldn't get worse, diplomatic deals on both Syria and nuclear security fell apart this week.

Moscow went first, announcing that it was pulling out of a landmark agreement on plutonium. Russia's President Vladimir Putin blamed "unfriendly actions" by the United States.

Hours later, Washington said it was breaking off talks on a ceasefire in Syria. "This is not a decision that was taken lightly," State Department spokesman John Kirby wrote in a statement. "Unfortunately, Russia failed to live up to its own commitments."

Moscow and Washington aren't cooperating on much of anything these days. And that prompts a question: What might come next, in the way of cyberattacks?

http://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2016/10/04/496543317/amid-deteriorating-u-s-russia-relations-questions-grow-about-cyberwar

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What are all these Russian hackers up to?
30 Sep 2016

Russia has been implicated in many breaches of U.S. networks in recent months, most notably the Democratic National Committee and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee hacks, whose data were subsequently dumped to the whistleblowing site WikiLeaks. On Sept. 28, FBI Director James Comey told a congressional hearing that Russian hackers have been testing cyberdefenses of voter registration databases in more than a dozen states.

http://phys.org/news/2016-09-russian-hackers.html

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Russian Hackers Targeted Nearly Half of States' Voter Registration Systems, Successfully Infiltrated 4
29 Sep 2016

Nearly half of the states in the U.S. have recently had their voter registration systems targeted by foreign hackers, and four of those systems have successfully been breached, sources tell ABC News.

That amount of targeting and actual infiltration into state election-related systems is significantly larger than the U.S. government has been willing to acknowledge.

Hackers working on behalf of the Russian government are suspected in the onslaught against more than 20 state election systems, according to sources with knowledge of the matter.

http://abcnews.go.com/US/russian-hackers-targeted-half-states-voter-registration-systems/story?id=42435822

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It’s No Cold War, but Vladimir Putin Relishes His Role as Disrupter
29 Sep 2016

Escalating airstrikes in Syria. Sophisticated cyberattacks, apparently intended to influence the American election. New evidence of complicity in shooting down a civilian airliner.

The behavior of Russia in the last few weeks has echoes of some of the uglier moments of the Cold War, an era of proxy battles that ended in 1991 with the collapse of the Soviet Union. President Obama, fresh from a meeting with President Vladimir V. Putin this month, wondered aloud whether the Russian leader was content living with a “constant, low-grade conflict.” His reference was to Ukraine, but he could have been addressing any of the arenas where Mr. Putin has reveled in his new role as the great disrupter of American plans around the globe.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/30/world/europe/for-veterans-of-the-cold-war-a-hostile-russia-feels-familiar.html

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How MH17 Gave Birth to the Modern Russian Spin Machine
29 Sep 2016

The downing of a passenger flight over Ukraine triggered an extraordinary campaign of lying, dissembling, and distortion that hasn't stopped since.

It seems odd to look back to just over two years ago — a time when Russia had already effectively annexed Crimea and quietly fomented civil war in Ukraine — and to think of those days as simpler times.

To be sure, they weren’t that simple, even then: Before Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 was shot down over eastern Ukraine, Russian officials had already lied publicly about their special forces’ role in the seizure of Crimea. Kremlin-backed media had already begun spreading wild rumors and fake news stories, such as the alleged crucifixion of a 3-year-old boy by Ukrainian forces.

But, looking back now, it seems that the downing of MH17 — a disaster that horrified the world, and that has since been the subject of two international investigations seeking to establish some semblance of truth — marked a Rubicon moment for the Russian disinformation machine: the first time that the full power of the state was trained on the task of convincing the world to accept a false narrative of events, despite a preponderance of evidence to the contrary.

http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/09/29/how-mh17-gave-birth-to-the-modern-russian-spin-machine-putin-ukraine/

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How Russia Wants to Undermine the U.S. Election
29 Sep 2016

What's behind Russia's effort to influence the U.S. election

The leaders of the U.S. government, including the President and his top national-security advisers, face an unprecedented dilemma. Since the spring, U.S. intelligence and law-enforcement agencies have seen mounting evidence of an active Russian influence operation targeting the 2016 presidential election. It is very unlikely the Russians could sway the actual vote count, because our election infrastructure is decentralized and voting machines are not accessible from the Internet. But they can sow disruption and instability up to, and on, Election Day, more than a dozen senior U.S. officials tell TIME, undermining faith in the result and in democracy itself.

http://time.com/4512771/how-russia-wants-undermine-us-election/

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Can Fancy Bear Be Stopped? The Clear and Present Danger of Russian Info Ops
29 Sep 2016

Russia is engaged in an unprecedented, sophisticated attack on the American political system. Defeating it won’t be easy.

Former Secretary of State Colin Powell was curt to his former aide. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump “is a national disgrace and an international pariah,” he wrote. In the leaked email, Powell, whose public persona is dignified and deeply appealing to both political parties, comes across as frustrated and upset by the 2016 presidential election. “I would rather not have to vote for her,” he wrote elsewhere, referring to Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, describing her as having “a long track record, unbridled ambition, greedy, not transformational.”

It was the sort of juicy gossip political reporters just cannot ignore, and they predictably ran stories detailing who got burned and who got shade from the famously dignified and respectful Powell. Yet this email leak was the latest vanguard of what has become a sustained campaign of cyber operations by the Russian government, seemingly geared to manipulate the election. By aggressively hacking into email accounts and then selectively leaking documents meant to embarrass Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party, Moscow is combining two different strains of security threats in a way no one is sure how to counter. Combining a traditional form of cyber operation (the actual email hacks) with targeted releases to affect a political outcome (information warfare), the Russian government has innovated a type of cyberwarfare that is catching both the media and policymakers off guard.

http://warontherocks.com/2016/09/can-fancy-bear-be-stopped-the-clear-and-present-danger-of-russian-info-ops/

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U.S. Believes Hackers Are Shielded by Russia to Hide Its Role in Cyberintrusions
28 Sep 2016

Officials are increasingly confident that the Russian government is intensifying a campaign to steal U.S. computer records and leak damaging information to the American public

U.S. officials are increasingly confident that the hacker Guccifer 2.0 is part of a network of individuals and groups kept at arm’s length by Russia to mask its involvement in cyberintrusions such as the theft of thousands of Democratic Party documents, according to people familiar with the matter.

While the hacker denies working on behalf of the Russian government, U.S. officials and independent security experts say the syndicate is one of the most striking elements of what looks like an intensifying Russian campaign to target prominent American athletes, party officials and military leaders.

A fuller picture of the operation has come into focus in the past several weeks. U.S. officials believe that at least two hacking groups with ties to the Russian government, known as Fancy Bear and Cozy Bear, are involved in the escalating data-theft efforts, according to people briefed on the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s probe of the cyberattacks.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-believes-russia-steered-hacked-documents-to-websites-1475058781

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Russian hackers harassed journalists who were investigating Malaysia Airlines plane crash
28 Sep 2016

Russian government hackers began targeting a British citizen journalist in February 2015, eight months after he began posting evidence documenting alleged Russian government involvement in the shoot-down of a Malaysian jetliner over Ukraine.

And then in February 2016, a group that researchers suspect is a propaganda mouthpiece of the Russian government — CyberBerkut — defaced the home page of Eliot Higgins’s citizen journalism website, Bellingcat.com.

That same month, CyberBerkut hacked the email, iCloud and social media account of a Bellingcat researcher in Moscow, then posted online personal pictures, a passport scan, his girlfriend’s name and other private details.

Russia’s information operations against Bellingcat are a taste of what may be in store for other media organizations whose reports anger the Kremlin, said a cyber-research firm that has extensively documented the effort.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/russian-hackers-harass-researchers-who-documented-russian-involvement-in-shootdown-of-malaysian-jetliner-over-ukraine-in-2014/2016/09/28/d086c8bc-84f7-11e6-ac72-a29979381495_story.html

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The White House Asked Congress To Keep Quiet On Russian Hacking
27 Sep 2016

Sources tell BuzzFeed News that top White House officials tried to stop two of Congress’s senior intelligence officials from publicly confirming Russian efforts to undermine the US election.

The White House sought to muzzle two of Congress’s top intelligence officials when they decided to publicly accuse Russia of meddling in the US election last week, sources familiar with the matter told BuzzFeed News.

In a statement released Friday, Sen. Dianne Feinstein and Rep. Adam Schiff, the vice-chairmen of the Senate and House Intelligence Committees respectively, formally accused Russia of attempting to influence the US election. It was the first official, on-record confirmation from US government officials that the Kremlin is actively working to manipulate public confidence in the country’s election system.

But sources tell BuzzFeed News that the White House — which has stayed silent despite mounting pressure to call out its Moscow adversaries — tried to delay the statement’s release. The public accusation was of such concern to the administration that White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough was personally involved in the negotiations over releasing it, according to a congressional source.

https://www.buzzfeed.com/alimwatkins/the-white-house-asked-congress-to-keep-quiet-on-the-whole-ru

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NATO Warns West ‘Losing Information War’ Against Russia, IS
27 Sep 2016

The West must step up its efforts to combat and counter the information war being waged by its opponents, according to NATO officials. They warn that countries like Russia are exploiting the freedom of the press in Western media to spread disinformation.

The term "hybrid warfare" is frequently used to describe the tactics used by the Kremlin in its forceful takeover of Crimea in 2014, when unmarked, heavily armed gunmen now widely known as the ‘little green men’ began storming Ukrainian military bases in the region.

Moscow initially denied they were Russian military, yet weeks later similar unidentified armed units appeared in eastern Ukraine. That conflict between Russia-backed rebels and the Ukrainian military is still continuing.

http://www.voanews.com/a/nato-russia-information-war-propaganda/3526780.html

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The Sino-Russian Axis
26 Sep 2016

Joint naval exercises show a common strategic purpose: Push the U.S. out.

China and Russia completed an eight-day joint naval exercise in the South China Sea last week, and this time the location was also the message. The two autocracies are expanding cooperation and offering each other support in their territorial disputes, a trend that could fuel instability from East Asia to Central Europe.

Days before the drill, which focused on antisubmarine warfare and what a Xinhua dispatch called “island-seizing,” Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping held their 15th bilateral meeting on the sidelines of the G-20 summit in Hangzhou. Mr. Putin announced support for Beijing’s aggressive sovereignty claims in the South China Sea and opposition to “any third-party interference,” an unsubtle reference to the United States.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-sino-russian-axis-1474931288

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Top spy suggests Russia trying to sow doubt in US elections
21 Sep 2016

The nation’s top intelligence official is suggesting Russia could be tampering with U.S. election systems in order to create public doubt about their reliability.

“There’s a tradition in Russia of interfering in elections, their own and others,” Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said Tuesday evening at an event hosted by the Washington Post. “So it shouldn’t come as a bit shock to people.”

The decentralized nature of U.S. elections — which are run by multiple local and state governments instead of a single national system — makes it incredibly difficult for any hackers to substantially affect the nationwide outcome, Clapper added.

http://thehill.com/policy/national-security/296999-top-spy-suggests-russia-trying-to-sow-doubt-in-us-elections

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Russia has a years-long plot to influence Balkan politics. The U.S. can learn a lot from it.
19 Sep 2016

“A Russian influence operation in the United States is something we’re looking very closely at,” The Washington Post recently quoted an unnamed senior intelligence official as saying. As the article put it:

U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies are investigating what they see as a broad covert Russian operation in the United States to sow public distrust in the upcoming presidential election and in U.S. political institutions, intelligence and congressional officials said.

Information campaigns are nothing new for Russia, which has been running them in the Balkans at least for the past eight years, since Kosovo’s separation from Serbia and declaration of independence. There its strategy is to create a perception of Russia as a great power and powerful ally, with little substance behind it in investments or donations to the nations involved.

Here’s what the United States can learn from Russia’s low-cost, high-yield communications approach there.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2016/09/19/heres-how-russias-trying-to-sway-opinion-in-serbia-and-the-balkans/

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U.S. Intelligence Chief Suggests Russia Was Behind Election-Linked Hacks
20 Sep 2016

James Clapper’s comments were his most explicit to date about operation that stole Democratic Party records

WASHINGTON—U.S. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper suggested Russia was behind a recent computer hacking operation that stole records from the Democratic Party and then leaked thousands of documents online.

Mr. Clapper, speaking Tuesday evening at an event hosted by the Washington Post, said Russia has been conducting similar exercises since the 1960s targeting the U.S.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-intelligence-chief-suggests-russia-was-behind-election-linked-hacks-1474416647

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To Counter Russian Disinformation, Look to Cold War Tactics
20 Sep 2016

For the next administration, identifying, countering and neutralizing Moscow’s influence operations should be a priority.

Since Russia’s 2008 invasion of Georgia, there has been a marked increase in the scope of Moscow’s overt military operations. Parallel, but perhaps more important, has been the gradual evolution in Russia’s approach to coordinating and executing sophisticated propaganda campaigns. Militarily resurgent and openly aggressive, Russia is dedicated to maintaining a decisive edge in cyberspace. According to the Pentagon, this poses a “serious challenge to the national security interests of the United States and its allies,” particularly the Baltic states.

While the employment of military deception is old hat, Vladimir Putin has effectively fused political influence with denial and deception operations in pursuit of his national security objectives. In cyberspace, the strategic goal is straightforward: hack everything, deny everything, and make counter-accusations.

http://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2016/09/counter-russian-disinformation-look-cold-war-tactics/131674/

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Blaming Russia for U.S. Hacks Is Easier Than Responding to Them
18 Sep 2016

Determining that the Russian government has been hacking political groups and election systems may have been the easy part for the U.S. intelligence community. Now the Obama administration has to decide what, if anything, to do about it.

While officially the FBI and intelligence agencies are still investigating a series of hacks that have roiled the U.S. presidential campaign, a number of cyber specialists who have reviewed the evidence as well as U.S. officials familiar with the investigation say with high confidence that Moscow is to blame.

http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2016-09-19/blaming-russia-for-u-s-hacks-is-easier-than-responding-to-them

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Who Are the Russian-Backed Hackers Attacking the U.S. Political System?
18 Sep 2016

Two teams of highly skilled hackers directed and protected by the Russian state are on the offensive.

Cybersecurity experts and intelligence officials tell NBC News the same hackers who broke into the Democratic Party's computers, the World Anti-Doping Agency's Administration System and who are implicated in the leaks of the personal emails of former Secretary of State Colin Powell and the health documents of Olympians are executing a Kremlin-backed campaign of cyber-espionage and sabotage.

Their target: Western democratic institutions and Russia's political opponents.

http://www.nbcnews.com/tech/internet/who-are-russian-backed-hackers-attacking-u-s-political-system-n649966

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Putin wants revenge and respect, and hacking the U.S. is his way of getting it
16 Sep 2016

The recent spate of embarrassing emails and other records stolen by Russian hackers is President Vladimir Putin’s splashy response to years of what he sees as U.S. efforts to weaken and shame him on the world stage and with his own people, according to Russia experts here and in the U.S. intelligence world and academia.

Putin is seeking revenge and respect, and trying to reassert Russia’s lost superpower status at a time of waning economic clout and an upcoming Russian election, according to interviews with specialists here and in Washington, with a senior U.S. intelligence official, recently retired CIA operations officers in charge of Russia, and the last three national intelligence officers for Russia and Eurasia analysis in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/russian-hacking-a-question-of-revenge-and-respect/2016/09/15/8bcc8d7e-7511-11e6-9781-49e591781754_story.html

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The Cold War is over. The Cyber War has begun.
15 Sep 2016

Contemplating Russian nuclear threats during the Cold War, the strategist Herman Kahn calibrated a macabre ladder of escalation, with 44 rungs ranging from “Ostensible Crisis” to “Spasm or Insensate War.”

In the era of cyberwarfare that’s now dawning, the rules of the game haven’t yet been established with such coldblooded precision. That’s why this period of Russian-American relations is so tricky. The strategic framework that could provide stability hasn’t been set.

Russian hackers appear to be pushing the limits. In recent weeks, the apparent targets have included the electronic files of the Democratic National Committee, the private emails of former secretary of state Colin Powell, and personal drug-testing information about top U.S. athletes.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/the-cold-war-is-over-the-cyber-war-has-begun/2016/09/15/bc4ca5c0-7b87-11e6-bd86-b7bbd53d2b5d_story.html?utm_term=.b26c5e4ee3cc

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Lawmakers say Obama should start thinking about sanctioning Russia for hacking
15 Sep 2016

Some lawmakers believe that President Obama should start thinking about sanctioning Russia for its alleged hacking of American political organizations like the Democratic National Committee.

The House Intelligence Committee’s top Democrat, Rep. Adam Schiff (Calif.), said Thursday that the president needs to start “naming and shaming” Russia for its alleged hacking activities, as well as use the sanctions authority he already has to punish President Vladimir Putin’s country.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/wp/2016/09/15/lawmakers-think-obama-should-start-thinking-about-sanctioning-russia-for-hacking/

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As Russia reasserts itself, U.S. intelligence agencies focus anew on the Kremlin
14 Sep 2016

U.S. intelligence agencies are expanding spying operations against Russia on a greater scale than at any time since the end of the Cold War, U.S. officials said.

The mobilization involves clandestine CIA operatives, National Security Agency cyberespionage capabilities, satellite systems and other intelligence assets, officials said, describing a shift in resources across spy services that had previously diverted attention from Russia to focus on terrorist threats and U.S. war zones.

U.S. officials said the moves are part of an effort to rebuild U.S. intelligence capabilities that had continued to atrophy even as Russia sought to reassert itself as a global power. Over the past two years, officials said, the United States was caught flat-footed by Moscow’s aggression, including its annexation of Crimea, its intervention in the war in Syria and its suspected role in hacking operations against the United States and Europe.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/as-russia-reasserts-itself-us-intelligence-agencies-focus-anew-on-the-kremlin/2016/09/14/cc212c62-78f0-11e6-ac8e-cf8e0dd91dc7_story.html

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NSA Chief: Potential Russian Hacking of U.S. Elections a Concern

The head of the National Security Agency said Tuesday that the potential for Russia to harm the U.S. electoral process in the upcoming general election is a concern.

Cybersecurity officials have become increasingly worried about the issue in the wake of revelations that Russia-based hackers were behind two recent hacking attempts into state voter registration databases.

http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/nsa-chief-potential-russian-hacking-u-s-elections-concern-n647491

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Russian fighter makes ‘unsafe close range intercept’ with U.S. anti-submarine aircraft
7 Sep 2016

A Russian fighter aircraft made an “unsafe close range intercept” with a U.S. Navy jet over the Black Sea on Wednesday.

Pentagon spokesman Navy Capt. Jeff Davis said in an emailed statement that the Russian Su-27 came “extremely close” and spent 19 minutes intercepting the U.S. P-8A Poseidon. The P-8 was conducting “routine operations in international airspace,” Davis said.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/checkpoint/wp/2016/09/07/russian-fighter-makes-unsafe-close-range-intercept-with-u-s-anti-submarine-aircraft/

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Updated: Russian Fighter Came Within 10 Ft. of Navy Surveillance Plane Over Black Sea
7 Sep 2016

A Russian fighter has come within 10 feet of a Navy surveillance flight over the Black Sea on Wednesday, defense officials told USNI News.

The incident between the Navy P-8A Poseidon surveillance aircraft and a Sukhoi Su-27 Flanker occurred at about 11:20 A.M. local time in international airspace over the Black Sea, according to a statement provided to USNI News.

“During the intercept, which lasted approximately 19 minutes, the Su-27 initially maintained a 30-foot separation distance then closed to within 10 feet of the P-8A, which is considered unsafe and unprofessional,” read the statement.

https://news.usni.org/2016/09/07/russian-fighter-came-within-10-ft-navy-surveillance-plane-black-sea

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U.S. investigating potential covert Russian plan to disrupt November elections
5 Sep 2016

U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies are investigating what they see as a broad covert Russian operation in the United States to sow public distrust in the upcoming presidential election and in U.S. political institutions, intelligence and congressional officials said.

The aim is to understand the scope and intent of the Russian campaign, which incorporates ­cyber-tools to hack systems used in the political process, enhancing Russia’s ability to spread disinformation.

The effort to better understand Russia’s covert influence operations is being coordinated by James R. Clapper Jr., the director of national intelligence. “This is something of concern for the DNI,” said Charles Allen, a former longtime CIA officer who has been briefed on some of these issues. “It is being addressed.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/intelligence-community-investigating-covert-russian-influence-operations-in-the-united-states/2016/09/04/aec27fa0-7156-11e6-8533-6b0b0ded0253_story.html

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How Russia Often Benefits When Julian Assange Reveals the West’s Secrets
31 Aug 2016

American officials say Mr. Assange and WikiLeaks probably have no direct ties to Russian intelligence services. But the agendas of WikiLeaks and the Kremlin have often dovetailed.

Julian Assange was in classic didactic form, holding forth on the topic that consumes him — the perfidy of big government and especially of the United States.

Mr. Assange, the editor of WikiLeaks, rose to global fame in 2010 for releasing huge caches of highly classified American government communications that exposed the underbelly of its wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and its sometimes cynical diplomatic maneuvering around the world. But in a televised interview last September, it was clear that he still had plenty to say about “The World According to US Empire,” the subtitle of his latest book, “The WikiLeaks Files.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/01/world/europe/wikileaks-julian-assange-russia.html

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White House Asks U.S. Spies to Study Russian Hacks
31 Aug 2016

The White House has ordered a special intelligence task force to examine the implications of Russia's recent hacks of U.S. political organizations, U.S. intelligence officials tell NBC News.

According to one official, the classified national study is being conducted by the Foreign Denial and Deception Committee, a Cold War-era organization that is part of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

The committee traditionally has advised the DNI on foreign attempts to thwart U.S. intelligence through trickery. But in the cyber era, the committee has increasingly looked at how nation states use computer attacks to conduct espionage and spread propaganda.

Russia, China, North Korea, Iran are primary subjects, the official said.

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/white-house-asks-deception-committee-study-russian-hacks-n640151

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EXCLUSIVE: Russia-Backed DNC Hackers Strike Washington Think Tanks
29 Aug 2016

The same Kremlin-backed group that hacked the Pentagon, State Department, and DNC targeted DC insiders last week.

Last week, one of the Russia-backed hacker groups that attacked Democratic computer networks also attacked several Russia-focused think tanks in Washington, D.C., Defense One has learned.

The perpetrator is the group called COZY BEAR, or APT29, one of the two groups that cybersecurity company CrowdStrike blamed for the DNC hack, according to founder Dmitri Alperovitch. CrowdStrike discovered the attack on the DNC and provides security for the think tanks.

http://www.defenseone.com/threats/2016/08/exclusive-russia-backed-dnc-hackers-strike-washington-think-tanks/131104/

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A Powerful Russian Weapon: The Spread of False Stories
28 Aug 2016

With a vigorous national debate underway on whether Sweden should enter a military partnership with NATO, officials in Stockholm suddenly encountered an unsettling problem: a flood of distorted and outright false information on social media, confusing public perceptions of the issue.

The claims were alarming: If Sweden, a non-NATO member, signed the deal, the alliance would stockpile secret nuclear weapons on Swedish soil; NATO could attack Russia from Sweden without government approval; NATO soldiers, immune from prosecution, could rape Swedish women without fear of criminal charges.

They were all false, but the disinformation had begun spilling into the traditional news media, and as the defense minister, Peter Hultqvist, traveled the country to promote the pact in speeches and town hall meetings, he was repeatedly grilled about the bogus stories.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/29/world/europe/russia-sweden-disinformation.html

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Russian “New Generation” Warfare: Theory, Practice, and Lessons for U.S. Strategists
25 Aug 2016

Russian unconventional warfare—dubbed by analysts as “new generation” warfare—elevates the psychological and popular aspects of conflict more so than any of its geopolitical partners and rivals.[i] In an era of expanding popular engagement and attention to foreign conflicts, a strategic appreciation of these people-centric dimensions is more important now than ever. Recent interventions in Crimea and Donbas demonstrate the effectiveness of this new generation strategy, expose some critical weaknesses in U.S. approaches to unconventional war, and provide lessons for future strategic design.

http://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/russian-“new-generation”-warfare-theory-practice-and-lessons-for-us-strategists

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Here's why the NSA won't release a 'smoking gun' implicating Russia in these major hacks
18 Aug 2016

Was Russia behind the massive hack of the Democratic National Committee, or the latest breach of what appears to be the NSA's elite hacking unit?

That's quite possible, but the US National Security Agency is probably not going confirm that — even as former employees proclaim that it can do so, and top US officials say that there is "little doubt" Moscow is involved.

Former NSA contractor Edward Snowden said on Twitter that "evidence that could publicly attribute responsibility for the DNC hack certainly exists at NSA" with a tool known as XKeyscore, which he previously described as a "one stop shop" for information it collects.

If that's true, then it's likely that that same tool could find the culprits behind the latest attack.

http://www.businessinsider.com/nsa-russia-hack-dnc-2016-8

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Understanding the Role of Russian Propaganda in the US Election
17 Aug 2016

It may seem strange, but the Kremlin's propaganda machine is not backing US Presidential Republican Candidate Donald Trump. It has a bigger goal: Discrediting democracy in the United States.

The Kremlin's main propaganda outlets in the US are the television station RT—formerly Russia Today—and the radio and online outlet Sputnik. Both are headed by Kremlin loyalists and closely mirror Russia's foreign policy. While their effect on the presidential race is likely to be minimal, their reporting is useful for the insight it provides into the Kremlin's intentions.

That reporting focuses on specifically attacking US Presidential Democratic Candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton, and the general nature of US democracy. As such, it appears that the Kremlin is less interested in promoting Trump than promoting discontent.

http://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/new-atlanticist/understanding-the-role-of-russian-propaganda-in-the-us-election

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Russian-Linked Group Leaks US Lawmakers’ Phone Numbers, Emails
14 Aug 2016

Late Friday, an online figure linked to Russian intelligence groups released the personal information of several lawmakers, part of an established pattern.

In an ominous turn, a shady actor linked to Russian intelligence has leaked to the public stolen personal phone numbers and private email addresses of Democratic members of the U.S. House of Representatives.

The latest data dump appeared Friday on the WordPress site of an individual (or individuals) known as Guccifer 2.0, also called Guccifer2. It contained personal data of the of the members  and members of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, or DCCC. “Hi all! It’s time for new revelations now,” the post read. On Saturday, WordPress administrators removed the post for violating terms of service. But Guccifer2, through Twitter, promised to post the rest of the material to Wikileaks.

http://www.defenseone.com/technology/2016/08/russian-linked-group-leaks-us-lawmakers-phone-numbers-emails/130733/

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The meaning of deeming elections ‘critical infrastructure’
4 Aug 2016

PONDERING A NEW DESIGNATION — Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson said Wednesday that the department was looking at designating elections as critical infrastructure, on par with the electricity grid or banking system. It’s a subject the Obama administration, as a whole, is exploring. “I know this is an idea that other members of the president’s national security team have also discussed,” White House spokesman Josh Earnest added Wednesday.

http://www.politico.com/tipsheets/morning-cybersecurity/2016/08/the-meaning-of-deeming-elections-critical-infrastructure-215708

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Putin’s Infowar on America
31 Jul 2016

The DNC leaks were another Russian victory as the U.S. fails to fight back.

This column recently predicted that Russia would disclose hacked emails just before the presidential election as an “October surprise.” The first surprise came early, with last week’s release of emails hacked from the Democratic National Committee, whose chairman resigned for rigging the primaries in Hillary Clinton’s favor.

Expect more surprises before the election. Vladimir Putin has an unprecedented trove of hacked communications at his fingertips—and shows canny timing on when to hit “send.” Moscow has an ambitious strategy for information war that goes beyond affecting a presidential election. Israeli analyst Dima Adamsky wrote last year that the Russian “information struggle” entails “technological and psychological components designed to manipulate the adversary’s picture of reality, misinform it, and eventually interfere with the decision-making process of individuals, organizations, governments, and societies.”

http://www.wsj.com/articles/putins-infowar-on-america-1469996741

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Russia Wanted to be Caught, Says Company Waging War on the DNC Hackers
28 Jul 2016

Pointing a finger at Russia is easy. Punishing them is hard. That’s why they hacked the DNC, according to the company that first named one of the key suspects.

The Russian groups behind the DNC hack no longer seem to care about getting caught. Long before the Kremlin-sponsored hacking squads APT 28 and APT 29 were making waves for stealing files from the Democratic National Committee, they made an appearance in two white papers put out by FireEye. The cybersecurity company has been monitoring and analyzing the two groups on behalf of corporate clients for years. In the DNC breach, a company spokesman told Defense One: “They wanted experts and policymakers to know that Russia is behind it.”

That fits a pattern of increasing bold moves over the past year by the groups, which are also known as FANCY BEAR and COZY BEAR, says Christopher Porter, the manager of Horizons, the strategic intelligence and forecasting arm of FireEye iSIGHT Intelligence, the company’s threat monitoring division.

http://www.defenseone.com/technology/2016/07/Russia-wanted-to-be-caught/130312/

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U.S. Intelligence Chief James Clapper Says Russia Sees Meddling in Election as Payback
28 Jul 2016

Mr. Clapper also calls Russian President Vladimir Putin ‘paranoid’

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said Moscow views attempts to interfere in U.S. politics—including the November elections—essentially as payback for what the Kremlin sees as concerted efforts by the U.S. to influence elections in Russia.

He described Russian President Vladimir Putin as “paranoid.”

“Of course they see a U.S. conspiracy behind every bush and ascribe far more impact than we’re actually guilty of, but that’s their mind-set,” said Mr. Clapper, speaking at the Aspen Security Forum in Colorado.

“And so I think their approach is they believe we are trying to influence political developments in Russia, trying to affect change, and so their natural response is to retaliate and do unto us as they think we’ve done unto them,” he said.

Mr. Clapper was careful to point out that U.S. intelligence agencies haven't reached a firm conclusion as to whether Russia or any other country was behind the recent computer breach that stole emails and other records from the Democratic National Committee. Close to 20,000 of those emails were released by WikiLeaks last week, a move that proved embarrassing to senior DNC officials because the emails showed party officials trying to undermine the candidacy of Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-intelligence-chief-james-clapper-says-russia-sees-meddling-in-election-as-payback-1469741326

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On the Need for Official Attribution of Russia’s DNC Hack
28 Jul 2016

Yesterday, Sen. Dianne Feinstein and Rep. Adam Schiff—Vice Chair of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and Ranking Member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, respectively—called on the Obama administration to consider declassifying and releasing any intelligence community assessments on the attribution and motives of the DNC hackers.

I wholeheartedly agree.

The intelligence community has powers and capabilities that far exceed that of the private sector for attribution, and do not suffer from the same conflicts of interest. Whereas private sector attribution tends to rely on technical forensics of the malware and infrastructure used by the hackers, the IC is able to draw upon a much more diverse set of capabilities—such as financial intelligence, human intelligence, and counter-intelligence—to bring together a wider set of facts with narrower bands of uncertainty than the private sector would normally have at its disposal.

https://www.lawfareblog.com/need-official-attribution-russias-dnc-hack

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Russia’s Long History of Messing With Americans Minds Before the DNC Hack
26 Jul 2016

Russia’s intelligence services have a long history of mingling sinister fiction with shards of fact and leaking through third parties to cover their tracks.

Lord Byron observed, in skewering one of his favorite poetic targets of derision, that while the English have no word so good as the French longueurs to describe tedious, uninterrupted stretches of writing, they nevertheless “have the thing.” Similarly, there is no proper American term for what Russian intelligence calls aktivniye meropriyatiye, or active measures, but by now most Americans really ought to be used to the thing, as it might well decide our next presidential election.

As The Daily Beast reported Monday, the FBI now suspects that a year-long hacking of the Democratic National Committee’s emails and their subsequent publication on WikiLeaks was actually the work of Russian intelligence.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/07/26/putin-s-wicked-leaks-didn-t-start-with-the-dnc.html

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It looks like Russia hired internet trolls to pose as pro-Trump Americans
27 Jul 2016

Russia's troll factories were, at one point, likely being paid by the Kremlin to spread pro-Trump propaganda on social media.

That is what freelance journalist Adrian Chen, now a staff writer at The New Yorker, discovered as he was researching Russia's "army of well-paid trolls" for an explosive New York Times Magazine exposé published in June 2015.

http://www.businessinsider.com/russia-internet-trolls-and-donald-trump-2016-7

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Experts: The US has fallen dangerously behind Russia in cyber warfare capabilities
27 Jul 2016

Specialists who have studied Russia’s cyber warfare capabilities said the Kremlin is responsible for the hacking and eventual release of 20,000 emails from the Democratic National Committee, adding that there is no sure way to stop these kinds of attacks from recurring.

Experts who spoke to the Washington Free Beacon cautioned that it is difficult to prove the connection between the hackers and the Russian government with a legal degree of certainty, but they said the evidence indicated Russian involvement.

http://www.businessinsider.com/us-behind-russia-cyber-warfare-2016-7

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Why would Russia interfere in the U.S. election? Because it sometimes works.
26 Jul 2016

In the wake of the release of emails stolen from the Democratic National Committee, and the assessment by some intelligence experts that Russia leaked the documents in hopes of tilting the election in favor of Republican Donald Trump, observers have expressed furor that a foreign government would seek to influence American politics.

“That the Russians would be happy burglarizing the emails of a major party to try to affect the outcome of our presidential election . . . is very serious and an unprecedented development,” former Maryland governor Martin O’Malley told Fox Business. Slate’s Franklin Foer called it “a strike against our civic infrastructure” that violates “a clear set of rules designed to limit foreign interference in our elections.”

Without context, that outrage is naive. Foreign governments have regularly sought to shape our politics. And the United States, in addition to overtly sponsoring regime change, has honed interference in other countries’ elections into something of an art form. Such interventions will always be appealing to their perpetrators because they can succeed, especially if they find willing accomplices in the targeted country.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2016/07/26/why-would-russia-interfere-in-the-u-s-election-because-it-usually-works/

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Spy Agency Consensus Grows That Russia Hacked D.N.C.
26 Jul 2016

American intelligence agencies have told the White House they now have “high confidence” that the Russian government was behind the theft of emails and documents from the Democratic National Committee, according to federal officials who have been briefed on the evidence.

But intelligence officials have cautioned that they are uncertain whether the electronic break-in at the committee’s computer systems was intended as fairly routine cyberespionage — of the kind the United States also conducts around the world — or as part of an effort to manipulate the 2016 presidential election.

The emails were released by WikiLeaks, whose founder, Julian Assange, has made it clear that he hoped to harm Hillary Clinton’s chances of winning the presidency. It is unclear how the documents made their way to the group. But a large sampling was published before the WikiLeaks release by several news organizations and someone who called himself “Guccifer 2.0,” who investigators now believe was an agent of the G.R.U., Russia’s military intelligence service.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/27/us/politics/spy-agency-consensus-grows-that-russia-hacked-dnc.html

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Putin’s suspected meddling in a U.S. election would be a disturbing first
25 Jul 2016

CREDIT FOR the internecine furor that disrupted the Democratic Party on the eve of its convention should go to Vladimir Putin. As The Post has reported, cybersecurity experts say Russian intelligence operatives were likely responsible for the hacking of the Democratic National Committee’s computer network, as well as for leaking to the Moscow-friendly WikiLeaks website some 20,000 emails. The trove appeared online Friday, just in time to create discord between supporters of Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders as they headed to Philadelphia. To no one’s surprise, the emails showed that DNC staffers opposed the attempt of the socialist Mr. Sanders to take over the party. Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz was forced to announce her resignation, and — as Russia likely intended — Ms. Clinton’s campaign took a hit.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/amphtml/opinions/global-opinions/putins-suspected-meddling-in-a-us-election-would-be-a-disturbing-first/2016/07/25/2e84c374-5280-11e6-bbf5-957ad17b4385_story.html

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How Putin Weaponized Wikileaks to Influence the Election of an American President
24 Jul 2016

Evidence suggests that a Russian intelligence group was the source of the most recent Wikileaks intel dump, which was aimed to influence the U.S. election.

Close your eyes and imagine that a hacking group backed by Russian President Vladimir Putin broke into the email system of a major U.S. political party. The group stole thousands of sensitive messages and then published them through an obliging third party in a way that was strategically timed to influence the United States presidential election. Now open your eyes, because that’s what just happened.

On Friday, Wikileaks published 20,000 emails stolen from the Democratic National Committee. They reveal, among other things, thuggish infighting, a push by a top DNC official to use Bernie Sanders’ religious convictions against him in the South, and attempts to strong-arm media outlets. In other words, they reveal the Washington campaign monster for what it is.

http://www.defenseone.com/technology/2016/07/how-putin-weaponized-wikileaks-influence-election-american-president/130163/