The New York Times had set a new editorial policy stipulating that anything Trump said needed fact checking. Editorial writer Charles Blow wrote an article suggesting that if you support Trump, you support racism.44 Sure enough, within days the CYBER BEARS hacked the New York Times in what appears to be an attempt to gain information to discredit Blow and others. What it did was reveal that anyone who publically goes against Trump is subject to attack.
The Intelligence Professionals Weigh In
As the public has come to learn about more cyberattacks, numerous officials and cyber security experts have weighed in on the possibility of Russian interference on the 2016 election cycle. Numerous intelligence officials, government, and cyber security experts alike, weighed in on possible Russian involvement. They overwhelmingly agreed that though more evidence is needed, the CYBER BEARS paw prints are all over the hacks.
Reuters reported that the U.S. Department of Justice national security division was investigating the attacks as threats on U.S. national security. The FBI also said it was investigating the case and it was “aware of media reporting on cyber intrusions involving multiple political entities, and is working to determine the accuracy, nature and scope of these matters.”45
While speaking at the Aspen Security Forum about the Clinton Campaign hacks, C.I.A. director John O. Brennan didn’t point any fingers to Russia, but said, “obviously, interference in the U.S. election process is a very, very serious matter, and I think certainly this government would treat it with great seriousness.”46
The U.S. government has not yet officially named any culprits, but the general consensus is that Russia is behind the hacks. “The consensus that Russia hacked the DNC is at this point very strong, albeit not unanimous,” said cybersecurity consultant Matt Tait. “The consensus that Russia hacked the DNC in support of Trump is, by contrast, plausible, but something for which the jury at this stage is very much still out.”47
President Obama also said “anything’s possible” to NBC, since Russian hackers “on a regular basis, they try to influence elections in Europe.”48
Yahoo! News reported August 15 that state polling systems had been hacked by foreign agencies. The FBI sent out an internal “flash” alert from the FBI’s Cyber division saying that state polling systems had potentially been hacked by Russian state-sponsored hackers, aimed at disrupting the November elections. Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson held a conference call with state elected officials to offer his department’s services. Johnson said there were no “specific or credible cybersecurity threats” to the election, but three days later, the FBI released a memo titled “Targeting Activity Against State Board of Election Systems.” It revealed that the bureau is investigating attacks on two state election websites this summer that resulted in the theft of voter registration data.49
The memo didn’t directly name any particular states, but Yahoo! News sources claim Arizona and Illinois were affected. In Illinois, officials were forced to shut down the state’s voter registration system for ten days in late July, after hackers downloaded personal data on at least 200,000 state voters, according to Ken Menzel, the general counsel of the Illinois Board of Elections. The Arizona attack wasn’t as serious; the virus injected into the voter registration system wasn’t successful in stealing data.
“The FBI is requesting that states contact their Board of Elections and determine if any similar activity to their logs, both inbound and outbound, has been detected,” the alert said. “Attempts should not be made to touch or ping the IP addresses directly.”
“This is a big deal,” said Rich Barger, chief intelligence officer for ThreatConnect, a cybersecurity firm, on the FBI alert. “Two state election boards have been popped, and data has been taken. This certainly should be concerning to the common American voter.”-270 Barger said one of the IP addresses listed in the FBI alert has surfaced before in Russian criminal underground hacker forums. He also compared the hacking methods to that of cyberattacks on the World Anti-Doping agency. The FBI told Yahoo! News that it intended “to help systems administrators guard against the actions of persistent cyber criminals.” Menzel, the Illinois election official, said the FBI was investigating a “possible link” to the other hacks. They drew no conclusions in the run-up to the election about the intent of the hack; some say it could just be common cyber criminals looking to steal data for fraud. However, the IPs of where the hackers registered their domains came from a shady company called IT Itch. It registers sites anonymously and is paid in Bitcoins, the currency of the internet underworld. This same company registered the COZY BEAR and FANCY BEAR spear-phishing websites as well.50
Even President Barack Obama weighed in on the possibility that Russia was behind the leak. The Associated Press wrote:
Asked whether Moscow was trying to influence the presidential election, Obama said, “Anything’s possible.” Obama, who traditionally avoids commenting on active FBI investigations, broke with that protocol and noted that outside experts have blamed Russia for the leak. He leaned heavily into the notion that President Vladimir Putin may have reason to facilitate the attack. “What the motives were in terms of the leaks, all that—I can’t say directly,” Obama told NBC News. “What I do know is that Donald Trump has repeatedly expressed admiration for Vladimir Putin.”51
Overall, the CYBER BEARs working in the guise of Guccifer 2.0 publically gave Trump and Clinton detractors illegally-obtained opposition research, without it being connected directly to Trump. As former FBI agent and security specialist Ali Soufan noted on twitter “The nature of breaches appears to be changing from covert info collection to the overt and weaponized use of that info.”52
I Know Noth-Think!
On September 1, 2016 in a moment of rare candor and perhaps a bit of mischief, Vladimir Putin spoke about the nature and responsibility of the hacks against the United States: “But I want to tell you again, I don’t know anything about it, and on a state level Russia has never done this.” Putin then added, with a completely straight face, “Listen, does it even matter who hacked this data?… The important thing is the content that was given to the public.”
9
CYBERWAR TO DEFEND DEMOCRACY
“Always remember: cyber or kinetic, your adversaries prefer your silence, apathy and inaction. Be the consequence, not the victim.”
THE 2016 ELECTION CYCLE IN THE United States will be noteworthy for more than just the bombastic rhetoric, the illogic, the lies, and the almost religious fervor of the electorate. The most important part of this election could easily be lost in the short-term memory of the American people, mainly because of the simplistic way our media makes us forget what is truly important.
Without any question, no matter what side of the aisle one sits on, the simple fact is that the United States was attacked by Russian cyber commandos deployed by Vladimir Putin and organized by his intelligence apparatus, the FSB and GRU. It was a serious act of political warfare.
The 2016 cyber attack was not just another case of simple Kompromat—meddling in the political affairs of a satellite nation or an individual dissenter. It was a direct attempt to hijack and derail the traditional processes and norms that held the United States together for more than 240 years. The attempt was even more brazen due to the apparent belief that Putin assumed that he and his oligarchy could charm, groom, and select a candidate, then with the right amount of cybercrime and enough organized propaganda they could actually choose a President of the United States to do their bidding.