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 Agencyis probably not goingconfirm that evenas former employees proclaim that it can do so, and topUS officials say that there is "little doubt" Moscow is involved.FormerNSA contractor Edward Snowdensaid on Twitterthat "evidencethat could publicly attribute responsibility for the DNC hack certainly exists at NSA" with a tool known as XKeyscore, which he previously describedas 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.ButDr. Peter Singer,a strategist at the think tank New America and coauthor of "Ghost Fleet,"argues that releasing a "smoking gun"clearly pointingthe finger at Russiaor some other nationfora cyberattack bears a much larger risk of blowing future operations.If the NSA has covert computers just sitting back and watchingas Russian hackershita target, then it probably doesn't want to give those up by tryingto prove it."You give away capabilities and maybe even access if you reveal that," Singertold Business Insider, adding that it's a case of "I can't show you my homework because it means I'll give up this intelligence goldmine."That's not to say that Russia is notinvolved in the hack of the DNC or the NSA. Cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike foundtwo different Russia-linked hacker groupsinside the DNCservers, while providing atechnical analysis of its findings. And some former agencyemployees believe that Moscowis behind the mysterious "Shadow Brokers" claiming to have hacked the NSA.But a detailed dump of evidence like President John Kennedy did in 1962, proving thatnuclear missiles were inside Cuba, is probably not coming."President Kennedy famously gave his press briefing where he actually showed U-2 spy plane photos, and this gave away great secrets of the United States, but it also proved to the world that there were, in fact, missiles in Cuba," Cris Thomas, a strategist at Tenable Network Security and former hacker at the legendary L0pht collective, told Business Insider in May ofthe Sony hack, which officials publicly blamed on North Korea.The US should "say 'this is why we think this country did this thing ... here's our evidence, here's our IP addresses, here's our packet captures,' just so that it's not a he-said/she-said type of thing."Many in the computer-security community are oftenskeptical of attribution claims, since attacks can originatefrom previously hacked machines and hop over a variety of servers, and exposed code and hacker toolkits canend up pointing the finger at someone else entirely.In short, attribution is difficult, if not impossible.Theproblem is twofold: Gathering definitiveevidence is extremely hard, and even that data, if obtained, is not easy to understand by average people outside the world of computer-security research."What is persuasive when so few people understand the topic'" Singer asked. "The most persuasive stuff might be the most technical."Even a former NSA hacker who took part in cyberattacks on behalf of the US agrees."I can tell you that if I got onto a machine today and I found a Russian backdoor and I started using it, it's just software. You wouldn't know that I was using it," the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters, told Business Insider. "It's just really hard to know who's using, who created it. I find these analyses that 'the code had a reference to this part of the Bible, so it must be Israel,' it's just really kind of silly."SEE ALSO:Experts have 2 theories for how top-secret NSA data was stolen, and they're equally disturbingJoin the conversation about this storyNOW WATCH: There's a glaring security problem with those new credit card chips
Click here to read full news..
