I like the idea of innocent until proven guilty. Russia is guilty of a lot of things and their horrible reputation is well-deserved, but pinning any hack on them because I don't like them is moronic.
Try pinning a hack on them because it is something they are very good at doing and have a recent history of doing. It works a lot better and is at least somewhat based on facts.
You don't "try pinning". You find proof. Again, accusing someone of something without proof solely because they have a history of doing it is moronic and downright retarded.
I'm not yet done with all comments, but so far I've not seen anyone defending Russia, just asking for evidence or at least indicators. Proper attribution of hacks isn't exactly a trivial and foolproof thing.
There is a big asymmetry here: On the one hand this whole "cyberattack" boils down to a) the password for the build server being <companyname>123 and b) publishing said password on github. The customers, federal agencies including intelligence, failed to find this for a year, which simply is gross incompetence. I mean really: Did the agencies integrate this software into their critical systems without any checks?
Yet these agencies are at the same time so competent that they can reliably attribute usage of the password (this wasn't even a hack) to the Russian government within days?
Edit: It is of course quite possible to be Russia, but hacking is comparatively cheap, so the list of possible culprits is larger than just Russia and China. It could also be way more than just one country, as the password was public for everyone to use for almost a year.
There are people who are working on the case saying things like "this looks like Russia" and those are the front line people. They know wtf they're talking about because they're the ones looking through the evidence while some officials pace back and forth while they write their statements and get paid 20x as much.
At this point, any evidence pointing to Russia will be met with responses like "I'm still waiting for evidence that Russia is behind this," or "I need to see this quote unquote evidence myself..."
I gotta admit though, they have apparently really honed their English grammar. Can't use that technique to detect them anymore.
> They know wtf they're talking about
because they're the ones looking through the evidence
Show me it then.
> I gotta admit though, they have apparently really honed their English grammar.
Maybe that's because what you're insinuating is false and you refuse to believe it? Also, you've still not outwardly said what you are insinuating. You're still beating around the bush. So I'll say it for you: "anyone who asks for evidence is a Russian shill." That's what you're getting at, right?
Yes, that's what I'm getting at. I thought it was clear.
The first story on HN about this linked to an article which said that investigators saw what looked like them to be clearly "Russian" in the techniques used, based on their own previous experience.
I will trust a reporter over a random HN commenter any day of any year.
