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Dutch intelligence first to alert U.S. about Russian hack of Democratic Party

Peter King

Peter King

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In the Summer of 2015, Dutch intelligence services were the first to alert their American counterparts about the cyberintrusion of the Democratic National Committee by Cozy Bear, a hacking group believed to be tied to the Russian government. Intelligence hackers from Dutch AIVD (General Intelligence and Security Service) had penetrated the Cozy Bear computer servers as well as a security camera at the entrance of their working space, located in a university building adjacent to the Red Square in Moscow.

Over the course of a few months, they saw how the Russians penetrated several U.S. institutions, including the State Department, the White House, and the DNC. On all these occasions, the Dutch alerted the U.S. intelligence services, Dutch tv programme Nieuwsuur and de Volkskrant, a prominent newspaper in The Netherlands, jointly report on Thursday. This account is based on interviews with a dozen political, diplomatic and intelligence sources in The Netherlands and the U.S. with direct knowledge of the matter. None of them wanted to speak on the record, given the classified details of the matter.

Not only had Dutch intelligence penetrated the computer network of the hackers, they also managed to hack a security camera in the corridor. This allowed them to see exactly who entered the hacking room. Information about these individuals was shared with the US intelligence services. Dutch intelligence services consider Cozy Bear an extension of the SVR, the Russian foreign intelligence service, which is firmly controlled by President Putin.

The information shared by The Netherlands about the hacks at the DNC ended up on the desk of Robert Mueller, the Special Prosecutor leading the FBI investigation into possible Russian interference in the American elections. As early as December, the New York Times reported that information from, among others, Australia, the United Kingdom and The Netherlands had propelled the FBI investigation.

https://nos.nl/nieuwsuur/artikel/2213767-dutch-intelligence-first-to-alert-u-s-about-russian-hack-of-democratic-party.html

The rest of the story can be found here, and one can read about this story also on this link https://www.reuters.com/article/us-netherlands-russia-cybercrime/dutch-intelligence-agency-spied-on-russian-hacking-group-media-idUSKBN1FE34W

So it seems more than one nations spy organizations was able to hack into the Russian Hackers. It also seem the Ruskies used cams that could be hacked and accessed by the Dutch Spy agency AIVD, making them knowledgeable about who entered the cozy bear hacking room.

Could this be the evidence that Robert Muller was able to use to prove that Russia hacked the elections in the US? Not that this means anybody from the Trump organization was involved in any of this, but it does sure look like the KGB and Putin did not like a democratic victory in 2016.

What is also curious IMHO is how this information is "leaked" to the media by several sources when the Russian election is only weeks away? Is it also meant to damage the US - Russia contacts that might take place in Davos?

Because this clearly damages Putin's image and his claims of innocence, because this at least suggests that Putin's word is worthless. All of this could even predate the Trump presidential announcement, making this more about Putin's hatred of Obama and the democrats and maybe less because of them wanting Trump in the oval office, I would assume they would have preferred any republican candidate over Hillary.
 
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So the Dutch hacked into Cozy Bear’s network, and in turn the security cameras outside the building the Russian hackers worked in, thereby connecting them to known Russian spies. And that discovery in and of itself would have been fine, except for...

"As of now, the AIVD hackers do not seem to have access to Cozy Bear any longer. Sources suggest that the openness of US intelligence sources, who in 2017 praised the help of a Western ally in news stories, may have ruined their operation. The openness caused great anger in The Hague and Zoetermeer. In the television programme College Tour, this month, AIVD director Bertholee stated that he is extra careful when it comes to sharing intelligence with the U.S., now that Donald Trump is President."

...which was a concern at the very beginning of 2017, was validated when Trump handed over classified Israeli information to Russian diplomats, led to a "re-evaluation of intelligence sharing" by Israeli Intelligence, and clearly continues to be a problem even now.

Anyway, are there any serious people (i.e. skeptical but reasonable people, i.e. not Trump supporters) who are still doubting that it was Russians that hacked into the DNC?
 
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As I asked in the other thread, if Dutch intelligence informed US officials in the summer of 2015, then why was there no or little response?

In December 2016, they said:

The Obama administration didn’t respond more forcefully to Russian hacking before the presidential election because they didn’t want to appear to be interfering in the election and they thought that Hillary Clinton was going to win and a potential cyber war with Russia wasn’t worth it, multiple high-level government officials told NBC News.
Click to expand...

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/why-didnt-obama-do-more-about-russian-election-hack-n696701

But summer 2015?

Because also in the summer of 2015, news broke that Chinese government hackers had made a serious breach into US intelligence filed and released a lot of information on a lot of people:

CONFIRMED: Chinese government hackers linked to historic hack of US security clearance info - Business Insider

So Chinese and Russian hacks, both known of by US officials, and little to nothing was done about it?
 
Cardinal said:
So the Dutch hacked into Cozy Bear’s network, and in turn the security cameras outside the building the Russian hackers worked in, thereby connecting them to known Russian spies. And that discovery in and of itself would have been fine, except for...

"As of now, the AIVD hackers do not seem to have access to Cozy Bear any longer. Sources suggest that the openness of US intelligence sources, who in 2017 praised the help of a Western ally in news stories, may have ruined their operation. The openness caused great anger in The Hague and Zoetermeer. In the television programme College Tour, this month, AIVD director Bertholee stated that he is extra careful when it comes to sharing intelligence with the U.S., now that Donald Trump is President."

...which was a concern at the very beginning of 2017, was validated when Trump handed over classified Israeli information to Russian diplomats, led to a "re-evaluation of intelligence sharing" by Israeli Intelligence, and clearly continues to be a problem even now.

Anyway, are there any serious people (i.e. skeptical but reasonable people, i.e. not Trump supporters) who are still doubting that it was Russians that hacked into the DNC?
Click to expand...

Few people doubt Russia hacked the DNC (even though there is no proof Russia ever did).
But that argument is obfuscated by the year long crusade that Trump was in on it.
 
Harshaw said:
As I asked in the other thread, if Dutch intelligence informed US officials in the summer of 2015, then why was there no or little response?

In December 2016, they said:



https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/why-didnt-obama-do-more-about-russian-election-hack-n696701

But summer 2015?

Because also in the summer of 2015, news broke that Chinese government hackers had made a serious breach into US intelligence filed and released a lot of information on a lot of people:

CONFIRMED: Chinese government hackers linked to historic hack of US security clearance info - Business Insider

So Chinese and Russian hacks, both known of by US officials, and little to nothing was done about it?
Click to expand...

What is fascinating about this has been the long belief that the Clinton server itself was almost certainly hacked.
What was in those 30,000 emails?
 
Harshaw said:
So Chinese and Russian hacks, both known of by US officials, and little to nothing was done about it?
Click to expand...

Should something have been done about it since 1/19/17?
 
Mr Person said:
Should something have been done about it since 1/19/17?
Click to expand...

who knows, maybe something is being done, just because we do not know does not mean something isn't done about it.

Well, that is what a competent government would have done but what this government is doing is very likely not doing a lot about it. Not sure it is one of the current administration main talking points.
 
Major Lambda said:
The server did not have to be hacked.....she knowingly and willingly - maliciously, verbally shared classified info.



Major Lambda
Click to expand...

This has little to nothing to do with this story, we are talking about the hacking of one of the main political parties in the USA for the purpose of messing and disrupting the US elections. If you want to talk the email issues of Hillary at the state department start a thread about it if you would be so kind.

Now do you also have an opinion about a foreign governments attack on the United States?
 
Peter King said:
who knows, maybe something is being done, just because we do not know does not mean something isn't done about it.

Well, that is what a competent government would have done but what this government is doing is very likely not doing a lot about it. Not sure it is one of the current administration main talking points.
Click to expand...

It wasn't any talking point in 2015 nor most of 2016, either, and we know that the previous administration held off doing much of anything until late 2016 -- by their own account. We certainly know there there were no consequences of note for the Chinese hack and release of information, story which broke about the same time the Dutch were informing us of these Russian hacks.

The Administration explanation for holding off doing much even after the hacks became publicly known was that they didn't want to interfere with/influence the election. But what's the excuse for having this info in summer 2015, on the heels of the Chinese hacks, and still sitting on their hands? Why weren't there visible diplomatic consequences?

And especially, why weren't the further acts prevented?

It's not my characterization that they held off. They said they did. The responsibility was theirs. Considering the continuing Russian hacks, it appears that even with the knowledge it was going on, they did not live up to it.
 
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Peter King said:
In the Summer of 2015, Dutch intelligence services were the first to alert their American counterparts about the cyberintrusion of the Democratic National Committee by Cozy Bear, a hacking group believed to be tied to the Russian government. Intelligence hackers from Dutch AIVD (General Intelligence and Security Service) had penetrated the Cozy Bear computer servers as well as a security camera at the entrance of their working space, located in a university building adjacent to the Red Square in Moscow.

Over the course of a few months, they saw how the Russians penetrated several U.S. institutions, including the State Department, the White House, and the DNC. On all these occasions, the Dutch alerted the U.S. intelligence services, Dutch tv programme Nieuwsuur and de Volkskrant, a prominent newspaper in The Netherlands, jointly report on Thursday. This account is based on interviews with a dozen political, diplomatic and intelligence sources in The Netherlands and the U.S. with direct knowledge of the matter. None of them wanted to speak on the record, given the classified details of the matter.

Not only had Dutch intelligence penetrated the computer network of the hackers, they also managed to hack a security camera in the corridor. This allowed them to see exactly who entered the hacking room. Information about these individuals was shared with the US intelligence services. Dutch intelligence services consider Cozy Bear an extension of the SVR, the Russian foreign intelligence service, which is firmly controlled by President Putin.

The information shared by The Netherlands about the hacks at the DNC ended up on the desk of Robert Mueller, the Special Prosecutor leading the FBI investigation into possible Russian interference in the American elections. As early as December, the New York Times reported that information from, among others, Australia, the United Kingdom and The Netherlands had propelled the FBI investigation.

https://nos.nl/nieuwsuur/artikel/2213767-dutch-intelligence-first-to-alert-u-s-about-russian-hack-of-democratic-party.html

The rest of the story can be found here, and one can read about this story also on this link https://www.reuters.com/article/us-netherlands-russia-cybercrime/dutch-intelligence-agency-spied-on-russian-hacking-group-media-idUSKBN1FE34W

So it seems more than one nations spy organizations was able to hack into the Russian Hackers. It also seem the Ruskies used cams that could be hacked and accessed by the Dutch Spy agency AIVD, making them knowledgeable about who entered the cozy bear hacking room.

Could this be the evidence that Robert Muller was able to use to prove that Russia hacked the elections in the US? Not that this means anybody from the Trump organization was involved in any of this, but it does sure look like the KGB and Putin did not like a democratic victory in 2016.

What is also curious IMHO is how this information is "leaked" to the media by several sources when the Russian election is only weeks away? Is it also meant to damage the US - Russia contacts that might take place in Davos?

Because this clearly damages Putin's image and his claims of innocence, because this at least suggests that Putin's word is worthless. All of this could even predate the Trump presidential announcement, making this more about Putin's hatred of Obama and the democrats and maybe less because of them wanting Trump in the oval office, I would assume they would have preferred any republican candidate over Hillary.
Click to expand...

The DNC hack happened in the summer of 2015?

There's something wrong with those dates.
 
Peter King said:
In the Summer of 2015, Dutch intelligence services were the first to alert their American counterparts about the cyberintrusion of the Democratic National Committee by Cozy Bear, a hacking group believed to be tied to the Russian government. Intelligence hackers from Dutch AIVD (General Intelligence and Security Service) had penetrated the Cozy Bear computer servers as well as a security camera at the entrance of their working space, located in a university building adjacent to the Red Square in Moscow.

Over the course of a few months, they saw how the Russians penetrated several U.S. institutions, including the State Department, the White House, and the DNC. On all these occasions, the Dutch alerted the U.S. intelligence services, Dutch tv programme Nieuwsuur and de Volkskrant, a prominent newspaper in The Netherlands, jointly report on Thursday. This account is based on interviews with a dozen political, diplomatic and intelligence sources in The Netherlands and the U.S. with direct knowledge of the matter. None of them wanted to speak on the record, given the classified details of the matter.

Not only had Dutch intelligence penetrated the computer network of the hackers, they also managed to hack a security camera in the corridor. This allowed them to see exactly who entered the hacking room. Information about these individuals was shared with the US intelligence services. Dutch intelligence services consider Cozy Bear an extension of the SVR, the Russian foreign intelligence service, which is firmly controlled by President Putin.

The information shared by The Netherlands about the hacks at the DNC ended up on the desk of Robert Mueller, the Special Prosecutor leading the FBI investigation into possible Russian interference in the American elections. As early as December, the New York Times reported that information from, among others, Australia, the United Kingdom and The Netherlands had propelled the FBI investigation.

https://nos.nl/nieuwsuur/artikel/2213767-dutch-intelligence-first-to-alert-u-s-about-russian-hack-of-democratic-party.html

The rest of the story can be found here, and one can read about this story also on this link https://www.reuters.com/article/us-netherlands-russia-cybercrime/dutch-intelligence-agency-spied-on-russian-hacking-group-media-idUSKBN1FE34W

So it seems more than one nations spy organizations was able to hack into the Russian Hackers. It also seem the Ruskies used cams that could be hacked and accessed by the Dutch Spy agency AIVD, making them knowledgeable about who entered the cozy bear hacking room.

Could this be the evidence that Robert Muller was able to use to prove that Russia hacked the elections in the US? Not that this means anybody from the Trump organization was involved in any of this, but it does sure look like the KGB and Putin did not like a democratic victory in 2016.

What is also curious IMHO is how this information is "leaked" to the media by several sources when the Russian election is only weeks away? Is it also meant to damage the US - Russia contacts that might take place in Davos?

Because this clearly damages Putin's image and his claims of innocence, because this at least suggests that Putin's word is worthless. All of this could even predate the Trump presidential announcement, making this more about Putin's hatred of Obama and the democrats and maybe less because of them wanting Trump in the oval office, I would assume they would have preferred any republican candidate over Hillary.
Click to expand...

Its no secret that Putin utterly despised both Obama and Hillary for their own transgressions. Hillary more so, because she was most likely batting for open war with the Russians. So not having her in office would have been a tantamount decision of necessity.
 
Mr Person said:
Insights? Other than that into the whattaboutism?


Meh...
Click to expand...




Ahh the left whining about "whataboutism" from the very same people who blamed bush for every bad thing that happened under obama. Raging hypocrisy is a badge of pride for some I see.
 
Harshaw said:
I'm pretty sure the "whattaboutism" was:

But, clearly you don't have anything to say about the actual topic of the thread. Have a good one.
Click to expand...

Well, you would say that.


If you treat the factual information in the OP as accurate, you have little cause to focus exclusively on why nothing was done in 2015, yet that is what you did. If there was a problem, that problem continued to exist. And you see, now we're in the Trump administration. We're a year into it, in fact. So if you treat the facts as valid and act like they are cause for action of some sort, the more important question is actually "ok, so why isn't anything being done now?" not "but what about Obama in 2015?"

Pointing out a whattaboutism is not by itself a whattaboutism, even though I'm sure you'll continue to pretend it is for the usual purposes.....
 
Mr Person said:
Well, you would say that.


If you treat the factual information in the OP as accurate, you have little cause to focus exclusively on why nothing was done in 2015, yet that is what you did. If there was a problem, that problem continued to exist. And you see, now we're in the Trump administration. We're a year into it, in fact. So if you treat the facts as valid and act like they are cause for action of some sort, the more important question is actually "ok, so why isn't anything being done now?" not "but what about Obama in 2015?"

Pointing out a whattaboutism is not by itself a whattaboutism, even though I'm sure you'll continue to pretend it is for the usual purposes.....
Click to expand...

Of course there was a problem. Russians were hacking us. The Chinese had just hacked us and released compromising information on federal employees. Is this not a problem? We knew about it in the summer of 2015.

This story was about Russian hacking, that we were aware of, in 2015. Especially on the heels of the Chinese hacking scandal, it's perfectly fair to ask what they were doing with this information, if anything, and why wasn't more done -- because obviously the Russians kept doing it, and from what I hear, it was the to detriment of the 2016 election, more than a year later. This story is not about 2017 or 2018. That you want to shift the conversation to today - and you are the first to do so - is the "whattaboutism."

The question raised by your own post, of course, is why it continued to be a problem for years in order for it to still have been a problem on your "whattaboutism" date of 1/19/17. But you don't want to talk about that. You want to make it about Trump, even though the info in this story doesn't have a thing to do with Trump.
 
Cardinal said:
So the Dutch hacked into Cozy Bear’s network, and in turn the security cameras outside the building the Russian hackers worked in, thereby connecting them to known Russian spies. And that discovery in and of itself would have been fine, except for...

"As of now, the AIVD hackers do not seem to have access to Cozy Bear any longer. Sources suggest that the openness of US intelligence sources, who in 2017 praised the help of a Western ally in news stories, may have ruined their operation. The openness caused great anger in The Hague and Zoetermeer. In the television programme College Tour, this month, AIVD director Bertholee stated that he is extra careful when it comes to sharing intelligence with the U.S., now that Donald Trump is President."

...which was a concern at the very beginning of 2017, was validated when Trump handed over classified Israeli information to Russian diplomats, led to a "re-evaluation of intelligence sharing" by Israeli Intelligence, and clearly continues to be a problem even now.

Anyway, are there any serious people (i.e. skeptical but reasonable people, i.e. not Trump supporters) who are still doubting that it was Russians that hacked into the DNC?
Click to expand...

Are there any skeptical but reasonable people who are able to prove that the DNC was hacked? No, there are not, because the DNC wasn't hacked--the material was leaked.

Skeptical but reasonable people????:lamo

Dutch Intelligence--isn't that an oxymoron?

As they showed with MH17, they are merely echo chambers for their CIA counterparts.
 
Thoreau72 said:
Are there any skeptical but reasonable people who are able to prove that the DNC was hacked? No, there are not, because the DNC wasn't hacked--the material was leaked.

Skeptical but reasonable people????:lamo

Dutch Intelligence--isn't that an oxymoron?

As they showed with MH17, they are merely echo chambers for their CIA counterparts.
Click to expand...

Before chiming in with one's thoughts on a topic, it's generally good etiquette to read the the OP and the linked article first.
 
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