Cybergate

On January 6, 2017, the three largest US intelligence agencies - the National Security Agency (ANB), the CIA and the FBI - published a report that stated: Russian President Vladimir Putin personally authorized hacker attacks on computer systems in the United States during the presidential election. The publication of the report was the dominant of the scandal, which accompanied the American election campaign from almost the very moment when Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton came together in a fight for a chair in the White House. In the background and details of The New Times, I was versed with an expert

The aim of attacks was said in the January report, which was a public version of the secret intelligence service document, was a “undermining public confidence in the democratic process in the United States” and discrediting a candidate from the Democratic Party Hillary Clinton. There was no direct evidence in favor of such a version in the report: nevertheless, it was clarified that the CIA and the FBI were “firmly confident” in it, and the NSA expresses “moderate confidence”. A few hours before the publication, representatives of the intelligence community held a closed briefing for the elected President of the United States Donald Trump, in which they introduced him to the classified part of the report. After that, Trump, who had previously expressed doubts about the involvement of Russian hackers in attacks and reproached intelligence in his Twitter for “slowness” with the preparation of the report, agreed - at least in words - with its conclusions. Moscow for the next two days - January 7 and 8 - remained completely silent. And only on January 9, comments were heard by the press secretary of the President of the Russian Federation Dmitry Peskov, who called the conclusions of the American intelligence services “baseless” and “amateur”. In Moscow, “seriously tired” from such a “witch hunt,” added Peskov. On the same days, the same phrase - “Witch Hunting” - used in his Twitter in relation to himself, with which he does not part, Donald Trump does not part.

The irony is that they also managed to get tired in Washington - both from Russian hackers and from his own newly elected president. The billionaire and showman, who became the will of providence at the head of the strongest power of the world, is inclined to consider the work of the special services not through the prism of their responsibility to protect national security, but in line with attacks personally. “Trump initially saw in reports and reconnaissance briefings, first of all, the threat of legitimacy of his election campaign and, ultimately, his victory,” says, in a conversation with NT, Andrew Foxal, the director of the Center for Russia's study in Henry Jackson Society (Great Britain). “Therefore, he was originally configured to reject all the arguments of the American special services.”

Trump has never been to the civil service. Barack Obama managed to stay on her. Therefore, he reacted differently to the reports of cyber attacks.

Comment by Alexei Kondaurov, Major General of the KGB retired: “The fact that Putin is designated as a person who gave commands to cyber attacks is an extremely important point. This means that Personally, Obama gave an intelligence to such an extremely responsible statement - in fact, the accusation against the leader of another nuclear superpower. This is extremely serious! Such an accusation can either be based on one hundred percent information, or to be one hundred percent fake. I reject the second option: after all, Trump, who comes to the White House, is now necessary to whitewash themselves at all costs, to prove that the Russians did not help him, that these guys from intelligence fabricated the fake and send them to the bars. Yes, and smear your predecessor along the wall at the same time. Intelligence would not play such a deadly game. Moreover, Trump promised to submit to the public the results of the investigation of hacker attacks. So, intelligence has one hundred percent information.

On the other hand, the US intelligence has a large tooth on Trump. And because he went to public confrontation with her, and because he actually forced her to publish a report on Russian intervention. They really did not want to do this. Because now our counterintelligence will begin to dig with his nose, to look from where leaks came from, but how else ”...

“Est of unspoken rules. Here are the same Chinese - they could also hack. They, if they hack it, do not drain the compromising data in WikiLeaks or somehow, thereby shaking someone else's political system-they will store them at their own. But we, Russia, did not just hacked - we also went out with this in public "

Bear grip

To investigate the hacking of the servers of the National Committee of the US Democratic Party, Crowdstrike was hired, one of the leaders of which, Sean Henry, was a former assistant to the director of the FBI, who oversaw the struggle with cybercrust. Back in June 2016, Crowdstrike revealed the technical details of utilities and infrastructure used by crackers. The company considers them two groups, which, according to its classification, appear as Cozy Bear and Fancy Bear. Crowdstrike, whose version none of the specialists has yet disputed, connected the “bear” hackers (Bear in English “Bear”) with the FSB and GRU, but did not introduce confirmation of this. (There are no evidence of the Russian government’s involvement in the hacker attacks on the servers of the Democratic Party and in the open part of the joint report of the American intelligence services.) But without this, the statement is that the customer from Russia is worth the NT specialists of cybersecurity considered quite reliable. First of all, due to the effectiveness of methods for the struggle of American special services with hackers.

Among the most famous (thanks to Edward Snowden) methods are the Counter Computer Network Exploitation (CCNE). Its essence is that government agents penetrate the servers that use the hacker groups and observe those who are attacked by hackers, what information is stolen, etc. In addition, classical intelligence work is also used to obtain information ( Humint - Human Intelligence. - NT): Special services find informed people and receive the necessary information from them. The analysis of the data obtained by CCNE is emphasized by experts who agreed to talk with the magazine on a strict anonymity, and led the Americans to the conclusion that it was the Russians who were behind the attacks.

In addition, the ethnic and geographical affiliation of hackers can give out hours of activity indicating a specific watch belt, as well as malicious utilities (programs) containing lines in a certain language. Thanks to them, leading companies in the field of computer security are able to say quite accurately who is behind the attack.

“According to our data, the hacking of American democrats is a matter of paws of“ bear ”(that is, Fancy Bear groups),” notes Anton O., a leading specialist in a large international cybersecurity company, who independently investigated hacker attacks during the campaign in the United States. He draws attention to the fact that earlier the goal of the “bears” was people and organizations whose position and views were annoyed by the Kremlin: Russian opposition, the World Anti -Doping Agency (WADA), journalists and other public figures who opposed the actions of Russia in Ukraine and in Syria. The activity of these hackers with the accuracy of a minute coincides with the working day (Moscow time) of Russian government agencies, with the exception of weekends. ”

According to Anton O., the fact that the crackers standing behind the Fancy Bear cybergroup, Russian -speaking, also indicates that in the initial code of the malicious Xagent program, there were comments on Russian.

The US Democratic paid Crowdstrike for anti -Haker services about $ 270 thousand, but anti -Hackers could not establish how the attackers penetrated the National Committee network. Perhaps the fact is that Crowdstrike experts were invited only when they found suspicious activity: by that time, information about the hacking method was already unavailable.

Nevertheless, according to Donald Trump, which he shared on Twitter, hacker attacks are a consequence of the "gross negligence of the National Committee of the Democratic Party." But the "National Committee of the Republicans is seriously protected!"

“Mr. Trump is mistaken: there is no protection that cannot be hacked,” retorted in a conversation with NT Vladislav Zdolnikov, a cyber protection specialist, an IT consultant of the Foundation for Combating Corruption (FBK) Alexei Navalny. - The only question is what means justify the goal and complexity of protection. The reason for hacking the resources of the Democratic Party, in my opinion, is not that they were easy to hack, but that they were the goal. ”

“Russia deliberately blurred the section between state and non -state institutions in the information war - just like it did this before in the field of ordinary weapons,” said Andrew Foxal in a conversation with NT. “Having transferred warfare in the Internet space to a third-party contractor, the Kremlin can afford to declare that“ does not bear any responsibility ”for hacker attacks-just as he previously stated that he was not responsible for the appearance of“ polite people ”in the Crimea in early 2014.”

Comment by Alexei Kondaurov: “The Americans do not have to listen to Putin directly, although I do not exclude this. It’s just to get information with so many of our oligarchs abroad, which have connections at the highest level, with our talkativeness and with the possibilities of their technical intelligence, this is, in principle, not a problem. The second is agent sources. If they indicate Putin, then they should be from him at an extended hand or a maximum of one interval, through “one handshake”. Because Putin, in order to give this kind of teams, does not collect 30-50 people ... "

"Argument of the last level"

On October 31, 2016, in the office of Vladimir Putin, the “red phone” rang, as the old -fashioned “hot line” of facsimile satellite communications is called - not a voice, but in the form of text messages - between Russian leaders (and earlier - the USSR) and the USA. It has been operating since 1963, but they used it literally a few times, in the most emergency cases. For example, President Reagan is only once, in 1986, in order to state a sharp protest in connection with the arrest of Gorbachev in Moscow, American journalist Nicholas Daniloff. So President Barack Obama, who called Putin just a week before the completion of the presidential race in the United States, took advantage of the “hot line” for the first time in all his presidency.

“Before the American democrats, the goal of hackers“ bears ”was people and organizations whose position and views were annoyed by the Kremlin: Russian opposition, the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), journalists and other public figures who opposed the actions of Russia in Ukraine and in Syria. The activity of these hackers with an accuracy of minutes coincides with the working day (Moscow time) of Russian government agencies "

The reason was not just emergency. With the help of the Red Phone, the US leader made it clear to his interlocutor that Russia was crossing the “red line”. Obama persistently demanded that Putin stop. The call from one president to another is, as the diplomats say, the “last level argument”: when all other communication channels have already been exhausted. And even more so the bell, in which one president, freely or involuntarily, reveals the most important intelligence information. At one time, the KGB chairman Ivan Serov repeatedly warned Nikita Khrushchev so that he would not boast in conversations with the heads of other states - so as not to substitute its sources. For American presidents, this attitude has always been alphabetical truth, especially in communication with the USSR and Russia. Going beyond is already a political event. Moreover, the conversation on October 31 of the two presidents about cyber attacks was not the first. Obama raised the same topic in a conversation with Putin Tet-A-Tet ​​(only a translator was present) back in September, at the Twentieth Summit in Hangzhou (PRC). By that time, the WikiLeaks website is already with might and main, in portions, as if by ordering, published a hacking confidential correspondence of the Chillary Clinton election headquarters, which hackers merged it. The victim of the first hacking in the middle of the summer the National Committee of the Democratic Party - on July 22, Wikileaks published the first batch of documents that compromise the leadership of the Democrats. The next, 27th portion, WikiLeaks posted open access on November 3-that is, four days after the conversation of Obama and Putin on the Red Phone. The total number of “merged” confidential documents reached 44 thousand - despite the fact that there were about 50 thousand of them.

However, informed sources of NT believe that the warning of Obama still had an action. After all, the objects of the efforts of the hackers were not only the headquarters of Clinton, but also the databases of the staff of the States-the database in 34 states out of 50 were hacked. Those who led the attacks, most likely, had no idea that in America everything was arranged differently, not like, say, in the system of guts: each state is separate from the point of view of counting the vote, from the side to influence a national algorithm Voting is difficult. Rather, it is impossible. But the Americans were infuriated by the very attempt to get into the electoral process. And not only to fit, but also to drain the obtained info to the side, to replicate through the loyal ones (and doubt the mutual sympathy and trusting relations of the founder of WikiLeaks Julian Assange with the Kremlin is already somehow accepted) information channels. One way or another, after October 31 and until November 10, when the name of the new president of the United States (as well as the number of electors voted for him) was already known, but the general counting of votes was nevertheless completed, leaks (and along with the press) about hacker attacks came to naught.

Comment by Alexei Kondaurov: “There are a lot of hunters before hacking in the world. But there are unspoken rules. Here are the same Chinese - they could also hack. And if they hack it, do not drain the compromising data in WikiLeaks or somehow, thereby shaking someone else's political system-they will store them at their own. But we, Russia, were not just breaking - we also went out into the public with this. This is where we crossed the red line. Elections are a system -forming thing. ”

COMPPRESTMATE from Orbis

“Constant video surveillance is being conducted,” it is written above the entrance to the high, faced building in the center of London, at the distance of a pistol shot from the Buckingham Palace. No designation is located inside, only the name of the company that controls this ambitious house. The visor of the entrance and the tops of the columns at the entrance to the house are entangled with thin steel cable - the protection either from wiretap, or from attempts to unauthorized invasion. Near the door is an electronic lock. The light in the windows of the fourth floor and in the attic rooms, it seems, is burning there constantly, because it is visible in all photographs of this building published in the British media. And there was a sea-after January 12, the American The Wall Street Journal called the author published on the eve of January 11, the BuzzFeed “Dirty Dossier” portal with a compromise of the former British intelligence of the 52-year-old Christopher Steel, the co-owner of Orbis Busance Intelligence. The company positions itself as a consulting company specializing in business intelligence-it is it that is located in this building at the 9–11 Grosvenor Gardens.

There are too many inaccuracies in the dossier, including spelling errors, in order to perceive it as a serious document, too many pretentious-annual sources that any specialist can easily calculate, but a lot of enchanting details-from the “golden rain” in the performance of Russian women “with low social responsibility” (this is the definition of workers of the first ancient, given by Putin, it has already become a meme)-prostitutes) Trump, whom he forced to urinate on a bed in his “presidential room” in the Moscow Ritz-Carleton Hotel, where a couple of Obama stopped before him (this was in 2013, when Trump came to the Russian capital for the Miss Universe contest), to the details of the Kremlin’s special operation to discredit Trump with the help of cyberseches, which is supposedly coordinated Dmitry Peskov, and the former head of the presidential administration, Sergei Ivanov, expressed skepticism on this occasion, for which he was allegedly dismissed.

Style, a former spy, who worked in Russia and the “zero” in France under a diplomatic cover in the 1990s, performed special-winning in Afghanistan, immediately after publication, the dossier disappeared from his house for £ 1.3 million in the county of Surrey. The walls of his family house are literally stuffed with external surveillance cameras, “shooting” each section of his garden. The British media wrote that Style jumped to the neighbors to say that he was afraid for himself, asked them to take care of his three cats and left the light in almost all rooms during his hasty flight. British journalists cannot find him, but some believe that he is hidden in one of the secret houses of Mi6.

Comment by Alexei Kondaurov: “I am quite admitted that Trump behaved in Moscow exactly as described there - taking into account his personal biography, features of his character, etc. Он не боится камер в своем номере, потому что крутой: «Пусть снимают!» Точно так же я могу назвать 20 причин, почему у нашей контрразведки мог быть интерес к тому, чтобы попытаться завербовать Трампа. Во-первых, он человек со связями по всей Америке и с колоссальным влиянием, через него можно какие угодно «активки» ( активные мероприятия, открытые или тайные специфические операции спецслужб . — NT) осуществлять. Во-вторых: он уже делал попытку, по-моему, в 1999 году, баллотироваться в президенты. И не столь даже важно, станет он президентом или нет, он — денежный мешок, а значит, интересен с точки зрения инвестиций»…

Задание собрать материалы о том, как российские спецслужбы годами коллекционировали разного рода компромат на Трампа, чтобы тем самым держать его на крючке, Orbis получил от базирующейся в Вашингтоне компании Fusion GPS, созданной тремя бывшими журналистами WSJ и специализирующейся на расследованиях разного рода грязных историй. Но на этом цепочка не заканчивалась: у Fusion GPS тоже были заказчики, связанные как с Республиканской, так и с Демократической партией. Для GPS, пишет британская Daily Mail, всегда было обычным делом работать одновременно на конкурирующие партии и компании.

В британской прессе отмечалось, что за выполнение заказа Orbis изначально получил от Fusion GPS £ 130 тыс. (около $ 150 тыс.), но после победы Трампа на выборах Стил продолжал работать над досье уже бесплатно, считая это чрезвычайно важным делом для западного общества. Так же, без оплаты, по данным источника газеты The Independent, работал после избрания Трампа и партнер Стила в Fusion GPS.

Сначала Стил, уточняет The Independent, передавал свои данные в американское ФБР, однако руководство ведомства не спешило работать с ними, опасаясь, что утечка может оказать влияние на результаты голосования американцев. Тогда разочарованный Стил обратился к своей родной английской разведке MI6. Он также встречался с журналистами и одному из них сказал в октябре 2016 года: «Это обязательно должно быть обнародовано».

Кстати, Fusion GPS не только заказала Orbis досье на Трампа, но и после сбора досье активно его рекламировала, предлагая — еще с лета 2016 года! — различным СМИ для публикации. Однако никто не хотел публиковать материалы, которые априори не поддавались проверке. В открытом доступе не было и подробной информации о Стиле, позволяющей журналистам проверить его профессионализм. Тем не менее в начале января 2017 года досье оказалось востребованным…

Комментарий Алексея Кондаурова: «Отчет» Стила любому профессионалу читать смешно, хотя бы потому, что все перечисленные им источники запросто можно вычислить. Серьезные вещи так не делаются. Кристофер Стил — профессионал, он понимает, что такая туфта не продается, что те, кто нанимали его, делали это в первую очередь для того, чтобы он слил все это под своим именем. На языке разведки это называется «отвлечение на негодный объект» — в результате умышленного слива все, включая СМИ, принимаются обсуждать мешанину из сплетен и слухов. И тут же начинают думать: «Да это же все фигня, ни на Трампа, ни на русских хакеров ничего серьезного нет». Тем самым отвлекается внимание от вещей серьезных — от закрытого доклада разведки, от реальных источников информации, от реальной агентуры, наконец. Так что я не исключаю, что история со Стилом — это «активка» самих же американцев, она вроде тепловой ракеты: которая должна чуть-чуть увести в сторону».

те, кто кричит сейчас, что в результате выборов в США победил Путин, должны задаться элементарным вопросом: «Ну и какой цели достигла Россия?»

To be continued?

11 января, сразу же после пресс-конференции в Нью-Йорке, на которой он заклеймил авторов и распространителей «фейк-новостей», Дональд Трамп встретился с директором Национальной разведки США Джеймсом Клэппером. Спецслужбы не имеют отношения к сливу компромата и не считают материалы из BazFeed достоверными, сказал Клэппер Трампу. Наступило затишье. How long? Ведь вполне возможно, что «британское досье» — не последний звучный аккорд в кибергейте.

Но независимо от дальнейших поворотов сюжета уже сейчас можно сказать: кибергейт, на этапе избирательной кампании расколовший американский истеблишмент, в итоге его, напротив, консолидировал, а Дональд Трамп, втянувшийся в публичный, вплоть до резких выпадов, спор с разведсообществом, чего прежде не позволял себе ни один президент США, понес солидные репутационные потери, которые, несмотря на видимую поддержку Москвы, в итоге могут привести его к импичменту.

Комментарий Алексея Кондаурова: «Планируя какую-то разведывательную или контрразведывательную операцию, нужно сразу же просчитать, как из нее выйти с минимальными издержками. В Москве не просчитали ничего. Если подумать, то Россия оказала Трампу медвежью услугу. Что бы кто ни говорил, а Трамп выиграл выборы сам, без чужой помощи. А теперь он, получается, замазан настолько, что чуть ли не «агентом КГБ» его называют, — это пятно навечно, не отмоешься уже. Поэтому те, кто кричит сейчас, что в результате выборов в США победил Путин, должны задаться элементарным вопросом: «Ну и какой цели достигла Россия?» Доверия между нашими странами и так катастрофически не хватало. Теперь его не будет вообще».

В подготовке материала принимала участие Елизавета Нестерова