Want to read Slashdot from your mobile device? Point it at m.slashdot.org and keep reading!

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×
United States Democrats Security Politics

President Obama Threatens Retaliatory Actions Against Russia Over Hacks (nytimes.com) 531

An anonymous reader quotes the New York Times: [President Obama] said he was weighing a mix of public and covert actions against the Russians in his last 34 days in office, actions that would increase "the costs for them." Mr. Obama said he was committed to sending the Kremlin a message that "we can do stuff to you," but without setting off an escalating cyberconflict... "Some of it we will do in a way that they will know, but not everybody will," he said...

[T]he president was clearly wrestling with what he said the hacking affair and the reaction to it revealed about the state of American politics. Citing a recent poll that showed more than a third of Trump voters saying they approved of Mr. Putin...the president appealed to Americans not to allow partisan hatred and feuds to blind them to manipulation by foreign powers. "Unless that changes," Mr. Obama said, "we're going to continue to be vulnerable to foreign influence because we've lost track of what it is that we're about and what we stand for."

President Obama pulled Putin aside at a September meeting of the G20 to discuss Russian hacking, according to the article, telling Putin "to cut it out, there were going to be serious consequences if he did not."
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

President Obama Threatens Retaliatory Actions Against Russia Over Hacks

Comments Filter:
  • Evidence, please. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 17, 2016 @11:46AM (#53503253)

    Can someone explain what exactly was hacked (voting machines?) and what is the evidence that the Russians are responsible?

    • by Anonymous Coward

      If I understand correctly, this was about the DNC emails, which have the Democratic party the transparency they've been promising all this time.

    • by BlueStrat ( 756137 ) on Saturday December 17, 2016 @11:52AM (#53503289)

      Can someone explain what exactly was hacked (voting machines?) and what is the evidence that the Russians are responsible?

      Why are you wasting time asking silly questions!? Angry you should be, yes! Russians! Hacking!! Russians hacking! US election!! Hacking! Pay no attention to the corruption behind the curtain! Russians! Hacking! Election!

      SQUIRREL!!

      Strat

    • Re:Evidence, please. (Score:5, Informative)

      by MBGMorden ( 803437 ) on Saturday December 17, 2016 @11:53AM (#53503291)

      Every indication from the articles are that they're talking about the hacking of the DNC and Hillary's emails.

      There's not indication that they hacked the actual results (the electronic voting machines aren't even net-connected), but merely that by releasing the DNC's emails that they hacked they swayed public opinion.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward

        > the electronic voting machines aren't even net-connected

        So far they have not alleged that the voting machines were hacked. But an airgap is not much of an obstacle. Do not forget how well Iran's offline centrifuges were hacked by stuxnet. Voting machines don't even have the kind of operational security procedures that Iran's classified program had. A voter could do it. [bleepingcomputer.com] Or they could attack the PCs of the people who do maintenance on the voting machines, and put a virus on the media they use to cop

      • by BarbaraHudson ( 3785311 ) <barbara.jane.hud ... minus physicist> on Saturday December 17, 2016 @12:33PM (#53503563) Journal
        As well public opinion should have been swayed. If you don't want to piss people off about your "public policy for the masses" and "private policy for wall street and the banks", don't give speeches about how you do that sh*t. Problem solved.
        • by gumbi west ( 610122 ) on Saturday December 17, 2016 @02:47PM (#53504285) Journal

          Are we talking about Trump here? He says that quite often--he says it is a negotiating technique.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      A flood of fake news stories to influence gullible voters to vote against their interests by voting for Trump. It doesn't help that Trump, various staff members and some of his appointees are members of The Friends of Putin Club. Or that the Republican Party is worshiping Putin as a strong leader that the U.S. could never have without a fascist government.

      • Re:Evidence, please. (Score:4, Informative)

        by BarbaraHudson ( 3785311 ) <barbara.jane.hud ... minus physicist> on Saturday December 17, 2016 @12:36PM (#53503583) Journal
        On the contrary, the US could have a strong leader without a fascist government - but it's not going to happen when you have such disparity between the current oligarchy and the masses. Economic inequality keeps increasing, the financial benefits of government policies flow increasingly to those who need it least, and you want people to get behind you? Ain't gonna happen unless you drug the water supply.
      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by voting for Trump.

        A large mass of people didn't just go out and vote Trump. Trump did not win this election as much as Clinton lost it. In the few states that flipped from D to R this election Republican votes remained more or less flat.

        Stein and Johnson saw massive jumps. People didn't get talked into voting for either of them because of some fake news stories, they went 3rd party after the DNC declared it didn't need or want those pesky Bernie supporters.

        Clinton lost because she was Clinton. That is no ones fault but hers

    • by Imrik ( 148191 )

      I'm more interested in what proof, if any, they have that Russia intended to help Trump get elected. That may have been the end result, but I find it far more likely that they intended to hurt Clinton to make her less able to do anything once she was elected.

  • ... and Putin knows it.

    Obama is just giving the guy a heads up.

  • red line (Score:5, Funny)

    by Kohath ( 38547 ) on Saturday December 17, 2016 @11:48AM (#53503263)

    "Airing our party's dirty laundry crosses a red line, and there will be consequen -- nah, nevermind"

    • We shall write a very stern letter.

      And send it to the UN!

    • which turned out to be nothing (hell, I give Hilary bonus points for charging Goldman Sachs millions for those worthless speeches) and ignoring the massive amount of fake news, aka propaganda that their pro trolling organization did. They played us like a fiddle and we let them. Hell, they're still doing it by getting you to focus on worthless "leaks".
  • by blogagog ( 1223986 ) on Saturday December 17, 2016 @11:52AM (#53503287)
    If they are not careful, Obama may be forced to do something drastic, like issue a strongly worded letter of condemnation!
    • If they are not careful, Obama may be forced to do something drastic, like issue a strongly worded letter of condemnation!

      We'll expect a retraction of your snarky sarcasm here when something much more significant than a letter occurs.

  • by klingens ( 147173 ) on Saturday December 17, 2016 @11:54AM (#53503297)

    There are not even the barest shreds of any proofs about russian influence or wrongdoing. However the allegations all come from proven professional liars and torturers who then steal and kill to hide their wrongdoings. All of the infamous 17 agencies lie pretty much everytime they go public with anything political.
    How many russian speakers work at the CIA who can write russian comments? "Rasputin" is now considererd a proof? How many attack servers of the NSA and CIA are located in former soviet republics? Weren't stuxnet servers there too? The CIA/NSA has a lot more reason to do some hacking their own election than Russia: there simply is no reason for Russia to hack cause the conflicts they are in, they are actually winning, unlike the US no matter who wins the election. Also no mather who wins it, the war in the middle east will go on, maybe a little less bloody since the US won't send weapons to Al-Qaeda aka al-Nusra via Saudi Arabia. Russia has realistic goals, and goes rationally to achieve them. The US does not but finances and supports with weapons instead the people they are claiming to fight for the last 15 years.

    So if any country wishes to meddle in any election by telling the truth about any sides corruption, I say: more power to them. Even if it is some CIA guy who publicized the campaign emails. I'd be happy if they did the same for the republicans and their campaings, but I guess that hacker there already did a lot for the american public so we can't demand more from him.

    The US has meddled in other countries' elections especially their allies, since at least WW2 (Greece, Italy for example), toppled by now probably dozens of governments in clandestine operations and in bloody coups on in middle and southern america alone. So how are they to accuse anyone of doing it? And doing it with the truth instead of bullets like the US customarily does?

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward

      The US has meddled in other countries' elections especially their allies, since at least WW2 (Greece, Italy for example), toppled by now probably dozens of governments in clandestine operations and in bloody coups on in middle and southern america alone. So how are they to accuse anyone of doing it?

      It gets better. According to Hillary herself, the reason Russia is interfering with the US election is in retaliation for Hillary as Secretary of State interfering in the Russian election in an attempt to prevent Putin from being elected.

      Really.

      She flat-out admitted to trying to influence the Russian election, and then blamed her loss on Putin retaliating over her attempted manipulation of their election.

      If that right there doesn't sum up both the amazing delusion of liberals and the cognitive dissonance th

  • by LinuxFreakus ( 613194 ) on Saturday December 17, 2016 @11:58AM (#53503319)

    The only reason the emails were newsworthy at all was that the documents revealed information that the DNC and the Clinton campaign were trying to keep secret from the American voters. If the Russians were involved in the leak (and that seems like a pretty big "if" since there doesn't seem to be much evidence), they would only have been giving to the voters information that Clinton should have released on her own. In other words, these disclosures are clearly not “fake news”.

    I'll say this one more time: information that the CIA has accused Russia of sharing with the American people is “real news” about newsworthy topics, and given how pathetic the "security" was on the servers it came from, it seems unbelievable that this wouldn't have made the news sooner or later.

    Tell me again how they "hacked the election"?

    • by schwit1 ( 797399 )
      Please up vote.

      The Russians made US voters aware of lies, deceit, corruption and collusion of the Clinton campaign, the DNC and the media.

    • by Imrik ( 148191 )

      They (or someone else) also hacked the voter registration in a few states.

  • by zr ( 19885 ) on Saturday December 17, 2016 @12:06PM (#53503369)

    1) it doesn't matter who's the hacker, if our infrastructure is vulnerable, its vulnerable to anyone. lets worry about fixing that first.

    2) fine, retaliate. why is this news? hacking happens every day. remember stuxnet? solution to hacking is better technology NOT better lawyering.

    3) nice job wagging-the-dog your way out of actually dealing with the contents of hillary emails. real threat is what happened with Sanders (i'm not his supporter _at all_). it was a scandalous perversion of democracy. Putin (if it was him) did us a great service. i mean us the people, not necessarily certain people in power.

    • If anything I hope this emphasizes the need to use well funded domestic IT workers in many more areas of the industry.
      • If anything I hope this emphasizes the need to use well funded domestic IT workers in many more areas of the industry.

        Good luck with that. I saw a study in 2001 that the IT industry will have 1M+ job openings and no one to fill them as baby boomers retire by 2030. That's when I went back to community college to learn computer programming and got into the IT field. Few workers means higher pay for those still in the workforce.

        • If you ask for more money, in their mind that just validates a more open H1-B. It solves nothing. Without a government willing to prosecute abuse of H1B they will find a method to obtain workers who will work for the salary they want rather than accepting lcoal market forces. All that +1M openings represents is an industry unwilling to establish a fair and profitable working environment and so no one wants to take the time to learn the skills because why go into it if you'll be treated like a slave or ha
          • If you ask for more money, in their mind that just validates a more open H1-B.

            Today, yes. Not in 2030. As China and India embraces the middle class lifestyles, their young people will stay home to work. If we do import workers, it will be in the healthcare industry to take care of all those baby boomers in retirement.

      • The problem is hiring. How do you hire competent IT people when the primary criteria is 'commitment to the cause' and the cause is fucking stupid and corrupt.

        I'm sure there is a competent IT person working for the DNC. I'm also sure (s)he is 'on the outs' for breaking up the circle jerk.

        A competent IT person would say 'there isn't any evidence the Ruskys did it'. Guess who's not going to be working for the DNC next week?

        One of the consequences of working in a corrupt organization is corrupt hiring. I

    • Ummmm (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Sycraft-fu ( 314770 ) on Saturday December 17, 2016 @01:46PM (#53504021)

      How is this our infrastructure being vulnerable? Russia didn't hack US infrastructure, at least not that I've seen (please provide reliable sources if you know otherwise) they got in to the internal e-mails of campaigns. Also "hack" seems to be a bit of a strong word for what they did. Sounds like they got in to Podesta's e-mails by phishing his username/password. I'm not really sure what you think the federal government can do to fix/prevent that. I mean they already have information out there about "don't click on shit in e-mails" and there is training out there organizations can point people to from groups like SANS.

      That aside, even if it was a hack (as in exploiting vulnerabilities) it wasn't a federal government controlled system. So again, what is the fed supposed to do? Take over private e-mail systems? Put up a national firewall on the Internet?

      • by zr ( 19885 )

        lets assume you're right.

        what is the difference then between what the russians (allegedly) have done vs what a whistle blower or a real journalist might have done to expose conspiracy to deny Sanders a nomination?

        should we say "thank you russia" and move on?

  • "Some of it we will do in a way that they will know, but not everybody will,"

    Well, NOT IF YOU TELL THE MEDIA ABOUT IT!!!!

To stay youthful, stay useful.

Working...