This is ridiculous. Some excepts from the Intercept article on this matter:
As described by the classified NSA report, the Russian plan was simple: pose as an e-voting vendor and trick local government employees into opening Microsoft Word documents invisibly tainted with potent malware that could give hackers full control over the infected computers.
Overall, the method is one of “medium sophistication,” Williams said, one that “practically any hacker can pull off.”
Schneier said the attack, as described by the NSA, is standard hacking procedure. “Credential-stealing, spear-phishing — this is how it’s done,” he said. “Once you get a beachhead, then you try to figure out how to go elsewhere.”
https://theintercept.com/2017/06/05/top-secret-nsa-report-details-russian-hacking-effort-days-before-2016-election/
So we have a "simple" hack, "standard" in that it could be pulled off by "any hacker," and we're supposed to believe this is indicative of Russian intelligence involvement? Doesn't it seem unreasonable to infer that state actors were using a "simple" plan that "any hacker could pull off?" The Russians are some of the most sophisticated hackers in the world. The Russian intelligence community is not a "gang that couldn't shoot straight." They are the real deal. I find it incredible that these "standard' hacking techniques, that we have "traced" back to the highly skilled hackers in the Russian intelligence apparatus, apparently, through their use of Russian ip addresses, is the kind of thing to risk a geopolitical shit storm over. Even if the Russian intelligence hackers chose to use these "unsophisticated" hacking techniques, which, lets face it, are extremely easy to detect and trace, isn't it wildly fantastical to believe they would be so stupid as to do so from the Kremlin? After all, they simply needed to set up shop in the Seychelles, Panama, or some other such location where the internet service providers don't cooperate with the authorities. It is frankly absurd to suggest that sophisticated state employed hackers were too sloppy, incompetent or stupid to know that ip addresses can be traced. And it is also absurd to suggest that Russia would risk such an endeavor without making sure the hackers they employed were adept at covering their tracks. This whole narrative smells fishy to me, like the one where they assured us that Iraq had WMDs.
Bloomberg reported.
