Who remembers this? details on the russian group at the heart of the election hack: [View all]

[Gabi Hayes]

https://www.buzzfeed.com/sheerafrenkel/meet-fancy-bear-the-russian-group-hacking-the-us-election?utm_term=.aaXwzVN9p#.agYgKDbOV

The group behind the hacks is known as Fancy Bear, or APT 28, or Tsar Team, or a dozen other names that have been given to them over the years by cybersecurity researchers. Despite being one of the most reported-on groups of hackers active on the internet today, there is very little researchers can say with absolute certainty. No one knows, for instance, how many hackers are working regularly within Fancy Bear, or how they organize their hacking squads. They don’t know if they are based in one city or scattered in various locations across Russia. They don’t even know what they call themselves.

The group is, according to a White House statement last week, receiving their orders from the highest echelons of the Russian government and their actions “are intended to interfere with the US election process.” For the cybersecurity companies and academic researchers who have followed Fancy Bear’s activities online for years, the hacking and subsequent leaking of Clinton’s emails, as well as those of the DNC and DCCC, were the most recent — and most ambitious — in a long series of cyber-espionage and disinformation campaigns. From its earliest-known activities, in the country of Georgia in 2009, to the hacking of the DNC and Clinton in 2016, Fancy Bear has quickly gained a reputation for its high-profile, political targets.

“Fancy Bear is Russia, or at least a branch of the Russian government, taking the gloves off,” said one official in the Department of Defense. “It’s unlike anything else we’ve seen, and so we are struggling with writing a new playbook to respond.” The official would speak only on condition of anonymity, as his office had been barred from discussing with the press the US response to Fancy Bear’s attacks. “If Fancy Bear were a kid in the playground, it would be the kid stealing all the juice out of your lunch box and then drinking it in front of you, daring you to let him get away with it.”

For a long time, they did get away with it. Fancy Bear’s earliest targets in Georgia, Ukraine, Poland, and Syria meant that few in the US were paying attention. But those attacks were where Fancy Bear honed their tactics — going after political targets and then using the embarrassing or strategic information to their advantage. It was in those earliest attacks, researchers say, that Fancy Bear learned to couple their talent for hacking with a disinformation campaign that would one day see them try to disrupt US elections.

story goes on to detail how they were involved the invasion of Georgia,

one of the earliest cases of cyberwarfare coinciding with a real-world physical war, and Fancy Bear, say researchers, was one of the groups behind it.

much as I loathe Godson, it was his testimony today that reminded me of this. that said F him and his treasonous neo con pals, including Ollie North, who brought us genocide in Central America, among other places