> the FBI were allegedly complicit in DDoS (distributed denial-of-service) attacks on the websites of several Iceland government institutions. The FBI had then approached Icelandic authorities, promising to assist them in preventing any future such attacks
What's really stunning that this statement does not seem like just a wildly crazy accusation.
> If the server uses full-disk encryption, and if it's well locked down, it would be nontrivial to secretly access and copy the server's data.
OP's article mentions this, part of the reason they move out of the US is because RAM can be trivially read even if full disk encryption is used. Reading RAM still works in Iceland.
>The evidence mentioned here are the addresses of the Command and Control servers. But the author does not give any reason for why he or she thinks this is the thing the FBI is being cryptic about?
The fbi and several other sources publicized the select portion of the code base that linked the ips to shamoon. Presumably, the piece the fbi is being cryptic about is the servers behind the proxy, which, as mentioned, it probably isn't too much of a stretch to guess the government might be able to trace.
> In cases like this I also imagine CF cooperates with FBI investigations.
Seems to be the case,
> The FBI’s Anchorage Field Office and its Los Angeles-based Cyber Initiative and Resource Fusion Unit investigated this matter. [...] Cloudflare, Inc. [...] assisted this investigation.
> Computer-security experts believe that intelligence agencies have been doing this sort of thing for years, both with the consent of the software developers and surreptitiously.
What ever happened with that thing a few years back where some in the OpenBSD community were claiming the FBI was attempting to insert a backdoor?[1][2] I was always surprised with how little media attention that seemed to get.
It's a shoddy story. Quote: "Our sources told us the hackers had gained access giving them the ability to intercept ALL INTERNET TRAFFIC going to several countries in the Middle East" Way back, I used to work with dissidents/journo's/academics against censorship and surveillance at various countries. All but Turkey where easy because I recall that it was the military being in full control; playing with BGP among other things. This makes the quote a bit awkward. Why would they gain abilities already possessed & put their cards open on the table ?
> the broadened hacking conspiracy continues to allege that Assange conspired with Army Intelligence Analyst Chelsea Manning to crack a password hash to a classified U.S. Department of Defense computer.
Can you imagine the euphoria in the moment they cracked the hash? Feels like something out of a Nicolas Cage movie.
> bureaucracies tend to do extremely stupid stuff when looked at from the outside but every cog on the inside thinks that its action makes perfect sense.
If this is Chinese doing, the likely ones responsible are the Chinese Intelligence, not their bureaucracy.
> Evidence?
Occam's Razor. I find it hard to believe that a society with sufficient level of sophistication to obtain $9 trillion GDP[1] would 'accidentally' go on to declare cyber war on US. Especially considering the fact that the attack itself was pretty sophisticated.
> Dotcom built Mega so it was technically impossible for anyone, including the site’s operators, to know what content users had stored. It means one result of the FBI’s action is the creation of a rogue website which exists outside the intrusive surveillance technology exposed by Snowden.
What's really stunning that this statement does not seem like just a wildly crazy accusation.
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