U.S. "retaliates" against Russia

[TheReal_ND]

Putin came out the winner of this.

We regard the recent unfriendly steps taken by the outgoing US administration as provocative and aimed at further weakening the Russia-US relationship. This runs contrary to the fundamental interests of both the Russian and American people. Considering the global security responsibilities of Russia and the United States, this is also damaging to international relations as a whole.

As it proceeds from international practice, Russia has reasons to respond in kind. Although we have the right to retaliate, we will not resort to irresponsible ‘kitchen’ diplomacy but will plan our further steps to restore Russian-US relations based on the policies of the Trump Administration.

The diplomats who are returning to Russia will spend the New Year’s holidays with their families and friends. We will not create any problems for US diplomats. We will not expel anyone. We will not prevent their families and children from using their traditional leisure sites during the New Year’s holidays. Moreover, I invite all children of US diplomats accredited in Russia to the New Year and Christmas children’s parties in the Kremlin.

It is regrettable that the Obama Administration is ending its term in this manner. Nevertheless, I offer my New Year greetings to President Obama and his family.

My season’s greetings also to President-elect Donald Trump and the American people.

I wish all of you happiness and prosperity.

http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/53678

Instead, we have an affirmative action hire throwing a tantrum and trying to derail relations between the two major nuclear powers because his legacy is in ruins.

Not falling for the nice guy act Putler.

[Haumana]

Taibbi scrutinizes the Russia hacking narrative. Nice to see that journalism isn't quite dead yet.

This dramatic story puts the news media in a jackpot. Absent independent verification, reporters will have to rely upon the secret assessments of intelligence agencies to cover the story at all.
Many reporters I know are quietly freaking out about having to go through that again. We all remember the WMD fiasco.
"It's déjà vu all over again" is how one friend put it.

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/fe ... ks-w458439

[Haumana]

Here is WordFence's' blog post of the results of their recreation of the Guciffer 2.0 hack.

At Wordfence our focus is WordPress security. Our security analysts spend a lot of time analyzing PHP malware, because WordPress is powered by PHP.

As an interesting side-project, we performed analysis on the PHP malware sample and the IP addresses that the US government has provided as “…technical details regarding the tools and infrastructure used by Russian civilian and military intelligence services (RIS)”. [Source]

The IP addresses that DHS provided may have been used for an attack by a state actor like Russia. But they don’t appear to provide any association with Russia. They are probably used by a wide range of other malicious actors, especially the 15% of IP addresses that are Tor exit nodes.

The malware sample is old, widely used and appears to be Ukrainian. It has no apparent relationship with Russian intelligence and it would be an indicator of compromise for any website

https://www.wordfence.com/blog/2016/12/ ... e-ip-hack/

[Okeefenokee]

TFW you provide evidence and it contradicts your hoax.