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On Friday, five days after the story first broke, in an article misleadingly headlined, "Suspected Russian hack is much worse than first feared," NBC News admitted:
"At this stage, it's not clear what the hackers have done beyond accessing top-secret government networks and monitoring data."
Who conducted the hack is also not certain.
NBC reported that the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency "has not said who it thinks is the 'advanced persistent threat actor' behind the 'significant and ongoing' campaign, but many experts are pointing to Russia."
At first Sanger was certain in his piece that Russia was behind the attack. He refers to FireEye, "a computer security firm that first raised the alarm about the Russian campaign after its own systems were pierced."
But later in the same piece, Sanger loses his certainty: "If the Russia connection is confirmed," he writes.
In the absence of firm evidence that damage has been done, this may well be an intrusion into other governments' networks routinely carried out by intelligence agencies around the world, including, if not chiefly, by the United States. It is what spies do.
So neither the actor, nor the motive, nor the damage done is known for certain.
Yet across the vast networks of powerful U.S. media the story has been portrayed as a major crisis brought on by a sinister Russian attack putting the security of the American people at risk.
In a second piece on Wednesday, Sanger added to the alarm by saying the hack "ranks among the greatest intelligence failures of modern times." And on Friday Secretary of State Mike Pompeo claimed Russia was "pretty clearly" behind the cyber attacks. But he cautioned: -- we're still unpacking precisely what it is, and I'm sure some of it will remain classified." In other words, trust us.
Ed Loomis, a former NSA technical director, believes the suspect list should extend beyond Russia to include China, Iran, and North Korea. Loomis also says the commercial cyber-security firms that have been studying the latest "attacks" have not been able to pinpoint the source.
Tom Bossert
(Image by Wikipedia (commons.wikimedia.org), Author: Executive Office of the President of the United States) Details Source DMCA
In a New York Times op-ed, former Trump domestic security adviser Thomas Bossert on Wednesday called on Trump to "use whatever leverage he can muster to protect the United States and severely punish the Russians." And he said Biden "must begin his planning to take charge of this crisis."
[On Friday, Biden talked tough. He promised there would be "costs" and said: "A good defense isn't enough; we need to disrupt and deter our adversaries from undertaking significant cyberattacks in the first place. I will not stand idly by in the face of cyber-assaults on our nation."]
While asserting throughout his piece that, without question, Russia now "controls" U.S. government computer networks, Bossert's confidence suddenly evaporates by slipping in at one point, "If it is Russia."
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