美国国家公共电台 NPR Russian Hackers Doxxed Me. What Should I Do About It?（在线收听）

Russian Hackers Doxxed Me. What Should I Do About It? 

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What to do and who to blame when you've been the victim of a cyber intrusion - NPR's David Welna had to find out firsthand.

DAVID WELNA, BYLINE: It's a strange experience seeing your own passport posted on a pro-Kremlin news site. That's what happened to me after Ukraine's Defense Ministry got hacked, including the documents I had sent there to get press credentials. I was identified on that news site as a high-ranking U.S. adviser. The episode does not surprise Ukrainian journalist Alya Shandra.

ALYA SHANDRA: This is how Russian propaganda works. They just take some document that they find somewhere and they send this absurd story around. Ukraine is being run by the Americans. That's their main narrative.

WELNA: The Ukraine Defense Ministry's hacking forced me to get a new passport. Things get even more complicated when it comes to the hack of the Democratic National Committee's emails. Adam Schiff is the top democrat on the House Intelligence Committee. Russia, he says, needs to be named and blamed.

ADAM SCHIFF: I would like to see the administration make public the attribution of responsibility for the hack. There's ample evidence - certainly, we've seen ample evidence even within the public sources.

WELNA: Indeed, there already has been quite a bit of attribution of responsibility by the news media.

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RENE MARSH: The cybersecurity firm called in to investigate tells CNN the perpetrators are affiliated with the Russian government.

WELNA: But not all cybersecurity experts are rushing to blame the Kremlin.

JEFFREY CARR: The problem with cyberspace is that you can't confirm your suspicions because anybody can pretend to be anyone.

WELNA: That's Jeffrey Carr. He heads Taia Global, a cybersecurity firm that assesses the risk of being hacked. He says while the tool used to hack the DNC was made by a Russian company, there's no conclusive evidence it was Russia's authorities who used it.

CARR: And this is why skepticism is so critical when it comes to claims of attribution in cyberspace because it's very easy to place the blame on a foreign power, especially if there's already tension between the U.S. and that other foreign power.

WELNA: Russian President Vladimir Putin, for his part, flatly denies having a hand in the DNC hack. He was asked about it by Bloomberg News.

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PRESIDENT VLADIMIR PUTIN: (Through interpreter) I don't know anything about it. And on a state level, Russia has never done this.

WELNA: A few days after Putin's claim that Russia had never done anything like this on a state level, Defense Secretary Ash Carter spoke in Oxford, England. He declared that while the U.S. wanted neither a cold nor a hot war with Russia...

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ASH CARTER: We will counter attempts to undermine our collective security, and we'll not ignore attempts to interfere with our democratic processes.

WELNA: It was the closest any administration official had come to publicly suggesting Russia is meddling in the presidential election.

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JOHN MCCAIN: Is that the best the United States can do?

WELNA: That's what Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain wanted to know at a hearing on cybersecurity. Seated before him in the witness chair was Admiral Mike Rogers, commander of the U.S. Cyber Command. While Rogers seemed to sympathize with McCain's frustration over the administration's muted response to the hacks, he would not start naming names.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

MIKE ROGERS: Sir, we continue to see activity of concern. Again, I'm not going to characterize this activity - is it a foreign nation state or not?

WELNA: The official line from the administration is that it's waiting for the FBI to complete an investigation of the DNC hack before making any attributions of responsibility. Connecticut Democratic Senator Chris Murphy says reasons of state, including the recent failing attempt at a cease-fire in Syria, may be why little has been said or done so far.

CHRIS MURPHY: I am confident that the Obama administration is going to send the right signals to Russia, but this is not a moment in which we can shut down a relationship that is vital to the future disposition of potential peace in a place like Syria.

WELNA: But with Election Day only weeks away now, Congressman Schiff says it's past time to publicly pin blame on Russia.

SCHIFF: I think if you level with the American people and you say this is what the Russians are doing and we need to protect against this, it's far better to alert the public now than to wait until after the election and say, OK, this is what happened.

WELNA: And as both I and the DNC found out, what happens when you get hacked raises a thornier issue - what to do about it.

David Welna, NPR News, Washington.