[KREBSONSECURITY] If indeed those who hacked the DNC were recruited from the ranks of the cybercriminal community focused mainly on financial crime, I would not be surprised in the least. The Russian source who first introduced me to much of the cyber underground told me exactly this when we first met some years ago. He had just left the Russian military for a job at a computer security firm in Russia, and his job was to build a presence on all of the Russian-language cybercrime forums and learn the real-life identities of the major power players in that space.

That source, who won’t be named here because it would compromise his current position and create legal problems for him, said he routinely saw Russian intelligence services recruiting hackers on cybercrime forums — particularly for research into potential vulnerabilities in the software and hardware that powers various national power grids and other energy infrastructure.

“All these guys had interest in hacking government resources, including Russian [targets],” my source told me. “Several years ago I got to know one of these hackers who worked for Russian government, [and] he operated his [cybercrime] forum as a government honeypot for hiring hackers. They were hiring hackers to work in official government organizations.”

Initially, he said, the hackers targeted U.S. military installations and U.S. news media outlets, but eventually they turned their attention to collecting government and corporate secrets full-time. The source said the teams routinely used botnets for foreign intelligence gathering and counterintelligence, and frequently sought to infiltrate botnets that were suspected of being co-opted for the same purposes by other countries.

“Then they started attacking foreign-only targets, and even started their own VPN (virtual private networking) service for English-speaking customers so they could capture corporate data,” he told me. “They also ran a service for checking stolen PDFs and other documents for [proprietary] data and classified information. If something like Stuxnet destroys some power plant, I will think about these guys first. Now I use them as a source of information about foreign intelligence botnets, so I really don’t want them to be uncovered.”

Even with the rapid growth of religion inspired violence since the 1980s the end of the Cold War in 1991 led to a sharp (by over 20 percent so far) drop in violence worldwide. That decline was not news but the increasing activity of Islamic terrorists was. While the terror attacks themselves were news the current and historical causes of the Islamic terrorism was not.

The post-Cold War trend towards less violence is stalled because of the continued unrest in Moslem nations or areas with a significant Moslem minority. This began in 2014 when over a decade of declining violence was reversed because terrorism deaths were up by about 20 percent that year and nearly as high in 2015. This was mainly because of ISIL (Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant) in Syria and Iraq and Boko Haram in Nigeria. ISIL sees itself as the new leaders of the Islamic world and employs extreme violence in pursuit of that goal. As a result one thing Saudi led Sunnis, Iran led Shia, the West and even al Qaeda can agree on is that ISIL is evil and a threat to all that must be destroyed. Meanwhile Boko Haram actually caused more deaths in 2014 than ISIL but ISIL was much better at publicizing its murderous activities. In 2015 the Islamic terrorist related deaths declined in large part because Moslem nations have finally become less tolerant of the Islamic radicalism, especially when it is practiced on them instead of non-Moslems. The decline in terrorism related deaths is welcome, because they get the most publicity. Keep in mind that most war deaths are not caused by terrorists and even in 2014 terrorism related deaths (mostly Islamic terrorism) accounted for 20 percent of all war related deaths. Islamic terrorism gets the most publicity but less glamorous disputes do most of the killing.

What gets the most media attention are the fearsome catastrophes headline writers can conjure up. All media thrives on FUD (Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt) and the scary headlines in 2017 will feature China (and the possible collapse of the economy there and the worldwide impact), South Asia (the threat of nuclear war between Pakistan and India) and East Asia (the crumbling North Korean dictator may have usable nukes in 2017 and might use them). Meanwhile the threat of Islamic terrorism activity in the West will remain a headline staple. Not many people in the West get killed by Islamic terrorists, especially compared to Moslem countries. But the Internet changed all that. By making it possible for anyone to hustle FUD video and audio round the clock at no cost and little personal risk, Islamic terrorists finally had the promotional tool they always needed but never realized was possible until suddenly, in the 1990s, there it was. The rise of 24 hour global TV news operations in the 1980s helped the Islamic terrorists but they could not control their message. With the Internet then could and soon learned how to do so for maximum impact on potential victims, donors and recruits.