The US Intelligence Community on Friday released its promised report on Russian election hacking. (The report had been expected some time this week, but it was issued soon after the President-elect was briefed on its contents.) The work of the CIA, FBI, and NSA, the report as expected is longer on conclusions than it is on evidence, evidence usually being more sensitive than conclusions, because likelier to reveal sources and methods.
Those conclusions are that the Russian government sought to influence the US presidential election, with a goal of ensuring that either major candidate would wind up either compromised, indebted, or damaged. The analysis holds that President-elect Trump was the Russians' preferred candidate, although their efforts were for some time premised on the assessment that former Secretary of State Clinton would be the eventual winner.
The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence will begin an investigation tomorrow. Initial reactions range from outrage against Russia's activities to skepticism (especially in RT, unsurprisingly, but in other quarters, too) concerning evidence in the analysis. The analysis is brief and worth reading. Two mild surprises: part of the Russian motivation seems to have been retaliation for embarrassment by the World Anti-Doping Agency, and the UK's GCHQ may have tipped US intelligence off to some Russian activity.
In other news, the Baltic News Agency, which reports on Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia, sustained a denial-of-service attack late Friday. The DragonOK APT group, linked to China's PLA, is said to be newly active against Tibetan and Russian targets.