This site may earn affiliate commissions from the links on this page. Terms of use.

AIVD

Intelligence-sharing agreements betwixt various countries are nada new; the Us' "Five Eyes" agreement between Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the UK, and the US is one well-known top-level alliance for sharing signals intelligence that dates back to the post-WW2 era. It's just ane of many systems, both formal and breezy, the Us has in place for sharing information with our allies (and, in certain specific instances, countries we unremarkably wouldn't label that way).

Generally, we don't find out which nations specifically contribute intelligence in which cases, this being a cataclysmic breach of operational security in its own correct. But a recent report suggests the Dutch national intelligence service shared critical data with Us agencies back in 2014 and 2015 — material that underpinned the findings of fact issued by the Us national intelligence communities joint assessment that Russia had hacked the DNC and interfered in the 2016 election.

According to a new report published by de Volkskrant, the Dutch intelligence agency AIVD penetrated the calculator network of a academy adjacent to Scarlet Foursquare back in 2014, simply to later realize they had tapped into APT29, aka Cozy Acquit, one of the Russian government-affiliated organizations that penetrated the DNC and targeted other U.s.a. government departments at various points. One question raised by many during the tumultuous 2016 United states of america presidential election was how the Us authorities and its various institutions could be sure of its analysis. So-candidate Trump once argued that the individual behind the intrusions "could be somebody sitting on their bed that weighs 400 pounds."

We now know why various government agencies were certain of their conclusions. The edifice the Dutch hackers compromised had a closed-circuit Telly network. Over a period of months, the AIVD team was able to watch everything the Russians did, including which specific individuals came and went. Ane reason the US intelligence agencies were and so confident Russia was responsible was that the Dutch did a smashing atomic number 82 of early on legwork to demonstrate that known Russian intelligence operatives were working inside Cozy Bear.

The de Volkskrant story implies that the Dutch authorities began targeting the Russians after the downing of MH17. In the aftermath of that attack, both the US and Ukraine stated that the missile was almost certainly fired from a Soviet-era Buk missile system.

Part of a Buk missile system battery.

Part of a Buk missile system battery. The command vehicle is on the left; the launcher in the middle has a congenital-in radar system.

Russia offset claimed MH17 was shot down by a Ukrainian Su-25, before cycling through a variety of alternatives — it was a Ukrainian Su-25, using an Israeli missile, no, it was a Ukrainian Buk missile system (fired by Ukrainians as part of a false flag). Or that the plane was really MH370 and total of corpses when it took off from Amsterdam. Or that the Ukrainian military was trying to assassinate Putin. The one thing Russia wasn't interested in doing was albeit that Russia had anything to do with the attack in whatever way, shape, or grade. Of the 298 people killed, 193 were Netherlands citizens. As motivations get, the thought that the netherlands might've been motivated to go hacking around to see what it could detect isn't much of a stretch.

In November of 2014, the AIVD sees Cozy Bear launching attacks on the Usa State Department. It and the armed forces organization MIVD coordinate with the FBI and NSA to thwart the attack in real time, with the Dutch literally watching the performance via CCTV provided courtesy of APT29. The intense attack occurs over 24 hours, and the Dutch assistance is critical plenty that the NSA begins coordinating with AIVD directly.

This attack is the one NSA Deputy Director Richard Ledgett referred to as "hand-to-hand combat," in a spoken language at the Aspen Plant in March 2017. At the time, Ledgett said the NSA had been assisted past a Western intelligence agency, one that had managed to hack the surveillance cameras being used by the attacking bureau. At present nosotros know the identities of the players — we had assistance from the Dutch, who'd been watching the Russians (and verifying their identities) for months at the time the attacks took place.

The de Volkskrant report notes that the Dutch may accept traded information on Russian hacking attempts and tactics to the United States in substitution for data on the MH17 attack. The last twist in the story is that Dutch sources are apparently quite unhappy with the way Ledgett revealed the US had cooperated with a "Western ally" in its defense of the Country Department back in 2014, because such assets are not supposed to exist disclosed. Only the story also implies that data revealed by the Dutch is part of why the diverse US government intelligence agencies were so confident in their ain conclusions on who hacked the DNC.