Final Word from Monday, September 5, 2016
In articles about the leak of 20,000 Democratic Party emails, such as this one in the Financial Times, reporters stressed the professionalism of Russian hackers but quoted sources saying that there is no doubt that the perpetrators were the Russians. They're among the best hackers in the world, but they left behind Russian-language notes in the malware coding! The annual report of the BIS intelligence agency gives a similar impression. Russian and Chinese spies are influencing everything, or are at least trying to, yet BIS is able to track their every move. In the latest report, BIS raises the stakes and accuses the Russian intelligence services of trying to steal Czech and EU subsidies. Who are the Czech "frontmen" helping the Russians to do this, and were they successful? BIS doesn't give any answers. It seems that the Russians and their Czech helpers are always just incompetent enough to leave tracks, but just clever enough never to get caught. [Czech Republic service spy European Union]
Glossary of difficult words
perpetrator - a person who carries out a harmful, illegal, or immoral act;
to raise the stakes - to increase the level of importance or danger;
frontman - a person who represents an organization and works to make its image more appealing to the public; we have linked to BIS's Czech site, because the English translation significantly changes the meaning of "nastrčené osoby" (frontmen), by rendering it as "duped Czech individuals."