This has got to be the most ridiculous falsehood ever perpetrated by the mainstream media. They continue stating it has been clearly shown the Russians hacked into Hillary's emails and the DNC and that Donald Trump colluded with them to win the elcection. This is pure fiction. I have not posted for a long time merely because I am trying to get together an Independent News Channel to shoot down all the lies from Washington Post, CNN, and New York Times.
The Democrats cannot accept the fact the it was Hillary bad campaign and lack of ability that lost the election.
The allegation – now accepted as incontrovertible fact by the “mainstream” media
– that the Russian intelligence services hacked the Democratic National
Committee (and John Podesta’s emails) in an effort to help Donald Trump
get elected recently suffered a blow from which it may not recover.
Crowdstrike is the cybersecurity company hired by the DNC to determine who hacked their accounts: it took them a single day to determine the identity of the culprits – it was, https://www.crowdstrike.com/blog/bears-midst-intrusion-democratic-national-committee/" rel="nofollow - they said , two groups of hackers which they named “Fancy Bear” and “Cozy Bear,” affiliated http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Passcode/2016/0615/Meet-Fancy-Bear-and-Cozy-Bear-Russian-groups-blamed-for-DNC-hack" rel="nofollow - respectively with the GRU, which is Russian military intelligence, and the FSB, the Russian security service.
How did they know this?
These alleged “hacker groups” are not associated with any known individuals in any way connected to Russian intelligence:
instead, they are identified by the tools they use, the times they do
their dirty work, the nature of the targets, and other characteristics
based on the history of past intrusions.
Yet as Jeffrey Carr and https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-12-22/why-i-still-don-t-buy-the-russian-hacking-story" rel="nofollow - other cyberwarfare experts
have pointed out, this methodology is fatally flawed. “It’s important
to know that the process of attributing an attack by a cybersecurity
company has nothing to do with the scientific method,” https://medium.com/@jeffreycarr/faith-based-attribution-30f4a658eabc#.767a5g3t8" rel="nofollow - writes Carr :
“Claims of attribution aren’t testable or repeatable because the hypothesis is never proven right or wrong. Neither
are claims of attribution admissible in any criminal case, so those who
make the claim don’t have to abide by any rules of evidence (i.e.,
hearsay, relevance, admissibility).”
Likening attribution claims of hacking incidents by cybersecurity
companies to intelligence assessments, Carr notes that, unlike
government agencies such the CIA, these companies are never held to account for their misses:
“When
it comes to cybersecurity estimates of attribution, no one holds the
company that makes the claim accountable because there’s no way to prove
whether the assignment of attribution is true or false unless (1) there
is a criminal conviction, (2) the hacker is https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2012/10/31/georgia-hacker-photographed/" rel="nofollow - caught in the act, or (3) a government employee https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/28/general-cartwright-investigated-stuxnet-leak" rel="nofollow - leaked the evidence.”
This lack of accountability may be changing, however, because Crowdstrike’s case for attributing the hacking of the DNC to the Russians is falling apart at the seams like a cheap sweater.
To begin with, Crowdstrike initially gauged its certainty as to the identity of the hackers with “ https://www.emptywheel.net/2017/01/04/on-crowdstrikes-curiously-timed-report-claiming-newfound-high-confidence-in-its-gru-attribution/" rel="nofollow - medium confidence .” However, a later development, announced in late December and touted by the Washington Post, boosted this to “high confidence.” The
reason for this newfound near-certainty was their discovery that “Fancy
Bear” had also infected an application used by the Ukrainian military
to target separatist artillery in the Ukrainian civil war. As the Post https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/cybersecurity-firm-finds-a-link-between-dnc-hack-and-ukrainian-artillery/2016/12/21/47bf1f5a-c7e3-11e6-bf4b-2c064d32a4bf_story.html?utm_term=.6e552c383896" rel="nofollow - reported :
“While
CrowdStrike, which was hired by the DNC to investigate the intrusions
and whose findings are described in a new report, had always suspected
that one of the two hacker groups that struck the DNC was the GRU,
Russia’s military intelligence agency, it had only medium confidence.
“Now, said CrowdStrike co-founder Dmitri Alperovitch, ‘we have
high confidence’ it was a unit of the GRU. CrowdStrike had dubbed that
unit ‘Fancy Bear.’”
Crowdstrike https://www.crowdstrike.com/resources/reports/idc-vendor-profile-crowdstrike-2/" rel="nofollow - published
an analysis that claimed a malware program supposedly unique to Fancy
Bear, X-Agent, had infected a Ukrainian targeting application and, using
GPS to geo-locate Ukrainian positions, had turned the application
against the Ukrainians, resulting in huge losses:
“Between
July and August 2014, Russian-backed forces launched some of the
most-decisive attacks against Ukrainian forces, resulting in significant
loss of life, weaponry and territory.
“Ukrainian artillery forces have lost over 50% of their weapons
in the two years of conflict and over 80% of D-30 howitzers, the highest
percentage of loss of any other artillery pieces in Ukraine’s arsenal.”
Alperovitch http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/security-company-releases-new-evidence-russian-role-dnc-hack/" rel="nofollow - told
the PBS News Hour that “Ukraine’s artillery men were targeted by the
same hackers, that we call Fancy Bear, that targeted DNC, but this time
they were targeting cell phones to try to understand their location so
that the Russian artillery forces can actually target them in the open
battle. It was the same variant of the same malicious code that we had
seen at the DNC.”
He http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/same-russians-who-hacked-dnc-helped-target-kill-ukrainian-soldiers-n698851" rel="nofollow - told NBC News that this proved the DNC hacker “wasn’t a 400-pound guy in his bed,” http://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2016/09/26/mobile-clinton-trump-debate-400-pound-man-cyber-security-hofstra-sot-05.cnn/video/playlists/mobile-2016-presidential-debate-donald-trump-hillary-clinton/" rel="nofollow - as Trump had opined during the first presidential debate – it was the Russians.
The only problem with this analysis is that is isn’t true. It turns out that Crowdstrike’s estimate of Ukrainian losses was based on a http://www.voanews.com/a/skeptics-doubt-ukraine-hack-link-to-dnc-cyberattack/3649234.html" rel="nofollow - blog post by a pro-Russian blogger eager to tout Ukrainian losses: the Ukrainians https://www.facebook.com/sherstyuk.ya.n/posts/1374145112659432" rel="nofollow - denied
it. Furthermore, the hacking attribution was based on the hackers’ use
of a malware program called X-Agent, supposedly unique to Fancy Bear.
Since the target was the Ukrainian military, Crowdstrike extrapolated
from this that the hackers were working for the Russians.
All somewhat plausible, except for two things: To begin with, as Jeffrey Carr https://medium.com/@jeffreycarr/fbi-dhs-joint-analysis-report-a-fatally-flawed-effort-b6a98fafe2fa#.abh9rnk3m" rel="nofollow - pointed out in December, and now others are beginning to realize, X-Agent isn’t unique to Fancy Bear. Citing the findings of ESET, another cybersecurity company, he wrote:
“Unlike
Crowdstrike, ESET doesn’t assign APT28/Fancy Bear/Sednit to a Russian
Intelligence Service or anyone else for a very simple reason. Once
malware is deployed, it is no longer under the control of the hacker who
deployed it or the developer who created it. It can be
reverse-engineered, copied, modified, shared and redeployed again and
again by anyone. In other words? – ?malware deployed is malware enjoyed!
“In fact, the source code for X-Agent, which was used in the DNC, Bundestag, and TV5Monde attacks, was obtained by https://www.eset.com/us/about/newsroom/press-releases/dissection-of-sednit-espionage-group-1/" rel="nofollow - ESET as part of their investigation!
“During our investigations, we were able to retrieve the complete Xagent source code for the Linux operating system….”
“If ESET could do it, so can others. It is both foolish and
baseless to claim, as Crowdstrike does, that X-Agent is used solely by
the Russian government when the source code is there for anyone to find
and use at will.”
Secondly, the estimate Crowdstrike used to verify the
Ukrainian losses was supposedly based on data from the respected
International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS). But now IISS is
disavowing and http://www.voanews.com/a/crowdstrike-comey-russia-hack-dnc-clinton-trump/3776067.html" rel="nofollow - debunking their claims :
“[T]he http://www.iiss.org/" rel="nofollow - International Institute for Strategic Studies
(IISS) told [Voice of America] that CrowdStrike erroneously used IISS
data as proof of the intrusion. IISS disavowed any connection to the
CrowdStrike report. Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense also has claimed
combat losses and hacking never happened….
“’The CrowdStrike report uses our data, but the inferences and
analysis drawn from that data belong solely to the report’s authors,”
the IISS said. “The inference they make that reductions in Ukrainian
D-30 artillery holdings between 2013 and 2016 were primarily the result
of combat losses is not a conclusion that we have ever suggested
ourselves, nor one we believe to be accurate.’
“One of the IISS researchers who produced the data said that
while the think tank had dramatically lowered its estimates of Ukrainian
artillery assets and howitzers in 2013, it did so as part of a
‘reassessment” and reallocation of units to airborne forces.’
“’No, we have never attributed this reduction to combat losses,”
the IISS researcher said, explaining that most of the reallocation
occurred prior to the two-year period that CrowdStrike cites in its
report.
“’The vast majority of the reduction actually occurs … before
Crimea/Donbass,’ he added, referring to the 2014 Russian invasion of
Ukraine.”
The definitive “evidence” cited by Alperovitch is now effectively debunked:
indeed, it was debunked by Carr late last year, but that was ignored in
the media’s rush to “prove” the Russians hacked the DNC in order to
further Trump’s presidential ambitions. The exposure by the
Voice of America of Crowdstrike’s falsification of Ukrainian battlefield
losses – the supposedly solid “proof” of attributing the hack to the
GRU – is the final nail in Crowdstrike’s coffin. They didn’t
bother to verify their analysis of IISS’s data with IISS – they simply
took as gospel the allegations of a pro-Russian blogger. They didn’t
contact the Ukrainian military, either: instead, their confirmation bias
dictated that they shaped the “facts” to fit their predetermined
conclusion.
Now why do you suppose that is? Why were they married so
early – after a single day – to the conclusion that it was the Russians
who were behind the hacking of the DNC?
Crowdstrike founder Alperovitch is a http://www.atlanticcouncil.org/about/experts/list/dmitri-alperovitch" rel="nofollow - Nonresident Senior Fellow
of the Atlantic Council, and head honcho of its “Cyber Statecraft
Initiative” – of which his role in promoting the “Putin did it” scenario
is a Exhibit A. James Carden, https://www.thenation.com/article/is-skepticism-treason/" rel="nofollow - writing in The Nation,
makes the trenchant point that “The connection between Alperovitch and
the Atlantic Council has gone largely unremarked upon, but it is
relevant given that the Atlantic Council – which http://www.atlanticcouncil.org/support/supporters" rel="nofollow - is funded in part
by the US State Department, NATO, the governments of Latvia and
Lithuania, the Ukrainian World Congress, and the Ukrainian oligarch
Victor Pinchuk – has been among the loudest voices calling for a new
Cold War with Russia.” Adam Johnson, http://fair.org/home/allegedly-disappears-as-russians-blamed-for-dnc-hack/" rel="nofollow - writing
on the FAIR blog, adds to our knowledge by noting that the Council’s
budget is also supplemented by “a consortium of Western corporations
(Qualcomm, Coca-Cola, The Blackstone Group), including weapons
manufacturers (Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Northrop Grumman) and oil
companies (ExxonMobil, Shell, Chevron, BP).”
Johnson also notes that CrowdStrike currently has a https://www.usaspending.gov/transparency/Pages/TransactionDetails.aspx?RecordID=EEFBF110-EC44-4308-8C6F-F171909722AF&AwardID=44480195&AwardType=C" rel="nofollow - $150,000 / year, no-bid contract with the FBI for “systems analysis.”
Nice work if you can get it.
This last little tidbit gives us some insight into what is
perhaps the most curious aspect of the
Russian-hackers-campaign-for-Trump story: the FBI’s complete dependence
on Crowdstrike’s analysis. Amazingly, the FBI did no
independent forensic work on the DNC servers before Crowdstrike got its
hot little hands on them: indeed, http://thehill.com/policy/national-security/313555-comey-fbi-did-request-access-to-hacked-dnc-servers" rel="nofollow - the DNC denied the FBI access to the servers , and, as far as anyone knows, the FBI https://twitter.com/mtracey/status/844416493509120000" rel="nofollow - never examined them . BuzzFeed https://www.buzzfeed.com/alimwatkins/the-fbi-never-asked-for-access-to-hacked-computer-servers?utm_term=.wf10qep6pP#.bvyLobedeA" rel="nofollow - quotes
an anonymous “intelligence official” as saying “Crowdstrike is pretty
good. There’s no reason to believe that anything they have concluded is
not accurate.”
There is now.
Alperovitch is https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C6WXFGdXMAAr1pI.jpg" rel="nofollow - scheduled to testify before the House Intelligence Committee, and one
wonders if our clueless – and technically challenged – Republican
members of Congress will question him about the debunking of
Crowdstrike’s rush to judgment. I tend to doubt it, since the
Russia-did-it meme is now the Accepted Narrative and no dissent is
permitted – to challenge it would make them “Putin apologists”!
(Although maybe Trey Gowdy, the only GOPer on that panel who seems to
have any brains, may surprise me.)
As http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2016/07/28/who-hacked-the-dnc/" rel="nofollow - I’ve been http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2017/01/10/wheres-the-evidence/" rel="nofollow - saying for http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2016/12/11/stop-cia-coup/" rel="nofollow - months , there is http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2016/08/30/campaign-blame-putin-everything/" rel="nofollow - no evidence that the Russians hacked the DNC: http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2016/10/20/president-strangelove/" rel="nofollow - none , http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2016/07/31/its-getting-scarier/" rel="nofollow - zilch , http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2016/12/15/leak-came-cold/" rel="nofollow - nada .
Yet this false narrative is the entire basis of a campaign launched by
the Democrats, hailed by the Trump-hating media, and fully endorsed by
the FBI and the CIA, the purpose of which is to “prove” that Trump is
“Putin’s puppet,” as Hillary Clinton http://www.cnn.com/2016/10/19/politics/clinton-puppet-vladimir-putin-trump/" rel="nofollow - put it .
Now the investigative powers of the federal government are being
deployed to confirm that the Trump campaign “colluded” with the Kremlin
in an act the evidence for which is collapsing.
This whole affair is a vicious fraud. If there is any justice in this world – and there may not be – the perpetrators should be charged, tried, and jailed. comment: Obviously all the media need a reality check as well as the failing Democratic party. Fueled by social justice warriors and over-the-hill actors and celebrities trying to get attention- the comedy continues.
There is nothing to find out. If there was it would have been used in the election and released weeks before it.
Mainstream media - you have serious issues, cannot be trusted, and flagrantly still publish lies and fake stories.
The nation, the world needs a new Independent Media because you can neither be trusted or believed. You target the gullible with things they want to hear and continue to endanger our national security and safety of our citizens. Let us hope more and more will sue you and besides just retractions exact the pound of flesh they so richly deserve.
Medclinician
------------- "not if but when" the original Medclinician
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