As usual, the rabbit hole gets much deeper the more you look.
In yesterday’s post, Credibility of Cyber Firm that Claimed Russia Hacked the DNC Comes Under Serious Question, I examined how CrowdStrike, the cybersecurity firm hired by the DNC to look into its hacking breach, had been exposed as being completely wrong about a separate attack it claimed originated from the same group it claimed broke into DNC systems, and supposedly works for Russia’s military intelligence unit, GRU. Here’s some of what we learned:
An influential British think tank and Ukraine’s military are disputing a report that the U.S. cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike has used to buttress its claims of Russian hacking in the presidential election.
The CrowdStrike report, released in December, asserted that Russians hacked into a Ukrainian artillery app, resulting in heavy losses of howitzers in Ukraine’s war with Russian-backed separatists.
But the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) told VOA 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 challenges to CrowdStrike’s credibility are significant because the firm was the first to link last year’s hacks of Democratic Party computers to Russian actors, and because CrowdStrike co-founder Dimiti Alperovitch has trumpeted its Ukraine report as more evidence of Russian election tampering.
Yaroslav Sherstyuk, maker of the Ukrainian military app in question, called the company’s report “delusional” in a Facebook post. CrowdStrike never contacted him before or after its report was published, he told VOA.
VOA first contacted IISS in February to verify the alleged artillery losses. Officials there initially were unaware of the CrowdStrike assertions. After investigating, they determined that CrowdStrike misinterpreted their data and hadn’t reached out beforehand for comment or clarification.
CrowdStrike declined to answer VOA’s written questions about the Ukraine report, and Alperovitch canceled a March 15 interview on the topic. In a December statement to VOA’s Ukrainian Service, spokeswoman Ilina Dimitrova defended the company’s conclusions.
Seems like pretty extraordinary incompetence. Either that, or something else was potentially at play; namely, a desire to push the narrative that Russia hacked the DNC, irrespective of the facts.
The whole things gets even more disturbing the more you look.
For example, Counterpunch put out a very important article earlier today on the topic, adding several crucial nuggets of information.
First there’s this:
The investigation methods used to come to the conclusion that the Russian Government led the hacks of the DNC, Clinton Campaign Chair John Podesta, and the DCCC were further called into question by a recent BuzzFeed report by Jason Leopold, who has developed a notable reputation from leading several non-partisan Freedom of Information Act lawsuits for investigative journalism purposes. On March 15 that the Department of Homeland Security released just two heavily redacted pages of unclassified information in response to an FOIA request for definitive evidence of Russian election interference allegations. Leopold wrote, “what the agency turned over to us and Ryan Shapiro, a PhD candidate at MIT and a research affiliate at Harvard University, is truly bizarre: a two-page intelligence assessment of the incident, dated Aug. 22, 2016, that contains information DHS culled from the internet. It’s all unclassified — yet DHS covered nearly everything in wide swaths of black ink. Why? Not because it would threaten national security, but because it would reveal the methods DHS uses to gather intelligence, methods that may amount to little more than using Google.”
That’s weird enough, but it gets far stranger. For example:
In lieu of substantive evidence provided to the public that the alleged hacks which led to Wikileaks releases of DNC and Clinton Campaign Manager John Podesta’s emails were orchestrated by the Russian Government, CrowdStrike’s bias has been cited as undependable in its own assessment, in addition to its skeptical methods and conclusions. The firm’s CTO and co-founder, Dmitri Alperovitch, is a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, a think tank with openly anti-Russian sentiments that is funded by Ukrainian billionaire Victor Pinchuk, who also happened to donate at least $10 million to the Clinton Foundation.
In 2013, the Atlantic Council awarded Hillary Clinton it’s Distinguished International Leadership Award. In 2014, the Atlantic Council hosted one of several events with former Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk, who took over after pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych was ousted in early 2014, who now lives in exile in Russia.
Recall that the FBI was denied access to the DNC servers by the DNC itself, and simply agreed to rely on the results provided by CrowdStrike, which as you can see has ties to all sorts of anti-Russia organizations and individuals. I find it absolutely remarkable that James Comey head of the FBI outsourced his job to CrowdStrike.
There remains zero evidence that Russia hacked the DNC. I repeat, there remains zero evidence that Russia hacked the DNC.
As cybersecurity expert Jeffrey Carr noted:
DNC should stand for Dirty.Nasty & Corupt these Demacrats are lower then a snake in a wagon rut
No federal agencies were ever allowed to examine the DNC server their claim of a nonpartisan 3rd party never held water. As boxes of missing emails vanishing from FBI offices. The ability to examine 600K emails from Weiners laptop in days all seems too phishy. But our intelligence and justice departments are much too busy now trying to cover up election spying done by a previous administration.
From What we know about evidence of coordination between Russia and the Trump campaign:
Adam Schiff, of the House Intelligence Committee, has publicly stated that the evidence of collusion between the Russians and members of the Trump organization is more than merely circumstantial. That’s an unambiguous claim he wouldn’t be making, unless he knows he can back it up. The sooner we know what he’s referring to, the better.
@Greg: What Madcow never fully expresses collusion to what end exactly what was going to be done?
Collusion like with CNN, The manipulation by DNC to put Hillary in not more popular Bernie? The collusion that put a film maker in prison for a year to try cover up the real reasons of Benghazi? Perhaps to mezmerize her and have her use an illegal storage device? Destroy government documents? Suck as a candidate.
The tactics of Obamas police State have been exposed deal with it. Montgomery has tons of evidence 47 hard drives, hundreds of thousands of documents.
I see where some Dumb-O-Crat lawmaker wanted to make Obama s birthday a state holiday in Illininoise it was rejected DUMB-O-CRATS the stupid jackass party of dumb
@kitt, #4:
Collusion, as in, Russian operatives were making a concerted effort to turn public opinion against Hillary Clinton, and People inside the Trump campaign were being advised of their efforts as they did so.
Here’s what I think:
Without the coordinated efforts of Russian operatives, Wikileaks, and clandestine, widespread Russian manipulation of U.S. political forums and social media, Donald Trump would not be President. He was installed, by way of dishonest domestic and foreign manipulation of public opinion. This can and will be proved, despite resistance from the Trump administration. The public is catching on and will demand answers, and any elected officials blocking honest efforts to find them will go down as a result. The fact that Trump’s ratings are in free fall reflects a growing awareness by the public that they’ve been duped.
There are many unexamined connections between important Trump organization figures and the Russian oligarchy and governmental figures. Much of this has been kept hidden, but it’s all going to come out, and we’re all going to be shocked when it finally does.
That’s what I think. There’s plenty out there already suggesting these are entirely logical, if not inescapable, conclusions. Each assertion can be fully investigated, and determined to be either true or false. The implications, if true, are so serious that it would be treasonous not to fully investigate. It’s the most serious national security issue to have come along in decades. It’s more serious than Watergate, because the issue at question is the possible subversion of our election system and our federal government itself by a hostile foreign power. That’s not hot air or partisan hyperbole. That’s literally what this is all about.
A foreign power has made a calculated effort to render our national government ineffective and dysfunctional, using weaponized social media and an insecure cyber infrastructure to influence an election. Do you doubt the seriousness of the results? Keep watching Washington. We now have two dysfunctional, clueless branches, increasingly unable to practice basic governance, along with an impaired judicial branch. The dysfunctional Executive Branch is busily disassembling the essential institutional structure of our governmental machinery, trashing the State Department, attacking our intelligence community, our investigative agencies, etc. They’re also attacking journalists and media, who would dare to point out what’s happening.
Who, in all of this, seems to consistently escape the Trump administration’s criticism? How can anyone miss this?
@Greg: Did you see his crowds? Did you look at his numbers on the internet, The press couldnt wait to report if he said something they thought was a gotcha. A far as the press goes reporting classified info with their unnamed sources, the unmasking the whole collusion was done on their part.
They persist ,listen to the words unconfirmed, perhaps, suspected thats not news its wild speculation.
CNN colluded thats a fact, The DNC colluded to place Hillary in the candidate position. She was ill the last 1/2 of the campaign, she called voters names, she had no plan to put people back to full time work, it was this 2 jobs to survive and crappy health care is the new norm I will continue to carry on with Obamas policies…damn that voice, that laugh. Yes it was her not the Russians and that her campaign also met with. The fake poll numbers ,havent changed have they.
The State dept during her rein did not properly account for 6 billion, thas alot of cabbage, if a business did that there would be jail for someone.
The MSM basically owned by 6 people will continue on I just wish they would get verified info, including Fox. Investigate all they want we should know, but watching them wring their hands and report wouldn’t it be cool if we could get him impeached is getting old.
The national unemployment rate has been steadily declining since 2009. Thank the Obama administration for that, because Republicans haven’t done squat to improve anything, and still haven’t.
Statistically, on a national level, we’re near most reasonable definitions of full employment. The problems are largely regional. Basically, states with industries and work forces that have not adapted to the global economy, to increasingly sophisticated technology, and to automation have fallen behind. There’s little real prospect of the past returning anytime soon. Trump is not going to somehow magically revitalize the regional coal industry, for example, or reopen aging factories in the rust belt.
I do think he’s on to something with his tariff ideas. What I doubt is that he will have the support of a Republican Party that tends to represent the very industries that have exported jobs to maximize profits. I wish him luck with that. There’s no reason why American workers should be forced to compete with Chinese workers who are happy to be paid a bit over $400 per month, just to keep Wall Street investors and CEOs rolling in money.
Obviously republicans aren’t solving any healthcare system problems. But then, they aren’t really trying. Their commitment over the past 7 years has been to assure that Obamacare fails, using any means at their disposal. They’ve kicked the props out from under it. They’ve worked their butts off to create and worsen problems, while failing to devote even a moment to legislation to eliminate problems. They should all be tarred, feathered, and run out of town on a rail.
@Greg: On the healthcare you are correct the Rinocare sucked we were promised way different than proposed.
They count part time jobs in the employment figures, thats just lying, let them take the jobs that dont have 38 hours or more per week out of that statistic and you would be singing a different tune most jobs created after AHCA were part time. That pushed the medicaid numbers through the roof. Trying to juggle 2 part time jobs neither offering health insurance is very stressful. Do those numbers include those whos benefits have expired?
Employment in mining increased by 8000 jobs in Feb.
With serious tax and regulatory reforms jobs for people not cut out for college will return, automation needs a 2 year tech school degree to maintain these machines, but pays good. Highschools need to put machining, wood working and mechanics classes back into the schedule so a kid is semi ready to hit the road at 18. College is wonderful but has priced itself out of reach, unless the kid wants to have debt as high as a house with no guarantee of a full time job.