Brit ran proKremlin disinfo Cmpgn helped trump deny Russian

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Brit ran proKremlin disinfo Cmpgn helped trump deny Russian

Postby seemslikeadream » Thu Aug 23, 2018 11:52 am

Briton ran pro-Kremlin disinformation campaign that helped Trump deny Russian links


According to former NSA technical manager Tom Drake, “Ray’s determination to publish claims he wanted to believe without checking facts and discarding evidence he didn’t want to hear exactly reproduced the Iraq war intelligence failures which the VIPS group was formed to oppose”. He and other VIPS members refused to sign McGovern’s report.

But the VIPS endorsement was repeated by American media, from respected left-wing publication The Nation to controversial right-wing site Breitbart News. The ploy succeeded – and made it to the White House. Binney was invited on to Fox News and said allegations that Russia had hacked the DNC were unproven. Trump then told CIA director Mike Pompeo to see Binney to find evidence to support the claims. Pompeo met with Binney on 24 October 2017.

Binney said he told the CIA chief that he had no fresh information. But he said he knew where to look – in the surveillance databases of his former intelligence agency, NSA.

As a former top NSA insider, Binney was correct, but not in the way he expected. NSA’s top secret records, disclosed in the DoJ indictment earlier this month, lifted the lid on what the Russians did and how they did it.





Briton ran pro-Kremlin disinformation campaign that helped Trump deny Russian links

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A British IT manager and former hacker launched and ran an international disinformation campaign that has provided US President Donald Trump with fake evidence and false arguments to deny that Russia interfered to help him win the election.


The campaign is being run from the UK by 39-year-old programmer Tim Leonard, who lives in Darlington, using the false name “Adam Carter”. Starting after the 2016 presidential election, Leonard worked with a group of mainly American right-wing activists to spread claims on social media that Democratic “insiders” and non-Russian agents were responsible for hacking the Democratic Party. The hacking attacks had damaged Trump rival Hillary Clinton’s campaign.

The claims led to Trump asking then CIA director Mike Pompeo to investigate allegations circulated from Britain that the Russian government was not responsible for the cyber attacks, and that they could be proved to be an “inside job”, in the form of leaks by a party employee. This was the opposite of the CIA’s official intelligence findings.

Trump went further at his July 2018 summit with President Putin in Helsinki, saying he believed Putin’s claim that Russia had not interfered. In doing so, he rejected multiple highly classified US intelligence agency reports given to him over the past 18 months, including by former president, Barack Obama. “I don’t see any reason … why it would be [Russia],” said Trump.

Three days earlier, the US Department of Justice (DoJ) had charged 12 Russian Federation Main Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff (GRU) intelligence officers with conspiracy against the US, releasing unprecedented amounts of previously top secret information about the agents, offices and tools used in multiple cyber attacks on the Clinton presidential campaign.

After returning to the US, facing outrage over his conduct, Trump claimed he mis-spoke and meant to say the opposite of what he said.

The Guccifer deception

The GRU’s hackers were caught red-handed in June 2016, when the Washington Post exposed evidence of their role. Within 24 hours, after the Post had asked Russia for comment, the hackers fabricated evidence and planted a false trail that the hacking was the work of an imaginary, lone Romanian called Guccifer 2.0. While this happened, GRU officers were spotted doing online searches to check English phrases while penning the first blog post for their Romanian fake, according to the DoJ indictment.

Guccifer 2.0’s role was “falsely to undermine the allegations of Russian responsibility for the intrusion”, according to the indictment. US and European intelligence agencies identified “Guccifer 2.0” as a Russian deception operation before Americans went to vote. Detailed evidence had not been publicly available until the publication of the indictment.

Guccifer 2.0 vanished the week after President Obama released intelligence confirming that Russia had helped Trump to the presidency – just a week before Trump’s inauguration in January 2017. “Here I am, again, my friends,” Guccifer blogged, claiming: “I have totally no relation to the Russian government.” Then he vanished. Tweets, blogs and tempting tips to journalists dried up.

The GRU actor playing Guccifer 2.0 tripped up, and gave his hoax away, several times. On one occasion, he made the catastrophic error of forgetting to turn on his virtual private network (VPN) before logging on to WordPress. WordPress is an American blogging service which records login addresses and can give them to the FBI. The exposed address led US intelligence directly to a GRU Moscow office.

As Trump moved into the White House, he faced growing suspicion – and now a full-blown investigation – that his campaign had been backed by Russia to help win the presidency. In Britain at the same time, archived evidence shows, Tim Leonard was completing a website intended to obfuscate the truth about Guccifer 2.0 and the GRU.

The Guccifer distraction

A Twitter account traced to Leonard revealed his new project – a campaign claiming that the hacking was done by a Democratic Party insider – on 3 February 2017. “What if #Guccifer2 is NOT Russian ... NOT even a hacker – but still had access to DCCC [democratic campaign] docs?” it said.

At 1.14am on 5 February 2017, Leonard registered the website g-2.space. He hid his involvement using nominee company Identity Protect Ltd, but was given away by internet records which showed that the site was operated from internet address 213.229.109.154, one of two UK virtual servers he ran for web design company Creative Insomnia.

His g-2.space front page went live 13 hours later, and included the hidden warning: “Contingency plans are in place in case this site or its creator are compromised.” A hidden web page comment warned: “If I die under suspicious circumstances, the primary suspects should be the Clinton cartel.”

G-2.space’s launch page listed five prominent mainstream journalists he had contacted, and who had faced demands to disclose their evidence and sources about Guccifer 2.0. All declined or ignored him.

Leonard’s website was created in and run from the UK, using servers owned by Creative Insomnia of Newport, Gwent. Leonard is listed in company records as a shareholder and director. His activity was not known of or authorised by others in the company ().

Leonard admits hosting g-2.space, a website which published numerous articles giving mutually contradictory and often nonsensical theories, each attempting to prove that the pretend Romanian was not a Russian disinformation invention.

Leonard also admits that he secretly built another website inside the servers he was employed to manage. His first hidden site, Defianet (d3f.uk), initially campaigned on piracy and privacy, themes familiar to programmers who had worked with him on unrelated projects and who spoke with Computer Weekly.

Defianet’s front page proclaimed “United in the shadows” when it went online in September 2014. During 2017, he transformed Defianet to make it a focus for US extremist and conspiracy “independent media” groups, many of which are notorious for spreading false news. The site also promoted WikiLeaks and Russia Today (RT), the state-owned media channel.

Leonard has created and managed a library of disinformation manuals and techniques shared with his supporters, including “Weaponisation of social media”, “Deception techniques” and “Information warfare”. He moved the library to g-2.space after being ordered to close Defianet.

Leonard, who lives in a modest red-brick house in Darlington, is the technical director of Creative Insomnia. He admits that he built websites “making use of Creative Insomnia’s infrastructure”, including g-2.space, without the knowledge of his company, a fellow director and other workers. It was “entirely my responsibility ... not a board-approved decision”, he confessed in a letter.

G-2.space claims to be written by an anonymous persona called Adam Carter. The name was copied from a character in Spooks, a BBC spy drama series broadcast from 2002 to 2011.

Computer Weekly has established that the email address used by the fictional Adam Carter – op@d3f.uk – was set up on Creative Insomnia’s email system in 2014, and used to run accounts on Reddit, Twitter and Disqus. The email used was on the same domain as Leonard’s Defianet site. As the company’s sole server manager, Leonard was the only person able to create new websites and email addresses.

Creative Insomnia

Creative Insomnia was launched as a web design business in January 2005. It is run by partners Mark Butler and Sarah Chicken, who are university lecturers at the University of South Wales and the University of the West of England. Tim Leonard joined in 2010. They currently host about 45 small sites on UK datacentres run by Simply Transit of Bracknell.

Because of this, the IP addresses which Leonard secretly used to promote his views on US politics were shared with other clients, including Newport’s gay sauna, a swinger site, Welsh businesses, and the host company.

Contacted initially in December 2017, Butler said he had no prior knowledge of Leonard’s disinformation activities. Butler said he was shocked to learn that hidden sites and email services had been secretly running on his company’s systems since 2014. He ordered them taken down. Both sites went offline within two hours. One soon reappeared online at a new site in Bulgaria, and was later moved back to the UK host Webfusion, in an IP block controlled from Leeds.

The websites had been set up “behind the backs of directors”, Butler said. There is no suggestion that Butler or Chicken previously knew about Leonard’s concealed activities.

Butler confirmed to Computer Weekly at the time that he had “disciplined Tim Leonard”. “He has apologised for using the servers,” he said. “Where we are going next, I don’t know. I have to speak to another member of the company to decide what to do with Tim,” he added.

When the Twitter account @with_integrity used the email address in 2016, the writer described himself as a “CTO/software developer/ex-blackhat” from England – a description matching Tim Leonard. During the US elections, @with_integrity and Leonard’s other accounts began circulating media attacks on Hillary Clinton, describing her as a “fracking warmonger”.

The Twitter account, which was later also given the fake name Adam Carter, trolled mainstream journalists or academics who disagreed with conspiracy theories Leonard encouraged in early 2017. On unmoderated social networks permitting hate speech, “Carter” later linked to American neo-Nazis such as “Anna” and promoters of the Daily Stormer neo-Nazi website.

One @with_integrity tweet asked for confirmation that the cyber security expert who first spotted Russian hackers was Jewish. “Social media activity patterns [suggest] possible observance of the Sabbath,” he told followers.

After his hidden sites were discovered in December 2017, Leonard told Creative Insomnia founder Mark Butler that he had created g-2.space for an “old friend” called Ken. In a letter, he referred to “further enquiries regarding g-2.space in relation to some points Adam/Ken has asked me to look into”.

Leonard told Butler that Ken – the mysterious friend he claimed was running the Adam Carter operation – was Ken McClelland, a programmer who had worked with Leonard in Methlabs, a group building a software firewall.

This was untrue, Computer Weekly has found. Journalists traced McClelland to western Canada, and interviewed him. Asked why he had lied about McClelland and the accounts he had created, Leonard did not reply.

Hoax hits White House

One document – a tip-off file obtained in June 2017 by Leonard’s site from an “anonymous source” – took new disinformation all the way to the White House and the CIA.

The untitled file included complex details explaining how to unlock information inside a tranche of files released by Guccifer 2.0 in London. Metadata in the files had been manipulated to “prove” that the documents could have been stolen by a Democratic National Committee (DNC) employee. Until the file arrived, the information hidden in the files, created by the GRU hackers and known only to them, had not been detected by security experts.

The document, rewritten for propaganda effect, was published three weeks later and claimed to be the work of a new fake personality called Forensicator, which claimed that stolen DNC documents were copied to a computer located in the eastern US. If correct, it was devastating news for US intelligence – because it cleared the Russians.

Some former intelligence officials, from a group called Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS), backed up the claim. A group, including William Binney, a former technical director at the US National Security Agency (NSA), and former CIA officer Ray McGovern, were persuaded, without checking the file data, to say that the hacking was the work of insiders.

According to former NSA technical manager Tom Drake, “Ray’s determination to publish claims he wanted to believe without checking facts and discarding evidence he didn’t want to hear exactly reproduced the Iraq war intelligence failures which the VIPS group was formed to oppose”. He and other VIPS members refused to sign McGovern’s report.

But the VIPS endorsement was repeated by American media, from respected left-wing publication The Nation to controversial right-wing site Breitbart News. The ploy succeeded – and made it to the White House. Binney was invited on to Fox News and said allegations that Russia had hacked the DNC were unproven. Trump then told CIA director Mike Pompeo to see Binney to find evidence to support the claims. Pompeo met with Binney on 24 October 2017.

Binney said he told the CIA chief that he had no fresh information. But he said he knew where to look – in the surveillance databases of his former intelligence agency, NSA.

As a former top NSA insider, Binney was correct, but not in the way he expected. NSA’s top secret records, disclosed in the DoJ indictment earlier this month, lifted the lid on what the Russians did and how they did it.

A month after visiting CIA headquarters, Binney came to Britain. After re-examining the data in Guccifer 2.0 files thoroughly with the author of this article, Binney changed his mind. He said there was “no evidence to prove where the download/copy was done”. The Guccifer 2.0 files analysed by Leonard’s g-2.space were “manipulated”, he said, and a “fabrication”.

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William Binney (left) checks the Forensicator report with author Duncan Campbell

How Russia attacked

The GRU used multiple units to conduct “large-scale cyber operations to interfere with the 2016 US presidential election”, according to the US hacking indictment. The operations involved “staged releases of documents stolen through computer intrusions”, including by Guccifer 2.0, WikiLeaks and DCLeaks, another front observed being set up by the GRU.

Security experts have been stunned by the depth and detail of US intelligence information on the hackers in the indictment. Some of the detail could likely only have come as the results of counter-attacks on the GRU, implanting malware that was copying screens and keystrokes, at the same time they were doing the same to officials in the Democratic Party.

The main Russian attack began in March 2016, and used large-scale phishing attacks that acquired the email accounts of members of Hillary Clinton’s campaign team, including campaign chairman John Podesta. Staged releases began in June 2016.

Three days before the start of the Democratic National Convention on 22 July 2016, WikiLeaks published the first of 44,053 emails from the senior democrats’ accounts, including 17,761 attachments. Some of the emails appeared to show bias by top-level Democratic Party officials in favour of Clinton. Four top DNC officials quickly resigned, throwing Clinton’s nomination convention into disarray.

Guccifer 2.0 claimed credit, tweeting – accurately, it now appears – that WikiLeaks had published documents “I'd given them”. Donald Trump loved it, telling a Florida news conference that Russia should increase its cyber espionage: “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing.”

Trump repeated his view a month before US election day, telling a Pennsylvania crowd: “I love WikiLeaks!”

The Russian attacks included creating fake social media “posing as US persons... to interfere with US political and electoral processes” in order to defeat “the lawful governmental functions of the United States”, according to another grand jury indictment released in February. The indictment charged 13 Russians working for the St Petersburg Internet Research Agency – known as the “troll factory”. Impersonating a US citizen to interfere in elections is a crime in the US, irrespective of the country where it takes place.

Leonard’s @with_integrity Twitter account had also posed as a US citizen in the same period.

Darlington’s disinformation warrior

At the start of his career, Leonard (pictured left) helped create a firewall system, PeerGuardian, which was designed to block music industry investigators from infiltrating networks where computer users shared music in breach of copyright laws. Leonard worked with a group of privacy and piracy activists in Europe, Canada and the US. His online name was Method.

Leonard’s website Methlabs was used to develop and support PeerGuardian. His blog posts on Methlabs promoted Ecstasy test kits, shared cracked programs and hacks, and threatened distributed denial of service (DDOS) attacks on film industry anti-piracy teams.

Leonard was later hired to run servers for Simplyclick, a now-defunct portal which provided intranets for British schools.

Evidence recorded by the Internet Archive shows that he hid blocking lists of film industry investigators’ addresses inside Simplyclick’s infrastructure. Archived evidence from Simplyclick also refers to a Methlab tool, XS (see image below).

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Methlab XS shown on Simplyclick

Leonard began creating networks of anonymous media accounts after he joined Welsh internet firm Creative Insomnia. In many of the accounts, he pretended to be a US citizen and Democratic Party supporter, posting thousands of angry, expletive-loaded comments. With a hissing cat as avatar, in August 2010 he signed up to blog host Disqus as @Retaliate. He added more anonymous Disqus accounts – @InconvenientProof and @OptimumCognition.

Leonard again offered to exploit servers he was responsible for managing. In November 2010, he told other programmers: “I can certainly host a site ... the boxes I’ve got should be able to handle a fair bit of traffic ... of course it would be free.”

Leonard has refused to explain why he started building and running profiles in which he pretended to be a US citizen. Social media activity seen by Computer Weekly shows that he subscribed to US conspiracy theory sites, including Breitbart News, Infowars and Bulltruth.

After building Defianet’s website, he added a new Disqus account – @Inviolable – and joined Reddit as d3fi4nt (Defiant). Both accounts used his Creative Insomnia email address, op@d3f.uk. On Reddit, d3fi4nt posed as a US-based Democrat supporter of Bernie Sanders, publishing hate messages targeted at Clinton, and signed up to The Donald, an exclusive Reddit location for Trump supporters, as well as r/Conspiracy, a notorious watering hole for conspiracy theorists.

On Disqus, @Retaliate and @InconvenientProof posted attacks on Clinton, following the same messaging at the same times as known Russian trolls. @InconvenientProof and d3fi4nt also operated as sockpuppets, referencing other Leonard-operated accounts and activity. @OptimumCognition focused on media industry claims to be losing revenue to pirates, writing: “Prove your alleged losses ... or shut up and fuck off.”

His @Retaliate and @InconvenientProof Disqus accounts participated in alt-right US news groups, including Breitbart News Network, a far right-wing platform created by former Trump advisor Steve Bannon. Disqus expelled the Breitbart group in 2017 after it was described as “one of the vilest cesspools on the internet ... the worst of humankind” for supporting racism and neo-Nazis.

On a Creative Insomnia domain called ciuk.eu, Leonard created multiple private personal mailboxes, using initials and false names. According to the website Have I been pwned?, email address t@ciuk.eu subscribed to games hacking websites PS3hax and Multiple Game Player Hacks (MGPH) in 2014 and 2015.

On a single day in 2015, Leonard created two new Disqus accounts using ciuk.eu addresses: @InconvenientProof, linked to tix@ciuk.eu; and @OptimumCognition, linked to a ciuk.eu mail address for a Sarah Thomas.

IP addresses used to log in to these accounts, seen by Computer Weekly, showed that the user often used a VPN anonymiser service. When, like Guccifer, Leonard forgot to switch on his VPN, he was using addresses provided by Virgin Media broadband in the UK. Fixed Virgin IP addresses used were assigned to Haughton Le Skerne – the small Darlington district where Leonard purchased a house in 2007.

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Defianet proxy page

At first, Defianet looked like the work of an ambitious hacktivist. The site focused on torrents and security, advertised discussion fora, claimed to run unique “d3fcrypt” encrypted chat channels, as well as a torrent “magnet link collection” called MASS.

A “proxy relay” offered to users was built inside Creative Insomnia’s systems (see image above). The Defianet link was running at the time of publication, and is archived here. Logged in test users included Method and Retaliate.

Defianet’s original front page (see image below) stated that it was created by m3th0d (Method) and three others. Method is Leonard’s nickname. On Reddit, Disqus and Twitter, Leonard published the email address op@d3f.uk. Emails sent by that account passed through Creative Insomnia’s mail server, mail.creativeinsomnia.co.uk.

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Defianet’s original front page

“I’m with integrity”

As US election campaigns ramped up in May 2016, Leonard’s Defianet email address, op@d3f.uk, was used to create a new Twitter account, @with_integrity. The name, he said, was a parody of Clinton’s campaign slogan, “I’m with Hillary”. The profile displayed a WikiLeaks avatar.

For 10 days in 2016, @with_integrity trolled and attacked the Democratic Convention, accusing the Democrats of collusion, conspiracy, cheating, corruption, rigging elections and sabotage.

On 22 July 2016, @with_integrity tweeted a link to the Russian propaganda and news channel, RT, claiming that primary elections had been rigged. On 26 July, as delegates voted, @with_integrity tweeted a new RT attack on Hillary Clinton.

After Clinton was nominated, @with_integrity followed the Russian trolls’ path in supporting Donald Trump, retweeting Trump slogans, including #CrookedHillary, #LockHerUp, #MakeAmericaGreatAgain and #VoteOnlyTrump, and a third link to a “special episode” on RT.

Two months after g-2.space was launched, Leonard’s @with_integrity Twitter account also started claiming to be run by Adam Carter. The previous WikiLeaks symbol was replaced by angular lettering (IWI – I’m with Integrity) created in an obscure typeface called Critical Mass LDR. Leonard used the identical typeface to create Defianet’s logo and for a special program used by “Carter”, which he called Hexcell (see image below).

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Obscure typeface Critical Mass showed link betweeen different deception sites

Fragments of Hexcell were left inside Creative Insomnia’s servers after Leonard was ordered to shut down Defianet. Leonard has admitted that he ran the Hexcell program from his personal folder inside Creative Insomnia, called Timtest. Leonard created the Hexcell program in a failed attempt to find data proving Guccifer was a former Democratic Party manager.

On g-2.space, Leonard published multiple contradictory descriptions of who Carter was supposed to be. His blog first claimed: “I am NOT a journalist or reporter ... I’m just a civilian that noticed some oddities.”

Days later, it claimed the opposite: “An independent, investigative ‘citizen journalist’ from the UK.” Meanwhile on Twitter, “Carter” described himself as a chief technology officer (CTO), a software developer and ex-blackhat, an Englishman living in England – an accurate description of Leonard.

“[I was] schooled by other hackers while working as a software developer and maintaining servers,” Leonard posted on Disqus in 2011, as @Retaliate. Last month, his Carter account claimed on Steemit: “I know what it feels like to have unauthorised access to hundreds of servers that you’re not supposed to have access to. Fortunately, for the past 15 years, I’ve been working in IT in a far more legitimate capacity and currently manage an array of servers.”

Hacking to gain unauthorised access to computer stystems – blackhat hacking – is an offence in the UK under the Computer Misuse Act, punishable by a maximum of 10 years in prison and a fine.

A bucket of conspiracy theories

Leonard’s first theory about Guccifer 2.0, posted to Reddit’s “r/conspiracy” subreddit in October 2016, was that “the feds (FBI) did it”. Guccifer 2.0 (G2) was really being used by the FBI, similar to compromised Lulzsec hacker Sabu in 2011, he claimed. Leonard had blogged at the time that he was the first person accurately to spot that the FBI had got control of Lulzsec.

In February 2017, Leonard’s g-2.space site proclaimed “Game Over”. On Reddit, he threatened a campaign of “disruption” against media outlets unless they agreed to stop reporting the US intelligence assessment on Russia, or failed to report as fact his theory that Guccifer 2.0 was a Democratic Party insider.

“Media entities will then be given seven days from confirmation of receipt to clean up their act and cease reporting” – otherwise, he would “red card violators”, he told Reddit.

The second theory, published on g-2.space, was that G2 could not be a hacker, because a stolen DNC “opposition research” file published on 15 June 2016 “took a mere 30 minutes to go from a DNC contractor creating documents to Guccifer2”. This theory was unfounded.

Leonard’s third theory involved the program called Hexcell, which he had installed on a Creative Insomnia server. Hexcell’s purpose was to decode “binary large objects” to prove that G2 was “a misdirection effort”. He tweeted Goo.gl short links using the program to hashtag #Guccifer2.

When run, the links accessed cached copies of analyses stored inside Creative Insomnia. The cached copies recorded giveaway internal filepaths to his Timtest folder (blocked from external access). After Leonard admitted creating the Timtest folder and the giveaway Hexcell links, the files disappeared.

Theory number four claimed that the DNC was hacked by Crowdstrike, the security company it had hired to kick out the Russian hackers. Four days later, according to g-2-space theory number five, a group of Ukrainians were claimed to be the real hackers – citing evidence that they had visited the White House on the day of the hack.

His g-2.space site then complained to 100 US senators that they had ignored his finding that the hacking could not have been done by Russians. None were interested. He then circulated 150 foreign ambassadors in London complaining of a “serious ... threat to global stability” if his theories were “not investigated properly”.

The g-2.space theory that worked – the theory that President Trump pushed to the CIA – was based on a unique document dump by Guccifer 2.0, in Britain.

Guccifer appears in London (not)

On 20 August 2016, UK conference organisers PSBE Events, part of iMember Media group (iMM), announced a world exclusive. They had booked the world’s then most notorious hacker – Guccifer 2.0.

Guccifer 2.0 would appear in person for the first time, they promised, in a video “live stream” at their September conference in London, Future of Cyber Security Europe 2016. Publicity for his talk, called Hacking Insights from Guccifer 2.0, generated “an awful lot of excitement”, they tweeted.

The GRU team had three weeks to decide what to say and do in London, after getting the conference invite. They played up a theory which had started to circulate in obscure conspiracy-focused chat-rooms on 4chan and Reddit, placing blame on Seth Rich, a then recently murdered DNC employee, for the DNC leaks.

Two bullets in the back had taken the life of 27-year-old DNC researcher Rich, as he walked home from work late at night in Washington. The date, significant to how his death was later exploited, was 10 July 2016. Two weeks later, in a private message exchange with Guccifer 2.0 published by a US actress, the pretend hacker referred to Rich’s death and claimed, “His name is Seth, he was my whistleblower”.

Rich’s bereaved parents have repeatedly pleaded for the torrent of conspiracy claims about their dead son to come to an end. “Anyone who claims to have such evidence is either concealing it from us or lying,” his father Joel said, adding: “They have a transparent political agenda or are a sociopath.”

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange also planted a public pointer to Rich, after Guccifer 2.0 claimed to have provided the stolen DNC emails to WikiLeaks – a claim also shown to be accurate, according to evidence described in the latest US indictment. On 9 August 2016, WikiLeaks tweeted a $20,000 reward offer for information leading to the conviction of Rich’s killer. WikiLeaks had previously offered rewards for leaks, but never, before or since, used the tactic to point to a possible confidential source. WikiLeaks attempted to backtrack the next day.

Forensic analysis of the files prepared for the conference suggests that the GRU team then hoped to exploit the London conference opportunity by framing Rich.

By early September 2016, Guccifer 2.0’s operators had 2,280 stolen DNC files ready to publish at the conference. None of the files concerned Rich or his work. File internal data analysis shows that they were all stale, deadwood information, and of no relevance in 2016. All had been completed and closed before the previous presidential election in 2012.

Using a combination of copying and compression techniques, the “last modified” timestamps of all but 12 of the aged files was changed to 5 July 2016, just five days before Rich was killed and 17 days before WikiLeaks published its first share of the DNC hacks. While this was done, the computer in use for copying had its clock set to Eastern Daylight Time (EDT), the zone covering Washington DC and the eastern US seaboard.

Conference organisers had previously asked former British hackers to present the speech, but they declined. Mustafa Al-Bassam, a former hacker from the Lulzsec group, said: “I didn’t want to be a representative for potentially illegal hacking activities.”

News teams arrived at Prospero House, a conference centre near London Bridge, on 13 September 2016, and were disappointed. There would be no live streaming. Instead, the hackers had sent the organisers instructions, including a prepared speech, a PowerPoint show published here for the first time, and a link to a uniquely structured compressed file of stolen data.

Conference presenter Tim Holmes read Guccifer’s long, rambling, ungrammatical statement. Holmes displayed a slide giving an internet address from which to download the files, and the password to unlock them (see image below).

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Tim Holmes shows slide giving url from which to download files

Guccifer’s PowerPoint presentation, a pseudo-hacktivist rant, mixed much-derided Comic Sans lettering with images lifted from TV’s Mr Robot. The Guccifer script claimed that the hacks had exploited flaws in NGP-VAN, the voter analysis system used by the Democrats. This claim was not supported by an explanation, or by the contents of the stolen files, and has been refuted by the company.

Mark Hilton, solicitor for iMM group and Cyber News, told Computer Weekly: “My client simply invited [Guccifer 2.0] to present at the conference. My client did not stipulate or dictate the concept of the presentation. My client ... was never informed as to the existence and content of the hacked information/data.”

When users on Twitter asked how to open the hacked container of DNC files, the Twitter account run from Leonard’s d3f.uk’s email server – @with_integrity – tweeted the password “for anyone struggling”. The password was GuCCif3r_2.0 – the fake hacker’s name in “leet speak”.

How the Forensicator fraud worked

The team that created Forensicator, including Leonard, gave away that they were not the real authors of the analysis when they inaccurately copied a Linux “Bash” script they had been sent, breaking it. This suggested that they did not write, understand, or test the script before they published. Someone else had sent the script, together with the fake conclusion they wanted discovered and published – that DNC stolen files had been copied in the US Eastern Time zone on 5 July 2016, five days before DNC employee Seth Rich was killed.

Uncritical reporters failed to spot that the Forensicator blog gave no evidence for its conclusion, which was that the data analysed was evidence of theft by local copying happening within the eastern US. The Forensicator report avoided pointing out that the time stamps examined were present only in the special London group of documents, and not in tens of thousands of other DNC files published by WikiLeaks or Guccifer 2.0.

The files were manipulated using an unusual method of file packing, forensic checks show. Because of computer clock settings, the packing operations appeared to have created “evidence” that the stolen files had been copied in the US Eastern Time zone, which includes Washington.

US Eastern Standard Time (EST) is normally five hours behind Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) – better known in Britain as Greenwich Mean Time (GMT). In summer months, clocks are set forward, placing the US Eastern Daylight Time (EDT) four hours behind UTC. The difference between a time zone and UTC is the offset. It is trivially easy for any computer user to change their time, date and time zone offset, using standard controls.

The files released in London, we found, had first been processed in this way to show timestamps for 5 July 2016. Some 13 groups had then been compressed using WinRAR 4.2. Nine additional files were compressed using 7zip. The archive, called 7dc58-ngp-van.7z, was published in this format, as a single file of 680MB.

This dual compression method was unique to the London documents. It was not used in other file dumps released by Guccifer 2.0, WikiLeaks or other publishers of stolen DNC material. The special method used two different file compression systems, 7zip and WinRAR, and required using a four-year-old, superseded version of WinRAR to obtain the required result. The way the Russians did it, the two compression operations appeared to overlap within a single 20-minute period. The tampering may have been done on 1 September, a week before the London conference.

On inspecting the full data analysis, Binney agreed: “It’s clear G2 is messing with the data. Everything G2 says is suspect and needs to be proven by other sources/means. I agree there is no evidence to prove where the download/copy was done.”

He added: “The merger of data from 5 July and 1 September ... makes all the G2 crap a fabrication ... we should only say what we can prove with evidence.”

Privately, Binney says his colleague Ray McGovern, who has also pushed the Forensicator theories, accepts that there is no evidence where the files were really copied. “Ray no longer argues that point – except to call it an ‘alleged location’,” said Binney. McGovern has refused to confirm this, or to answer questions about evidence for his claims.

Despite accepting that there was no evidence, Binney and McGovern have not retracted the claims in the 2017 VIPS report at the time of writing.

In a bizarre and telling sequel, a retired engineer later spotted that some files released in London had popped up a second time in a batch of so-called “Clinton Foundation” files published by Guccifer 2.0 in October. But the file modification times were one hour different. This happens if computer time zone settings are being manipulated as files are copied and recopied, as described above. This was an inconvenient truth. Accepting that the engineer, Steve McIntyre, was factually correct, the Forensicator came up with a comic and far-fetched explanation to avoid talking about clock tampering.

Their explain-it-away theory was that in 2016 their alleged DNC leaker had transferred the aged problem files from Washington to a computer using US Central Time, one hour behind DC time. The leaker then copied the files to a thumb drive in the Central Time zone, flew “back to the East Coast” and copied it again for public release. To assist readers’ understanding, they published a large map showing how to fly memory sticks from Washington to New Orleans, and back again (see image below).

Image

Fantasy explanation of timestamp faking

The obvious, simple explanation was that hackers were manipulating computer clock settings. The observed changes would have taken seconds.

A hike to the Rockies

It took a month to locate Ken McClelland, the Canadian programmer who Leonard told his boss was the real Adam Carter – the friend he claimed to have built the sites for. With the assistance of Canadian TV company Global, we found and spoke to McClelland.

McClelland lives in Kelowna, a scenic British Columbia town in the eastern Rockies, astride Canada’s main east-west highway.

Leonard’s claim that McClelland was the real Russian disinformation agent had initially appeared to have substance. At the time Leonard and McClelland worked together, McClelland’s online name had been d3f, as used in the Defianet site name, d3f.uk.

Leonard and McClelland, then 16 years old, had worked together to build PeerGuardian, the firewall system designed to block music industry investigators from infiltrating P2P networks.

Leonard was “lying”, says McClelland. Leonard had “set him up to cover himself”. He had never heard or known of d3f.uk or Defianet. McClelland added that he had stopped using d3f as an online nickname by 2010, he and Leonard had never met in person, and Leonard had not asked for permission to use his online name.

“I haven’t talked to the man in a decade. It’s a pissoff,” McClelland added, in the TV interview.

Responses

In a letter admitting setting up the hidden Creative Insomnia sites, Tim Leonard wrote: “No crime has been committed by myself nor has any crime been committed through those sites.” Computer Weekly is not suggesting that Leonard or any of the websites associated with him has committed any crime.

Last December, after another IT publication asked about Carter, staff received threats, sent through Creative Insomnia’s email systems, managed by Leonard and signed Adam Carter.

The emails threatened: “I can generate a lot of noise... I already have an article prepared. I am prepared to write a much more muted, sanitised version that won’t inherently be propagated by a bunch of independent media outlets ... all depends on how everyone else wishes to proceed.”

If a story was published, he said, the publication would “end up spontaneously combusting”, and the author of this article would “burn”.

When Leonard was called, he claimed the author of this article was an “American-style Russiagater”. On Imgur, Leonard published all the enquiries sent to “Carter”, accompanied by his own evasive responses. On Twitter, “Carter” published part of an email addressed to Leonard.

Two days later, the “Carter” operation merged with Disobedient Media, and Carter appeared on the site as a “technology correspondent”.

Leonard’s other responses have been revealing about his operations. Within two hours of being approached and photographed by the Sunday Times at home in Darlington, the Adam Carter account was used to tweet: “I’m anticipating character attacks, straw man attacks and other flak from MSM [mainstream media] outlets. Of course, I’m not anticipating they’ll focus on the evidence and research raised.”

Within two hours of a Computer Weekly editor asking Leonard’s company for comment, the Carter account clicked to start following him on Twitter.

Last week, Computer Weekly sent Leonard a detailed email for comment, addressed to him as Mr Leonard, to his Creative Insomnia email address and his defianet@protonmail.com email. The reply was signed “Adam Carter” and came from the email address defianet@protonmail.com, which Leonard has used since the start of 2018. Leonard did not respond to the specific questions we asked.

As Carter, he has tweeted: “Those behind Guccifer 2.0 sacrificed their own hacking claims in an effort to point out that Seth Rich had dealings w/Russians when alive.” On Reddit, as “d3fi4nt”, he has stated his target: “To be clear – I believe Seth Rich was the source for the DNC leaks.”

According to US deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein when releasing the latest indictment, the hacking and disinformation activities he described were part of a larger plan to “spread divisive messages” and to “spread disinformation and to sow discord on a mass scale in order ... ultimately to undermine the appeal of democracy itself”.

Additional research: This extensive investigation would not have been possible without essential help from Global Kelowna TV, Canada; Global TV video journalist Kelly Hayes; data and forensic analysis by programmer Matt Fowler; media network analysis by Lawrence Alexander; and research assistance from former hackers Lauri Love and Mustafa Al Bassam.

The US disinformation team

Disobedient Media is a so-called “independent media” site that describes “Adam Carter” as its technology correspondent. It claims to “bring honesty and integrity back into journalism”. The site has recycled paedophile allegations directed at Hillary Clinton and fellow democrats, and has made repeated attempts to frame murdered DNC official Seth Rich.

Newspapers in France, Germany, Spain and Britain have identified Disobedient Media as an epicentre of Russian-backed attacks on Europe, using forged documents, including smears against Angela Merkel, Sadiq Khan and Emmanuel Macron.

The site, which has run since Trump took office, claims to be run by four young Americans whose records say they each live with their parents. Co-founder and head researcher Ethan Lyle, 23, registered the business name to his parents’ house in a remote part of rural Iowa’s plains. Lyle is no longer listed as a member of the team.

Disobedient Media was started by William Craddick, who claims to have been the prime spreader of a conspiracy story known as Pizzagate, which claimed that Hillary Clinton and her election staff ran a child sex and torture ring in the non-existent basement of a Washington pizzeria.

On startup, Craddick publicised a Pastebin dump of false information claiming that Angela Merkel was bringing ISIS terrorists into Europe so that she could unleash an “EU Army” against other EU states. The article displayed Merkel appearing to give a fascist salute (pictured left).

Following the Westminster Bridge terror attack, Craddick published false claims that London mayor Sadiq Khan was linked to ISIS and the Muslim Brotherhood. In September, Disobedient Media reported that cancellation of the Catalan referendum had put in doubt Spain’s membership of the EU. The report was identified by El Pais as Russian disinformation. Craddick has also tweeted fictitious quotes never spoken by Winston Churchill.

The day before the French presidential election, which took place on 5 May 2017, Disobedient Media was chosen as the channel to release 9GB of hacked email and files from associates of now-President Emmanuel Macron. According to the new US indictment, one of the officers whose name leaked into Macron’s hacked mail, Georgy Petrovich Roshka, was an employee of GRU unit 26165 and also took part in the DNC attacks – further, if indirectly, connecting Leonard to the Russian disinformation activity.
https://www.computerweekly.com/news/252 ... sian-links



The ploy succeeded – and made it to the White House
and here at RI by me and others although I had a different and skeptical view about it


US Intelligence Veterans Believe Russian Hack Inside Job
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=40613&p=641268&hilit=Binney#p641268


Trumpublicons: Foreign Influence/Grifting in '16 US Election
conniption » Thu Jul 06, 2017 9:38 pm wrote:
conniption » Thu Jul 06, 2017 6:14 pm wrote:Thanks for the article I was about to post, Harvey. You beat me to it.
There are a number of comments following the Craig Murray piece and embedded links throughout.

https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives ... ut-secret/

Also, these relevant articles in case you missed it: (I know CNN missed it, because they're still going on about the "17 intelligence agencies")

NYT retracts claim that ‘17 US intelligence agencies’ verified Russian DNC email hack
Published time: 30 Jun, 2017
https://www.rt.com/viral/394821-nyt-int ... im-debunk/


AP latest to retract claim that ‘17 US agencies’ confirmed Russian DNC email hack
Published time: 1 Jul, 2017
https://www.rt.com/viral/394917-associa ... mp-russia/


and today, from MoA:

July 06, 2017
The Undeniable Pattern Of Russian Hacking

http://www.moonofalabama.org/2017/07/th ... cking.html

_____

Harvey » Mon Jul 03, 2017 12:14 pm wrote:I had a notion to write a novel set in a bleak near future after another more catastrophic American civil war leads to it's virtual disengagement with the rest of the world, the upshot being each chapter is a story from various victim nations of the American will to 'freedom,' (read resource war) but nobody gives America a second thought, they're all too busy getting on with their actual lives, they almost didn't notice, except to the degree they weren't being bombed by America or her allies. Might still be an interesting idea...

The Stink Without a Secret

3 Jul, 2017, Craig Murray

After six solid months of co-ordinated allegation from the mainstream media allied to the leadership of state security institutions, not one single scrap of solid evidence for Trump/Russia election hacking has emerged.

I do not support Donald Trump. I do support truth. There is much about Trump that I dislike intensely. Neither do I support the neo-liberal political establishment in the USA. The latter’s control of the mainstream media, and cunning manipulation of identity politics, seeks to portray the neo-liberal establishment as the heroes of decent values against Trump. Sadly, the idea that the neo-liberal establishment embodies decent values is completely untrue.

Truth disappeared so long ago in this witch-hunt that it is no longer even possible to define what the accusation is. Belief in “Russian hacking” of the US election has been elevated to a generic accusation of undefined wrongdoing, a vague malaise we are told is floating poisonously in the ether, but we are not allowed to analyse. What did the Russians actually do?

The original, base accusation is that it was the Russians who hacked the DNC and Podesta emails and passed them to Wikileaks. (I can assure you that is untrue).

The authenticity of those emails is not in question. What they revealed of cheating by the Democratic establishment in biasing the primaries against Bernie Sanders, led to the forced resignation of Debbie Wasserman Shultz as chair of the Democratic National Committee. They also led to the resignation from CNN of Donna Brazile, who had passed debate questions in advance to Clinton. Those are facts. They actually happened. Let us hold on to those facts, as we surf through lies. There was other nasty Clinton Foundation and cash for access stuff in the emails, but we do not even need to go there for the purpose of this argument.

The original “Russian hacking” allegation was that it was the Russians who nefariously obtained these damning emails and passed them to Wikileaks. The “evidence” for this was twofold. A report from private cyber security firm Crowdstrike claimed that metadata showed that the hackers had left behind clues, including the name of the founder of the Soviet security services. The second piece of evidence was that a blogger named Guccifer2 and a websitecalled DNC Leaks appeared to have access to some of the material around the same time that Wikileaks did, and that Guccifer2 could be Russian.

That is it. To this day, that is the sum total of actual “evidence” of Russian hacking. I won’t say hang on to it as a fact, because it contains no relevant fact. But at least it is some form of definable allegation of something happening, rather than “Russian hacking” being a simple article of faith like the Holy Trinity.

But there are a number of problems that prevent this being fact at all. Nobody has ever been able to refute the evidence of Bill Binney, former Technical Director of the NSA who designed its current surveillance systems. Bill has stated that the capability of the NSA is such, that if the DNC computers had been hacked, the NSA would be able to trace the actual packets of that information as those emails travelled over the internet, and give a precise time, to the second, for the hack. The NSA simply do not have the event – because there wasn’t one. I know Bill personally and am quite certain of his integrity.

As we have been repeatedly told, “17 intelligence agencies” sign up to the “Russian hacking”, yet all these king’s horses and all these king’s men have been unable to produce any evidence whatsoever of the purported “hack”. Largely because they are not in fact trying. Here is another actual fact I wish you to hang on to: The Democrats have refused the intelligence agencies access to their servers to discover what actually happened. I am going to say that again.

The Democrats have refused the intelligence agencies access to their servers to discover what actually happened.

The heads of the intelligence community have said that they regard the report from Crowdstrike – the Clinton aligned private cyber security firm – as adequate. Despite the fact that the Crowdstrike report plainly proves nothing whatsoever and is based entirely on an initial presumption there must have been a hack, as opposed to an internal download.

Not actually examining the obvious evidence has been a key tool in keeping the “Russian hacking” meme going. On 24 May the Guardian reported triumphantly, following the Washington Post, that

“Fox News falsely alleged federal authorities had found thousands of emails between Rich and Wikileaks, when in fact law enforcement officials disputed that Rich’s laptop had even been in possession of, or examined by, the FBI.”


It evidently did not occur to the Guardian as troubling, that those pretending to be investigating the murder of Seth Rich have not looked at his laptop.

There is a very plain pattern here of agencies promoting the notion of a fake “Russian crime”, while failing to take the most basic and obvious initial steps if they were really investigating its existence. I might add to that, there has been no contact with me at all by those supposedly investigating. I could tell them these were leaks not hacks. Wikileaks. The clue is in the name.

So those “17 agencies” are not really investigating but are prepared to endorse weird Crowdstrike claims, like the idea that Russia’s security services are so amateur as to leave fingerprints with the name of their founder. If the Russians fed the material to Wikileaks, why would they also set up a vainglorious persona like Guccifer2 who leaves obvious Russia pointing clues all over the place?

Of course we need to add from the Wikileaks “Vault 7” leak release, information that the CIA specifically deploys technology that leaves behind fake fingerprints of a Russian computer hacking operation.

Crowdstrike have a general anti-Russian attitude. They published a report seeking to allege that the same Russian entities which “had hacked” the DNC were involved in targeting for Russian artillery in the Ukraine. This has been utterly discredited.

Some of the more crazed “Russiagate” allegations have been quietly dropped. The mainstream media are hoping we will all forget their breathless endorsement of the reports of the charlatan Christopher Steele, a former middle ranking MI6 man with very limited contacts that he milked to sell lurid gossip to wealthy and gullible corporations. I confess I rather admire his chutzpah.

Given there is no hacking in the Russian hacking story, the charges have moved wider into a vague miasma of McCarthyite anti-Russian hysteria. Does anyone connected to Trump know any Russians? Do they have business links with Russian finance?

Of course they do. Trump is part of the worldwide oligarch class whose financial interests are woven into a vast worldwide network that enslaves pretty well the rest of us. As are the Clintons and the owners of the mainstream media who are stoking up the anti-Russian hysteria. It is all good for their armaments industry interests, in both Washington and Moscow.

Trump’s judgement is appalling. His sackings or inappropriate directions to people over this subject may damage him.

The old Watergate related wisdom is that it is not the crime that gets you, it is the cover-up. But there is a fundamental difference here. At the centre of Watergate there was an actual burglary. At the centre of Russian hacking there is a void, a hollow, and emptiness, an abyss, a yawning chasm. There is nothing there.

Those who believe that opposition to Trump justifies whipping up anti-Russian hysteria on a massive scale, on the basis of lies, are wrong. I remain positive that the movement Bernie Sanders started will bring a new dawn to America in the next few years. That depends on political campaigning by people on the ground and on social media. Leveraging falsehoods and cold war hysteria through mainstream media in an effort to somehow get Clinton back to power is not a viable alternative. It is a fantasy and even were it practical, I would not want it to succeed.


viewtopic.php?f=8&t=40179&p=640582&hilit=Binney#p640582



Nsa, Bill Binney: "put these people in Jail"
Grizzly » Fri Feb 17, 2017 6:02 pm wrote:Nsa, Bill Binney: "Things won't change until we put these people in jail"
http://www.repubblica.it/esteri/2017/02 ... 0211124553

The documentary 'A Good American' explain how 9/11 could have been prevented and how useful informations against terror attacks could have been obtained without spying on entire populations


He is considered one of the best analysts in the history of the National Security Agency (NSA), "the largest, most expensive and most technologically sophisticated spy organization the world has ever known," as described by The New Yorker. Before Edward Snowden, the US crypto-mathematician Bill Binney blew the whistle on NSA's mass surveillance activities, and was one of those who inspired Snowden to take the enormous risk of exposing it.

In Oliver Stone's movie Snowden, Binney is the maverick genius played by Nicolas Cage. But now a new documentary film tells his intriguing story. Entitled A Good American (Agoodamerican.org), it is a brilliant film crafted with civic passion by Friedrich Moser. It will be arriving in Italian cinemas at the end of February and it is a film destined to anger people, as it tells how 9/11 could have been prevented and how information important for preventing terror attacks could have been obtained effectively without spying on entire populations had Binney and other whistleblowers been able to prevail upon the military leaders of the NSA. La Repubblica talked to Bill Binney (LEGGI LA VERSIONE ITALIANA)

*

You've spent a lifetime in the NSA, how did it all start?
"It all started because I was trying to get out of being in a rifle company in the Army, I tell the story in the movie why I volunteered for the service to get a chance of having a different occupation other than a rifleman, because riflemen kill people and I didn't want to do that. I got into intelligence, I had the aptitude, a maths background, logic and things like that, and they said you are a good candidate for that, why don't you go into that area? So that was what I did: I went into 'NSA CSS', which is the military branch of the NSA, and CSS is 'Combined Security Services', which means the Signal intelligence components of the Army, the Navy, the Air Force and the Marines. It was really mentally challenging: something I liked doing, plus of course I thought I was doing something that was worthwhile, working to make sure we knew exactly what the Soviets were doing, what they were planning".

When did you join them?
"I was in the NSA military division from June of 1965 to June 1969, and I came back five-six months later, in April or March 1970, to be a civilian in the NSA and I stayed there for 32 years".

Thirty-six years: a lifetime inside the NSA. Was it important to help US leaders make better decisions based on reliable information?
"If you don't do that, what happens is you end up in wars like Vietnam and the Gulf of Tonkin affair, which didn't really happen: they used that and bad intelligence to start the (Vietnam) war and many people were killed because of that. We had the other case of Iraq, where they ended up with the weapons of mass destruction that weren't there and that was the justification for going to war and a lot of people died. So, my whole idea was trying to stop people making bad mistakes and killing people".

When did you first start having concerns about NSA activities?
"There were two types of activities that started concerning me around 1988. I started being concerned about how they were spending money, how jobs were performed internally in the NSA and how they actually tried to solve problems. Money was milled around between programs and given to different contractors to ensure they would stay in businesses and so on. That was a kind of corruption that was concerning to me, but so long as I could get the things I wanted to get done, I was still making progress, until 1999 when [general Michael] Hayden came in. When he came in, he kind of took everything and said nobody else can have any ideas to try to do anything different. That fundamentally shut everything down and very shortly after that, after 9/11, the second week of October, NSA started taking the data of US citizens, so everything they were doing was being collected. For me it was the last straw: I couldn't participate in it and couldn't be associated with that".

You invented a system called "ThinThread" to detect terrorist and criminal networks, without spying on entire populations. Was your system ready before 9/11?
"ThinThread was the programme that Thomas Drake, I and our team - there were six of us on the ThinThread team- designed to be able to look into massive amounts of data and only pull out things that were relevant to spot individuals engaged in criminal activities, like terrorism or drug smuggling or money laundering. That was a very selected, targeted and focused programme that only put out relevant data, so if you were involved [in any network of people doing criminal activities] your data would be taken in, and the other thing we did was to put all metadata into it, but it was encrypted, so we couldn't tell who it was, yet you could still see the networks and any time in the future you found that a guy was a bad guy, you could still go back and see his [social] connections before that. Thinthread essentially granted privacy to everyone in the world: no one in the NSA or the FBI could look into the databases and see who they were looking at. That was the idea and that was one of the first things Michael Hayden's NSA got rid of"

Was your programme, Thinthread, ready for 9/11?
"Yes, actually it was ready in November 2000 and we were proposing to deploy it to 18 sites, that were producing information on terrorism. Most of the ThinThread programme was software, it wasn't hardware, so what we could do was electronically download software to a number of sites very quickly like in a day, and get it set up to run. At that time it cost nine and a half million to do it, that was all. Before 9/11, as early as January 2001, we could have started monitoring all those people: they couldn't have done anything this system wouldn't have picked up".

Your system was cancelled by the NSA, which favoured a multi-billion dollar system called "Trailblaizer" How do you know that your programme could have worked to prevent 9/11? Did you test it?
"The reason I know that for a fact is that Tom Drake took the software we had for ThinThread, basically after the NSA cancelled our programme, and ran it against the entire NSA database in February 2002. We found that all the data about the attack was in there, where they were going, who they were connecting with, actually even the date of the attack: 9/11. So it was all in the NSA database, they just didn't know they had it there. That's the whole point".

You have declared that after 9/11 you heard the high echelons of the NSA saying: we can milk this cow for the next 15 years. What did they mean?
"They meant: we can keep the money flowing for the next 15 years to keep programs running. Originally, I had a vision statement for the contractors working for the NSA: "aim low and miss ", because they always failed and reprogrammed, but that milking key was the real issue and I came up with a new vision statement for them: "keep the problem going, so the money keeps flowing". That's the whole point: never want to solve the problem, because if you solve the problem, you no longer have the problem to get the money".

After 9/11 the NSA hijacked your system, stripped away the privacy measures, and used it to spy on entire populations. Which NSA programme did ThinThread enable?
"The first thing they did was the "Stellar Wind" [programme ], which was about domestic spying, and that is exactly what they did: they removed three features [from ThinThread] and one was the privacy protection. Instead of taking relevant data or data highly likely to be relevant, they took in everything, and then they extended surveillance to the entire planet".

You filed a complaint against the NSA. The first time you met your lawyer, Jesselyn Radack, you wrote her: "If something happens to me, I did not commit suicide". Why did you fear for your life?
"I was filing a complaint against the US government because it was basically violating the Constitution of the United States, which is what I call treason against the founding principles of our country. The people involved in this were: the director of the CIA, the director of the NSA, the White House, as well as members of the Congressional Committee, the House Committee, and members of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, the FBI and the Department of Justice. These are all leading members of the United States government, people fucking with them don't really last that long. I wanted my lawyer to know I was in this fight with everybody, if anything happens, I didn't do it. Later on we experienced the FBI attacking us, the Department of Justice fabricating evidence against us and trying to use the Espionage Act against us to put us in jail for 35 years. We caught them and we threatened them with malicious prosecution and said: OK, let's go to court, and so they dropped the whole hot potato. That is the only reason we are not in jail".

When you saw Edward Snowden exposing the NSA mass surveillance activities, did you fear for his life? Did you fear that he could have been renditioned by the CIA?
"Sure, the only difference is that being in Moscow, I think the FSB might be protecting him from that kind of thing, that is the only reason I think they can't get him, but if he came out they would go after him in a second".

Do you think the Russians are interested in having him as a symbol or rather for his intelligence?
"I think it's mostly for the visible symbol that he represents: sticking his thumb in the eye of the United States".

Do you think Snowden will have to watch his back for the rest of his life?
"I think so, yes, until the government begins to realise they need to stop violating the Constitution. They have to clean this up and once they do that, they might realise that people like Snowden and [Julian ] Assange and others are really trying to expose the criminality of the government which has been going on for over a decade now. Until we clean our barracks, he is going to need to watch his back" .

We've seen how the NSA surveillance has failed to prevent terror attacks in the last sixteen years. Do you think it's only a matter of time before the NSA is able to do that effectively, or do you think they won't improve their capabilities at all?
"I think they are doomed to fail, because they are locked into the concept that they have to collect everything, and that just makes it impossible. They are very good at collecting data, but they haven't made any improvements at all in trying to figure out what they have in the data they've collected. That's why they can't see threats in advance, they can't alert on threats and they can't stop attacks. I don't see that changing, not until we put people in jail, because they have violated laws and the Constitution, as well as the Constitution and laws in Europe and around the world. Until we start putting people in jail to make sure they don't do this again, and start cleaning up what is going on, I don't see this changing".

You declared that not even the KGB and the Stasi have the surveillance capabilities and powers that the NSA has. How do you reply to those who say that this is an exaggeration?
"It's pretty simple: if you look at 'Treasure Map', 'Muscular' and other programs the NSA is running, you can clearly see that they have tap points all around the world and tens of thousands of implants, and switches and servers around the network: the objective of the "Treasure Map" programme is to know where every device is in the world every minute of every day. Now, I don't know that the Russians have anywhere near the amount of money necessary to be able to do that, they certainly don't have a GDP that can support that kind of activity, but here in the United States we do. We in the United States have spent 1 trillion dollars since 9/11 on intelligence, that's almost an entire year of GDP for Russia. They just don't have the money to do it, we do, so it's obvious we can do it, and they can't".

Not even China.
"No, not even China. They don't even have the access either. Access means points in the network where they have taps to collect all the data or implants to selectively pull data out".

Are you satisfied with the changes introduced by the Obama Administration after Edward Snowden?
"No, they actually did very little to nothing".

Are you scared about Donald Trump having the NSA capabilities and powers in his hands?
"I look at it in this way: he is doing exactly as he said he would do in the campaign. During the campaign he said he would abide by the Constitution of the United States, now if he does that, he has to stop these programs, because they are unconstitutional, obviously. On the other hand, if he adopts this process, he is going to have the same powers as Obama had. That kind of power should not exist in any kind of government, because it really creates a totalitarian state. It's like Stasi on super-steroids; instead of having folders with papers on everybody, they have everything that you do stored electronically, so it is a much more complete, up-to-date and mineable set of information and they can manipulate it, and do anything they want to you. That is the problem with it: no government should have it".

So the problem is not only the collection, but also the manipulation of data.
"Yes. Once you have info stored, you can change it and do anything that you want".

What if anything can Donald Trump do that George W. Bush and Barack Obama did not do?
"He can do the same things they did".

Looking back, would you still put your talents at the service of the NSA? Was it worth it?
"I think it was worth it until the end of the '80s, early 1990s things got bad, but until then I think everything I did was worthwhile, and certainly helped prevent mistakes being made".

Would you advise young people to put their talents at the service of the NSA?
"I am an advocate of infiltration: joining the ranks of those working and coming out through the ranks of the administration of that agency, whatever the agency may be: the CIA, the FBI, whatever. As long as you preserve your character and integrity, you do the right thing, and that is what we need: people doing the right thing. It's the only way to change things, in the end. The other way is to come from the outside and put them in jail".

viewtopic.php?f=8&t=40375&p=631496&hilit=Binney#p631496


US Punishes Russia for Election Hacking Ejecting Operatives
Rory » Wed Jan 11, 2017 5:05 pm wrote:http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2017/01/crowdstrikes-russian-hacking-story-fell-apart-2-dni-report-faked-sources.html

The only thread that holds the DNI report together at first glance is the false testimony and fake evidence Crowdstrike and Dmitri Alperovitch provided to the FBI and other agencies involved. When you look at the evidence presented and the sources it becomes evident that the Russian hack story doesn’t stand up against Crowdstrike’s own facts.

By examining facts, timelines, and sources needed for the DNI report, the only conclusion is the DNI report is strictly political. Because of this Craig Murray- Julian Assange’s story showing the emails were leaked is the only version of the story that stands. The facts on hand show criminality and negligence on the part of Crowdstrike, the FBI, and the DNI.

The Murray and Assange story stands on evidence many heavyweights in the Intel community are backing up their account as the only way the emails could have gotten to Wiki Leaks.

The DNI report uses of information obtained by self-identifying Ukrainian neo-nazis (Pravy Sektor members). For US Intel to offer this proof of Russian involvement is really bizarre. While heading 17 Intel agencies, the DNI was not concerned enough about Russia hacking or influencing the 2016 election to look into. Why is it that during the 10 days following the election, James Clapper knew so little about the subject?

According to the Washington Times ” As recently as Nov. 17, James Clapper, the nation’s top intelligence officer, told Congress his agencies “don’t have good insight” into a direct link between WikiLeaks and the emails supposedly hacked by a Russian operation from Democrats and the Hillary Clinton campaign.”

But the FBI had it covered for months. James Comey, Director of the FBI is in charge of the domestic version of the CIA. According to the 2006 update of the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004, “the FBI’s job in the streets of the United States would thus be a domestic equivalent, operating under the U.S. Constitution and quite different laws and rules, to the job of the CIA’s operations officers abroad.

According to the FBI Director, “there are now 5,000 agents and 2,000 intelligence analysts” 41 in the branch.

It is our hope that open source will become an integral part of all intelligence activities (FBI) and that, at some point in the future, there may no longer be a need for a separate directorate.”

With this in mind, Comey could have and should have simply phoned the NSA and received all the information he needed, chose not to. The question is why? Comey could have asked any of over 2000 analysts to look into it. Why didn’t the Director of the domestic CIA request information?

“According to William Binney (former Technical Director, World Geopolitical & Military Analysis, NSA), the NSA’s “extensive domestic data-collection network,” any data removed remotely from Hillary Clinton or DNC servers would have passed over fiber networks and therefore would have been captured by the NSA who could have then analyzed packet data to determine the origination point and destination address of those packets.”

After spending time in the election spotlight this year the only way FBI Director James Comey could not know any information about the alleged hack is that he didn’t want to.

The FBI report is based solely on Crowdstrike’s evidence which has become a laughing stock across the cyber security industry. Cyber security professionals are standing up saying how laughable Dimitri Alperovitch’s information is. For there to be any evidence of a hack, the DNI report has to use the FBI report and Crowdstrike’s evidence. This includes the tool X-Agent.

X-Agent was a key proof for Crowdstrike. In the NPR interview with Judy Woodruff, Crowdstrike’s CTO, Dimitri Alperovitch says the use of X-agent shows guilt as clearly as DNA results. This proof, according to him is unique to a single hacker group. Crowdstrike labeled this hacker group “Fancy Bear.” Just as important is the timeline it was used in.

According to Marcy Wheeler, Crowdstrike’s story of a Russian hacker falls apart on this point. Part of the problem is that Alperovitch stated his final undeniable and overwhelming proof was that it was used to target Ukrainian artillerymen throughout 2014. She argues given that timeline, the GRU, X-Agent had to be in development at least 6 months BEFORE Victor Yanukovych was ousted in a coup. Ukraine and Russia were on friendly terms.

Further, citing Jeffery Carr, X-Agent doesn’t have anywhere near the functionality that Crowdstrike claims it does. Carr goes on further to say two other entities have access to X-Agent which Crowdstrike presents as unique. The first is Crowdstrike itself. The second is the Ukrainian hacking group RUH8 which self-identifies with Pravy Sektor.

Pravy Sektor is a Ukrainian ultra-nationalist group that has been noted for torture, murder, kidnapping, and has been trying to start a war with Russia since the beginning of the Ukrainian civil war. Because of this, the Russian GRU can’t be implicated. The tool is in too many hands that want to do Russia harm. Crowdstrike has it. The neo-nazi Ukrainian hackers have it. The Atlantic Council may have it.

Carr said that 3 groups have it. This is based on the assumption that the DNC was hacked by Russians. There are literally only 2 groups that are known to have the X-Agent tool, Crowdstrike and Ukraine’s neo-nazi hackers that are part of Ukraine’s Intelligence Agency.

Wheeler goes further by saying Crowdstrike named the hacker before any evidence was developed. The hacker was the Russian GRU according to Alperovitch. After naming them without proof, Crowdstrike started searching for proof that the X-Agent could have been used by the Russian GRU. That was when Alperovitch’s most solid proof appeared. He claimed the Russians used the tool to spot Ukrainian artillery.

Crowdstrike never contacted the developer of the app they claimed was hacked over the course of 6 months. Crowdstrike claimed artillerymen downloaded the app that got hacked from a forum. But, according to the app developer, he had control over it all the way to end user. There was no chance for it to be hacked like Crowdstrike insists.

According to cyber security Jeffrey Carr “The Android APK malware doesn’t use GPS nor does it ask for GPS location information from the infected phone or tablet. That’s a surprising design flaw for custom-made malware whose alleged objective was to collect and transmit location data on Ukrainian artillery to the GRU [Russian military intelligence – ed],” Carr explained in a Medium post.…Crowdstrike hasn’t provided any evidence that the malware-infected Android app was used by even a single Ukrainian soldier.”

That core information needed for the DNI report to prove Russian hacking was provided by Crowdstrike. When that information proved to be wrong, the DNI report is empty of facts. Ukrainian Intelligence’s OSINT group InformNapalm does not want to be associated with it, even though they have a strong relationship with Crowdstrike, it’s just that bad.

“I have little liking of the security industry as the guys in this business of fear are fearmongers, but CrowdStrike failed to keep to even the mediocre standards generally accepted in the industry. They start their report with a bold statement alleging that the Ukrainian Armed Forces lost up to 80% of all their D30 howitzers. The figure of 80% did not come from the International Institute for Strategic Studies, but was voiced by colonelcassad (Ed.: the nickname of a Russian propagaDNIst blogger). And even he, when blurting out this 80% figure then says it is not due to combat losses, but rather to a transfer of weapons from the Ukrainian Army to the National Guard.”

From an X-Agent user standpoint, he then asks where is the “tell” hashes, control centers, or infected phones?”

Crowdstrike’s best cyber security hack evidence is a Russian blogger? Crowdstrike’s claim that this malware caused 80% of the Ukrainian losses is rebuffed by the Ukrainians themselves. The Ukrainian Defense Ministry called Crowdstrike liars. Why would people who want to start a war between the USA and Russia walk away from Crowdstrike’s help?

Simply put, the evidence of a Russian hack came from Crowdstrike. The issue is so hot (it could start a war) that the Ukrainian government doesn’t want to be standing near Crowdstrike’s overly simple lies when the facts came out. The simple tech facts listed above show there was no Russian hacking at the DNC.

The fatal shot to Crowdstrike’s evidence of a Russian hack and the DNI report comes from a Chalupa. What’s a Chalupa you ask? In the first part of these articles covering Russian election hacking, you were introduced to Alexandra, Andrea, and Irene Chalupa. All of them are integral to starting and pushing a Russian hacking story into the mainstream press. After dealing with Crowdstrike’s evidence, they can’t get far enough away from the story.

Alexandra Chalupa was named one of 16 people that shaped the US election because of her Russian hacking tale. While trying to drum up anti-Russian sentiment and help with the election, they must have thought Crowdstrike would at least be able to come up with something credible. The Chalupas relationship to Crowdstrike and the Ukrainian hackers is detailed in that article.

The surprising move discredits Crowdstrike’s Russian hacking story in support of the Ukrainian Defense Ministry. Irene Chalupa, like Alperovitch, is a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council She also runs Ukrainian owned Stopfake.org.

Stopfake.org is an official propaganda channel for the Ukrainian government and unofficially for the Atlantic Council. Chalupa and her sisters have relationships with both Alperovitch and the Ukrainian hackers shown in the 1st Crowdstrike article.

Stopfake.org just started a local propaganda paper in the specific towns (Toretsk, Krasnogorovka, Maryanka, among others) listed in the 1st Crowdstrike article to re-educate the people and stop them from targeting Ukrainian artillerymen. These are specifically the towns where people were caught.

This move on the part of this particular Atlantic Council senior fellow totally discredits Crowdstrike’s story that an app infected with malware was responsible for destroying 80% of Ukrainian artillery. This was Alperovitch’s largest proof of “Russian hacking” the DNC that was given to the FBI, CIA, and DNI. He said this proof was as sure as a DNA match. The FBI is now stating openly all their evidence rests on Crowdstrike. Without this proof, there is no Russian hacking the DNC story.

Where it gets more damning (it’s hard to believe that’s possible) is that Stopfake’s propaganda effort to directly affect the towns where people were caught targeting Ukrainian artillery is being funded by the British Embassy in Ukraine.

Obviously, neither the UK government or MI5 place any weight in the Russian hacking story. Otherwise, why spend money on this effort targeting propaganda at the specific area named by Ukraine’s SBU.

To make matters worse for the FBI and DNI, Radio Liberty is helping to start the anti-targeting propaganda effort. Keep in mind that Radio Liberty is managed by the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG). The US Secretary of State John Kerry is a board member. Didn’t anyone tell him by dealing with the real problem, he was destroying the Russian hacking story so the real situation could be managed?

In the last article which is linked at the top, the penetration testers at Wordfence tested the uniqueness of the other tool Crowdstrike uses for identification called Grizzly Steppe. What they found was a Ukrainian-made malware that is outdated and a common hacking tool for WordPress websites. It cannot perform like Crowdstrike claims it does. This destroys the cyber-security giant’s story.

Without any evidence, Crowdstrike wrote the report the “Russians did it.” They in turn, gave it to the FBI, CIA, DNI, and whoever else would listen. Today, both Crowdstrike and the Ukrainian hackers are the only groups known that have the X-Agent tool.

Did the Bernie Sanders campaign get “berned” by Crowdstrike? In December 2015, Sanders filed suit against the DNC because the DNC froze access to voter data. The freeze came as a result of Crowdstrike’s fiDNIngs that Sanders staffers supposedly improperly accessing Clinton data files. Sanders accused the DNC of flagrantly favoring Clinton.

Why did the lawsuit get dropped? Crowdstrike investigated it and Sanders was convinced to drop the suit. Should Crowdstrike have notified Sanders that they had conflicts of interest?

Unless you are in the FBI, CIA, or DNI, the Russian hacking story doesn’t make any sense based on the facts. The facts say Crowdstrike supplied fraudulent evidence to the US government. Even the Ukrainians don’t want to be standing next to Crowdstrike when the truth comes out. Perhaps someone should investigate Crowdstrike and the Ukrainian hackers.

The next question is when did Clinton hire Crowdstrike and why? We know that Clinton paid around $1 million to internet trolls to turn Sanders supporters. How much money went into the Russian hacking story? We know that the Russian hacking story gained Crowdstrike a lot more revenue. But before all this happened:

According to Fortune “Between 2013 and 2014 its(Crowdstrike) revenue grew 142% and its customer base more than tripled, two reasons Google Capital (GOOG, +1.53%), the tech giant’s growth equity arm, led a $100 million investment in CrowdStrike in July, its first ever for a computer security company.

The reasons Google would invest are obvious. Fortune goes further in an interview with Crowdstrike CEO George Kurtz.

“Security is of foremost interest to Google,” said Google Capital partner Gene Frantz, mentioning Google’s expertise in protecting IT assets. “We identified what we think will be a very large and very important security company in the world.”

“To have Google align with our vision and kick the tires—they wouldn’t write us a huge check unless they checked us out—to have that level of validation in less than four years is incredibly rewarding,” George Kurtz CEO of Crowdstrike said.

There are only two scenarios that explain this situation. Crowdstrike thought nobody would fact check. Alperovitch started the hacking story to influence the election results and it got away from him. Or Crowdstrike is guilty of gross incompetence and may be guilty of over selling their capabilities and expertise to investors.

Either way, with the cyber security industry laughing at Crowdstrike’s evidence, an investigation needs to happen to find out how this company brought the USA to the brink of war with Russia. A cyber attack is an act of war. It doesn’t matter if Alperovitch didn’t imagine the story would get this big.

As it becomes clear to investors that Crowdstrike either willfully perjured themselves to the FBI, CIA, DNI, as well as the president, will they vote with their feet on the value of the company?

According to Wired “In its statement, the FBI agreed with the DNC’s implication that it had instead relied on data from Crowdstrike… The possibility that the FBI based its investigation on inferior-quality evidence is significant..”

Why does part of the official DNI Russia hacked DNC/ Fancy Bear story rely in part on information from a Russian blogger that writes about the civil war in Ukraine like Crowdstrike does? Honestly, come on guys, this is embarrassing. It gets a lot worse.

According to the DNI report “A journalist who is a leading expert on the Internet Research Agency claimed that some social media accounts that appear to be tied to Russia’s professional trolls—because they previously were devoted to supporting Russian actions in Ukraine—started to advocate for President-elect Trump as early as December 2015. ”

This journalist is Jessikka Aro. She works as Finnish YLE’s investigative journalist and is an expert in strategic communication issues for NATO and EU institutions. Unfortunately, she was also a drug dealer and according to her court papers and according to the article, a strong believer in self-medication.

Aro first came to notice when she wrote a story about Russian trolls. Since then, she has been NATO’s go-to girl. Recently she crowdfunded $30,000 for hacking and OSINT tools to “further her research.”

None of this says where she came from. Jessikka Aro is a protege of Aaron Weisburd and Joel Harding. I have written extensively about both of these men. Their way of protecting America is to hack and ruin American and Western-based News Websites. Weisburd takes it to the extreme and as the linked articles show his group hacks, plants evidence, and tries to “inform” the FBI or appropriate agency that you are the criminal. Because it’s cyber, you may never know he was there. He badgers internet providers to take down sites, threatens people, and steals their livelihoods.
NATO'S Jessikka Aro and Aaron Weisburd destroying Commentary Website

NATO’S Jessikka Aro and Aaron Weisburd destroying Commentary Website

There they are giving the high-five after one successful attack on a Canadian-based news commentary website. If there was anything illegal or God forbid, immoral, why didn’t they call the police?

Aaron Weisburd became a player in intelligence when Richard Clark decided to bring freelance terror hunters into the fold. He ingrained OSINT as the key Intel tool to use. Weisburd came in after the grandfather of federal OSINT broke ground for him. Steve Emerson and Rita Katz supplied most of the people on the bad lists that the Federal Government made.

Emerson, Katz, and Weisburd trained Federal Intelligence Agencies including FBI, CIA, and abroad including NATO personnel how to use OSINT techniques. For Weisburd it would only be natural to introduce his protege to NATO since they are directly involved in Ukrainian propaganda. Since I’ll be getting to this in the next article, let’s take a look at how intelligent the intelligence is that they generate.

In January 2015 Steve Emerson, the man that trained federal intelligence agents including the FBI how to use OSINT tools claimed on Fox News that Birmingham, England is an entirely Muslim city. The Telegraph writes “An American “terrorism expert” who claimed that Birmingham is a Muslim-only city is “clearly a complete idiot”, David Cameron has said.

If Emerson is the expert they leaned on to learn this form of Intel gathering, it’s not hard to see why a common cyber criminal is listed as a go-to expert in the DNI report.

According to the DNI report “Russian efforts to influence the 2016 US presidential election represent the most recent expression of Moscow’s longstanding desire to undermine the US-led liberal democratic order, but these activities demonstrated a significant escalation in directness, level of activity, and scope of effort compared to previous operations.”

The DNI report adds” We also assess Putin and the Russian Government aspired to help President-elect Trump’s election chances when possible by discrediting Secretary Clinton and publicly contrasting her unfavorably to him. All three agencies agree with this judgment. CIA and FBI have high confidence in this judgment; NSA has moderate confidence. ”

While CNN said on January 6th, “Officials said this was just one of multiple indicators to give them high confidence of both Russian involvement and Russian intentions. Officials reiterated that there is no single intercepted communication that qualifies as a “smoking gun” on Russia’s intention to benefit Trump’s candidacy or to claim credit for doing so.”

Which intercepted communications are they talking about? According to the Sydney Morning Herald the Ukrainian hacker group RUH8 hacked the Russian government email of Vladislav Surkov. The Russian government denies the hack happened.

Within hours of the attack, the Atlantic Council was examining the “hacked email.” They said there was no smoking gun. Is the DNI report leaning on the alleged hacking by self-identifying Pravy Sektor ultra-nationalists that want to start a war with Russia? RFE/RL is certainly glorifying the neo-nazis. These are the intercepted communications the report mentions.

Discussing the same subject Information War expert Joel Harding who has been working for the Ukrainians against the Russians stated “One of the really neat things about this election is seeing all my information operations and information warfare friends on social media, contributing and commenting, looking darned intelligent! Theirs is normally the voice of reason, maturity, and intelligence…and now for something completely different. Good news.

Russian propaganda is being ignored in the United States.”

Because any possibility of a Russian hack at the DNC has been taken away, the rest of the DNI report comes across as a long political whine. The only 2 groups that are known to possess X-Agent are Crowdstrike and the Ukrainian hacker RUH8. The DNI report relies on both to hold their facts together. Both are discredited. The following admission should interest John Podesta.

According to a RFE/RL interview, “RUH8 says the Cyber Alliance uses “all tools and methods” at its disposal to hack into their perceived foes’ accounts. In particular, he says, spear-phishing — using messages that mimic those of legitimate companies along with a request and link to change personal security information — “is quite efficient. People readily give up their passwords and personal info,” he says. “They receive something in their [e-]mail like, ‘Your account will be suspended if you don’t confirm [your security details].’ They click that link and we have them.”

Is it me or has RUH8 done everything except openly confess to hacking Podesta? Spear-fishing is the tactic said to be used in the DNC hacking. Only 2 known groups have the X-Agent and only RUH8 states openly that they changed the course of world geopolitics. Neither of them has been investigated. Security analysts are starting to speculate that if there was a hack, the Ukrainians probably did it. The self-identifying Pravy Sektor members RUH8 are also claiming to have hacked the Russian government email. When the facts are considered, RUH8 may have done a hack to cover up the Craig Murray leak.

The FBI now in charge of domestic intelligence didn’t investigate anything. All the evidence to prove a Russian hack has been shown clearly to be flawed and faked. Crowdstrike is guilty of at least perjury based on their own statements and the evidence they gave to the FBI. The DNI and 17 Intel agencies are relying on neo-nazi group hackers that openly mock them.

This only leaves only one scenario that has an unblemished track record. Julian Assange and Craig Murray told the truth. The emails were leaked.

viewtopic.php?f=8&t=40266&p=626997&hilit=Binney#p626997


US Punishes Russia for Election Hacking Ejecting Operatives
Morty » Fri Dec 30, 2016 6:38 pm wrote:
Creator of NSA’s Global Surveillance System Calls B.S. On Russian Hacking Report
Posted on December 30, 2016 by WashingtonsBlog

We’ve previously documented that the hacking evidence against Russia is extremely weak, and the new report on Russian hacking doesn’t say much.

Indeed – if Russia hacked the Democratic party emails (from the DNC and top Clinton aide John Podesta) – the NSA would have all of the records showing exactly who did it.

We asked Bill Binney what he thought of the new report.

Binney is the NSA executive who created the agency’s mass surveillance program for digital information, who served as the senior technical director within the agency, who managed six thousand NSA employees, the 36-year NSA veteran widely regarded as a “legend” within the agency and the NSA’s best-ever analyst and code-breaker, who mapped out the Soviet command-and-control structure before anyone else knew how, and so predicted Soviet invasions before they happened (“in the 1970s, he decrypted the Soviet Union’s command system, which provided the US and its allies with real-time surveillance of all Soviet troop movements and Russian atomic weapons”).

Binney is the real McCoy. As we noted in 2013, Binney has been interviewed by virtually all of the mainstream media, including CBS, ABC, CNN, New York Times, USA Today, Fox News, PBS and many others.

Binney tells Washington’s Blog:

I expected to see the IP’s or other signatures of APT’s 28/29 [the entities which the U.S. claims hacked the Democratic emails] and where they were located and how/when the data got transferred to them from DNC/HRC [i.e. Hillary Rodham Clinton]/etc. They seem to have been following APT 28/29 since at least 2015, so, where are they?

Further, once we see the data being transferred to them, when and how did they transfer that data to Wikileaks? This would be evidence of trying to influence our election by getting the truth of our corrupt system out.

And, as Edward Snowden said, once they have the IP’s and/or other signatures of 28/29 and DNC/HRC/etc., NSA would use Xkeyscore to help trace data passing across the network and show where it went. [Background.]

In addition, since Wikileaks is (and has been) a cast iron target for NSA/GCHQ/etc for a number of years there
should be no excuse for them missing data going to any one associated with Wikileaks.

***

Too many words means they don’t have clear evidence of how the data got to Wikileaks.


Binney designed the NSA’s electronic surveillance system, so he would know.


viewtopic.php?f=8&t=40266&p=625601&hilit=Binney#p625601



Last bumped by seemslikeadream on Thu Aug 23, 2018 11:52 am.
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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