Cyber Firm Rewrites Part of Disputed Russian Hacking Report (CrowdStrike)

U.S. cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike has revised and retracted statements it used to buttress claims of Russian hacking during last year's American presidential election campaign. The shift followed a VOA report that the company misrepresented data published by an influential British think tank.

VOA reported Tuesday that the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), which publishes an annual reference estimating the strength of world armed forces, disavowed the CrowdStrike report and said it had never been contacted by the company.

Ukraine's Ministry of Defense also has stated that the combat losses and hacking never happened.

After CrowdStrike released its Ukraine report, company co-founder Dmitri Alperovitch claimed it provided added evidence of Russian election interference. In both hacks, he said, the company found malware used by "Fancy Bear," a group with ties to Russian intelligence agencies.

CrowdStrike's claims of heavy Ukrainian artillery losses were widely circulated in U.S. media.

The company removed language that said Ukraine's artillery lost 80 percent of the Soviet-era D-30 howitzers, which used aiming software that purportedly was hacked. Instead, the revised report cites figures of 15 to 20 percent losses in combat operations, attributing the figures to IISS.

The original CrowdStrike report was dated Dec. 22, 2016, and the updated report was dated March 23, 2017.

The company also removed language saying Ukraine's howitzers suffered "the highest percentage of loss of any ... artillery pieces in Ukraine's arsenal."

Finally, CrowdStrike deleted a statement saying "deployment of this malware-infected application may have contributed to the high-loss nature of this platform" — meaning the howitzers — and excised a link sourcing its IISS data to a blogger in Russia-occupied Crimea.

Hillary Clinton’s policy of anti-Russian regime change in Ukraine is at the root of all this Russian hacking narrative. The “crimes” of Trump associates that Dems are so worked up about seem to involve working for or associating with any company or interest that is not on Hillary’s side of the Ukrainian coup d’état and its disastrous aftermath.

I would certainly like to see Ukraine free of Russian interference and domination. Unfortunately, what might be extremely good is not always within our power to effect, at least without extremely negative consequences. Ukraine has suffered thousands of dead and wounded, vast territorial loss, massive economic dislocations, etc. Russia has major credibility is the Middle East now because Putin intervened in Syria o create a bargaining chip and as payback for US interference in Ukraine.

Big Questions:
1) Why have the Democrats subordinated the US to Ukrainian nationalist politics? Ukrainians have an understandable motive to seek freedom from Russia. What was in it for the Democrats?
2) Who could possibly be so naive as to think the Russians would accept US meddling in their back yard without response? Ukrainian nationalists of course benefit from any anti-US reaction from Russia, by locking us into a cycle of conflict. Why would any US “statesman” fail to understand this?
3) Why has the US news media omitted to explore Clinton’s role in Ukraine, or looked into how and why the Democrats hitched their wagon to a Cold War policy of squeezing Russia? It explains exactly why the Russians “hate” her. It wasn’t just the pantsuits.
4) Is our entire intel community committed to this policy, or just the Democrats, following party orders? What are their real reasons to think this is a practical course, with benefits to the US outweighing the costs?

The American public deserves an airing of what s driving so much of our current political angst.

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