Posted on 11/27/2018 5:34:51 PM PST by Kaslin
Yes, Podesta’s email was a separate issue from the DNC server. The story is he fell for a fishing email but there are loads of possibilities. I read that his password was ‘password’. So who knows - it could have been read over his shoulder, or he borrowed someones computer and left the password autofill, or he was keylogged as he used a network computer at the DNC etc.
The point is while they may be separate incidents they aren’t necessarily separated by motive or persons. It could be the same person, or not. But all together the DNC leak, the Podesta hack, and the Hillary homebrew server (not to mention the little reported Awan Brothers controversy) together create the appearance of extreme recklessness when it comes to security - at the least. Even less reported was Hillary’s involvement with the Russian Skolvoko espionage scheme. The funny think is that while the media did report on these things as embarrassing foibles, they were incredibly soft and forgiving, and even Comey shrugged it all off.
But the psychology of the appearance of it all must have weighed heavy on them, because they really went heavy artillery in trying to project their weakness and culpability onto Trump. Trump taunted her about all this on the campaign trail with jokes about “Putin, release the emails!”, and that gave them the opening to try to pin it all on Russia and then try to tie Trump collusion into it.
PS: there are a number of articles explaining why the technical and physical data show it is extremely unlikely that the DNC hack was done via an overseas computer.
I agree with most of what you said. I have read some articles about the "overseas" computer. The DNC emails were zipped to less than 1 GB. That's nothing for any overseas data theft. The Chinese just stole 600 GB remotely, and there were bigger remote thefts than that one.
Just so I understand what you mean, you suggest that the foreigner executed a “zip” remotely on the server and then simply transferred the compressed file?
Obviously I don’t know what happened. The fake ‘fingerprint’ that appeared duplicated on at least 5 different documents could have been intentional subterfuge rather than a tell.
But the quickness to blame the Russian government is perhaps my biggest suspicion. I wrote upthread that there are only 3 possibilities 1) an outside hacker 2) an insider whistleblower or 3) an inside mole. The fact that there could have been one or more foreign agents planted inside the DNC is a major national security issue. But the DNC refused any investigation by the FBI.
I can understand that the DNC/HRC wanted to quickly turn the page on this issue - they had a campaign to run and didn’t want the distraction and a prolonged news cycle as any such investigation would incur. But at the same time, knowing that it was at least possible that the DNC had one or more foreign spies implanted should have sounded alarms. I suspect that the reason why they didn’t need any investigation is because they already knew who what when and how, and that it wasn’t any foreign agent at all. It suggests to me that the have known all along it was leaked by an inside whistleblower.
I hadn't heard anything about "fake fingerprints". I imagine anything could have been done as misdirection. Yes, the DNC refusing to turn over the server is a huge red flag. I read the "crowdstrike" blog post in 2016 and was distinctly not impressed. Yet that became one of the centerpieces of the official investigation. If their blogpost is indeed part of what has been retracted then I will seriously lose whatever smidgen of faith I had left in the FBI.
redacted, not retracted.
As I understand it, many the documents published by Wikileaks were created in OpenOffice by copy & paste. The default language for the software was set to Russian and Romanian depending on the document. The ‘fingerprints’ as I understand it are that at least 5 of the documents were cut and pasted onto the exact same template, suggesting an attempt to make it appear as if the documents were stolen by Russian and Romanian speakers. But, theoretically anyway, they wouldn’t need to cut and paste them into a template they would just open and save them individually. Thus, the fingerprints suggest the documents were altered to make it appear as if they came from Russian hackers.
The third option, misdirection, would be if Russians actually did hack them, then tried to create plausible deniability by making it appear like a sloppy frame-up. I don’t personally believe that but don’t deny the possibility.
At the other end they needed an automatic script to extract each email from the database fie and save it in its own file for easy access. If there was copy and paste involved that was probably scripted. The important point is that process would be the same whether an insider took the files or whether they were grabbed and transferred over the internet.
I suppose the template for the enpty OpenOffice doc could be language specific, before the English email contents are pasted in. Then saving might keep a few foreign language artifacts, hidden from normal view. I would not believe or bother investigating that any further. Anyone can use any process to do this including some automated thing downloaded from a freeware site in Romania or Russia. It would not count as evidence pointing to a perp country.
And that is the point. It isn’t evidence of anything except subterfuge. Hence, the fingerprint actually suggests it was not Russian hacking. Why would Russian hackers try to hide their involvement by using Russian language software templates?
Also, if it was an automated script to extract the data the script would be likely to handle every document the same way - a new file for each email/attachment. So the question is why do at least 5 use the same template? They are the aberration. There are lots of possible answers of course, including for whatever reason these particular documents having had special direct handling. But it’s just another peculiarity.
However the intelligence community claims to have deeper evidence of country of origin. Turns out that is a blog post by crowdsrike where the "investigator" (a former Russian hacker now naturalized US citizen) doodles around in the hacked server "watching" the alleged Russian hackers do their thing. First of all, the usual way to gather evidence in that case is to take the server online, freeze an image of it, and carefullly analyze it.
They could also trace connections on the internet with classified assets (e.g. routers in Russia where we have hacked and gather more or less unmanipulated data)., There is no indication in anything I read that we did that for the DNC server hack. If there was such data gathering, that would obviously be a classified source or method and should remain classified. So there's a catch 22, release the evidence and prove (to some extent) it was Russia, or don't reveal the source and method so we can use it some more. Like I said, I read most of the reports and I did not see a statement about extra classified evidence like I have described, at least for the DNC "hack".
If you want to read the crap from crowdstrike it is here: https://www.crowdstrike.com/blog/bears-midst-intrusion-democratic-national-committee/ (you can cut and paste that URL into your browser). I would recommend using a incognito window since crowdstrike are obviously a bunch of sleazoids.
At the same time as the DNC system was breached, there was an attempt to breach the RNC that failed.
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