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Guccifer 2.0 Calls DNC Hack His "Personal Project," Mocks Security Firms (computerworld.com)
An anonymous reader writes: The notorious hacker most recently in the news for releasing Clinton Foundation documents has said on Thursday in a blog post that the stolen confidential files from the DNC was his "personal project." Guccifer 2.0, as he identifies himself as, added that security firms and the DNC may be trying to blame the attack on Russia, but "they can prove nothing! All I hear is blah-blah-blah, unfounded theories, and somebody's estimates," he wrote. He claims to be Romanian and says he acted alone, pouring water on the theory that he may be a "smokescreen" to divert attention away from the real culprits, that may have been expert hacking teams based in Russia. "I'd like to reveal a secret to all those cool IT-specialists: All the hackers in the world use almost the same tools," he said. "You can buy them or simply find them on the web." He broke into the network using a little-known vulnerability found in the DNC's software, he added. "The DNC used Windows on their server, so it made my work much easier," he said. "I installed my trojan-like virus on their PCs. I just modified the platform that I bought on the hacking forums for about $1.5k." Guccifer 2.0 also disputed the idea that the DNC breach was an intelligence gathering operation for Russia, saying it was hacktivism.
But first of all, did anyone really expect "him" to come out and admit that this is merely a front for the Russian intelligence services running an active measures operation against a presidential candidate they don't like to aid the one they do? That's like expecting from Snowden come out and explain his relations to the FSB prior to boarding a plane to Moscow and especially afterwards.
The man claimed to have easily discovered a 0-day in a proprietary and not public piece of software very likely written in C# and JavaScript using IDA and WinDbg.
In addition, the Vice has found out his romanian is far from being good enough for a native speaker. And this prepared FAQ has a much better English than his prior conversations.
More information on this affair:
It could make sense. The Russian government would love to have Trump win the presidency. Putin can play that halfwit manchild like a cheap fiddle. Trump doesn't have any "negotiating skills" at all as many believe, he's simply had overwhelming economic power against small/medium businesses which he's always used as a crude weapon in business deals, and he has conflated this with "negotiating skills." The US doesn't have the kind of massive economic advantage over Russia or especially China that Trump has had over the construction contractors he's screwed.
Now you can say a lot of bad things about Hillary, but she's a shrewd political veteran who wouldn't make things easy for Putin, so from Russia's perspective she's a much less desirable option.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Republicans/Democrats can only give you more of the same old shit.
So true. I mean, they're in the business of maintaining the status quo. People worry about "throwing away their vote", but your vote is already wasted if you're voting for the slightly less worse candidate instead of the best candidate, whoever you might think that is. It's almost never a Democrat/Republican, am I right? As Eugene Debs once said, "It's better to vote for something you want, and not get it, than to vote for something you don't want, and get it", (apologies if the quote isn't verbatim).
Also, not entirely unrelated but, isn't "Gluecifer" the coolest band name, ever? "Guccifer" isn't bad, either.
-- sudon't
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