'DNC Hacker' Unmasked: He Really Works for Russia, Researchers Say (thedailybeast.com)
The hacker who claimed to compromise the DNC swore he was Romanian, but new investigation shows he worked directly for Russia President Vladimir Putin's government in Moscow. The Daily Beast reports: The hacker who claims to have stolen emails from the Democratic National Committee and provided them to WikiLeaks is actually an agent of the Russian government and part of an orchestrated attempt to influence U.S. media coverage surrounding the presidential election, a security research group concluded on Tuesday. The researchers, at Arlington, Va.-based ThreatConnect, traced the self-described Romanian hacker Guccifer 2.0 back to an Internet server in Russia and to a digital address that has been linked in the past to Russian online scams. Far from being a single, sophisticated hacker, Guccifer 2.0 is more likely a collection of people from the propaganda arm of the Russian government meant to deflect attention away from Moscow as the force behind the DNC hacks and leaks of emails, the researchers found. ThreatConnect is the first known group of experts to link the self-proclaimed hacker to a Russian operation, amidst an ongoing FBI investigation and a presidential campaign rocked by the release of DNC emails that have embarrassed senior party leaders and inflamed intraparty tensions turning the Democratic National Convention. The emails revealed that party insiders plotted ways to undermine Sen. Bernie Sanders' presidential bid. The researchers at the aforementioned security firm are basing their conclusion on three signals: the hacker used Russian computers to edit PDF files, he also used Russian VPN -- and other internet infrastructure from the country, and that he was unable to speak Romanian.
lets blame russia
Nothing to see here. These crimes were exposed by someone we don't like so much. That makes it OK.
I'm not sure the press is smart enough to understand that use of a Russian VPN means they're working for the Russian government...but I'd expect /. editors to understand at least the basics of, you know, connectivity.
From the same people who said...
"No classified email on my server"
"No material on my email that was classified at the time"
"No material marked classified on my server"
"I handed over all work related emails"
"The DNC did not collude to keep Sanders from winning"
"The DNC doesn't work with news media to plant stories against Sanders"
If they ever got caught telling the truth once, this might be believable. Who hacked the DNC server doesn't matter, what matters is how corrupt the DNC is from the content of the emails. They did their best to disenfranchise their base. Your vote doesn't mean anything to them, only their power and they are willing to lie, cheat and steal to keep that power and extend it over you.
What a joke the DNC is. How long till Debbie Waserman Schultz gets another high paid job thanks to Clinton? Oops, already happened, so corrupt she had to be fired from the DNC but is still truthful enough to work for Clinton.
Is this some pathetic attempt at political spin or misdirection?
1. "At this point, what difference does it make" who he was working for? Are the emails themselves not blatant enough for anyone?
2. What kind of half-assed chicken-shit "Security researchers" draw a connection between Putin's government and a Russian based malware serving IP address? I won't for a second deny that Russia and Putin's goverenment work extensively in hacking the wold. But, there are literally thousands of malware servers in Russia that Putin's government knows nothing about.
The real issue is the fact that DNC tried to stop Bernie with a few underhanded tactics.
The DNC is now trying to redirect the focus everyone to say the Russians did this rather than asking why Bernie didn't get a fair shot or why Hilary was basically given a free pass. I am more worried about why these emails were written in the first place and why the people at the DNC were stupid enough to think their email server couldn't be hacked.
....attack the messenger.
Isn't that pretty much Lawyer Response 101?
Dovetails nicely with the purported "vast Right Wing conspiracy", doesn't it?
If a hacker reveals illegal conduct, is it "less illegal" if the hacker is Russian?
I haven't noticed anyone asserting the emails are not genuine.
-Styopa
The Republicans are so inept, that they had nothing to do with this! This is all on the DNC and DWS and the entire Clintonista Crime Family. They own this, full and completely. The DNC is proven to be just as homophobic (no HOMO), racist (Taco Bowl) and Sexist ("bimbo" comment). I mean, if this was the GOP doing these things it would be front page of the NYT, but since the DNC has also been found colluding with the media to control the narrative ... several times ... this is just what everyone already knew, we just have a shit ton of smoking guns now.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
The Trump campaign welcomes your endorsement.
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
One party nominated a racist. The other party nominated a serial liar. And still, I bet the Libertarian and Green parties won't get 5% of the vote. I suspect that Hillary and Trump could beat American children in public while shouting "America sucks" and we still wouldn't get a third-party into office.
My favorite is the guy attending the RNC, wearing the "STOP TRUMP" t-shirt, who said he would vote for Trump. **NUCLEAR FACEPALM**
It's what's IN THEM that is the story behind the curtain nobody wants you to see
To my knowledge, ThreatConnect was paid by the DNC to do this investigation, and the company that owns the news source used as a reference here (The Daily Beast is owned by IAC) has Chelsea Clinton on their board of directors.
I would not draw any conclusions until this is independently confirmed.
And I also said that they shouldn't be claiming their emails are hacked by Russians, after all we've been hearing about hacked emails for the past year. They may be telling the truth, but making the argument at all is bad optics.
But then I hear this from Trump yesterday, clarifying his previous statements on NATO, which makes the Russian involvement seem more suspicious:
NATO. They ask me about NATO. Right? You saw that the other day, Meet the Press.
"Well, I hear you want to give up NATO..." I don't want to give up NATO. I like... NATO's fine. But they gotta pay. They gotta pay.
So we have all of these countries, and they're not paying. They're not paying. And we're protecting them.
And the question is: "If such-and-such a country were attacked, are you willing to start World War 3?" Because that's essentially what's happening. They don't pay.
They say, "Well, we have a treaty!" So they have these articles: "Donald Trump wants to give up NATO." No no no. I don't want to give up anything. I want them to pay.
We're a country. It's not 40 years ago, 50 years ago. And now, most people in this audience don't even know, that we're protecting Japan, China, we're protecting Germany! Nothing but money.
We're protecting Saudi Arabia. If we weren't around, Saudi Arabia, Saudi Arabia wouldn't be around for two weeks. We protect Saudi Arabia. They don't pay us what that should be paying. We're losing everything. Folks, we lose on everything.
We protect South Korea. We have 28,000 soldiers on the line, against the maniac on the right. We have 28,000 soldiers against North Korea, separated. Pretty dangerous stuff, considering he's got a million-person army. Pretty dangerous stuff.
So we're doing all this, and yet they're paying us a fraction of what it is.
I saw it with Japan. And by the way, I think it's fine- but they've got to pay us. We don't have the money. They gotta pay us. And they will pay us if the right person asks. If the right person asks. They will. They will.
Do you have any idea the difference that makes for our country if we get countries to take care of us the way they should.
We had a general recently, because we've been doing this, and he said, "Mr. Trump doesn't understand that Japan is paying almost 50 percent of the cost of what we do for them." And I said, why not 100 percent? Why? Tell me why. Tell me why.
Folks, we're run by incompetent people and it's going to end. And it's going to end soon. Because people aren't taking it anymore.
Now, when I talk about we're going to protect Japan, which is great, now, you always have to be prepared to walk. And I said, in one of the articles, they said, "Now what would happen if they didn't pay." I said, âoeWe have to walk."
Hillary Clinton said, "He wants to walk from Japan!" Now, see, what she did, she makes it impossible to negotiate. She's not a negotiator. She's a fool. She's a fool. No, she's a fool.
Because when you tell Japan- very smart people, great people, I have many friends there- but when you say you're not prepared to walk, you'll never walk? So she said, "How dare he say that! We will never walk!"
Then they're never going to pay us. We may have to walk! Folks, we may have to walk.
But- the same thing with Germany. We're spending a fortune in Germany. Same thing with Saudi Arabia. Let me tell you. Saudi Arabia? So we'll say this: "Folks, you gotta pay us. You gotta pay us. Sorry."
They're gonna say no. Bye-bye! Within two days, they're calling back, "Get back over here, we'll pay you whatever the hell you want."
OK? One hundred percent.
But whe
Irrelevant.
Vote for divided govt so Trump can't get anything done. A blocked Trump is better than President Hillary.
No conspiracy necessary. His campaign is over, he didn't get the nomination, now he's recommending that his supporters make the best of a bad situation and elect a ho-hum stay-the-course centrist, the only candidate who can realistically win enough votes to keep a bigoted, inept and childish protofascist from winning the presidency.
If you have to step in a dog turd to dodge a bullet, you do it. It's the smart and sensible choice.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
If that conspiracy theory were true, wouldn't you think the DNC would be screaming outright about them somehow being fake, instead of trying to hand-wave so much over them?
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Yes, why vote against Hillary or Trump when you can vote against BOTH HILLARY AND TRUMP!
Vote third party, ANY third party. If you really want to stick it to them, vote for the most likely 3rd party Gary Johnson because if he wins even a few electoral votes, it could prevent either candidate from securing the election and the House of Representatives will have to make the call. You can't just not vote or write in, because those don't get counted and thus might as well be a vote for the status quo.
Yes it's an anecdote! Were you expecting original research in a Slashdot comment?
Voting for the lesser of two evils still means you;re voting for evil.
Seriously - it's like saying "Oh, I'm voting for Stalin because that Hitler guy is just nasty...
You realize we sent Stalin a massive infusion of arms and armaments to help him keep fighting Hitler, and supported him despite his evil, right through V-E day? That we really preferred having Russian soldiers dying to having Americans dying, so we gave him all the help we could?
Yes, there was a strong feeling in certain circles that when the eastern front met the western front, the fighting would continue and we'd wind up in a war with the Russians. But still, we absolutely supported evil when it was fighting another evil.
Real lawyers write in C++
Hillary's involvement is Benghazi is what disqualifies her for me.
[ Cutting a anti-H rant which disagrees with the events in every official Benghazi investigation ]
We can agree on a few things:
* There have been about 8 Benghazi investigations.
* The first few focused on finding Obama at fault. After the 2014 election, they quickly pivoted to finding Hillary at fault.
* Most, maybe all of them were controlled by Republicans
* Republicans have very strong incentives to find Obama and Hillary at fault
* Republicans are supported by a number of generous billionaires, who also have very strong incentives to find Obama and Hillary at fault.
* Every investigation has returned largely the same results:
* Hillary and Obama did not give complete information at first (while conflicting information was coming in), but neither one lied. They gave the facts as they were known at the time.
* Neither Hillary nor Obama could have done anything during the attack which could have changed the outcome or had any effect.
* Neither Hillary nor Obama did anything (or failed to do anything) before the attack which directly led to or caused or enabled the attacks.
* Some lower level people at State made some decisions which were (in 20/20 hindsight) poor, but were not malicious.
* Some of the people involved in the investigations have not disagreed with the facts in the official reports, but have nonetheless claimed without explicit basis that Hillary and/or Obama lied and caused it and were otherwise EVIL. Again, without facts or clear explanations.
Now here is where we disagree.
You seem to believe that all of the investigations were wrong for some unexplained reason, and all wrong in the exact same way, and nobody involved has clearly explained how they were wrong, but you know more than all of the investigators and can prove that your version is correct.
I believe that you cannot deal with what you WANT to be true disagreeing with reality, so you are making shit up and ignoring facts while truly believing every word you say, You are not lying. You are also not correct.