More Evidence Ties Alleged DNC Hacker Guccifer 2.0 To Russian Intelligence (techcrunch.com)

An anonymous reader shares a report: It may be a while since you've heard the handle "Guccifer 2.0," the hacker who took responsibility for the infamous DNC hack of 2016. Reports from the intelligence community at the time, as well as common sense, pegged Guccifer 2.0 not as the Romanian activist he claimed to be, but a Russian operative. Evidence has been scarce, but one slip-up may have given the game away. An anonymous source close to the U.S. government investigation of the hacker told the Daily Beast that on one single occasion, Guccifer 2.0 failed to log into the usual VPN that disguised their traffic. As a result, they left one honest IP trace at an unnamed social media site.

That IP address, "identified Guccifer 2.0 as a particular GRU officer working out of the agency's headquarters on Grizodubovoy Street in Moscow," the Daily Beast reported. (The GRU is one of the Russia's security and intelligence organs.) Previous work by security researchers had suggested this, but it's the first I've heard of evidence this direct. Assuming it's genuine, it's a sobering reminder of how fragile anonymity is on the internet -- one click and the whole thing comes crashing down.

Comments

unnamed social media site

[Anonymous Coward]

no wonder reddit wont cough up the logs

Anonymous source...

[NuclearCat]

Yes, we should believe. I rather prefer to believe detailed technical reports like EFF do, with all details, than this bullshit with "well informed anonymous sources" that often turns to be "our imagination".

Re:Anonymous source...

[jeff4747]

Well, the person leaking this information is committing a crime. So oddly enough, they don't want to advertise their identity. Nor release to the public a lot of presumably classified information backing it up.

Bad news for Roger Stone

[bigtech]

who has admitted contact with Guccifer 2.0 during the campaign.

Poetic justice if you ask me

[DeplorableCodeMonkey]

The Clinton campaign used an online smear campaign to try to turn Sanders into the candidate whose supports are misogynists. Then Russian intelligence says "hold our vodka, we'll show you what professionals can do."

And the best part? 95% of what they did was dump dirty laundry that would have destroyed her before the primary if the MSM had not been in her pocket. They didn't even have to deep dive into dezinformatsia to undermine her.

Maybe if they'd run a candidate who didn't epitomize her nickname on the right, Felonia Von Pantsuit, they'd have had a tougher target.

Re:Poetic justice if you ask me

[CaptainDork]

Poetic justice my ass.

Things worked out the way they did because of the vote.

Re:Poetic justice if you ask me

[burtosis]

Felonia vonPantsuit is now my new favorite user name. Thank you!

Re:Poetic justice if you ask me

[umghhh]

And why is this marked as troll? I observe this a lot lately - before trolls were bad language garbage spitters. Now you have a view and you are handed a troll badge. Either a 50c army or the youth of today is half way brain dead - not because of trump or clinton but because they cannot handle normal conversation and argument exchange.

local hack = Seth Rich

[Anonymous Coward]

Uploaded at 22MB/sec (capital B), or so goes the narrative. That's a nice upload circuit. Why is is suspiciously close to the expected transfer rate of a USB2 drive? Gee I wonder.

Re:local hack = Seth Rich

[jeff4747]

Because once data is "hacked" from one server, it is physically impossible to move it onto another computer and/or device. It had to remain on this guy's hard disk in Russia.

Or perhaps that's not actually true....

Re: local hack = Seth Rich

[Anonymous Coward]

Nope. Just the DNC, where he had direct involvement. Thanks for continuing the discussion.

Re:local hack = Seth Rich

[walterbyrd]

Hardly a "hack" more of a leak.

All Seth had to do was copy a .pst file to a USB stick and send that to wikileaks. Seth had access, there would be nothing to it.

No hack, no conspiracy.

Seth had motive to that also. Seth was Bernie supporter, and was understandable unhappy to see Bernie robbed of the nomination.

The Seth theory is actually the anti-conspiracy theory. The Russia theory is the far-fetched conspiracy theory - especially if it involves Trump.

Re:local hack = Seth Rich

[randallman]

When there is 0 proof, it's called a conspiracy. And of course you're ignoring the findings of the CIA, FBI, and NSA.

Re:local hack = Seth Rich

[jeff4747]

Creation times are maintained from one device to another.

No, creation times can be maintained from one device to another. It's up to the driver, filesystem and OS to actually do so. And for no one to use any basic utilities to alter them.

The only way that happens is if they were copied locally.

And your evidence that the local copy happened at the DNC is.......?

The files probably passed through multiple servers between when it was exfiltrated from the DNC and when it showed up at Wikileaks - you typically do not directly copy the pilfered data to your workstation, for example. And you typically back up the data. And you typically do not give Wikileaks direct access to your network.

If your claim is it was copied to a USB drive, why did that copy have to happen at the DNC? It could just as easily have been copied in Bucharest. Or Moscow.

Re:local hack = Seth Rich

[AHuxley]

It was just another domestic version of the Pentagon Papers. People walking out with party political documents they saw all day and telling the world about US politics.

Re:local hack = Seth Rich

[Sique]

By not believing anyone you can prove anything. Someone tells something not fitting your story? Just don't believe them. Problem solved. Proof delivered.

Re:local hack = Seth Rich

[Uberbah]

And of course you're ignoring the findings of the CIA, FBI, and NSA.

You mean the ones that don't exist? Clapper - the guy who committed perjury before Congress while spying on Congress - handpicked analysts to come up with a story. And if you're handpicking the analysts, you're handpicking the results as well.

When there is 0 proof, it's called a conspiracy.

Don't forget your tinfoil hat on the way out.

Re:local hack = Seth Rich

[jeff4747]

Because the creation times were created when the data was downloaded off the server. They will then never be altered because the creation time is set when a file is created, not when it is copied.

Ok, let's walk through this slowly for you.

I steal the files from the DNC. I exfiltrate them from the DNC's server to my server somewhere on the Internet. Creation times set.

Then I download them from my server on the Internet to a local server. Creation times set.

Then I download them from my local server to my workstation to dig into them. Creation times set.

Then I upload the "interesting" files to the local server. Creation times set.

Then I download the "interesting" files to removable media in order to send them to Wikileaks. Creation times set.

Creation time only tells you when a file was created. It doesn't tell you where the file was created.

Face it, all the evidence is that the DNC "hack" was an inside job

Um....no, the evidence of it being an inside job is a staffer died about the same time. One of the "minor" holes in the inside-job theory is no one has established he had sufficient rights in the mail system to get the files.

There has never been any evidence, anywhere, pointing back to Russia

Except for a few indictments and leaks. But hey, who can call an indictment "evidence".

IP addresses mean jack shit

[Opportunist]

Every newbie hacker knows how to reroute his traffic or even (in some cases) make it appear to come from somewhere else. You just claim a "professional hacker" can't pull off what any scriptkiddy manages to do? Masking your IP address is hacking 101.

Please. Give me better evidence than that. Quite bluntly, if I wanted to send you on a wild goose chase, I'd make sure to include one such "blunder".

Re:IP addresses mean jack shit

[roccomaglio]

It seems amazing that the GRU internet access would have IPs pointing back to them. The end point of their network would be set to something innocuous by default. This would be done be done at the network level, so it would be impossible to screw up and give your real ip. This is equivalent to "the professional assassin slipped up and left his passport on top of the victim".

Re:IP addresses mean jack shit

[CaptainDork]

I think most of us have fucked up on occasion.

Re:IP addresses mean jack shit

[barc0001]

> Masking your IP address is hacking 101.

And even super smart people accidentally fucking up that one time out of 10,000 and getting caught has also been "getting caught 101" since the beginning of time.

How'd they nail that Silk Road guy? Because he fucked up with his gmail address once. How'd they nail Berkowitz (aka the Son of Sam)? A parking ticket.

Re:IP addresses mean jack shit

[Anonymous Coward]

How easy is masking your IP address as a particular GRU officer working out of the agency’s headquarters on Grizodubovoy Street in Moscow?

"Guccifer 2.0 sprang into existence on June 15, 2016, hours after a report by a computer security firm forensically tied Russia to an intrusion at the Democratic National Committee. In a series of blog posts and tweets over the following seven months—conspicuously ending right as Trump took office and not resuming—the Guccifer persona published a smattering of the DNC documents while gamely projecting an image as an independent Romanian hacktivist who’d breached the DNC on a lark.

Motherboard conducted a devastating interview with Guccifer that exploded the account’s claims of being a native Romanian speaker. Based on forensic clues in some of Guccifer’s leaks, and other evidence, a consensus quickly formed among security experts that Guccifer was completely notional.

“Almost immediately various cyber security companies and individuals were skeptical of Guccifer 2.0 and the backstory that he had generated for himself,” said Kyle Ehmke, an intelligence researcher at the cyber security firm ThreatConnect. “We started seeing these inconsistencies that led back to the idea that he was created hastily by the individual or individuals that affected the DNC compromise.”

Proving that link definitively was harder. Ehmke led an investigation at ThreatConnect that tried to track down Guccifer from the metadata in his emails. But the trail always ended at the same data center in France. Ehmke eventually uncovered that Guccifer was connecting through an anonymizing service called Elite VPN, a virtual private networking service that had an exit point in France but was headquartered in Russia.

But on one occasion, The Daily Beast has learned, Guccifer failed to activate the VPN client before logging on. As a result, he left a real, Moscow-based Internet Protocol address in the server logs of an American social media company, according to a source familiar with the government’s Guccifer investigation. Twitter and WordPress were Guccifer 2.0’s favored outlets. Neither company would comment for this story, and Guccifer did not respond to a direct message on Twitter.

Working off the IP address, U.S. investigators identified Guccifer 2.0 as a particular GRU officer working out of the agency’s headquarters on Grizodubovoy Street in Moscow. (The Daily Beast’s sources did not disclose which particular officer worked as Guccifer.)"

Re:IP addresses mean jack shit

[alvinrod]

I don't necessarily buy into all of this myself, but why do people tend to treat the government and its operatives as infallible masterminds? If they were so capable in these regards, why is so much else a complete cluster fuck?

Even if you want to argue that the intelligence organizations are not staffed by your typical rank and file idiots, highly skilled, very intelligent people are still capable of making mistakes. Even though the odds of those are quite small by themselves, doing something enough times makes it likely to have slipped up somewhere.

Re:IP addresses mean jack shit

[TFlan91]

It's also much easier to screw up digitally than physically... and much harder to undo.

Re:IP addresses mean jack shit

[Entrope]

If you'll believe some anonymous US intelligence source that, contrary to the findings of many courts in copyright infringement lawsuits, an IP address uniquely identifies a person, I have a bridge to sell you. And a prime island in New York City, only occupied by one rather large green lady.

Re:IP addresses mean jack shit

[jeff4747]

If you could manage to read aaaaaaalllllllll the way to the 4th sentence of the summary, you'll find out he forgot to turn on the VPN once.

I eagerly await your claim that no one ever makes a mistake.

Re:IP addresses mean jack shit

[jeff4747]

Making their external IP appear to be an innocuous business wouldn't help much. It would not take long to notice a whole lot of attacks are coming from that innocuous IP and figure out it's not so innocuous. And probably not that hard to tie it back to the GRU by correlating the attacks with other information.

VPNs let them change their IP far more frequently, preventing that correlation. Now, they should have configured their system to automatically connect to the VPN and refuse to send all packets that don't go on the VPN. But there's a practical angle to that too - they would not be able to use that system for anything but attacks. That's kinda inconvenient and requires one "attack" system and one "be able to access all the data I need to carry out the attack" system. So there would be some pressure to just have a software VPN the operator toggles on and off.

And this incident would seem to indicate the potential pitfalls of that. One mistake out of presumably lots of attacks is a pretty good error rate.

Re:IP addresses mean jack shit

[jeff4747]

This could be a Chinese plot to make the Russians look bad. Or a clever lad in Saskatchewan doing the same. Or a Russian. Or someone from New Zealand. No way of telling, really, until and unless they actually catch the guy...

So you're saying there's a VPN I can use that runs out of the GRU's headquarters?

Re:IP addresses mean jack shit

[barc0001]

> If you'll believe some anonymous US intelligence source that, contrary to the findings of many courts in copyright infringement lawsuits, an IP address uniquely identifies a person, I have a bridge to sell you. And a prime island in New York City, only occupied by one rather large green lady.

Cool, will you throw in Coney Island too? I've always wanted an amusement park.

Nobody with a brain would correlate IP = person. However let's assume this is US intelligence source is correct that Guccifer had activity tied to him linked to an IP belonging to the GRU in Moscow. Even if he's some pasty white kid in Colorado living in a ski shack, it's pretty damn odd that would happen. False flag op by Guccifer? "Sure, let's try tying my identity to the one thing that would discredit all this work I've done with Roger Stone and get the intelligence community's attention, that seems like an excellent plan"

Never attribute to malice/cleverness that which can be adequately explained by mistake or stupidity.

Re:IP addresses mean jack shit

[walterbyrd]

If the GRU is supposed the Russian version of the NSA, then it seems unlikely that anybody could just accidentally forget to turn on the VPN. There would be a dozen safeguards to prevent that from happening.

Re:IP addresses mean jack shit

[umghhh]

anybody could have done the false flag. We just do not know. The rage now is understandable - the democrats have the chance to kick but and there is nothing that republicans can do. Providing exact evidence when not always possible and easy is not in their interest. The bigger issues are these: 1. how is that possible that few however powerful trolls could influence elections of such a big state like US are? and 2. related: the involvement of the data mining companies over FB to influence electorate in most efficient way. First is kind of silly but I can believe Ruskis did it. We do that too. I think everybody on this planet is trying to affect elections of the neighbours and opponents to ain some advantage. Healthy rate of transparency and ability to discuss in civil way with respect for the other side (in case we win this pays off usually) helps here better than anything else. Well educated and intelligent population taking active part in public discussions is however not only unwelcome but also impossible to get in a country of any size except Switzerland it appears, The second thing is I think a lost case but it affects elections much more than anything else could (even Putin is a small boy comparing with possible effectiveness of these tools). Trump was helped this way (or so we are told). Marcon did that too. Obama did that I hear. The bottom line is this - these measures are making the little guy breaking in into the system possible only if they can gain a said company behind them. In principle the issues are not important anymore and instead the way to manipulate key points in electorate are.

Re:IP addresses mean jack shit

[jeff4747]

And yet the NSA's "toolkit" is public. There would be a dozen safeguards to prevent that from leaking.....

Re:IP addresses mean jack shit

[Zenzilla]

So what you are saying is that a non-Russian hacker was able to mask his IP address to an IP address used by Russian intelligence? That's still suspicious as hell. If we are talking IPv4,TCP then you need a good source and destination IP address to set up a session handshake. If I make a connect to your system but put a bad source IP in the IP header there is no TCP connection and we can't talk anything that relies on TCP, HTTP for example. When you say it's easy to mask your IP you are right you can VPN to a different system or NAT to a different IP address. That is not what we are talking about in this case. Russian Intelligence was the last known hop for this traffic. Where the connection went from there is unknown. But the fact that was the last hop is very significant.

Re:IP addresses mean jack shit

[pots]

Did you read the summary? He was masking his IP address, as you'd expect. Expect he made a mistake one time, as you'd expect. And they caught it with their ubiquitous surveillance, as you'd expect. That's how it usually works - you are the leetest haxxor ever... until you screw up that one time.

There's nothing weird or surprising about this evidence, it's a typical story about this sort of thing.

Re:IP addresses mean jack shit

[AHuxley]

Re "I don't necessarily buy into all of this myself, but why do people tend to treat the government and its operatives as infallible masterminds?"
Why would someone in Russia do the one any only thing that would get Russia detected?
A super easy to find tail back to Russia?
Russian code litter led to be found?
Russian spy method are then all over the Western media in real time?
Reading about the GRU and code litter would tell Russian about its fictional "missions" in the US news?
Who would allow the USA to talk to the media about what Russia is doing right and what it had to not do to not get caught?
Real spy work to discover Russian and Soviet methods by the NSA and CIA stays secret for decades.
So the Russians cant lean form how the USA works and wins.
Yet now we are to accept a real time account in the media? By an anonymous source who is allowed to talk to the media again and again about US methods and what was found?

Why would Russia have used the GRU? The GRU is the wrong part of Russian intelligence collection to quote and is very telling about the age and skill of the anonymous source.
GRU is not trusted by Russia for complex political data collection and working in the West on politics and not with human spies. The GRU made huge human spy mistakes in the Cold War and Russia is more careful now about who gets in Russia gets sensitive missions. The GRU lost the Soviet Union one of its best placed spies and did not get to go back to everyday spy work in the West after that.
What the GRU lost the KGB and what replaced the KGB had to be trusted to look after.
GRU is not what replaced KGB. GRU is not the political and Western spy side of Russian government. GRU has many other complex tasks not related to political spy work.
The anonymous source may have been out of US intelligence since the 1980's.
The anonymous source could be younger and does not really understand the long internal history of the GRU having never experienced the Cold War.
The GRU and its attempts at spying and why it does not spy in the way "the anonymous source" thinks it would.
It all makes great real time spy fiction for the media and online clicks. The all powerful GRU that can get into any computer but can work out the ip part and drops code litter all over everything all the time.
Then the story is in the US media in real time for free to show fictional US skills at doing Russian GRU discovery?
A GRU mission thats caught and that the US media can report on?
Thats the amazing super power with the most mazing computer skills ever?
Something like a spy sports event we can all read long with at home.

Re:IP addresses mean jack shit

[GrimSavant]

Keep in mind what this guy (guccifer 2.0) was doing, he was basically running a social media and communications operation to publicize the stolen emails. There's no guarantee that he was personally involved with the initial hack that got the intel in the first place, and could easily have been using different systems and gotten handed the stuff from another department with tighter security.

Just speculating here, but one way I could think of this going wrong for him would be he could have normally been connecting to his accounts from a secured system with more automated connections to the VPNs and whatnot, but a small number of times decides to log on to social media outside of his normal workspace, and slips up and forgets to turn on the VPN there. Heavily secured systems can be a pain in the ass from a usability standpoint, and maybe he wanted to shitpost on Reddit or something and used his laptop and missed the VPN that one time, and well, whoops.

The recent example of NSA should also show that even high end signals intelligence agencies aren't completely airtight. Remember that the US case against Kaspersky depended on an NSA contractor screwing up and taking the NSA malware home on a compromised laptop. That's a bigger screw up than forgetting to connect to the VPN when logging on to social media one time.

Re:IP addresses mean jack shit

[GrimSavant]

See, when you jump straight to "false flag" as an excuse without anything to back it up it doesn't make it look like you are dealing with this in good faith, especially when the accusation is that it linked back to a traceable IP that's presumably in Russia and not the endpoint of an anonymizer. At least when Trump reached for the "it could be anyone!" excuse during the 2016 election there weren't as many specific details in the public about the hack and the publication of the espionage materials.

At least a parallel construction argument would be halfway believable. I could very easily see the western intel agencies catching this guy and the uncovering overall operation by some other means, but not wanting to reveal those means they dig through the data to find one comparatively innocuous screw up and use that as the explanation for the public argument. Unlike the Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee, the intel community is justifiably paranoid about revealing sources and methods, so it would be hardly surprising for them to pick and choose which cards to reveal for indictments against Russians in Russia that will never be extradited by the Russian government.

Re:IP addresses mean jack shit

[Opportunist]

Governments have processes. Twice so if Russian. "The average Ruskie, son, don't take a dump without a plan." isn't just a quote from a movie, it's reality. For some people, process is what should be followed. For some, something that must be followed. But I haven't seen a Russian for whom it isn't just something that IS BEING followed because IT IS BEING FOLLOWED. There is no can, should, may or must. There is only IS. No option. No question. No discussion. This is how it is done if it is done or it isn't done.

I would be highly surprised if it was different in their secret service, of all the organizations in Russia...

Re:IP addresses mean jack shit

[Opportunist]

Depends on the protocol used. DNS reflection DDoS attacks are based on the fact that UDP is connectionless and it's trivially easy to make the server answer the wrong IP. TCP is far more tricky since you have to spoof the handshake without knowing when and how the answers come, but even that's doable (depending on how well the server is hardened).

I have to give you that it's nontrivial to fake a lengthy transaction because your chance of not fucking up sink with every challenge-response pair, but it's doable, provided the other end isn't too well hardened against me flooding it with guesses for the "right" answer and doesn't use impossible to guess tokens.

It really depends on the traffic involved. The more it depends on me knowing what the server sends to the one I want to blame (i.e. traffic I won't see), the harder it gets to pull off.

Re:IP addresses mean jack shit

[Opportunist]

Without going into detail: I actually cannot "forget" to turn the VPN on when I'm working. Case in point, I can't even deliberately circumvent it if I wanted. And I would be incredibly surprised if something like the Russian secret service doesn't have something like this in place if even our rather insignificant outfit has these security precautions in place.

Re:IP addresses mean jack shit

[Opportunist]

It's a question more than a defense. I question the stupidity of the Russian secret service implied here.

Re:IP addresses mean jack shit

[Opportunist]

I don't know what constitutes this "proof" of the Russian IP address. If it's a lengthy session over a connection based protocol like TCP, I'd be amazed if someone can pull a spoof of. I could maybe fake a handshake, but anything that requires a lengthy exchange is probably out of my league. Then again, my expertise is not in faking my IP source. If it's important to you, I'll ask around at work whether someone had to do something like that before.

The more I need to know from the answer the server gives, the more complicated it gets.

Re:IP addresses mean jack shit

[Opportunist]

This is the part I have problems with: How is it possible THAT he screws up?

I'm in IT security. And sometimes we need to use VPN services so it doesn't spook the admins when they see unusual traffic from a range they know well (because it would lead to "quick, ramp up the defenses, we're being audited"). And even we, "hacking" systems that we ARE ALLOWED TO hack because the owner of the systems hires us, set up an infrastructure that takes the whole VPN problem out of our hands so we CANNOT fuck up. It is simply impossible that we start to attack the servers in such a way that our IP addresses show up with the server logs.

And we're hardly a government agency, let alone a secret service.

What you want to do here is convince me that we're ahead in security of the Russian government. I feel flattered, but at the same time not too convinced.

It's an old Cold War tactic

[Provocateur]

Hello there, my capitalist pigs! Why are you watching this channel, when my own comrades are already watching me and Yuri, and U.S.A! There is nothingk of interest here, but maybe you want to save a Nigerian prince, so if you just send me the winning powerball ticket, we can split the winnings 50-50!

But the best news is that I will no longer use the nick Guccifer. I think Keyser Soze has a better ring to it.

Re:It's an old Cold War tactic

[umghhh]

most of the youngsters do not even know who this keyser soze was. The way things stand today the will never have a chance to know as the workings including the name of keyser soze have been cleansed 1984 style. In fact I have troubles pinning the name to any actual memory of mine.

Re:DNC Hacker

[GrumpySteen]

Trump's lead lawyer resigned yesterday and four other top law firms refused to represent him.

It was an inside job... Maybe...

[bobbied]

Assuming we are discussing the same DNC hacking instance.... The evidence shows that this was an inside job. At least the file copies where done locally based on the files creation times because the time offsets between the files wouldn't allow them to be transferred over standard speed internet links.

It's hard to know for sure though until we find out how the intruder was getting in and data out. But... We won't really ever find out for sure. Seems the DNC didn't want the FBI's help on this at the time and contracted the investigation of the breach out to a contractor instead. At this point, the forensic investigation of the equipment is nearly impossible and the conclusions of the contractor suspect.

So.. I'm wondering.. Why do we care about the DNC getting hacked at this point? What difference at this point does it make?

Re:It was an inside job... Maybe...

[Ryanrule]

lol climate audit. why not link to your babushkas blog too?

Re:It was an inside job... Maybe...

[AmiMoJo]

It's of mild interest to anyone concerned that a foreign government may have interfered with the US election. It won't reverse the result now, but it might help prevent it happening next time.

Re:It was an inside job... Maybe...

[jeff4747]

At least the file copies where done locally based on the files creation times because the time offsets between the files wouldn't allow them to be transferred over standard speed internet links.

Because it's not possible to copy a file locally and then transmit it. It's also not possible to preserve a timestamp when copying a file over the Internet. It's also not possible for the data to have been copied locally after it was exfiltrated.

Timestamps are not at all conclusive of anything.

So.. I'm wondering.. Why do we care about the DNC getting hacked at this point? What difference at this point does it make?

Because if the Russia claims are actually true, then some laws have been broken.

It would be good to enforce the laws instead of saying "We're just going to look forward" yet again.

Re:It was an inside job... Maybe...

[quantaman]

Assuming we are discussing the same DNC hacking instance.... The evidence shows that this was an inside job. At least the file copies where done locally based on the files creation times because the time offsets between the files wouldn't allow them to be transferred over standard speed internet links.

Source? I feel like you're climbing out on a very narrow technical limb, I can think of a lot of ways for creation times to end up close together. Hell, if I was the GRU hacker I'd keep my hacking machine on a different network than my other machines. And how would I then move the emails from one box to another? I'd copy them to a USB.

It's hard to know for sure though until we find out how the intruder was getting in and data out. But... We won't really ever find out for sure.

We never know anything for sure, but the evidence seems to be pretty overwhelming unless you're really desperate to believe something else.

So.. I'm wondering.. Why do we care about the DNC getting hacked at this point? What difference at this point does it make?

Because our worry isn't that Trump gets caught for conspiring with a foreign power to win an election, our worry is he gets away with it and then he pulls the same thing again in 2020.

The US's status as a democracy is in way more danger than you realize.

Re:It was an inside job... Maybe...

[randallman]

"The evidence shows that this was an inside job." What evidence?

"We won't really ever find out for sure." So you're sure it was an inside job because of "evidence", but then you're also sure we can't know what happened?

Why we care is because it potentially undermined our free elections as it was obviously used by the Trump campaign against Clinton.

Re:It was an inside job... Maybe...

[walterbyrd]

> Source?

Research Shows Guccifer 2.0 Files Were Copied Locally Suggesting DNC Not "Hacked By Russians"
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-07-10/new-research-shows-guccifer-20-files-were-copied-locally-dnc-not-hacked-russians

>> So.. I'm wondering.. Why do we care about the DNC getting hacked at this point? What difference at this point does it make?

> Because our worry isn't that Trump gets caught for conspiring with a foreign power to win an election, our worry is he gets away with it and then he pulls the same thing again in 2020.

By that reasoning shouldn't Hillary be investigated over the Benghazi scandal?

Re:It was an inside job... Maybe...

[Uberbah]

"The evidence shows that this was an inside job." What evidence?

Uh, the evidence was mentioned in the very next sentence. Reading comprehension, it's not just for kids anymore.

Re:It was an inside job... Maybe...

[Uberbah]

We never know anything for sure, but the evidence seems to be utterly non-existent unless you're really desperate to get punked again by the same people who lied to you about Iraq

FTFY

Because our worry isn't that Trump gets caught for conspiring with a foreign power to win an election, our worry is he gets away with it and then he pulls the same thing again in 2020.

Russiagate plothole #2,567: why would Russia try to swing the election to either the Democrats or the Republicans when both parties have been virulently anti-Russian for over a century.

Russiagate plothole #3,789: why is it that Putin was so diabolically clever that he knew years in advance that a bankrupt professional wresting character could be president, yet at the same time be so stupid as to not predict any blowback.

The US's status as a democracy is in way more danger than you realize.

Too bad the focus is on the Russian boogyman instead of voter disenfranchisement, easily hackable electronic voting machines, bogus voter ID laws, the corporate media giving Donald $6 billion in free coverage, gerrymandering, the Electoral College...shit that actually impacts actual elections.

Re:It was an inside job... Maybe...

[quantaman]

Russiagate plothole #2,567: why would Russia try to swing the election to either the Democrats or the Republicans when both parties have been virulently anti-Russian for over a century.

Are you playing dumb or have you just not been paying attention?

One of the most notable aspects of Trump is how pro-Russian he's been, and how much he wants to drop the various sanctions against Russia. Heck, Flynn was fired because he got caught secretly phoning the Russian ambassador to say that Trump would drop the election sanctions, and after a massive bi-partisan bill instructing Trump to implement more sanctions (and not drop the existing one) Trump basically ignored it.

Russiagate plothole #3,789: why is it that Putin was so diabolically clever that he knew years in advance that a bankrupt professional wresting character could be president, yet at the same time be so stupid as to not predict any blowback.

The Steele dossier being largely correct is not a pre-requesite for Trump colluding with Russia. But if Trump was being groomed beforehand it doesn't mean they wanted him to be President, Russia grooms lots of people. Most likely Trump was being used by Putin cronies so they could launder their money through Trump properties and businesses. If Putin or the intelligence agencies took a personal interest it was because he was prominent enough to destabilize things by doing things like going on Fox News and becoming a Birther.

The US's status as a democracy is in way more danger than you realize.

Too bad the focus is on the Russian boogyman instead of voter disenfranchisement, easily hackable electronic voting machines, bogus voter ID laws, the corporate media giving Donald $6 billion in free coverage, gerrymandering, the Electoral College...shit that actually impacts actual elections.

Those are worries. But I'm not talking about Russia in this context, I'm talking about Trump. One of the main ideas of Democracy is the job is bigger than the person, the President's first duty is to the country, the Attorney General to the law, director of the EPA to the environment, etc, etc. No administration gets this perfectly, but Trump doesn't even seem to understand this basic concept. He sees his job as doing good for Trump, whether that's boosting his poll numbers, helping out his family, helping his own businesses, or giving himself a tax cut. And he sees the first duty of any appointee as serving his interests rather than the country.

That's when a country is in danger of sliding towards authoritarianism, when the government starts putting the party or the individual before the country.

Re:It was an inside job... Maybe...

[Uberbah]

Are you playing dumb or have you just not been paying attention? One of the most notable aspects of Trump is how pro-Russian he's been

AYFKM? Under Trump, our moderate headchopping friends in ISIS just magically got targeting information precise enough to kill Russian generals in Syria with mortar fire. Trump is illegally staying in Syria indefinitely, a country Russia is defending from the aforementioned moderate headchoppers and organ eaters.

Trump has maintained high troop levels in eastern Europe, wants to arm our literal neo-Nazi pals that overthrew the elected government of Ukraine, and is sending Navy ships to the Black Sea. That's like Russia sending a fleet to the Gulf of Mexico. Most of the sanctions have been maintained, and the reason for not pushing new ones is that it's going to punish allies who have little choice to trade with Russia.

Sanctions that are complete bullshit to begin with. How is it that the U.S. gets to level sanctions against Russia in response to...the aforementioned American overthrow of Ukraine's government. How is it totally legitimate for the U.S. to spend $5 billion to "bring Ukraine the future it deserves" and then say the Crimean vote to secede was illegitimate - before whining about $5,000 in Facebook ads swinging an American election.

Flynn was fired because he got caught secretly phoning the Russian ambassador to say that Trump would drop the election sanctions

In return for Russian support on a UN vote on illegal Israeli settlements. But this fact is never mentioned in the Russiagate storyline...almost as if the people pushing it were lying propagandists. That and the fact that no one is accusing Trump of treason for colluding with Apartheid Israel.

The Steele dossier being used toilet paper

Also fixed. And still, how can Democrats talk about collusion with a straight face when it's a fact (as opposed to an unproven conspiracy theory) that Hillary not only worked with foreign agents to swing an election, but paid them to do so.

But if Trump was being groomed beforehand it doesn't mean they wanted him to be President

Still the plot hole of Putin being a master chess player setting the board years in advance, except for anticipating the totally predictable response from Democrats, from the media, and from the military-industrial complex.

But I'm not talking about Russia in this context, I'm talking about Trump. One of the main ideas of Democracy is the job is bigger than the person, the President's first duty is to the country, the Attorney General to the law, director of the EPA to the environment, etc, etc. No administration gets this perfectly, but Trump doesn't even seem to understand this basic concept. He sees his job as doing good for Trump, whether that's boosting his poll numbers, helping out his family, helping his own businesses, or giving himself a tax cut. And he sees the first duty of any appointee as serving his interests rather than the country.

You could always take it up with the person most responsible for Trump being in the White House.

Re:It was an inside job... Maybe...

[quantaman]

Under Trump, our moderate headchopping friends in ISIS just magically got targeting information precise enough to kill Russian generals in Syria with mortar fire.

So you're saying that Trump gave ISIS the location of Russian generals? That's a novel conspiracy theory.

I suppose you actually meant the remnants of the modern rebels, in that case I honestly don't know the legitimacy of your theory though would point out that Trump is still subject to constraints.

Trump has maintained high troop levels in eastern Europe, wants to arm our literal neo-Nazi pals

You either don't understand the word "literal" or you read waaaaay too much Russian propaganda.

Yes, there exist neo-Nazis in Ukraine, but they have less influence on Ukrainian than American neo-Nazis have on the GOP.

that overthrew the elected government of Ukraine, and is sending Navy ships to the Black Sea. That's like Russia sending a fleet to the Gulf of Mexico. Most of the sanctions have been maintained, and the reason for not pushing new ones is that it's going to punish allies who have little choice to trade with Russia.

Sanctions that are complete bullshit to begin with. How is it that the U.S. gets to level sanctions against Russia in response to...the aforementioned American overthrow of Ukraine's government. How is it totally legitimate for the U.S. to spend $5 billion to "bring Ukraine the future it deserves" and then say the Crimean vote to secede was illegitimate - before whining about $5,000 in Facebook ads swinging an American election.

This is hilarious. Russia literally invades and annexes part of another country and a fig leaf of a referendum is all you need to give them the thumbs up.

Flynn was fired because he got caught secretly phoning the Russian ambassador to say that Trump would drop the election sanctions

In return for Russian support on a UN vote on illegal Israeli settlements. But this fact is never mentioned in the Russiagate storyline...almost as if the people pushing it were lying propagandists. That and the fact that no one is accusing Trump of treason for colluding with Apartheid Israel.

I actually thought you might be on to something for a moment.

Then I found out that Flynn talked to Russia about the UN vote on Dec 22, the vote was on the 23rd, and Russian ignored Flynn and voted for the resolution.

The call about dropping the sanctions was on Dec 29th.

But I wouldn't get too worked up about it, causality really is a PITA sometimes.

The Steele dossier being used toilet paper

Also fixed. And still, how can Democrats talk about collusion with a straight face when it's a fact (as opposed to an unproven conspiracy theory) that Hillary not only worked with foreign agents to swing an election, but paid them to do so.

Because hiring an investigator who happens to be a retired intelligence operative for an ally is very different from getting an unfriendly nation to do your dirty work.

But if Trump was being groomed beforehand it doesn't mean they wanted him to be President

Still the plot hole of Putin being a master chess player setting the board years in advance, except for anticipating the totally predictable response from Democrats, from the media, and from the military-industrial complex.

It's like you didn't even read my response, or more likely, you're applying the same reasoning skills you used to conclude the Crimean "referendum" was legit.

Re:It was an inside job... Maybe...

[bobbied]

Then WHY did the DNC not accept FBI assistance in figuring out who the criminal was?

I think the issue here is not that the DNC was hacked because both parties where hacked. But the issue is how the DNC decided to deal with it, refusing FBI assistance and obfuscating any possible evidence that could be used in a criminal prosecution by sending their equipment off to be "evaluated" by a third party.

After the DNC refuses the FBI's assistance in tracking down criminal hackers in their systems, they lose the election, then claim that the reason for this was the criminal hacking... I'm sorry, but that's like the fox claiming the coyote ate the missing eggs after he burned down the hen house. Yea, the fox may be right about who the criminal is, but there can be no investigation to prove it so, because any evidence is ashes now.

Re:It was an inside job... Maybe...

[jeff4747]

Then WHY did the DNC not accept FBI assistance in figuring out who the criminal was?

The DNC lost an election to a Nacho Cheese Dorito with a bad comb-over that spent the campaign spewing neo-Nazi talking points.

Why didn't the DNC go to the FBI? They're fucking idiots.

Re:It was an inside job... Maybe...

[Uberbah]

So you're saying that Trump gave ISIS the location of Russian generals? That's a novel conspiracy theory.

The U.S. has been in Iraq and Afghanistan for over 15 years, and other countries almost as long. How many U.S. generals has Al Queda/ISIS/Taliban been able to magically target with mortars.

You either don't understand the word "literal" or you read waaaaay too much Russian propaganda.

You you were saying?

This is hilarious. Russia literally invades and annexes part of another country and a fig leaf of a referendum is all you need to give them the thumbs up.

Insert Luke picture here because everything you just said is false. Russia had an existing base in Crimea - if moving troops through there is an invasion then the United States invades 30 or so locations in Germany alone every year. And repeating myself since you skipped it the first time:

How is is totally legit for the U.S. to overthrow the elected government of Ukraine, yet totally illegitimate for Russia to accept Crimea's vote to be annexed.

The call about dropping the sanctions was on Dec 29th.

Distinction without a difference. Did you read your own link or even it's title?

• Presumably, a delay would have enabled a new Trump administration to veto the Security Council's condemnation of Israel. Flynn made the call to the Russian ambassador and stated the administration's case. On Dec. 23 (after a one-day postponement of the vote), the Russian ambassador called Flynn back and basically said nice try, but nyet, Russia wouldn't be succumbing to the wishes of Team Trump. The resolution passed later that day, with Russia voting in favor of it, and with the Obama administration declining to veto the resolution and abstaining from the vote.

Flynn was in contact with the Russians about a UN vote in exchange for sanctions. That he talked to them a week later does....what to change that fact?

Sanctions that are still complete bullshit. If the USSR had overthrown the government of Canada and immediately started brining the junta into the Warsaw Pact, it's not as though the U.S. would sit around with its thumb up its ass. And if the USSR then slapped America with sanctions for any response would be the cherry on top your BS sundae.

Re:It was an inside job... Maybe...

[quantaman]

The U.S. has been in Iraq and Afghanistan for over 15 years, and other countries almost as long. How many U.S. generals has Al Queda/ISIS/Taliban been able to magically target with mortars.

You either don't understand the word "literal" or you read waaaaay too much Russian propaganda.

You you were saying?

I overstated a bit, but the existence of neo-Nazi movements in Ukraine doesn't mean they're in power, I'd say Russia has a far better claim to being a state where the fascists are in power. Also recall the history, the Soviets did some horrific things to Ukraine, and the Nazis were enemies of the Soviets. A lot of those Ukrainian neo-Nazis are likely there for the anti-Russian aspect more than the racism aspect.

This is hilarious. Russia literally invades and annexes part of another country and a fig leaf of a referendum is all you need to give them the thumbs up.

Insert Luke picture here because everything you just said is false. Russia had an existing base in Crimea - if moving troops through there is an invasion then the United States invades 30 or so locations in Germany alone every year. And repeating myself since you skipped it the first time:

How is is totally legit for the U.S. to overthrow the elected government of Ukraine, yet totally illegitimate for Russia to accept Crimea's vote to be annexed.

Yeah... you're not even taking this seriously.

Re:It was an inside job... Maybe...

[Uberbah]

Also recall the history, the Soviets did some horrific things to Ukraine

90% of which is western propaganda, and nothing compared to what Nazi Germany did when they invaded the USSR. Some of the things you're complaining about were greatly expanded rights for women, universal health care, and quadrupling the country's industrial output. And yet your government is arming neo-Nazis now, interesting. And even the stuff you're complaining about is a century old at this point - how much time shall we spend on American slavery or the million people killed in the occupation of the Philippines?

How is is totally legit for the U.S. to overthrow the elected government of Ukraine, yet totally illegitimate for Russia to accept Crimea's vote to be annexed.

Yeah... you're not even taking this seriously.

You talking to the nearest mirror? So you'd be perfectly OK if Russia had actually tried to interfere in the French election, as opposed to that idea being directly debunked by French intelligence services.

You'd be OK if Russia spent $5 billion USD to overthrow said French government, with help from literal neo-Nazis.

You'd be OK if Russia instantly stepped in and gave billions more to the junta.

You'd be OK if Russia immediately started to bring France into a western-hostile alliance, and start sending weapons that were pointed to the U.K.

You'd be OK if Russia responded to any western country protesting this or supporting the legitimate French government by slapping sanctions on them.

You'd be OK if Russia freaked the hell out over a few thousand dollars in Facebook ads in a Russian election that cost almost $10 billion USD and applied more sanctions.

OK. If you say so.

1 kevin bacon from Trump himself

[Anonymous Coward]

Trump, stone, GRU, DNC. no other cutouts.
Not just communicating, which might be casual, but also being the first (we know of) to know what's in the wikileaks data ahead of time.

Re: 1 kevin bacon from Trump himself

[Comboman]

The same reason the news media doesn't talk about all the bribes the Bushes accepted from the Saudi government. It's yesterday's news. There's a new ass-clown in charge who make all the previous ass-clowns look saintly in comparison.

Re: 1 kevin bacon from Trump himself

[ColdWetDog]

Nothing so drastic. Everybody likes Chinese food. Borscht, not so much.

Re:1 kevin bacon from Trump himself

[bestweasel]

How about this guy? I don't know the law here but this seems a bad thing to do.

A GOP political operative in Florida, Aaron Nevins, DM’d Guccifer 2.0 a request for “any Florida based information” and received 2.5 gigabytes’ worth, according to The Wall Street Journal. The data, he enthused to Guccifer 2.0, was “probably worth millions of dollars.” A consultant for a successful Florida Republican congressional candidate told the paper, “I did adjust some voting targets based on some data I saw from the leaks.”

Must. Blame. Russia. RUSSSIA!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Uploaded at 22MB/sec (capital B), or so goes the narrative. That's a nice upload circuit. Why is is suspiciously close to the expected transfer rate of a USB2 drive? Gee I wonder.

No.

MUST BLAME RUSSIA!!!

Repeat it enough times and you can be a zombified fool, too.

Sure

[Train0987]

Top-level Russian Spy super-hacker just happened to use his Kremlin IP address. Yeah, I bet it happened just like that.

Re:Sure

[Anonymous Coward]

Top-level Russian Spy super-hacker just happened to use his Kremlin IP address. Yeah, I bet it happened just like that.

Patreus was head of the CIA and was dumb enough to use his gmail account draft folder to communicate with his mistress. Some American covert ops guy in Italy got caught because he thought putting his phone in a potato chip bag would make it untraceable. People get sloppy after a while.

Re:Sure

[jeff4747]

Because it's impossible for someone to make a mistake one time out of many, many instances.

Re:Sure

[walterbyrd]

> Patreus was head of the CIA and was dumb enough . . .

Being the head of the CIA does not make you a top-level Spy super-hacker. Typically the head of the CIA is a not a techie.

Re:Sure

[painandgreed]

Top-level Russian Spy super-hacker just happened to use his Kremlin IP address. Yeah, I bet it happened just like that.

Totally! What really probably happened, was that the real Guccifer 2.0 hacked the GRU, compromised one of their machines, and then remoted in and sent messages from there for the lulz.

Re:Sure

[bayankaran]

This can happen. The top level associates and hangers-on are more rabid than the top dude himself. (Usually its a "dude".)

In India when the current hindu right wing administration got into power in 2014, someone from the home ministry (or close to Prime Ministers office) was identified as debasing Wikipedia articles on Jawaharlal Nehru, India's first Prime Minister, and a true giant of a statesman.

The current PM Modi may understand he has differences of opinion about Nehru and his contributions to Indian society, but his acolytes and henchmen will do the dirty work without prompting.

Re:we already know about the DNC hacker...

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't forget Vince Foster, Ben Ghazi and Vitaly Churkin.

Oh that's funny - your link starts with a BIG disclaimer. Here's part of it:

"Subsequently, Nation editors themselves raised questions about the editorial process that preceded the publication of the article. The article was indeed fact-checked to ensure that Patrick Lawrence, a regular Nation contributor, accurately reported the VIPS analysis and conclusions, which he did. As part of the editing process, however, we should have made certain that several of the article’s conclusions were presented as possibilities, not as certainties. And given the technical complexity of the material, we would have benefited from bringing on an independent expert to conduct a rigorous review of the VIPS technical claims.

We have obtained such a review in the last week from Nathan Freitas of the Guardian Project. He has evaluated both the VIPS memo and Lawrence’s article. Freitas lays out several scenarios in which the DNC could have been hacked from the outside, although he does not rule out a leak. Freitas concludes that all parties “must exercise much greater care in separating out statements backed by available digital metadata from thoughtful insights and educated guesses.” His findings are published here.

We have also learned since publication, from longtime VIPS member Thomas Drake, that there is a dispute among VIPS members themselves about the July 24 memo."

3 different attacks

[Anonymous Coward]

There were 3 different hacks during the election.
1) DNC email hack, looked at by Crowdstrike. This one looked like an inside job, as you pointed out.
2) Podesta email hack, spearfishing attack but his email password was "password". If I remember right, THIS is the hack Guiccifer 2.0 took credit for.
3) Sydney Blumenthal email hack. Happened first, I believe Guiccifer (the original one) did this.

I don't remember anyone claiming Guiccifer 2.0 hacked the DNC, until this story broke yesterday. I do remember them saying he hacked Podesta, which was a separate attack. He may not have even used the spearfishing since the password was easy to guess and that may have been a completely different attack.

Re:3 different attacks

[kenh]

He may not have even used the spearfishing since the password was easy to guess and that may have been a completely different attack.

As I recall, the story is Podesta got a spearfish email asking him for his email password.

Podesta assistant asked IT staffer if it was legit, staffer assured him it was "legitimate".

Podesta's gmail account was scooped up by hackers.

Podesta's emails were put on selective public display.

Podesta's IT staffer that assured him the spearfish email was a "legitimate" email blamed a typo, he meant to say "it was illegitimate", but only typed "it is legitimate".

Podesta's IT staffer feels really bad about typo.

Re:3 different attacks

[walterbyrd]

2) Podesta email hack, spearfishing attack but his email password was "password". If I remember right, THIS is the hack Guiccifer 2.0 took credit for.

Do you have a source on that?

Re:New perspective

[GeekWithAKnife]

Sorry to deviate from topic...talking about Russian interference and hacking in the election overall...

Re:Were we watching the same election?

[Anonymous Coward]

>>The MSM shat all over Hilary.
an impressive move considering their tongues were all the way up Hillary's butt.

Re:we already know about the DNC hacker...

[Anonymous Coward]

I didn't know Sean Hannity had a Slashdot ID. Welcome to Slashdot Sean I guess.

I didn't know you could download data from a server in DC to one in Moscow at 22 MB/sec.

Welcome to a planet with a blue sky. Cuz the color of the sky on your planet sure as shit ain't blue.

Re:DNC Hacker

[burtosis]

Trump dosent need those dotards. He is now going to represent himself and testify in front of Mueller. I was losing faith in him, but with this it is restored.

Re:we already know about the DNC hacker...

[DigiShaman]

It was inside job, with a USB drive at 23MB/s transfer rate. This is known and documented.

https://www.zerohedge.com/news...

You and I will never know

[some old guy]

The professional excellence and utter dishonesty of both the Russian state intelligence apparatus and the American deep state make any informed, verifiable determination impossible. The spooks and their masters are pretty damned good at their obfuscation and disinformation games.

Rather than hitch oneself to a favorite political or ideological bandwagon, I prefer to adhere to a finely-crafted and well-tuned cynicism that demands treating this and every other spy versus spy story as low comedy.

It makes for passable diversion as I read such stories while comfortably relaxing in Diogenes' pithos.

Re:You and I will never know

[some old guy]

Any want is moot. Clearly, everybody already is bad.

Who's being naive, you self-righteous little twat?

Re:You and I will never know

[devloop]

NONE of this BS matters. We *know* States spy on and hack other States all the time. WHAT MATTERS is what the Media chooses ignore: The content of the material that was hacked. How the DNC rigged the primaries to screw Sanders and progressive voters. THAT is what gave us Trump, running the most corrupt, least likable establishment candidate the Dem Party has run in years. They'd rather have a psycho pathological liar in the WH than a progressive who'll govern for The People, not for the mega corps that are paying the DNC and the Clinton Foundation.

DailyBeast owned by IAC & Chelsea Clinton sits

[walterbyrd]

board.

Or so I've read.

https://medium.com/@jashobell/the-daily-beast-is-owned-by-iac-and-chelsea-clinton-sits-on-their-board-of-directors-d6978d1e9ee5

Re: DNC Hacker

[Reverend Green]

I wouldn't exactly describe a gaggle of attorneys who feel themselves professionally inadequate to represent the President as a "top" law firm.

hear that?

[Ryanrule]

the ivans are coming

Because we don't want a hostile foreign power

[rsilvergun]

attacking one of our country's major political institutions? You can argue the DNC shouldn't be a major institution, but the fact is that they are. Yes, our political system needs work, but it's not going to get fixed by hostile foreign powers meddling in it.

Re:Because we don't want a hostile foreign power

[kenh]

The Democrat National Committee (DNC) is a non-profit political organization, it has literally nothing to do with the governance of the United States.

The DNC hack was detected by federal organizations, advice and assistance was offered, but declined by the DNC at the time.

As I recall, the RNC was similarly attacked, but when advice and assistance was offered, it was accepted and the impact was mitigated.

In the after-attack analysis, the DNC chose to send their hacked server to a private firm for analysis, corrupting any evidence federal agencies could gleen from the DNC server.

I can't think of one thing Sec'y of State Hillary Clinton, Hillary's campaign manager Podesta, and the DNC did to protect their emails from prying eyes:

Hillary consciously choose to eschew secure federal email and instead contracted a consultant to arrange a private server for all work-related emails - care to argue her private server was more secure than the State Department's servers?

Podesta used a GMAIL account for work-related emails, chose "password" as his account password, and had incompetent assistants and IT staffers that mis-communicated about the legitimacy of a spearfish email.

DNC ignored FBU alerts that their email servers/network were under attack during the campaign.

And this is the team that felt ready to lead the free world?

Re:Because we don't want a hostile foreign power

[cresdon]

Interesting. Do you have a source for this tidbit? The DNC hack was detected by federal organizations, advice and assistance was offered, but declined by the DNC at the time. As I recall, the RNC was similarly attacked, but when advice and assistance was offered, it was accepted and the impact was mitigated. In the after-attack analysis, the DNC chose to send their hacked server to a private firm for analysis, corrupting any evidence federal agencies could gleen from the DNC server.

Re:Because we don't want a hostile foreign power

[farble1670]

Hillary consciously choose to eschew secure federal email and instead contracted a consultant to arrange a private server for all work-related emails - care to argue her private server was more secure than the State Department's servers?

Hi, Hilary Clinton is no longer running for president. You'll have to find a new bogeyman in your attempts to distract the US populace from the actual, present dangers facing us.

Re:Because we don't want a hostile foreign power

[Uberbah]

Hi, Hilary Clinton is no longer running for president. You'll have to find a new bogeyman in your attempts to distract the US populace from the actual, present dangers facing us.

Uh huh. And how much time did you spend complaining about Pence's private email from Indiana? And yes, Hillary will continue to be relevant, since:

1) President Trump is only a thing because of Hillary Clinton

2) All the crap Russiagaters accuse Trump of doing (without any evidence) Hillary was actually guilty of. Not only did she conspire with foreign intelligence agents, she paid them for dirt on her opponent.

Re:Because we don't want a hostile foreign power

[Uberbah]

The DNC hack was detected by federal organizations, advice and assistance was offered, but declined by the DNC at the time.

Supposedly, this is was a major criminal act from a hostile foreign power. Why would the FBI even consider getting approval from the DNC, rather than subpoenaing the alleged evidence or even skipping that step by sending them a 'national security letter'? Russiagate plothole #1,278.

Re:Because we don't want a hostile foreign power

[farble1670]

Uh huh. And how much time did you spend complaining about Pence's private email from Indiana? And yes, Hillary will continue to be relevant, since:

I don't even know what that is. And if I did, I'm 100% sure the answer would no "zero".

You see, normal people with 1/2 a brain are capable of evaluating facts without constantly saying "what about ...". It's a skill but I think you could learn it too.

All the crap Russiagaters accuse Trump of doing (without any evidence) Hillary was actually guilty of. Not only did she conspire with foreign intelligence agents, she paid them for dirt on her opponent.

I know comrade. Your handlers told you to just keep repeating lies over and over and eventually you'll sway the dumb people. It doesn't even matter if you don't supply any facts!

Re:Because we don't want a hostile foreign power

[Uberbah]

You see, normal people with 1/2 a brain are capable of evaluating facts without constantly saying "what about ...". It's a skill but I think you could learn it too.

Sorry to hear you were dropped on the head as a child - early and often. Trump has faced a ten month long investigation from Mueller on a theory, for something that Hillary did in fact. The only response available is "sure, keep investigating Trump but Hillary should have been indicted last year".

Otherwise, not only are you a political hack, you're doing what the United States routinely accuses countries like Venezuela or Russia of doing: using the criminal justice system to go after people you don't like for purely political purposes.

I know comrade. Your handlers told you to just keep repeating lies over and over and eventually you'll sway the dumb people. It doesn't even matter if you don't supply any facts!

Not just early and often, but from a great height as well. I have the facts, you have the dumbest conspiracy theory of all time.

Re:Because we don't want a hostile foreign power

[farble1670]

The only response available is "sure, keep investigating Trump but Hillary should have been indicted last year".

Funny isn't it. Trump controlled government. Trump controlled house. Trump appointed FBI director. And so on. Yet for some reason, they aren't able to indict this person that is apparently the biggest criminal of the last 50 years? Oh but forget Trump, they've been trying to find something on H for the last 10 years. Yet still, nothing?

It's so strange, and hard to explain.

Re:Because we don't want a hostile foreign power

[Uberbah]

It's so strange, and hard to explain.

For dullards, maybe. Hillary isn't going to be prosecuted by Trump's DOJ for the same reason Bill's DOJ dropped the Iran Contra investigation: to continue the de facto immunity to high crimes and misdemeanors. If an administration of either party started upholding the law to politicians, the deep state, and the military-industrial complex, the bubble propping up the American Empire might just pop. Trump sends Hillary to prison for mishandling classified information, Corporate Cory or Kamela "slave labor" Harris might actually prosecute Trump for his warmongering or corrupt weapons deals.

And we couldn't have that.

Re:Because we don't want a hostile foreign power

[farble1670]

Hillary isn't going to be prosecuted by Trump's DOJ for the same reason Bill's DOJ dropped the Iran Contra investigation

Isn't "pee-lover" Trump already being investigated?

Trump sends Hillary to prison for mishandling classified information

Hilary was already investigated. For years, and nothing.

Re:Because we don't want a hostile foreign power

[Uberbah]

Isn't "pee-lover" Trump already being investigated?

1) Petty partisan theater. Same reason Clinton and Obama were investigated for blow jobs and Benghazi, and not starting wars in Yugoslavia and Libya without Congressional authorization. Going after stupid shit like Stormy Daniels, not real shit like all the businesses Trump started in Saudi Arabia while running for president and then giving them a huge weapons deal.

2) Salve for butthurt Democrats who nominated the worst candidate in history. Also to keep their base compliant and distracted, so the corrupt assholes responsible for Trump in the first place can stay in control of the party.

3) Psyop to get the public on the side of confronting Russia. Same as the propaganda about Saddam planning 911 and having WMD's. Dick Cheney must be kicking himself these days, though. He went through all the trouble of having Colin Powell present fake evidence to the U.N., but who knew he could go make assertions to the press without any evidence whatsoever, and people would just eat that shit up with a spoon?

Hilary was already investigated. For years, and nothing.

Because her name was Hillary Clinton, and the aforementioned bipartisan immunity for crimes committed by high level officials.. If her name was Hillary Smith, an unconnected bureaucrat who mishandled classified information and then committed obstruction of justice on top by destroying evidence, she'd be serving an effective life sentence. That Hillbots continued to excuse her unsecured, unauthorized email server after a sailor was sent to prison for taking half a dozen unauthorized selfies on an unsecured phone shows the capacity for people to be partisan hacks. Really, really, really stupid partisan hacks.

Re:Because we don't want a hostile foreign power

[kenh]

Yet for some reason, they aren't able to indict this person that is apparently the biggest criminal of the last 50 years?

Hillary isn't "free" until the statute of limitations runs out.

The Justice Department Inspector General is currently reviewing the previous investigation, and if irregularities are found, the investigation will be re-opened - the report should be out this spring.

As a reminder, these things take time - how long has Mueller been investigating "collusion" between Trump campaign and Russians? Despite one prominent CA Congressman reporting he has seen "more than circumstantial" evidence of collusion for over a year, none has come forward yet...

Re:Because we don't want a hostile foreign power

[kenh]

Hilary was already investigated. For years, and nothing.

Then-FBI Director Comey didn't say Hillary had committed no crimes, he said "no prosecutor would likely bring charges" - that's not quite the exoneration you pretend it is, and it is subject to change when you get a new set of prosecutors.

It's not unbelievable

[rsilvergun]

Russia has a long history of telegraphing their intentions.

What I'm saying is that Putin doesn't respect us. And given the results of the last election it's getting harder to argue with the man. Literally as well as figuratively.

Re:It's not unbelievable

[Train0987]

This story is ludicrous.

Re:It's not unbelievable

[Uberbah]

Russia has a long history of telegraphing their intentions.

Except the long history here is of that particular chemical weapon being out of the bag. Anyone could have done it, and no one has presented any evidence that Russia was responsible. Given how many times the same sorts of people have told blatant lies (Iraqi WMD's) or had to retract Russiagate claims that have fallen apart, waiting for evidence is only justifiable response here.

Verify it yourself

[Anonymous Coward]

The other part of the story you can check for yourself. i.e. that he was handed off to another agent who speaks much better English. There you have a verifiable item by reading the early and late Guccifer comments, and it passes a quick sanity check.

But also "anonymous sources" seem to be nearly 100% accurate when it comes to Trumps stuff and the WH 100% INaccurate. Remember "Trump plans to sack US HR McMaster", remember all the denials from the Whitehouse? and guess what, he's sacked. It was so well known as true, that it barely registered as news.

And the Steele dossier, I think even the Fox news lying heads know that's real, this guys resignation email hit hard because it was true, if it was false it wouldn't have affected them:

"As a Russia analyst for many years, it also has appalled me that hosts who made their reputations as super-patriots and who, justifiably, savaged President Obama for his duplicitous folly with Putin, now advance Putin's agenda by making light of Russian penetration of our elections and the Trump campaign. Despite increasingly pathetic denials, it turns out that the "nothing-burger" has been covered with Russian dressing all along. And by the way: As an intelligence professional, I can tell you that the Steele dossier rings true--that's how the Russians do things.. The result is that we have an American president who is terrified of his counterpart in Moscow."

That's 100% true, and Fox are 100% sacks of lying shits who'd sell out their country for their sponsor. Hannity you are a fucking lying sack of Putin shit.

Re:Verify it yourself

[Anonymous Coward]

100% true, eh? I guess it's just as true as when President Obama mocked then-candidate Mitt Romney for calling out Russia at the debate -- followed by all of the talking heads also mocking Romney and applauding Obama's awareness? It's almost as if the talking heads for either party on the media networks try to support their favored candidate. Nope, that must not be it though because the other mainstream media sources are all Democrat-favoring and thus must be 100% factual. They would never stoop so low as to prefer one candidate and ignore facts.

Either Russia is a problem or it's not. I personally think that Russia is a problem. They actively help our enemies and behave as an enemy, which makes them -- wait for it -- an enemy. But you have to be realistic about their capabilities.

Pretending that Russia is the Boogeyman helps no one except Russia. Russia went overnight from being a joke, to a genius superpower with their ability to manipulate over 62 million voters with $100,000. Or it was the racists voting against the other white candidate (but who couldn't bring themselves out to vote against the black candidate). Only those two reasons could explain Trump winning the election. There's no such thing as people voting along party lines or absolutely hating the other candidate enough to vote.

Let's assume for a moment that the Steele dossier is completely true. Trump is blackmailable by the Russians, ignoring now all of that information is in the open. Now, let's flip it around onto Hillary, the Secretary of State during Obama's first term who famously announced the great reset. Follow that up with the fact that there is a line of money directly (I won't call it a bribe or payoff for the sake of argument) connecting Hillary's decision to signing off on the sale of Uranium One to Russia. Why pretend that her past behavior with Russia, which was an inability to negotiate with them at best or downright selling us out at worst, would be somehow superior to Trump? Why pretend that Russia somehow preferred Trump to Hillary given their past, very real ability to get what they want from her? Trump has literally allowed the killing of Russians in Syria, which is something that Obama was literally too afraid to do with his infamous line in the sand and Hillary has proven to be a lot more like Obama than Trump.

As for the White House denying reports that they are replacing people -- that is literally the exact same thing as any business or other government office. You cannot confirm reports that someone is going to be let go before the person has been let go. Only the most naive person can assume anything else. The same thing just happened with now-Former Deputy Director McCabe before he was fired -- the DoJ denied everything until it finally happened (leaks still happened though).

Re:Verify it yourself

[Anonymous Coward]

| But also "anonymous sources" seem to be nearly 100% accurate when it comes to Trumps stuff and the WH 100% INaccurate.

What?

| And the Steele dossier, I think even the Fox news lying heads know that's real

You have to be trolling, did you actually read it?

Re:Verify it yourself

[Uberbah]

You do realize that the Uranium One deal required 9 (that is nine for you number limited people) government people to sign off on?

Irrelevant.

You think Hillary was the only one? You are an idiot.

Straw man. And irrelevant.

From factcheck.org

Factcheck == toilet paper. But lets go ahead and look at your attempted deflection from the fact that Hillary promised at her confirmation hearings to erect a wall and disclose any potential conflicts of interest between the Clinton Foundation and her work at the State Department. How many of these other eight people had spouses earning half a million dollars from people pushing the deal?

Re:DNC Hacker

[Anonymous Coward]

Trump dosent need those dotards. He is now going to represent himself and testify in front of Mueller.

I totally agree Trump doesn't need any dotards. Why hire somebody when you're a top ranking dotard yourself?

And by all means let him represent himself in front of Mueller. What could possibly go wrong?

Do we haven an actual individual ?

[walterbyrd]

Somebody we can exonerate, and put under oath? Somebody who can be put in prison if any of this is true?

Re:Do we haven an actual individual ?

[umghhh]

Yes it is Vladi.
Putting him in prison, however possible, may be delayed. It probably server better democracy and respect for the rule of law of the country concerned i.e. US to actually cleanse the political class. It does not help long term but clearly these people are in a state of deep rot.

Re:Were we watching the same election?

[JaredOfEuropa]

Physically, these are not mutually exclusive. No, not speaking from experience...

But we must first have ironclad proof

[American AC in Paris]

Look, I'm unconvinced that Guccifer 2.0 is a GRU agent, and it's going to take a lot more than two-bit analysis of easily forged logs to convince me of this.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have work to do. Apparently some people out there still don't believe that Hillary Clinton was running a child-sex-slave ring in the basements of multiple pizza parlours nationwide, and I've got to set them straight.

Re:But we must first have ironclad proof

[walterbyrd]

- Guccifer 2.0 story relies entirely on the usual anonymous sources

- dailybeast broke the story and Chelsea Clinton sits on the board of their parent company IAC
http://iac.com/about/leadership/board-directors/chelsea-clinton
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/daily-beast-parent-iac-beats-quarterly-expectations-2017-02-01
for all we know, the anonymous source was Hillary Clinton.

- IP addresses are easy to spoof and therefore do not mean much

- It seems unlikely that the GRU internet access would have IPs pointing back to them

- if the GRU is supposed the Russian version of the NSA, then it seems unlikely that anybody could just accidentally forget to turn on the VPN. There would be a dozen safeguards to prevent that from happening.

- unconfirmed: Guccifer 2.0 only claimed to have hacked Podesta, not DNC

- DNC refuses to have it's servers examined by any US government intel agency

- Research Shows Guccifer 2.0 Files Were Copied Locally Suggesting DNC Not "Hacked By Russians"
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-07-10/new-research-shows-guccifer-20-files-were-copied-locally-dnc-not-hacked-russians

- NSA experts say DNC "hack" wasn’t a hack at all, but a leak
https://www.thenation.com/article/a-new-report-raises-big-questions-about-last-years-dnc-hack/

- Do we have an actual physical person? Somebody with a real name and face? If not, then all roads lead nowhere

Re:DNC Hacker

[cascadingstylesheet]

Trump dosent need those dotards. He is now going to represent himself and testify in front of Mueller. I was losing faith in him, but with this it is restored.

Har de har ...

Yeah, he might be doomed this time ... what is this, like the 500th time he's been doomed?

Or, you might be Wile E Coyote ... with your can't fail Acme thing about to fall on your head, again. We'll see.

My money's on the anvil, just from the track record so far ...

Re:Were we watching the same election?

[HornWumpus]

I'm going to need an 'Urban Dictionary' cite for that...

Re:DNC Hacker

[bestweasel]

Unlike the Roadrunner, your analogy's a bit off target. Wile E Coyote usually did get flattened by the anvil or blown up or fell off a cliff. OK he always got up eventually and tried yet again to catch his speedy nemesis but only succeeded in being severely injured once more. I'm not sure how this applies to Trump.

Re:I haven't seen the evidence.

[tinkerton]

I consider the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity a very credible source. Their VIPS memos are at consortiumnews.com , Ray Mcgovern has his own site and Scott Horton (libertarianinstitute.org )does an hour long interview with him every few months. The alternative explanation Ray McGovern gives is that when the Clinton campaign found out Wikileaks was going to publish their mails they had to take drastic measures because people were going to find out they bought up the DNC and stole the primaries from Sanders. So they(Jennifer Palmieri) started pushing the idea that the Russians stole the DNC mails and gave them to Wikileaks. It's outrageous that these two stories (stealing the election and manufacturing the Russiagate narrative ) don't even exist in the mainstream.
So the DNC under Clinton is the source for the Russiagate narrative and for the analysis of the theft(Crowdstrike), as well as for the Steele dossier.

And I'm sure Sanders knows it but can't do a thing about it.

Re: DNC Hacker

[cascadingstylesheet]

Trump's the roadrunner ...

Re:we already know about the DNC hacker...

[Zenzilla]

It looks like all they have shown is the files were probably copied to a USB drive AT SOME POINT. Didn't really show that the source system was the DNC servers unless I missed that part. When moving files between volumes it's very difficult to preserve time stamps, you end up with times stamps for when the copy between volumes occurred.

Re:I haven't seen the evidence.

[farble1670]

It's outrageous that these two stories (stealing the election and manufacturing the Russiagate narrative ) don't even exist in the mainstream.

Nah, it just means people aren't all that dumb after all.

So the DNC under Clinton is the source for the Russiagate narrative and for the analysis of the theft(Crowdstrike), as well as for the Steele dossier.

Sure thing comrade. Now report to your superiors about your progress undermining the capitalist pigs.

He was a fake

[Anonymous Coward]

Guccifer 2.0 was a fake. He releases some unimportant docs to mimic the original, real guy and then just happens to act as Russian as possible.

More info here.

Re:we already know about the DNC hacker...

[farble1670]

Can IP addresses be spoofed? Yes, so it must not be Russia.
Can data transfers be rate limited? Certainly not, so it has to be an internal job.

Glad I could clear that up for you.

Re:we already know about the DNC hacker...

[farble1670]

What on Earth did you just say that wasn't already pointed out?

I pointed out that a lot of the posts here are hypocritical. And apparently you also. I'll say it again slowly. You can't say it's impossible to to meter a data transfer, and simple and easy

No way in hell they have an ISP with that as an UPLOAD rating, and even if locally on the LAN, that would require a gigabit connectivity.

https://www.att-services.net/a...
I have it at my house. It's this little known technology known as fiber. Have you heard of it? It as symmetrical up / down. I get ~900Mb/s both ways.

Now, could a Russian operative have bandwidth as good as what I can get for $80 / month? Hmmm....

and even if locally on the LAN, that would require a gigabit connectivity

Yes and who has $50 to buy a gigabit router? Certainly not a state-sponsored operative.

Re:we already know about the DNC hacker...

[DigiShaman]

Bullshit! Almost 2GB of a 7Z archive transferred at a sustained rate of nearly 23MB/s. The preponderance of evidence suggest that it was local. To meter the speed would be to REDUCE it, you can't meter an increase- that simply can't be forged at the file system level remotely.

Want to still claim it was was a Russian spy? Fine, then the fucker was mole in the office. BUT HE/SHE WAS ***LOCAL***: as in, actually in the motherfuckin office!!!!!

Re:DNC Hacker

[AutodidactLabrat]

He actually is already doomed
November is coming, and impeachment grounds already exist.
Start saying Madame President (Pelosi)

Re:we already know about the DNC hacker...

[farble1670]

Bullshit! Almost 2GB of a 7Z archive transferred at a sustained rate of nearly 23MB/s.

What you are saying is so ridiculous it's comical. I even linked the proof that any consumer can buy that for $80 / month, which you then called "bullshit" lol.

Go away and find another thread to troll where you can make sense.

Yet more cyberbullshit ..

[najajomo]

Do you seriously think the FSB would use a computer that can be traced back to the street address of the FSB.

Re: I haven't seen the evidence.

[farble1670]

Okay. whoosh.