Whats Really Behind US Claims of Russian Hacking?By Tony Cartalucci A community responsible for verified, self-serving lies, has no credibility. Nor do the media organizations that repeated those lies without questioning the very flawed factual and logical fundamentals underpinning them. More recently, the evidence presented by this community and their partners across the Western media regarding alleged Russian hacking of the 2016 US elections is so weak, the logical fallacy of appealing to authority is essential to selling it to the global public. The sinister tone of Russian hacking suggests that Moscow somehow subverted the 2016 US elections through the use of information technology. Headlines across the Western media like CNNs, US accuses Russia of trying to interfere with 2016 election, would help fan the flames of hysteria, claiming: The announcement marks the first time the US administration has officially accused Russia of hacking into US political systems. Earlier in the week, the two countries broke off formal talks about a ceasefire in Syria. We believe, based on the scope and sensitivity of these efforts, that only Russias senior-most officials could have authorized these activities, the Department of Homeland Security and Office of the Director of National Intelligence said in a joint statement. Claims of Russia hacking into US political systems invokes images of hackers based in the Kremlin using sophisticated cyber weapons to crack into voting machines, polling stations, and databases to skew election results. In reality, nothing of the sort happened based not on Russian statements but on the American intelligence communitys own official reports on the incident. The e-mails were then handed over to WikiLeaks before being released to the public. No polling stations were hacked, no databases compromised, and no influence exercised over US elections beyond whatever influence the truth about DNC internal communications had on the American public. The nature of e-mail leaks involve a technique known as spear phishing. It is a technique in which a hacker targets specific individuals with e-mails posing as an official organization or company, requesting the targeted individual to fill in their user name and password. Spear phishingis perhaps the most elementary tactic imaginable, and is more closely related to social engineering and confidence gaming (conning) than actual computer hacking. The US governments own Joint Analysis Report (PDF) based on analytic efforts between the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) would reveal precisely this. In a wordy summary, the report admits (emphasis added): In spring 2016, APT28 compromised the same political party, again via targeted spearphishing.This time, the spearphishing email tricked recipients into changing their passwords through a fake webmail domain hosted on APT28 operational infrastructure.Using the harvested credentials, APT28 was able to gain access and steal content, likely leading to the exfiltration of information from multiple senior party members. The U.S. Government assesses that information was leaked to the press and publicly disclosed. In other, simpler words, targeted individuals were approached via e-mail, were asked for their user names and passwords, andvoluntarilyhanded them over. The Joint Analysis Report attempts to use sophisticated technical jargon in hopes that causal readers believe the operation required equally sophisticated skills to perpetrate. However, the attacks could not have been any more elementary. IT experts fromWikiLeaks Julian Assangetoshow host Vin Armani have explained in depth just how elementary the e-mail hacks were, with the consensus being that a teenager with no resources beyond an Internet connection, basic knowledge of IT, and a desire to crack the DNCs e-mails could have carried out the attacks. Other US government reports, including one linked to by the New York Times titled, Background to Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent US Elections: The Analytic Process and Cyber Incident Attribution (PDF), seem to admit as much, focusing not on the technical details of the actual e-mail hacks, but rather linking the operation to Russia based solely on allegations of how Russia would have benefited from compromising DNC e-mails. Had the elementary e-mail hacks required state sponsored resources, would Russia have been willing to accept the political, economic, and military risks associated with sponsoring such an operation? The answer is likely no. In reality, regardless of who sits in the White House, US foreign policy is primarily dictated by unelected corporate-financier special interests. This explains why the US has exhibited treachery and subversive tendencies toward Russia for decades transcending US presidencies, and even entire eras of US politics. Banks, energy firms, and defense contractors have seen Russia as a competitor since World War II a competitor to undermine, overrun, buy-off, or otherwise isolate and eliminate. Skewing elections in favor of president-elect Donald Trump over former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton would have made little to no difference at all in this decades-long struggle between East and West. Understanding this, however, does much in explaining why the US is exploiting the DNCs compromised e-mails to blame Russia. It provides yet another opportunity to further justify attempts to encircle, contain, and ultimately overthrow the political, financial, military, and industrial order in Russia eliminating a significant obstacle to Wall Street and Washingtons ambitions toward global hegemony. Without being able to cite election hacking and other alleged threats Moscow poses to the West, the immense expenditure on military expansion particularly by the US in Eastern Europe would be inexcusable. Tony Cartalucci, Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer, especially for the online magazineNew Eastern Outlook.,where this article first appeared. I remain optimistic on this INAUGURAL day. Tramp, sorry Trump, claimed that the elections were hacked to elect Clinton. After he won he said there was no hacking, now Trump claims there was hacking. NOTHING but total BULL DREN from both side total distractions. BTW: Trump will bring WW 3, that is what the 1% want Thats the trick of getting the public to routinely accept to diametrically opposed concepts; Orwellian double think. CIA supports Trump with the help of 9/11 Truth denier Assange (Wikileaks) according to Steve Pieczenik CFR Zio psychiatrist former head of intelligence psychological warfare division; new meme CIA opposes Trump. btw, imoWW3 would damage the infrastructure of TPTBs global gulag and undermine their control mechanisms. They have more precise ways to accomplish their enslavement paradigm via economic pain and selected depopulation (bioweapons, mandatory vaccinations, chemtrails, etc.) Agree with your logic train absofknlootley Cartalucci forgets (?) Obama just gave away control over the internet to the UN via ICANN with foreign nations, esp. China, already poised to take over management of the net and reap trillions in profit from data collectionas described in some detail by Elite mouthpiece Wall Street Journal. How does this jive with TPTB and US intelligence worried about hacking? Another false flag op. same-O, same-O !! 