U.S., MSM Claims Of Russian Hacking Lack One Important Ingredient ... EvidenceBy Brandon Turbeville These claims have been repeated ad nauseum by the President, high-level politicians, and the corporate media ever since shortly after the Trump victory and in the wake of Clintons treachery being unearthed by WikiLeaks in the months prior. The U.S. government is now provoking Russia yet again based on something that appears completely fabricated as 2017 appears on the calendar. Because these claims, also supported by U.S. intelligence agencies, are being circulated minute by minute by the corporate media, they bear some analysis before the world is incinerated on the basis of ignorance, paranoia, and deception. This is one point of intense misinformation by the corporate media. With the tagline Russia hacked US elections, the typical uninformed, half-attentive viewer is left with the idea that the Russians hacked into the voting machines and somehow disturbed the true choice of America. In addition, with the rhetoric coming from the government and their media mouthpieces, one is led to believe by inference that Russia also hacked the government itself in some way. But the truth is that, regardless of who the hackers may have been, neither the government nor the vote was ever hacked. Only the DNC was hacked. In other words, the Democratic party was the only victim of hacking in this sequence of events. The information contained therein was then released to WikiLeaks which, in turn, released them to the public. Notably, it was through intense work and effort that the alternative media was able to bring the material contained in the DNC emails to light. But it cannot be ignored that the emails and communications were all very legitimate. Had Clinton and her team not acted inappropriately, there never would have been an issue to begin with. After all, back when the PATRIOT Act was being debated, its supporters (the ranks of which included Clinton) argued that if we had nothing to hide, we had nothing to fear. Clearly, Clintons team had something to fear. While the corporate media loyally regurgitates everything the White House and its intelligence handlers produce, many outlets are, by inference alone, attempting to frame the alleged Russian hacking as having a code name, Grizzly Steppe. By reading many outlets, it sounds much like that is the name the Russians gave the hacking operations, thus making it appear that the hacking was a Russian intelligence operation, complete with a code name. However, Grizzly Steppe is only a name given to the alleged hacks by the U.S. intelligence community to represent the incident. There is nothing Russian about it. The U.S government, via the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security, released a joint statement explaining the alleged details and proof that the Russians were behind the hacks. This report, like the reports and statements before them, prove nothing at all and only succeed in furthering rumors and propaganda against Russia itself and the narrative that the Russians were behind the moderate expos of Hillary Clintons treachery. The report, while claiming to produce the details, does nothing but provide a more in-depth story to be heaped upon the skeleton produced by the intelligence community a few weeks prior. The report is full of technical jargon but the basics of the claims remain the same that the Russians, via hacking groups APT 28 and APT 29, hacked into the DNC emails and then colluded with WikiLeaks (which the pathetic corporate media also attempts to portray as an agent of Russia), to destroy the power of the Democratic party and the reputation of Hillary Clinton before the election to assure Donald Trump would be president. The report, however, already had been debunked before it was ever published. Two weeks ago, in a mostly excellent article by Sam Biddle of The Intercept (despite his bizarre accusations of WikiLeaks being a conspiracy prone organization), the alleged proof being produced regarding the alleged Russian hacking was completely demolished. Biddle, maintaining a balanced view of the possibilities wrote, There are some good reasons to believe Russians had something to do with the breaches into email accounts belonging to members of the Democratic party, which proved varyingly embarrassing or disruptive for Hillary Clintons presidential campaign. But good doesnt necessarily mean good enough to indict Russias head of state for sabotaging our democracy. Theres a lot of evidence from the attack on the table, mostly detailing how the hack was perpetrated, and possibly the language of the perpetrators. It certainly remains plausible that Russians hacked the DNC, and remains possible that Russia itself ordered it. But the refrain of Russian attribution has been repeated so regularly and so emphatically that its become easy to forget that no one has ever truly proven the claim. There is strong evidence indicating that Democratic email accounts were breached via phishing messages, and that specific malware was spread across DNC computers. Theres even evidence that the attackers are the same group thats been spotted attacking other targets in the past. But again: No one has actually proven that group is the Russian government (or works for it). This remains the enormous inductive leap thats not been reckoned with, and Americans deserve better. We should also bear in mind that private security firm CrowdStrikes frequently cited findings of Russian responsibility were essentially paid for by the DNC, which contracted its services in June. Its highly unusual for evidence of a crime to be assembled on the victims dime. If were going to blame the Russian government for disrupting our presidential election easily construed as an act of war we need to be damn sure of every single shred of evidence. Guesswork and assumption could be disastrous. . . . So far, all of the evidence pointing to Russias involvement in the Democratic hacks (DNC, DCCC, Podesta, et al.) comes from either private security firms (like CrowdStrike or FireEye) who sell cyber-defense services to other companies, or independent researchers, some with university affiliations and serious credentials, and some who are basically just Guys on Twitter. Although some of these private firms groups had proprietary access to DNC computers or files from them, much of the evidence has been drawn from publicly available data like the hacked emails and documents. Some of the malware found on DNC computers is believed to be the same as that used by two hacking groups believed to be Russian intelligence units, codenamed APT (Advanced Persistent Threat) 28/Fancy Bear and APT 29/Cozy Bear by industry researchers who track them. The attacker or attackers registered a deliberately misspelled domain name used for email phishing attacks against DNC employees, connected to an IP address associated with APT 28/Fancy Bear. Malware found on the DNC computers was programmed to communicate with an IP address associated with APT 28/Fancy Bear. Metadata in a file leaked by Guccifer 2.0 shows it was modified by a user called, in cyrillic, Felix Edmundovich, a reference to the founder of a Soviet-era secret police force. Another document contained cyrillic metadata indicating it had been edited on a document with Russian language settings. Peculiarities in a conversation with Guccifer 2.0 that Motherboard published in June suggests he is not Romanian, as he originally claimed. The DCLeaks.com domain was registered by a person using the same email service as the person who registered a misspelled domain used to send phishing emails to DNC employees. Some of the phishing emails were sent using Yandex, a Moscow-based webmail provider. A bit.ly link believed to have been used by APT 28/Fancy Bear in the past was also used against Podesta. Biddle then goes into why the information provided above is not enough to prove that the Russians hacked anything at all, much less justification to provoke World War Three in retaliation. He writes, Viewed as a whole, the above evidence looks strong, and maybe even damning. But view each piece on its own, and its hard to feel impressed. For one, a lot of the so-called evidence above is no such thing. CrowdStrike, whose claims of Russian responsibility are perhaps most influential throughout the media, says APT 28/Fancy Bear is known for its technique of registering domains that closely resemble domains of legitimate organizations they plan to target. But this isnt a Russian technique any more than using a computer is a Russian technique misspelled domains are a cornerstone of phishing attacks all over the world. Is Yandex the Russian equivalent of Google some sort of giveaway? Anyone who claimed a hacker must be a CIA agent because they used a Gmail account would be laughed off the internet. We must also acknowledge that just because Guccifer 2.0 pretended to be Romanian, we cant conclude he works for the Russian government it just makes him a liar. Next, consider the fact that CrowdStrike describes APT 28 and 29 like this: Their tradecraft is superb, operational security second to none and the extensive usage of living-off-the-land techniques enables them to easily bypass many security solutions they encounter. In particular, we identified advanced methods consistent with nation-state level capabilities including deliberate targeting and access management tradecraft both groups were constantly going back into the environment to change out their implants, modify persistent methods, move to new Command Control channels and perform other tasks to try to stay ahead of being detected. Compare that description to CrowdStrikes claim it was able to finger APT 28 and 29, described above as digital spies par excellence, because they were so incredibly sloppy. Would a group whose tradecraft is superb with operational security second to none really leave behind the name of a Soviet spy chief imprinted on a document it sent to American journalists? Would these groups really be dumb enough to leave cyrillic comments on these documents? Would these groups that constantly [go] back into the environment to change out their implants, modify persistent methods, move to new Command Control channels get caught because they precisely didnt make sure not to use IP addresses theyd been associated before? Its very hard to buy the argument that the Democrats were hacked by one of the most sophisticated, diabolical foreign intelligence services in history, and that we know this because they screwed up over and over again. But how do we even know these oddly named groups are Russian? CrowdStrike co-founder Dmitri Alperovitch himself describes APT 28 as a Russian-based threat actor whose modus operandi closely mirrors the strategic interests of the Russian government and may indicate affiliation [Russias] Main Intelligence Department or GRU, Russias premier military intelligence service. Security firm SecureWorks issued a report blaming Russia with moderate confidence. What constitutes moderate confidence? SecureWorks said it adopted the grading system published by the U.S. Office of the Director of National Intelligence to indicate confidence in their assessments. Moderate confidence generally means that the information is credibly sourced and plausible but not of sufficient quality or corroborated sufficiently to warrant a higher level of confidence. All of this amounts to a very educated guess, at best. Even the claim that APT 28/Fancy Bear itself is a group working for the Kremlin is speculative, a fact thats been completely erased from this years discourse. In its 2014 reveal of the group, the high-profile security firm FireEye couldnt even blame Russia without a question mark in the headline: APT28: A Window into Russias Cyber Espionage Operations? The blog post itself is remarkably similar to arguments about the DNC hack: technical but still largely speculative, presenting evidence the company [believes] indicate a government sponsor based in Moscow. Believe! Indicate! We should know already this is no smoking gun. FireEyes argument that the malware used by APT 28 is connected to the Russian government is based on the belief that its developers are Russian language speakers operating during business hours that are consistent with the time zone of Russias major cities. As security researcher Jeffrey Carr pointed out in June, FireEyes 2014 report on APT 28 is questionable from the start: To my surprise, the reports authors declared that they deliberately excluded evidence that didnt support their judgment that the Russian government was responsible for APT28s activities: APT28 has targeted a variety of organizations that fall outside of the three themes we highlighted above. However, we are not profiling all of APT28s targets with the same detail because they are not particularly indicative of a specific sponsors interests. That is the very definition of confirmation bias. Had FireEye published a detailed picture of APT28s activities including all of their known targets, other theories regarding this group could have emerged; for example, that the malware developers and the operators of that malware were not the same or even necessarily affiliated. The notion that APT 28 has a narrow focus on American political targets is undermined in another SecureWorks paper, which shows that the hackers have a wide variety of interests: 10 percent of their targets are NGOs, 22 percent are journalists, 4 percent are aerospace researchers, and 8 percent are government supply chain. SecureWorks says that only 8 percent of APT 28/Fancy Bears targets are government personnel of any nationality hardly the focused agenda described by CrowdStrike. Truly, the argument that Guccifer 2.0 is a Kremlin agent or that GRU breached John Podestas email only works if you presume that APT 28/Fancy Bear is a unit of the Russian government, a fact that has never been proven beyond any reasonable doubt. According to Carr, its an old assumption going back years to when any attack against a non-financial target was attributed to a state actor. Without that premise, all we can truly conclude is that some email accounts at the DNC et al. appear to have been broken into by someone, and perhaps they speak Russian. Left ignored is the mammoth difference between Russians and Russia. Security researcher Claudio Guarnieri put it this way: [Private security firms] cant produce anything conclusive. What they produce is speculative attribution that is pretty common to make in the threat research field. I do that same speculative attribution myself, but it is just circumstantial. At the very best it can only prove that the actor that perpetrated the attack is very likely located in Russia. As for government involvement, it can only speculate that it is plausible because of context and political motivations, as well as technical connections with previous (or following attacks) that appear to be perpetrated by the same group and that corroborate the analysis that it is a Russian state-sponsored actor (for example, hacking of institutions of other countries Russia has some geopolitical interests in). Finally, one cant be reminded enough that all of this evidence comes from private companies with a direct financial interest in making the internet seem as scary as possible, just as Lysol depends on making you believe your kitchen is crawling with E. Coli. Biddle also cited the Department of Homeland Security and Office of the Director of National Intelligence statement that alleged Russian hacking. The statement read, The U.S. Intelligence Community (USIC) is confident that the Russian Government directed the recent compromises of e-mails from US persons and institutions, including from US political organizations. The recent disclosures of alleged hacked e-mails on sites like DCLeaks.com and WikiLeaks and by the Guccifer 2.0 online persona are consistent with the methods and motivations of Russian-directed efforts. These thefts and disclosures are intended to interfere with the US election process. Absent anywhere in this statement, of course, is anything close to proof or even anything a step away from being a mostly baseless accusation. Note that, in 2014, the Department of Justice released a 56-page indictment of a team of Chinese hackers who were accused of stealing American trade secrets for the Peoples Liberation Army. In that case, we had 56 pages of evidence for such a relatively small offense but today there are zero pages of evidence from the entire intelligence community against alleged Russian hackers that supposedly swayed American elections in the direction they wanted. Are we seriously supposed to believe the claims being peddled by the intelligence community who has proven itself to not only be untrustworthy but also incredibly political and deceptive in the past? Are we to take their claims at face value, merely on trust and little to no evidence? So what would be proof? According to Security researcher, Claudio Guarnieri, All in all, technical circumstantial attribution is acceptable only so far as it is to explain an attack. It most definitely isnt for the political repercussions that were observing now. For that, only documental evidence that is verifiable or intercepts of Russian officials would be convincing enough, I suspect. Obviously, that is something that the U.S. government does not have. For its part, WikiLeaks has denied that Russia is the source of the hacks. Founder of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, stated clearly in an interview with RT that Hillary Clinton has stated multiple times, falsely, that 17 US intelligence agencies had assessed that Russia was the source of our publications. Thats false. We can say that the Russian government is not the source. Much of the corporate media continues to repeat the mantra that, while WikiLeaks has released so many documents relating to the U.S. government, U.S. elections, and U.S. foreign policy, it has released nothing on Russia. This, of course, is completely untrue as a short search of the WikiLeaks website with the search term Russia will prove. Assange himself has stated that WikiLeaks has released over 800,000 documents related to Russia since its existence. Hillary Clinton has consistently repeated the line that 17 agencies in the intelligence community have evaluated the information related to the hacks and have determined that the Russians were at fault. In reality, Clinton is only referring to Jake Tappers Office of the Director of National Intelligence since this is the organization that is tasked with representing them all. Thus, Clintons statement is nothing but an attempt to make her argument appear backed up by actual evidence. Considering the nature of the ODNIs evidence, however, Clintons case is weak at best. It is typical Clinton spin, containing a pinch of truth with a whole pot full of falsehood. In light of all the questions surrounding the alleged Russian hacks, Washingtons Blog reached out to Bill Binney, which Washingtons Blog described as the NSA executive who created the agencys mass surveillance program for digital information, who served as the senior technical director within the agency, who managed six thousand NSA employees, the 36-year NSA veteran widely regarded as a legend within the agency and the NSAs best-ever analyst and code-breaker, who mapped out the Soviet command-and-control structure before anyone else knew how, and so predicted Soviet invasions before they happened (in the 1970s, he decrypted the Soviet Unions command system, which provided the US and its allies with real-time surveillance of all Soviet troop movements and Russian atomic weapons). Binneys response was highly critical of the report being peddled by corporate media. Binney stated, I expected to see the IPs or other signatures of APTs 28/29 [the entities which the U.S. claims hacked the Democratic emails] and where they were located and how/when the data got transferred to them from DNC/HRC [i.e. Hillary Rodham Clinton]/etc. They seem to have been following APT 28/29 since at least 2015, so, where are they? Further, once we see the data being transferred to them, when and how did they transfer that data to Wikileaks? This would be evidence of trying to influence our election by getting the truth of our corrupt system out. And, as Edward Snowden said, once they have the IPs and/or other signatures of 28/29 and DNC/HRC/etc., NSA would use Xkeyscore to help trace data passing across the network and show where it went. [Background.] In addition, since Wikileaks is (and has been) a cast iron target for NSA/GCHQ/etc for a number of years there should be no excuse for them missing data going to any one associated with Wikileaks. *** Too many words means they dont have clear evidence of how the data got to Wikileaks. What we are seeing is yet another attempt to provoke conflict abroad and upheaval here at home on the basis of the intelligence community simply saying to the American public, trust us. This is the same intelligence community which claimed there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Thirteen years later, I would say it is wise not to give them the benefit of the doubt. Once again, we are given no evidence, only vague unproven allegations to justify actions that very well may be destructive not only to the American people but to all the people of the world. All we need is for Colin Powell to give a PowerPoint presentation in front of the United Nations and the circle will be complete. Brandon Turbeville article archive here is the author of seven books, Codex Alimentarius The End of Health Freedom, 7 Real Conspiracies, Five Sense Solutions and Dispatches From a Dissident, volume 1 and volume 2, The Road to Damascus: The Anglo-American Assault on Syria, and The Difference it Makes: 36 Reasons Why Hillary Clinton Should Never Be President. Turbeville has published over 850 articles on a wide variety of subjects including health, economics, government corruption, and civil liberties. Brandon Turbevilles radio show Truth on The Tracks can be found every Monday night 9 pm EST at UCYTV. His website is BrandonTurbeville.com He is available for radio and TV interviews. Please contact activistpost (at) gmail.com. This article may be freely shared in part or in full with author attribution and source link. Image: selfnews Post composite/Canva No one caused Hillary Clinton to lose the election. The American people did not want her as president. She didnt bring anything new to the table besides offering illegals free health care. And the American taxpayers were going to pay for right along with their free education. Obama is on a rampage because he knows all his dealings he did through executive orders he forced on the American people are about to be wiped clean. Congress really needs to arrest Obama for all his treasonous acts before he causes WWIII. It is within the possibility he could be arrested. Providing a false government document to prove his birth and thereby his qualification to hold the Office of the President is a felony. I believe that means legally and lawfully everything he signed is void, as if it never happened. He and his brain dead followers are spinning out of control.The closer President Trump gets to being sworn in the faster the demorats are spinning out of control.The progressive liberals have no concept of common sense.They see the world as they want it to be, not as it is. Truly lunatics. Pretty wordy article to get the point across?? DNC hacked by someone. DNC is private not gov institution. Podesta gave up his simplistic password in a phishing email. Wikileaks docs were leaked, not hacked. Bigger point hereif there was no bad stuff going on the hacks and leaks would be meaningless. Youre right, but that summation has been made by many, elsewhere (except in the MSM). The value of Turbevilles article is that it possesses more than just the flavor of opinion or Monday morning quarterbacking, it provides the data (and/or lack of same) to back up the argument that were being fed a load of bullshit. Maybe WE dont need it (according to our Commander-In-Chief, being regular consumers of fake news and propaganda were likely to believe any wild thing). But how many people around you would be better informed of just how our government and the MSM are trying to get away with a Big Lie, were they to actually read this entire article? I mean the HUTA types who see the headline CIA Reveals and fail to see the irony of a clandestine agency posting info in the mainstream media. Thanks, good summary. As a long time political/social activist I am quite well-versed in the machinations of the NWO, Bilderburgers, Tri-lateralists, SkullBones, etc. My frustration is I know as a mental health care worker that the focus and attention span of most people is quite limited and I want authors to get to the damn point. If the reader is interested in further knowledge they are on the greatest source of information besides the library of Alexandria, the Internet. Well, we know what happened to the library at Alexandria, at the hands of the greatest empire history had yet seen. The same thing the current great empire is attempting to do to the Internet, now: destroy it as resource. Of course, in order to understand and use the Alexandrian library you had to know how to read and do serious research, which presupposes intellectual focus and an attention span. Not things your average Roman soldier was noted for particularly, coming from a culture steeped in bread and circuses. Its been 20 hours now and the post you answered above is still gone and pending ?? Free speech is not reccognized here I guess. Its amazing how those pesky Russian hackers somehow hacked the electoral college vote in favor of Trump but also hacked the popular vote in favor of Clinton. Whats really amazing is that they were apparently able to hack the election. That is astounding. Traditional hackers are only able to hack servers and computers. Apparently these Russians possess such advanced technology that they can now somehow hack elections. I cant even wrap my head around the mechanics of such an amazing technological feat. wowI mean WOW! Hey, they hacked the Cowboys game yesterday, no really. I think its irrelevant where or from whom by whatever mechanism the emails came to light. The only relevant item is their veracity and I have not seen anything that shows the contents are false. Wow dude, lots of coffee today? Thank you! Well done, Brandon!!!! Very informative. With Hillary and her team deleting 33,000+ emails and openly lying about the Clinton Family Foundation (to hide its crimes), and the DNC embarrassing itself as well as openly harming Bernie Sanders, the Russian hacking accusations appear to be mere distraction. I am, of course, so glad that the hacking finds were printed for the edification of the rest of us. Funny, but Bill has dirt on Hillary too. Keeping my fingers crossed that Trump will be sworn in on the 20th. 