Last week I wrote that the Democrat National Committee (DNC) hired private firm CrowdStrike to look into its alleged hack, and at the same time denied the FBI access to its computers and servers.
CrowdStrike was first to link alleged hacks of Democrat Party computers to Russians last summer.
Some cyber security experts have questioned Crowdstrike's alleged evidence.
I went further -- there is no evidence provided to the public that the DNC was hacked at all.
Computer information can be leaked by an insider / whistleblower-- that's what WikiLeaks's claimed, and no credible facts have been made available to the public that contradict WikiLeaks.
US cyber security firm CrowdStrike has now revised and retracted statements it used to support claims of Russian hacking during last year’s American presidential election campaign.
In December 2016, for example, CrowdStrike said it found evidence that Russians hacked into a Ukrainian artillery app, contributing to huge losses of howitzers in Ukraine’s war with pro-Russian separatists.
The International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) disavowed the CrowdStrike report, and said it had never been contacted by the company.
After CrowdStrike released its Ukraine report, company co-founder Dmitri Alperovitch that report provided added evidence of Russian interference in the US election.
In both hacks, he said, the company found malware used by “Fancy Bear,” a group with ties to Russian intelligence agencies.
Last week CrowdStrike walked back key parts of its Ukraine report:
-- The company removed their claim that Ukraine lost 80% of the Soviet-era D-30 howitzers, which used aiming software that purportedly was hacked.
-- The revised report cites figures of only 15% to 20% losses in combat operations, not 80%, and attributed the new figures to consultants IISS -- a huge revision.
-- CrowdStrike deleted a statement saying “deployment of this malware-infected application may have contributed to the high-loss nature of this platform” (the Ukraine howitzers) ... and deleted a source link to a blogger in Russia-occupied Crimea.
In an email, CrowdStrike spokeswoman Ilina Dmitrova noted that the FBI and the US intelligence community have also concluded that Russia was behind the hacks of the Democratic National Committee, Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and the email account of John Podesta, Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager.
The FBI agreed with CrowdStrike’s conclusion, but did not analyze the DNC servers because the DNC suspiciously denied access.
This was noteworthy in its own right ... but takes on increased significance after CrowdStrike admitted to making huge errors in their Ukraine military hacking report.
Why did FBI head James Comey outsource his job to CrowdStrike?
Why did CrowdStrike need only one day to tell the DNC exactly what they wanted to hear -- 'Russia did it' -- which Democrat's immediately used as propaganda to help Hillary Clinton.
Democrats claimed:
(1) Putin supports Trump
(probably true -- when Hillary was Secretary of State, she made statements that stirred up protests in Russia), and
(2) Russians are actively trying to help Trump win (probably false -- if Russians really wanted Trump to win, they would have publicly supported Clinton).
