DCLeaks, Guccifer 2.0: Rosenstein Charges Russian Cyberspies

[Brian4Liberty]

Justice Department Charges Russian Cyberspies With Attack On 2016 Election
July 13, 2018

The Justice Department charged 12 Russian intelligence officers on Friday with a litany of alleged offenses related to Russia's hacking of the Democratic National Committee's emails, state election systems and other targets in 2016.

Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who announced the indictments, said the Russians involved belonged to the military intelligence service GRU. They are accused of a sustained cyberattack against Democratic party targets, including its campaign committee and Hillary Clinton's campaign.

The GRU attackers also targeted state election systems, including both government agencies and their vendors, and stole information about 500,000 American voters.

The attacks were a signature feature of Russia's active measures against the United States; embarrassing emails were passed to Wikileaks, which released them publicly. The GRU also created other ways to pass the material it stole into the public, including a website called DCLeaks and a fake persona called "Guccifer 2.0."

The flood of embarrassing information about the inner workings of the Democratic Party's leadership led to the resignation of then-DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman-Schultz. Later, Clinton's campaign chairman John Podesta also was embarrassed by the release of his emails.

The Russians named in the indictment discussed how and when to release material they'd accumulated in order to make the biggest political splash inside the United States, Rosenstein said.

There is no allegation in the indictment that any American participated knowingly in the GRU cyberattacks, Rosenstein said. Justice Department special counsel Robert Mueller is continuing to investigate whether anyone in the United States conspired with the Russian attack on the election.

Rosenstein said that responsibility for this prosecution — which is unlikely to go forward in court as Russia is unlikely to extradite the suspects who've been charged — would pass from Mueller's office to the National Security division of the Justice Department.

Friday's announcement follows a separate but related indictment by the special counsel's office from earlier this year of Russians connected to the campaign of social media agitation aimed at increasing the volume on political controversy within the United States.

The Russian government has so far declined to extradite the people named, although one American attorney has been arguing the case in Washington on their behalf.

Cui bono?

Rosenstein asked Americans to focus not only who was hurt by or benefited politically from the Russian attacks but to unite against foreign influence in the American democratic process.

"In my remarks, I have not identified the victims," Rosenstein said. "When we confront foreign interference in American elections, it is important for us to avoid thinking politically as Republicans or Democrats and instead to think patriotically as Americans. Our response must not depend on who was victimized."

The U.S. intelligence community has concluded, with further verification by the Senate intelligence committee, that Russia's active measures were aimed at hurting Clinton and helping Trump.

Geopolitical implications

Rosenstein's announcement took place just ahead of a planned meeting between President Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday in Helsinki. Trump told reporters on his visit to the United Kingdom on Friday that he planned to "ask" Putin about Russia's attack on the election.

Trump has gone back and forth as to what he acknowledges about what took place and cited Russia's official denials about its active measures. The president also has said the interference took place and vowed that if it returned in the 2018 midterm election — as U.S. intelligence officials have warned it may — he would "counteract it very strongly."

Rosenstein said the announcement of the charges on Friday took place because that was when the special counsel's office had completed its work investigating them and had the ability to present the evidence to a grand jury. The deputy attorney general said he'd briefed the president about the matter.
...
More: https://www.npr.org/2018/07/13/62877...es-in-dnc-case

[TheCount]

The US Justice Department on Friday filed criminal indictments that accused 12 Russian intelligence officers of carrying out the 2016 hacks on the Democratic National Committee and the campaign of Hillary Clinton.

The indictments were filed by Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller, who is investing possible collusion between the presidential campaign of President Donald Trump and the Russian spies US intelligence agencies say interfered with the 2016 election. So far, Mueller’s team has indicted 32 people, including members of a Russian company that blanketed social media with fake news stories and senior members of the Trump campaign. Friday’s indictments were disclosed by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein at a press conference in Washington, DC.

Separately, The Daily Beast reported that Mueller’s team has determined that the person calling himself Guccifer 2.0, who leaked sensitive DNC documents in the months leading to the 2016 election, is a Russian intelligence officer. Guccifer 2.0 had insisted that he was a Romanian who hacked the DNC independently with no involvement from Russia. Russia has also denied any connection to the breach.

Friday’s indictments come ahead of Tuesday’s scheduled meeting between President Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/...nton-campaign/

[TheCount]

Meh http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthr...ian-Cyberspies

[Brian4Liberty]

https://twitter.com/WeMeantWell/stat...06152292331520

[dannno]

Friday’s indictments come ahead of Tuesday’s scheduled meeting between President Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

LOL

[Zippyjuan]

"They are trying to make Putin look bad before he meets with Trump!"

[dannno]

"They are trying to make Putin look bad before he meets with Trump!"

It's as obvious as your motivations.

[Jamesiv1]

Fake news. The US justice system can indict foreign nationals? 'fraid not.

More BS.

[Brian4Liberty]

https://twitter.com/WeMeantWell/stat...18982773088256

[Zippyjuan]

Trump shrugs it off.

Asked what Trump would do if Putin again denies Russia interfered in the election, Trump answered, “Well, he may, I mean look, he may. What am I going to do? He may deny it, it’s one of those things. All I can do is say ‘Did you?’ and ‘Don’t do it again,’

https://shareblue.com/robert-mueller...ction-hacking/

[Zippyjuan]

[jllundqu]

This actually has a lot of angles and a lot of implications that need to be unpacked and examined:

First off, this was FBI proper and not the Special Counsel.

Second, how can the FBI reach these conclusions and obtain indictments, when the DNC never released the server? Did the FBI perform digital forensics on the servers or did they rely solely on the Democratic Cyber-Apparatus, CrowdStrike?

Third, this was clearly referencing the #DNCLeaks and the #Podestaemails and Wikileaks. This makes me really wonder where Julian Assange is... I find it curious he has been out of pocket and incommunicado for some time and now this happens.

Fourth, the download speeds from the Crowdstrike data demonstrate the server was NOT 'hacked' but accessed directly:

Forensicator’s first decisive findings, made public in the paper dated July 9, concerned the volume of the supposedly hacked material and what is called the transfer rate—the time a remote hack would require. The metadata established several facts in this regard with granular precision: On the evening of July 5, 2016, 1,976 megabytes of data were downloaded from the DNC’s server. The operation took 87 seconds. This yields a transfer rate of 22.7 megabytes per second.

These statistics are matters of record and essential to disproving the hack theory. No Internet service provider, such as a hacker would have had to use in mid-2016, was capable of downloading data at this speed. Compounding this contradiction, Guccifer claimed to have run his hack from Romania, which, for numerous reasons technically called delivery overheads, would slow down the speed of a hack even further from maximum achievable speeds.

What is the maximum achievable speed? Forensicator recently ran a test download of a comparable data volume (and using a server speed not available in 2016) 40 miles from his computer via a server 20 miles away and came up with a speed of 11.8 megabytes per second—half what the DNC operation would need were it a hack. Other investigators have built on this finding. Folden and Edward Loomis say a survey published August 3, 2016, by www.speedtest.net/reports is highly reliable and use it as their thumbnail index. It indicated that the highest average ISP speeds of first-half 2016 were achieved by Xfinity and Cox Communications. These speeds averaged 15.6 megabytes per second and 14.7 megabytes per second, respectively. Peak speeds at higher rates were recorded intermittently but still did not reach the required 22.7 megabytes per second.

“A speed of 22.7 megabytes is simply unobtainable, especially if we are talking about a transoceanic data transfer,” Folden said. “Based on the data we now have, what we’ve been calling a hack is impossible.” Last week Forensicator reported on a speed test he conducted more recently. It tightens the case considerably. “Transfer rates of 23 MB/s (Mega Bytes per second) are not just highly unlikely, but effectively impossible to accomplish when communicating over the Internet at any significant distance,” he wrote. “Further, local copy speeds are measured, demonstrating that 23 MB/s is a typical transfer rate when using a USB–2 flash device (thumb drive).”

Time stamps in the metadata provide further evidence of what happened on July 5. The stamps recording the download indicate that it occurred in the Eastern Daylight Time Zone at approximately 6:45 pm. This confirms that the person entering the DNC system was working somewhere on the East Coast of the United States. In theory the operation could have been conducted from Bangor or Miami or anywhere in between—but not Russia, Romania, or anywhere else outside the EDT zone. Combined with Forensicator’s findings on the transfer rate, the time stamps constitute more evidence that the download was conducted locally, since delivery overheads—conversion of data into packets, addressing, sequencing times, error checks, and the like—degrade all data transfers conducted via the Internet, more or less according to the distance involved.

https://www.thenation.com/article/a-...ears-dnc-hack/

This is what led to the theory that Seth Rich was the leaker who accessed the DNC Server and provided the material to Wikileaks, which resulted in his still-unsolved murder.

There are so many more questions now, than answers..... one thing is certain. The truth is still yet to be known.

[Mordan]

Trump wins again.

This is getting tiring

[jllundqu]

This actually has a lot of angles and a lot of implications that need to be unpacked and examined:

First off, this was FBI proper and not the Special Counsel.

Second, how can the FBI reach these conclusions and obtain indictments, when the DNC never released the server? Did the FBI perform digital forensics on the servers or did they rely solely on the Democratic Cyber-Apparatus, CrowdStrike?

Third, this was clearly referencing the #DNCLeaks and the #Podestaemails and Wikileaks. This makes me really wonder where Julian Assange is... I find it curious he has been out of pocket and incommunicado for some time and now this happens.

Fourth, the download speeds from the Crowdstrike data demonstrate the server was NOT 'hacked' but accessed directly:

Forensicator’s first decisive findings, made public in the paper dated July 9, concerned the volume of the supposedly hacked material and what is called the transfer rate—the time a remote hack would require. The metadata established several facts in this regard with granular precision: On the evening of July 5, 2016, 1,976 megabytes of data were downloaded from the DNC’s server. The operation took 87 seconds. This yields a transfer rate of 22.7 megabytes per second.

These statistics are matters of record and essential to disproving the hack theory. No Internet service provider, such as a hacker would have had to use in mid-2016, was capable of downloading data at this speed. Compounding this contradiction, Guccifer claimed to have run his hack from Romania, which, for numerous reasons technically called delivery overheads, would slow down the speed of a hack even further from maximum achievable speeds.

What is the maximum achievable speed? Forensicator recently ran a test download of a comparable data volume (and using a server speed not available in 2016) 40 miles from his computer via a server 20 miles away and came up with a speed of 11.8 megabytes per second—half what the DNC operation would need were it a hack. Other investigators have built on this finding. Folden and Edward Loomis say a survey published August 3, 2016, by www.speedtest.net/reports is highly reliable and use it as their thumbnail index. It indicated that the highest average ISP speeds of first-half 2016 were achieved by Xfinity and Cox Communications. These speeds averaged 15.6 megabytes per second and 14.7 megabytes per second, respectively. Peak speeds at higher rates were recorded intermittently but still did not reach the required 22.7 megabytes per second.

“A speed of 22.7 megabytes is simply unobtainable, especially if we are talking about a transoceanic data transfer,” Folden said. “Based on the data we now have, what we’ve been calling a hack is impossible.” Last week Forensicator reported on a speed test he conducted more recently. It tightens the case considerably. “Transfer rates of 23 MB/s (Mega Bytes per second) are not just highly unlikely, but effectively impossible to accomplish when communicating over the Internet at any significant distance,” he wrote. “Further, local copy speeds are measured, demonstrating that 23 MB/s is a typical transfer rate when using a USB–2 flash device (thumb drive).”

Time stamps in the metadata provide further evidence of what happened on July 5. The stamps recording the download indicate that it occurred in the Eastern Daylight Time Zone at approximately 6:45 pm. This confirms that the person entering the DNC system was working somewhere on the East Coast of the United States. In theory the operation could have been conducted from Bangor or Miami or anywhere in between—but not Russia, Romania, or anywhere else outside the EDT zone. Combined with Forensicator’s findings on the transfer rate, the time stamps constitute more evidence that the download was conducted locally, since delivery overheads—conversion of data into packets, addressing, sequencing times, error checks, and the like—degrade all data transfers conducted via the Internet, more or less according to the distance involved.

https://www.thenation.com/article/a-...ears-dnc-hack/

This is what led to the theory that Seth Rich was the leaker who accessed the DNC Server and provided the material to Wikileaks, which resulted in his still-unsolved murder.

There are so many more questions now, than answers..... one thing is certain. The truth is still yet to be known.

[Zippyjuan]

Same post as in the other thread on the same topic.

[Brian4Liberty]

https://twitter.com/mtracey/status/1017826785495568384

[Brian4Liberty]

This actually has a lot of angles and a lot of implications that need to be unpacked and examined:

First off, this was FBI proper and not the Special Counsel.

Second, how can the FBI reach these conclusions and obtain indictments, when the DNC never released the server? Did the FBI perform digital forensics on the servers or did they rely solely on the Democratic Cyber-Apparatus, CrowdStrike?

Third, this was clearly referencing the #DNCLeaks and the #Podestaemails and Wikileaks. This makes me really wonder where Julian Assange is... I find it curious he has been out of pocket and incommunicado for some time and now this happens.

Fourth, the download speeds from the Crowdstrike data demonstrate the server was NOT 'hacked' but accessed directly:



https://www.thenation.com/article/a-...ears-dnc-hack/

This is what led to the theory that Seth Rich was the leaker who accessed the DNC Server and provided the material to Wikileaks, which resulted in his still-unsolved murder.

There are so many more questions now, than answers..... one thing is certain. The truth is still yet to be known.

The Awan brothers told them it was the Russians...

[timosman]

Same post as in the other thread on the same topic.

Are you triggered?

[Zippyjuan]

This yields a transfer rate of 22.7 megabytes per second.

“A speed of 22.7 megabytes is simply unobtainable, especially if we are talking about a transoceanic data transfer,” Folden said.

Really?

BEYOND THE TELEGRAM
The first transatlantic telephone cables went into service in 1956, and 32 years later, the first fiber optic cable connected Europe and America.

Fiber optic technology made transmitting massive quantities of information fast and cost-effective. The level of speed has only increased with time – and now cables can transmit 160 terabits per second.

http://www.visualcapitalist.com/submarine-cables/

Also interesting to note that the claimed speeds came from Guccifer 2.0.

http://thehill.com/policy/cybersecur...probably-wrong

Why the latest theory about the DNC not being hacked is probably wrong

A forensic report claiming to show that a Democratic National Committee insider, not Russia, stole files from the DNC is full of holes, say cybersecurity experts.

“In short, the theory is flawed,” said FireEye’s John Hultquist, director of intelligence analysis at FireEye, a firm that provides forensic analysis and other cybersecurity services.

“The author of the report didn’t consider a number of scenarios and breezed right past others. It completely ignores all the evidence that contradicts its claims.”

The theory behind the report is that it would have been impossible for information from the DNC to have been hacked due to upload and download speeds.
The claims have slowly trickled through the media, finding backers at the right -wing site Breitbart in early June. Last week, the left-wing magazine The Nation published a 4,500-word story on the allegations.

The claims are based on metadata from the files, which were leaked by their purported hacker, Guccifer 2.0, during the 2016 election season.

[CaptUSA]

Trump wins again.

This is getting tiring

He tried to warn you that you'd be tired of winning.

[timosman]

Zippy, aren't you tired of playing the devil's advocate?

[timosman]

He tried to warn you that you'd be tired of winning.

Just look at the team he is against.

[fedupinmo]

Trump wins again.

This is getting tiring

[jllundqu]

Same post as in the other thread on the same topic.

Yes. It is a same post. As mods have not merged the threads, I posted in both threads so as to gain the most viewership. Gotta $#@!ing problem with that?

[jllundqu]

Interesting reading:

https://www.thenation.com/article/a-.../#vips-dissent

[AuH20]

edit.

[AuH20]

It's starting. I hate these people, if we can even call them that.

[TheCount]

This actually has a lot of angles and a lot of implications that need to be unpacked and examined:

First off, this was FBI proper and not the Special Counsel.

Second, how can the FBI reach these conclusions and obtain indictments, when the DNC never released the server? Did the FBI perform digital forensics on the servers or did they rely solely on the Democratic Cyber-Apparatus, CrowdStrike?

Third, this was clearly referencing the #DNCLeaks and the #Podestaemails and Wikileaks. This makes me really wonder where Julian Assange is... I find it curious he has been out of pocket and incommunicado for some time and now this happens.

Fourth, the download speeds from the Crowdstrike data demonstrate the server was NOT 'hacked' but accessed directly:


https://www.thenation.com/article/a-...ears-dnc-hack/

This is what led to the theory that Seth Rich was the leaker who accessed the DNC Server and provided the material to Wikileaks, which resulted in his still-unsolved murder.

There are so many more questions now, than answers..... one thing is certain. The truth is still yet to be known.

That's been debunked for a while.

http://thehill.com/policy/cybersecur...probably-wrong

[Zippyjuan]

https://www.coindesk.com/russian-dnc...ir-operations/

A group of Russian military intelligence officers indicted Friday as part of an ongoing investigation into interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election allegedly used bitcoin to fund their operations.

In the just-released indictment, prosecutors assert that the 12 named intelligence officers hacked computer networks and email accounts owned and used by the U.S. Democratic Party, including the presidential campaign of Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton.

The details were included under a charge of conspiracy to launder money. According to the indictment, the defendants "conspired to launder the equivalent of $95,000 through a web of transactions structured to capitalize on the perceived anonymity of cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin."

"In an effort to pay for their efforts around the world ... the defendants paid for it with cryptocurrency," deputy U.S. Attorney General Rod Rosenstein said during a press briefing.

While the defendants allegedly used other currencies, including the U.S. dollar, "they principally used bitcoin when purchasing servers, registering domains, and otherwise making payments in furtherance of hacking activity."

Payments are said to have been made to companies in the U.S., with some of those funds being traced to a bitcoin mining operation.

The indictment explains:

"In addition to mining bitcoin, the Conspirators acquired bitcoin through a variety of means designed to obscure the origin of the funds. This included purchasing bitcoin through exchanges, moving funds through other digital currencies, and using pre-paid cards. They also enlisted the assistance of one or more third-party exchanges who facilitated layered transactions through digital currency exchange platforms providing heightened anonymity."

The defendants allegedly used multiple "dedicated email accounts" to both track bitcoin transaction information and facilitate payments, the release added. Further, the indicted officials transferred bitcoin using the same computers that they used in hacking various email accounts

The indictment is the latest to come out of the ongoing – and politically explosive – investigation into Russian election meddling and the possible involvement of members of the presidential campaign of U.S. President Donald Trump.

Robert Mueller, a former Federal Bureau of Investigation director, was appointed in May 2017 to lead the special counsel investigation, which has drawn the ire of Trump, who has vehemently denied any collusion on election meddling.

[dannno]

That's been debunked for a while.

http://thehill.com/policy/cybersecur...probably-wrong

You call that "debunked" ???

That's about as believable as the "Russian hacker" named "Fancy Bear"