{"id":1465974,"date":"2022-05-06T08:01:16","date_gmt":"2022-05-06T12:01:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1465974"},"modified":"2022-05-06T08:01:51","modified_gmt":"2022-05-06T12:01:51","slug":"exclusive-spygate-researchers-said-claim-russians-hacked-the-dnc-could-have-relied-on-spoofed-data","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/exclusive-spygate-researchers-said-claim-russians-hacked-the-dnc-could-have-relied-on-spoofed-data\/","title":{"rendered":"Exclusive: Spygate Researchers Said Claim Russians Hacked The DNC Could Have Relied On \u2018Spoofed\u2019 Data"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"float:left\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">30<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fexclusive-spygate-researchers-said-claim-russians-hacked-the-dnc-could-have-relied-on-spoofed-data%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1465974&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><div><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/Screen-Shot-2022-05-05-at-5.31.24-PM-1024x603-1.png\" class=\"ff-og-image-inserted\" alt=\"image\" \/><\/div>\n<p>The Georgia Tech cyber security experts ensnared in the Alfa Bank hoax conducted a retrospective analysis of the Democratic National Committee hack, according to the Department of Defense. While the results of that analysis have yet to be made public, internal documents obtained by The Federalist reveal that Georgia Tech\u2019s computer scientists believed CrowdStrike\u2019s approach to investigating computer intrusions relied on the use of easily \u201cspoofed\/impersonated\u201d signals of traffic.<\/p>\n<p>In June 2016, about one month before WikiLeaks released a trove of internal communiques revealing top DNC officials plotted to destroy Bernie Sanders\u2019 presidential ambitions in favor of their preferred candidate, Hillary Clinton, the DNC publicly confirmed that its server had been hacked. In the Washington Post article breaking the story, the DNC maintained that the private security firm it had <a href=\"https:\/\/redstate.com\/diary\/davenj1\/2020\/09\/21\/the-dnc-hack-part-1-background-and-discovery-n265855\">hired<\/a> to investigate the hack, CrowdStrike, had concluded two Russian military intelligence groups, branded Cozy Bear and Fancy Bear, bore responsibility for the intrusions.<\/p>\n<p>Given that Democrats and the media would later rely on CrowdStrike\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2022\/03\/18\/spygate-101-a-primer-on-the-russia-collusion-hoaxs-years-long-plot-to-take-down-trump\/\">conclusion<\/a> that Putin\u2019s agents had hacked the DNC to support the Russia collusion hoax, those seeking to unravel Spygate paid particular attention to CrowdStrike\u2019s initial assessment. The declassification of CrowdStrike President Shawn Henry\u2019s December 2017 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.realclearinvestigations.com\/articles\/2020\/05\/13\/hidden_over_2_years_dem_cyber-firms_sworn_testimony_it_had_no_proof_of_russian_hack_of_dnc_123596.html\">testimony<\/a> before the House Intelligence Committee, that \u201cthere was no \u2018concrete evidence\u2019 that the emails were stolen electronically,\u201d later raised more \u201cquestions about whether Special Counsel Robert Mueller, intelligence officials and Democrats misled the public\u201d about the hack.<\/p>\n<p>In his final <a href=\"https:\/\/www.realclearinvestigations.com\/articles\/2020\/05\/13\/hidden_over_2_years_dem_cyber-firms_sworn_testimony_it_had_no_proof_of_russian_hack_of_dnc_123596.html\">report<\/a>, Mueller concluded \u201cthat Russian intelligence \u2018appears to have compressed and exfiltrated over 70 gigabytes of data\u2019 and agents \u2018appear to have stolen thousands of emails and attachments\u2019 from Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and DNC servers, respectively.\u201d But CrowdStrike remained the only publicly known source to support Mueller\u2019s conclusion. Given the numerous illegal efforts to frame Donald Trump as colluding with Russia exposed by then, conservatives were unwilling to trust either Mueller or CrowdStrike.<\/p>\n<p>Concerns over CrowdStrike\u2019s analysis reemerged after Special Counsel John Durham indicted former Clinton campaign attorney Michael Sussmann for allegedly lying to FBI General Counsel James Baker. That indictment and other documents filed in the Sussmann criminal case revealed that cyber-security experts assisted tech executive Rodney Joffe in crafting deceptive data and whitepapers to create the false appearance of a secret communication network between Trump and the Russian-based Alfa Bank. Sussmann then fed this \u201cintel\u201d to the CIA and FBI. <\/p>\n<p>After the election, Sussmann also provided the CIA with deceptively cherry-picked data to suggest a connection between Trump or his transition team and Russians, using cyber-tracking of a Russian Yota cell phone. To compile both the Alfa Bank and Yota phone hoaxes, according to the indictment, Joffe exploited proprietary information he had access to because of his positions in various tech companies. More troubling still was the revelation that Joffe used sensitive data from the Executive Office of the President in his attempt to frame Trump.<\/p>\n<p>This backdrop provided powder to the news The Federalist <a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2022\/03\/10\/exclusive-special-counsels-office-is-investigating-the-2016-dnc-server-hack\/\">broke<\/a> that Durham\u2019s team had asked Georgia Tech cybersecurity expert Manos Antonakakis \u201cpoint blank\u201d whether the Department of Defense\u2019s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DAPRA) \u201cshould be instructing you to investigate the origins of a hacker (Guccifer_2.0) that hacked a political entity (DNC).\u201d <\/p>\n<p>Antonakakis, according to documents obtained by The Federalist, told lead prosecutor Andrew DeFilippis \u2014 in a seeming confirmation that DARPA had directed him to investigate the DNC hack or hacker \u2014 that that was \u201ca question for DARPA\u2019s director.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Within days, however, DARPA\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonexaminer.com\/news\/justice\/durham-related-emails-prompt-darpa-to-deny-involvement-in-attributing-2016-dnc-hack-to-russia\">denied<\/a>\u00a0any involvement \u201cin efforts to attribute the DNC hack.\u201d Jared Adams, then the spokesmen for the agency, told the Washington Examiner that \u201cDr. Antonakakis worked on DARPA\u2019s Enhanced Attribution program, which did not involve analysis of the DNC hack.\u201d The Washington Examiner further reported that Adams maintained \u201cDARPA was not involved in efforts to attribute the Guccifer 2.0 persona, nor any involvement in efforts to attribute the origin of leaked emails provided to Wikileaks.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>But then another document dump by Georgia Tech revealed the university\u2019s cybersecurity experts had drafted four \u201cDARPA whitepapers.\u201d Those included one \u201cWhitepaper on DNC attack attribution\u201d and a second identified as the \u201c\u2018Mueller List\u2019\u2014list of domains and indicator related to APT-28.\u201d (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.thedailybeast.com\/mueller-finally-solves-mysteries-about-russias-fancy-bear-hackers\">APT-28<\/a>\u00a0is the more formal name for the Russian intelligence group of hackers known colloquially as Fancy Bear; Mueller would later <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wired.com\/story\/mueller-indictment-dnc-hack-russia-fancy-bear\/\">charge<\/a>\u00a012 Russian intelligence agents with allegedly working as Fancy Bear with crimes related to the DNC hack.)<\/p>\n<p>An email from Georgia\u2019s attorney general\u2019s office further indicated involvement by the tech researchers in Mueller\u2019s investigation. The lawyer handling Durham\u2019s subpoena of Georgia Tech noting that one of the individuals involved had \u201cindicated that there was a \u2018fairly large file of Trump related materials\u2019 that had been assembled for production to the office of Special Counsel Robert Muller (sic) or the DOJ.\u201d The state\u2019s lawyer added that they were \u201cunable to locate such a file,\u201d and sought further assistance. \u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Following The Federalist\u2019s reporting on this latest <a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2022\/04\/22\/docs-spygate-researchers-did-work-for-former-special-counsel-robert-mueller\/\">inconsistency<\/a> between DARPA\u2019s story and what the documents obtained through Right To Know requests showed, Republican Sens. Ron Johnson and Charles Grassley sent a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ronjohnson.senate.gov\/2022\/4\/sens-johnson-grassley-demand-records-from-dod-research-agency-on-potential-involvement-in-dnc-hack-attribution-and-mueller-investigation\">letter<\/a> to Stefanie Tompkins, the director of DARPA, demanding copies of the alleged \u201cwhitepapers.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In their joint letter, the senators stressed that \u201cthe DNC hack occurred during the lead up to the 2016 presidential election, which was marked by claims of meddling by foreign actors. Some of those claims have since been confirmed to be disinformation efforts by operatives from the Democratic campaign.\u201d \u201cAs details continue to emerge,\u201d the letter continued, \u201cthe public is rightly concerned about the extent to which various federal agencies investigated, validated, dispelled, or relied on these claims. Indeed, the credibility of some agencies has been called into question, and the public deserves a full accounting of federal officials\u2019 involvement in these activities.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>When contacted by The Federalist concerning Johnson and Grassley\u2019s letter, DARPA\u2019s new spokeswoman, Tabatha Thompson, noted it had received the letter and \u201cis following proper procedures to respond to the inquiry.\u201d In response to questions concerning the whitepapers that appeared connected to the Mueller investigation and the DNC hack, Thompson told The Federalist that, \u201cconsistent with our previous statements, the research neither contributed to the Mueller investigation nor the investigation into the DNC hack or Guccifer 2.0 attribution.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Thompson, however, then noted that contractors often conduct \u201cretrospective analyses of publicly disclosed, real-world scenarios to verify and validate tools and capabilities in development on the EA program,\u201d and that in the course of such programs, the contractors may \u201cproduced reports, sometimes referred to as white papers, explaining the retrospective analyses on those topics, relying on commercially available data to analyze attributions previously disclosed to the public.\u201d \u201cFor example,\u201d DARPA\u2019s representative, added, enhanced attribution \u201cperformers analyzed indicators from publicly released DoJ indictments, such as the Mueller indictment, as well as public attribution reports from other federal agencies.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In response to multiple requests from The Federalist for comment, Mark Schamel, the lawyer for Antonakakis, refused to go on the record with an explanation or to state whether the Georgia Tech whitepaper confirmed or contradicted CrowdStrike\u2019s conclusion that Russians had hacked the DNC. He also refused to answer whether the whitepaper had been provided to Mueller\u2019s office. \u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Also unknown is whether Joffe provided Antonakakis the data used for the research and the whitepapers related to the DNC hack. That is a concern given Joffe\u2019s role in the Alfa Bank and Yota phone hoaxes and given that other documents from Georgia Tech state that Joffe assisted with two other attribution requests performed by Antonakakis over the summer of 2016.<\/p>\n<p>Other <a href=\"https:\/\/www.scribd.com\/document\/572982889\/Manos-Antonakakis-Email\">documents<\/a> recently obtained by The Federalist likewise raise concerns over the validity of CrowdStrike\u2019s analysis of the hack, namely an exchange between Antonakakis and the executive director of the university\u2019s Institute for Information Security and Privacy, Lee Wenke.<\/p>\n<p>In an email thread from May of 2018, in response to Antonakakis\u2019 statement that \u201cyou do attribution from studying the mistakes they do during an operation,\u201d Wenke wrote: \u201cThen are you in principle doing the same as crowdstrike, e.g., using \u2018signatures\u2019 of coding\/texting styles? And didn\u2019t we all agree[] that those can be \u2018spoofed\/impersonated\u2019?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The exchange continued with Antonakakis stating that he is \u201cnot like\u201d CrowdStrike, and is \u201cnot building signatures,\u201d to which Wenke replied: \u201cI was saying that if you are using signatures\/signals of traffic and if those can be (easily) spoofed\/impersonated, then in principle your approach would suffer the same weakness (spoof-able) as [CrowdStrike.]\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Antonakakis ended the exchange by acknowledging his point, but \u201cstrongly\u201d disagreeing on the \u201cvalue that policy has in computer security.\u201d What remains unclear from this email thread, though, is whether Antonakakis\u2019 retroactive analysis of the DNC hack reached the same conclusion as CrowdStrike, namely that Russians had hacked the servers.<\/p>\n<p>Frankly, given Cozy Bear and Fancy Bear\u2019s propensity to hack government networks, it is extremely likely the Russian intelligence services were behind the DNC hack. Evidence unrelated to Trump or attempts to destroy the former president indicate, for instance, that between 2012 and 2018, Russian intelligence officers <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2022\/03\/24\/politics\/alleged-russian-hackers-indicted\/index.html\">\u201ctargeted<\/a> hundreds of energy companies around the world.\u201d <\/p>\n<p>Both U.S. and U.K. national security agencies likewise believe the Russia\u2019s military intelligence agency, GRU, has \u201cengaged in a global campaign to target \u2018hundreds\u2019 of predominantly American and European entities, including government and military organizations, energy companies, think tanks and media companies.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>But given what we know now about the Steele dossier and Alfa Bank and Yota cell phone hoaxes, as well as the FISA abuse by the Crossfire Hurricane team, taking the word of the intelligence community no longer suffices. It\u2019s now: Show me the evidence, who gave you the evidence, and that person\u2019s political affiliation.<\/p>\n<p>That is far from the ideal situation for national security, but it is the intelligence agencies and those in the cybersecurity world who own that reality \u2014 as well as Hillary Clinton and the media.<\/p>\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator\" \/>\n<p>\n  Margot Cleveland is The Federalist&#8217;s senior legal correspondent. She is also a contributor to National Review Online, the Washington Examiner, Aleteia, and Townhall.com, and has been published in the Wall Street Journal and USA Today. <\/p>\n<p>Cleveland is a lawyer and a graduate of the Notre Dame Law School, where she earned the Hoynes Prize\u2014the law school\u2019s highest honor. She later served for nearly 25 years as a permanent law clerk for a federal appellate judge on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Cleveland is a former full-time university faculty member and now teaches as an adjunct from time to time. <\/p>\n<p>As a stay-at-home homeschooling mom of a young son with cystic fibrosis, Cleveland frequently writes on cultural issues related to parenting and special-needs children. Cleveland is on Twitter at @ProfMJCleveland. The views expressed here are those of Cleveland in her private capacity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Georgia Tech cyber security experts ensnared in the Alfa Bank hoax conducted a retrospective analysis of the Democratic National Committee hack, according to the Department of Defense. While the<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":499,"featured_media":2315279,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1465974","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1465974","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/499"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1465974"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1465974\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2315279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1465974"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1465974"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1465974"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}