Please note this from WordFence.com, on Friday, December 30th.
Overall Conclusion
The IP addresses that DHS provided may have been used for an attack by a state actor like Russia. But they don’t appear to provide any association with Russia. They are probably used by a wide range of other malicious actors, especially the 15% of IP addresses that are Tor exit nodes.
The malware sample is old, widely used and appears to be Ukrainian. It has no apparent relationship with Russian intelligence and it would be an indicator of compromise for any website.
This is not a political analysis in the slightest, but a technological examination of the facts as yet known. The article is lengthy and of interest if you’re well-versed in technical digital matters. Please read if you are so inclined.
Long story short, it doesnt have anything to do with Russia. ‘May have’ used by anyone indeed, however Russia being able to use datacenters located especially in Germany to hack against US is quite unlikely, with the German intelligence practically being subservient to US intelligence as recent leaks showed.
Steve Maughan December 30, 2016 at 6:24 am • Reply
What you appear to be saying is there is no “smoking gun” link even to Russia, nevermind the Russian Government!
Interesting what you find when you are on a non-political quest for the truth. I appreciate the work you did digging into this. It’s hard to find a source that doesn’t lean one way or the other, and just provides cold, hard facts. Thanks!!!
David Bennett December 30, 2016 at 6:42 am • Reply
Great article but don’t you think it is a confusing headline because if anything, your article shows there is no smoking gun that leads back to Russia as a state actor?
“US Govt Data Shows Russia Used Outdated Ukrainian PHP Malware”
The problem with that reasoning is that this is also exactly what a non-governmental hacking job would look like. The burden of proof lies with those attempting to demonstrate a Russian plot to affect the election, which means they need to find evidence that distinguishes the a Russian hacking attempt from the null scenario. In the absence of such evidence, we must assume the null hypothesis (that it was more likely any of the many non-Russian, non-governmental actors capable of such an attack) until further evidence is presented.
Otherwise, we’d have to assume that the lack of evidence for aliens crash-landing in Roswell, New Mexico is evidence of a government conspiracy, because a government conspiracy would leave no evidence of an alien crash-landing in New Mexico. That would be circular reasoning, and therefore a fallacy.
It is claimed that “everyone” knows the Russians hacked the DNC, John Podesta’s emails, Hillary Clinton’s emails, et al, and turned them over to Wikileaks. Because it serves a political end for the Demorats — that is, it provides a ready and convenient excuse for Hillary Clinton’s having lost the election — the American Media Maggots have picked up on the theme as well. Therefore, “everyone” knows the Russians are responsible for the hacks and throwing the election.
However, what about the Sony hack two years ago? The FBI concluded after a few weeks that North Korea was responsible. It was convenient to say so, so it was so. Many people were not so sure. Why? Because determining a cyber attack is more of an art than a science. And intelligence agencies frequently rely on what is called “fourth party collection.” Even the NSA. Which was hacked.
But guess what?
For reasons delineated in prior posts, I think I’d consider the weight of the propeller-heads above over the input of others at this point, who are motivated by — well, let’s just say “self-interests.”
As the grandmother once said on the commercial, “where’s the beef?” I ask: where’s the evidence?
I have seen nothing concrete. Nor do I see any agreement. It’s simplicity itself to constantly bleat “the Russians are coming, the Russians are coming” if you’re a Leftist, Demorat or the American Media Maggots. But are they really?
Let’s first hearken back to what Barack Hussein Obama said to Mitt Romney in 2012 concerning the Russians, thanks to Patrick Dollard.
Since that time much has happened. The GOP winnowed itself from sixteen candidates down to one, Donald Trump. The Demorats from three serious candidates to one, Hillary Clinton.
On November 8th, Donald Trump became the president-elect of the United States, taking 306 electors to Clinton’s 232. This was confirmed on Monday, December 19, by taking all 270 electors required. Only six electors (instead of the “minimum of 37” promised) jumped electoral ship. But here’s the rub: four Democratic electors voted for someone other than Clinton, while two Republicans voted for someone other than Trump. Bottom line: the “elector revolt” hurt Clinton more than it hurt Trump.
In the roughly six weeks since the election, electors themselves have been threatened with death, injury, pressured, intimidated, had their personal information and addresses posted on the internet in order to sway a decision that was made over a month prior.
Now it would appear people want electors can be “lobbied” if you will, their votes influenced and — thanks to Michael Moore — purchased. Hillary Clinton actually lost more electors than Trump. Still, this sets a grim precedent. Leftists now insist that a small section of “very wise” or “very moral” persons should make the decisions.
I always ask: do the reverse. What would be happening now if Hillary had won the election and Trump supporters were acting in the same precise fashion as Clinton backers? There would be never-ending declarations of Brown Shirts and fascism.
More Leftists acted out regards the electors.
Then, as I said, let the Leftist cheating, hatred, violence and riots commence. I was not disappointed. As opposed to what the “fake news” said on the Left, 95% of the violence, burning and riots occurred at the veritable hands of the Left. The American Media Maggots did their level best to ignore or minimize this blatant fact.
Then came the demand for recounts, the declaration of “fake news,” the threat of electors turning and, of course, the Russians hacking the crap out of and influencing the election itself.
Let us go back in time, shall we, as evidenced and corroborated by the Mark I, Model I BZ Brain Housing Group (aided and abetted by Mr Gore’s internet) and examine the article that started it all, the December 9th story by the WashingtonPost.com:
Secret CIA assessment says Russia was trying to help Trump win White House
by Adam Entous, Ellen Nakashima & Greg Miller
The CIA has concluded in a secret assessment that Russia intervened in the 2016 election to help Donald Trump win the presidency, rather than just to undermine confidence in the U.S. electoral system, according to officials briefed on the matter.
Intelligence agencies have identified individuals with connections to the Russian government who provided WikiLeaks with thousands of hacked emails from the Democratic National Committee and others, including Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, according to U.S. officials. Those officials described the individuals as actors known to the intelligence community and part of a wider Russian operation to boost Trump and hurt Clinton’s chances.
“It is the assessment of the intelligence community that Russia’s goal here was to favor one candidate over the other, to help Trump get elected,” said a senior U.S. official briefed on an intelligence presentation made to U.S. senators. “That’s the consensus view.”
This is the same consensus view mandating “global warming” to be real though, in truth, there is in fact no consensus.
Let me please state the obvious regarding the above WaPo story. This is a second-hand report from people whose identities are being shielded, describing what the CIA supposedly concluded and “laundering” it, if you will, through the WaPo. There is no evidence whatsoever provided or linked to these assertions and allegations. We know the CIA has no claim to having cornered the candor market, their duties in the past have been to disseminate disinformation.
What of the statement given by James Clapper on video where he was proven to have baldly lied to Congress and the American public?
James Clapper is the Director of National Intelligence and the boss of CIA Director John Brennan. This bespeaks volumes to me about the status of our intelligence community.
Leftists are saying that people who don’t believe the account of an account, unverified and with no evidence, are unpatriotic stooges for Russia and Vladimir Putin.
We apparently forget the much-vaunted “Russian Reset” promoted by Barack Obama and then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Taylor Armerding writes:
President Obama declared early in his first term that he could have a productive relationship with Russia.
In March 2009, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton — you remember her, she was the most recent Democratic nominee for president — famously presented Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov with a “reset button.”
She said it “represents what President Obama and Vice President Biden and I have been saying and that is, ‘We want to reset our relationship.’ And so we will do it together.”
A few months later, the liberal news blog ThinkProgress declared that “the turnaround in US-Russian relations is a huge foreign policy accomplishment for the president.” Apparently it was unseemly to mention the Russian invasion of Georgia just a year earlier.
So don’t hand me the standard Leftist “occurs in a vacuum” shite about Obama and his sycophants. Let’s also remember this contact between Obama and Russian President Medvedev in 2012:
Then, in 2012, Obama was overheard telling then-Russian President Dmitri Medvedev that he would have “more flexibility” to negotiate on things like missile defense after he was re-elected. Interesting that he was telling a Russian leader that he would win the election.
Medvedev assured Obama that he would pass this information along to the incoming president, Vladimir Putin.
Indeed, Obama in particular and Democrats in general haven’t had any qualms about “working with” the most brutal dictators in the world.
That was Obama being conciliatory and amenable to working with the Russians.
Was it not also, then, Hillary Rodham Clinton who allowed Russia to acquire a controlling share of US uranium for the betterment of the Clinton Foundation? Even the NYTimes wrote:
Cash Flowed to Clinton Foundation Amid Russian Uranium Deal
by Jo Becker and Mike McIntire
The headline on the website Pravda trumpeted President Vladimir V. Putin’s latest coup, its nationalistic fervor recalling an era when its precursor served as the official mouthpiece of the Kremlin: “Russian Nuclear Energy Conquers the World.”
The article, in January 2013, detailed how the Russian atomic energy agency, Rosatom, had taken over a Canadian company with uranium-mining stakes stretching from Central Asia to the American West. The deal made Rosatom one of the world’s largest uranium producers and brought Mr. Putin closer to his goal of controlling much of the global uranium supply chain.
But the untold story behind that story is one that involves not just the Russian president, but also a former American president and a woman who would like to be the next one.
At the heart of the tale are several men, leaders of the Canadian mining industry, who have been major donors to the charitable endeavors of former President Bill Clinton and his family. Members of that group built, financed and eventually sold off to the Russians a company that would become known as Uranium One.
As the Russians gradually assumed control of Uranium One in three separate transactions from 2009 to 2013, Canadian records show, a flow of cash made its way to the Clinton Foundation. Uranium One’s chairman used his family foundation to make four donations totaling $2.35 million. Those contributions were not publicly disclosed by the Clintons, despite an agreement Mrs. Clinton had struck with the Obama White House to publicly identify all donors. Other people with ties to the company made donations as well.
And shortly after the Russians announced their intention to acquire a majority stake in Uranium One, Mr. Clinton received $500,000 for a Moscow speech from a Russian investment bank with links to the Kremlin that was promoting Uranium One stock.
Call me wacky, but that sounds like not only a tad bit of corruption but Russia favoritism as well. As per normal, I could be horribly wrong.
GOOD then and somehow magically bad NOW? Perfectly fine to work with and praise Castro? Venezuela’s Chavez and Maduro? What about the smoochies slathered upon Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and President Hassan Rouhani? Pallet upon pallet, literally billions of dollars of cash delivered from the back of a US cargo plane in the dead of night to the Iranian leaders — something right out of a Tom Clancy novel? Obama’s all good with that. Now only Vladimir Putin is a “bad actor”?
Tucker Carson had a wonderful tete-a-tete with a professor over evidence of Russian hacking of the election who, essentially sums up his evidence solely as “I have said it, now it must be true.” As in: he had no evidence whatsoever. Please listen:
Is it impossible that Russia tried to hack the US? Of course not. Nations hack each other, these days, all the time. But where is the innate curiosity of the American Media Maggots who simply took the CIA at their word (as they seldom did in the past) and ran downfield with the ball? Did any of the American Media Maggot brands ask or, better yet, demand an accounting of the CIA for the report? Demand citations, evidence, names, sources, dates? No. I repeat: no. It fit their narrative about Donald Trump. So it stood.
“The 1980s want their foreign policy back” as documented in the video above? Really, Mr Obama? Leftists? That’s all you’ve got? This, remember, is the Obama who purposely did not arm anti-Russian factions in Ukraine, cooperated with Putin in Syria, ad nauseum.
Why has Putin emerged as the existential threat against the United States, that he is our arch-enemy now? Aren’t Obama and Demorats the same people who have been dovish and not hawkish on war and conflict in the past? Why Russia, why now?
What happened to “common ground” with Russia? What happened to embracing “glasnost”? What happened to America under Obama saying we will become the most respected nation on the planet?
Who may have been responsible for the Wikileaks emails acquired from HRC, Podesta and the DNC? Are we absolutely certain it’s “the Russians”?
Obama Crushes Conspiracy: No Evidence that Russia Tampered with Votes in Election
by Charlie Spiering
President Barack Obama emphatically denounced the conspiracy theory saying Russians successfully tampered with the American voting process.
I suggested it may have been the NSA. They had excellent reasons for doing so: dead personnel. I’m not the only one suggesting this; so did Judge Andrew Napolitano and other persons I’ve spoken to with intelligence contacts.
Further, didn’t the FBI itself say the Russians were not involved, as I wrote here — courtesy of the NY Times on October 31st?
Investigating Donald Trump, F.B.I. Sees No Clear Link to Russia
by Eric Lichtblau and Steven Lee Myers
WASHINGTON — For much of the summer, the F.B.I. pursued a widening investigation into a Russian role in the American presidential campaign. Agents scrutinized advisers close to Donald J. Trump, looked for financial connections with Russian financial figures, searched for those involved in hacking the computers of Democrats, and even chased a lead — which they ultimately came to doubt — about a possible secret channel of email communication from the Trump Organization to a Russian bank.
Law enforcement officials say that none of the investigations so far have found any conclusive or direct link between Mr. Trump and the Russian government. And even the hacking into Democratic emails, F.B.I. and intelligence officials now believe, was aimed at disrupting the presidential election rather than electing Mr. Trump.
A British diplomat, former ambassador to Uzbekistan, also says the Russians are not responsible. From TruthFeed.com:
British Diplomat “I’ve Met The Wikileaks Informant and They’re NOT Russian”
by Amy Moreno
Craig Murry is a former UK Ambassador to Uzbekistan and an associate of Assange.
I have watched incredulous as the CIA’s blatant lie has grown and grown as a media story – blatant because the CIA has made no attempt whatsoever to substantiate it. There is no Russian involvement in the leaks of emails showing Clinton’s corruption. Yes this rubbish has been the lead today in the Washington Post in the US and the Guardian here, and was the lead item on the BBC main news. I suspect it is leading the American broadcasts also.
A little simple logic demolishes the CIA’s claims. The CIA claim they “know the individuals” involved. Yet under Obama the USA has been absolutely ruthless in its persecution of whistleblowers, and its pursuit of foreign hackers through extradition. We are supposed to believe that in the most vital instance imaginable, an attempt by a foreign power to destabilise a US election, even though the CIA knows who the individuals are, nobody is going to be arrested or extradited, or (if in Russia) made subject to yet more banking and other restrictions against Russian individuals? Plainly it stinks. The anonymous source claims of “We know who it was, it was the Russians” are beneath contempt.
What of Julian Assange himself? What has he said about the “leaks”? From the UKDailyMail.com:
Wikileaks’ founder Julian Assange goes on the offensive over claims Russia was behind Clinton email hack, saying Kremlin is NOT its source
by Alana Goodman
Wikileaks founder Julian Assange has flatly rejected U.S. intelligence claims that his organization received leaked Clinton emails from the Russian government
He says the allegations are part of a ‘foolish’ and ‘dangerous’ effort by Democrats to overturn Donald Trump’s election victory
Said group has a strict policy against commenting on sources, but he wanted to dispute allegations Wikileaks was involved in a Russian-orchestrated campaign
Wikileaks founder Julian Assange flatly rejected U.S. intelligence claims that his organization received leaked Clinton emails from the Russian government, saying the allegations are part of a ‘foolish’ and ‘dangerous’ effort by Democrats to overturn Donald Trump’s election victory.
‘Our source is not the Russian government,’ Assange told Sean Hannity on his radio show on Thursday, in his first U.S. interview since the election. ‘We have U.S. intelligence saying that say they know how we got our stuff and when we got it, and us saying we didn’t get it from a state.’
Assange said his group has a strict policy against commenting on its sources, but he wanted to dispute allegations that Wikileaks was involved in a Russian-orchestrated campaign to swing the election for Donald Trump.
Then there is this, a little-referenced article from TheNation.com:
Amazon, ‘The Washington Post’ and That $600 MIllion CIA Contract
by Greg Mitchell
It has been a tough few weeks for The Washington Post.
It’s been a rough couple days for The Washington Post.Word emerged that hackers invaded its internal system—for a few days, no less—all of its staffers had to change their passwords as the company tried to figure out how much data had been compromised.
Meanwhile, a petition campaign was launched related to news that Amazon, under the Post’s new owner, Jeff Bezos, recently secured a $600 million contract from the CIA.
Read that over again: the Washington Post, publisher of the article that gave the “Russian hack” meme legs for the Demorats, is in financial league with the CIA by way of the WaPo’s owner, Jeff Bezos.
Jeff Bezos is also a “good little Leftist” whose job it is to support by any means necessary the Demorats and Leftists of all stripes, to carry their water and their messages.
That’s at least twice what Bezos paid for the Post this year. Bezos recently disclosed that the company’s Web-services business is building a “private cloud” for the CIA to use for its data needs.
Well now. It didn’t. Nor was there any mention of this fact in their original article. That wasn’t an “oopsie” or a “mistake;” it was purposeful.
In a statement released by the Institute for Public Accuracy, media writer/author Robert McChesney observes:
When the main shareholder in one of the very largest corporations in the world benefits from a massive contract with the CIA on the one hand, and that same billionaire owns the Washington Post on the other hand, there are serious problems. The Post is unquestionably the political paper of record in the United States, and how it covers governance sets the agenda for the balance of the news media. Citizens need to know about this conflict of interest in the columns of the Post itself.
If some official enemy of the United States had a comparable situation—say the owner of the dominant newspaper in Caracas was getting $600 million in secretive contracts from the Maduro government—the Post itself would lead the howling chorus impaling that newspaper and that government for making a mockery of a free press. It is time for the Post to take a dose of its own medicine.”
What do you think? Is that not sufficient motivation to have the CIA do your bidding?
Let’s not lose sight of the bottom line. None of this would have occurred or been an issue had the Demorats, DNC and Hillary Rotten Clinton not been corrupt and rotten to the core.
Russia hacking the election — Russia influencing the election? Provide the clear evidence and the proof.
“Everyone knows the Russians hacked the election.” Right?
As the grandmother once said on the commercial, “where’s the beef?” I ask: where’s the evidence?
I suggested it