The Kremlin has issued a statement claiming it does not fully understand Microsoft’s claims of having “foiled” their hacking attacks, saying they aren’t clear who was supposed to have been conducting this attack, or what proof there was any such thing exists.
Microsoft announced Monday that they’d obtained a court order allowing them to seize six domain names which they believe were secretly run by a Russian hacking group called Fancy Bear, and which were meant to hack the International Republican Institution and the Hudson Institute.
The sites in question appear to have been set up to try to simulate the authentic versions of those think tanks’ websites, in hopes of trying to get actual members confused and accidentally giving them login credentials.
There is no evidence that any successful hacking ever happened this way, as these appear to be random phishing attempts, the types which could be set up by almost anybody, and would in no way be Russian government-specific.
Microsoft appears to be using these allegations to publicize their own “Defending Democracy” program, which offers services to political campaigns and certain NGOs. Officials who were accusing Russia of plotting to hack the mid-term elections suggest the Microsoft incident proves this is happening, but there does appear to be no evidence that what little was attempted here was Russia, nor that anything was successfully hacked.
MoA has an interesting analysis on this: http://www.moonofalabama.org/2018/08/microsoft-promotes-russia-scare-to-gain-insider-access-to-campaign-information.html#more
The speed with which data was downloaded indicated that It wasn’t a hack but a leak.
More here – ‘Too Big to Fail’: Russia-gate One Year After VIPS Showed a Leak, Not a Hack [Consortium]
This was known so long time ago. But information that official media does not condone or wants to bury has a predictable fate.
In fact, the entire “collusion” witch hunt started out ILLEGALLY. Our justice system was perverted by DNC, with full support of both parties. So, when FBI requested access to DNC computers supposedly hacked — they were denied. In fact, as FBI testified in Congressional hearing, three rrequests were made, to three different levrls of DNC. We are in America, not Middle East, where justice is private affair. In our justice system, high level crimes — and collusion or treason are one of them — are prosecuted by STATE, in this case it should have been Federal investigation by FBI and Federal prosecutor was to decide on the basis of evidence to prosecute. When DNC declined cooperation — FBI had two choices. Ine, given the seriousness if the charge, sejze computers and charge DNC with obstruction of justice, or concluded that the charge was baseless and frivolous political slander, thus not to be pursued. DNC was ALLOWED to avoid either, took political route, used political appointees heading intelligence agencies to come up with a laughable formula statement that suggested on the base on some unknown intelligence patterns it was “likely” a hacking committed by “Russians”. And backed it ip by a private report obtained by DNC using Dmitry Alperovich firm — well known for his Russophobia. The report itself, for those who bothered to read it — is embarrasing. Good part of it political persuasion, and technical part based on some unknown software that suppossedly “lit up” upon encountering Russian fingerprints. Why did not DNC allow professional FBI forensic software to examine the server, and provide official report. Instead of following US justice system and decide on the matter, we allowed a political opinions of some intelligence leaders to be the basis for investigation of the President and anyone associated with him. Investigation is open ended to include investigating any matter no matter how unconnected to the “collusion”. And anytime they run out of media fodder, any old event, slready checked into and debunked, is resurected as brand new event for gullable public.
The only way to get out of this type of political trials, is to forbid any person with dual citizenship from running for office, serving in any capacity in Federal government, be that as a civil cervant, appointed bureaucrat or contract employee. When it comes to contractors, the system is so broken, that just about any manager jn a private company doing business for Federal Government, has a top security clearance.
In addition, anyone who has in their life lobied for the interests if a foreign country, should be equally disqualified. Today, such people are at the center of all decision making. THIS NEEDS TO STOP. We no longer have a clue whise interests are being served by our policies, and with our money.
Even though this information has been known for a while, it is key to pointing out that it wasn’t a hack but a deliberate leak from inside.
The crux of the matter remains US/Western exceptionalism, which needs to be ended for the benefit of humanity.
As a matter of fact —- you are right on many counts. It should be repeated, over and over again, that the investigation is a sham, mostly maintained by the ruling cabal in order to deflect the public gaze from the miserable failure that the liberal globalist scam has proven to be. Thus, Russia, Russia, Russia. Collusion, collusion, collusion. Rights, rights, rights. Wars, wars, wars.
There is no talk of responsibility. The sooner these clowns passing for our representatives get off the public troth, the better. Let us hope new generation coming up, not easily manipulable by media stunts, will do better.
Pardon the late reply, least the comments are still open.
While we rinse wash and repeat, we should hope to become better at exposing war propaganda for the next generations, and explain the reasons why there are no funds available to provide them with free education, medical care and many other services that could have been funded with taxpayers resources, but have ended up filling the pockets of the rich and powerful.
Indeed. My grandson was 14 at the time last presidential electins were held. And he saw through the political manipulation, as did many of his other classmates. He will be 18, and voting in the next presidential election.
This appears to be the classic mistake that everyone makes – that because some site is in some way politically involved that it means the alleged hackers are “nation state”. This is completely false. Any hacker will hack any target based on 1 or more of three characteristics: 1) it is interesting, or 2) challenging, or 3) has either intellectual property or personally identifiable information which can be sold on the Dark Web.
These sites were probably phishing sites set up because the persons logging in to them as a result of phishing emails or mistypes URLs would be people who might have useful data to steal or the real sites might have. The hackers involved, as the post states, could be anyone.