Hi Steemit! I'm Adam Carter - Independent Journalist, Guccifer 2.0/DNC Hack Debunker

Hey Steemit! I'm Adam Carter, a software developer, server administrator & internet junkie from the UK and an independent journalist that has recently joined Disobedient Media as a technical correspondent.

I'm best known online for carrying out investigations into the "Guccifer 2.0" persona, dismantling the alleged hacking of the DNC and scrutinizing the claims and assumptions made by several cyber-security experts and firms - efforts that have yielded some very interesting results.

Background

While my identity as Adam Carter only goes back to early 2017, my background in IT goes back to the late 1980s. I started learning BASIC on a Commodore 64 when I was eight years old, by the time I was thirteen (early 1990s) I was familiar with 68k machine code (on the Commodore Amiga) and at fourteen I started accessing BBSs (Bulletin Board Servers, for those that don't know, it's how we shared 'warez' before the Internet was around) and ended up cracking (removing copy protection) and training (adding cheats to) games for a couple of warez scene groups.

At the end of the 1990s, I connected to the Internet and was instantly addicted. It wasn't long before I was reverse engineering protocols and propriety data formats alike. To cut a long and potentially self-incriminating story short, I'll just say that I know what it feels like to have unauthorized access to hundreds of servers that you're not supposed to have access to.

Fortunately, for the past 15 years, I've been working in IT in a far more legitimate capacity and currently manage an array of servers, defending customers from hackers, botnets, etc. as part of my responsibilities.

The Past Year

As is true of colleagues at Disobedient Media, of friends/allies in independent media, and, I'm sure, many of you reading this, I found myself gravely concerned about the state of the mainstream press at the end of 2016. It was my concern about an escalation in war-mongering rhetoric from politicians and mainstream news sources and a reliance (at that time) on citing Guccifer 2.0's antics as strong proof of Russia having hacked the DNC that actually prompted me to look into the hacking allegations and question the validity of attributing Guccifer 2.0 to Russia. 

Early in my investigation into the alleged DNC hack, I started to notice anomalies and inconsistencies (behavioral, linguistic, quality of leaked information & metadata correlations between several of Guccifer 2.0's first documents). I tried to let journalists know about it (including some of those who had reported on Guccifer 2.0 throughout 2016), there was little interest (Joe Uchill of The Hill said to let him know if anything new came up but with that exception, the rest were dismissive or didn't respond).

Undeterred, I set up a web site to lay out a detailed timeline of Guccifer 2.0's activities, to record any unique information I could find and to log my own efforts to investigate. I created the g-2.space site in February, 2017 and within a couple of weeks of going live, the first major breakthrough was discovered which revealed that Guccifer 2.0 had deliberately constructed his first batch of files to use Russian stylesheet definitions and a Russian name in file metadata.

Not long after that discovery, traffic to the site was given a considerable boost when WikiLeaks tweeted about the site, mentioning that it was a useful source for primary source content relating to Guccifer 2.0:

As the evidence and analysis grew and more researchers contributed to the evidence, I sent details of the site to every US Senator. In June, I reported that CrowdStrike were more likely to be behind the Guccifer 2.0 persona than anyone in Russia (and my certainty of this has increased since then). 

As the Summer months came to an end, one of the third party contributions, a study carried out by someone known online as "Forensicator", caught the attention of several intelligence agency veterans. I was consequently contacted by an associate of their group, VIPS (Veteran Intelligence Professional for Sanity), and was introduced to several people whose names I already knew (and respected as notable whistleblowers) but that I had never expected to end up communicating with.

A lot of this did involve me acting as a conduit between my source (Forensicator) and VIPS members at first but as time went on, all related topics were covered. Several VIPS members then co-signed a memo advising caution against attributing hacks to Russia on the basis of the Guccifer 2.0 persona and started to raise awareness through more mainstream channels (at least those willing to air a dissenting opinion on the topic of RussiaGate). Notable articles arising from this were featured in The Nation, Salon & Bloomberg.

While those VIPS members have been doing that, the aforementioned VIPS associate (that had introduced me to the group) compiled a new report detailing all the discoveries, anomalies, inconsistencies and debunked/discredited claims and sent hard copies (with a cover letter asking for acknowledgement of receipt and asking for the evidence and analysis referenced to be investigated/verified) to Special Counsel Robert Mueller, Rod Rosenstein (at the Department of Justice) and the intelligence and judicial committees in both the senate and congress (none of which ever were acknowledged).

I followed this up by sharing that report with every foreign embassy in London, expressing my concerns that escalation to an armed conflict between nuclear-armed nations may be, in part, due to an effort to frame Russia for hacking. The VIPS associate then contacted members of the UN and several UN-related groups to bring their attention to it too.

As a collective effort between myself and many others, we have now discredited most of the evidence used to assert that Guccifer 2.0 was a Russian and have collated a considerable amount of evidence that suggests Guccifer 2.0 was someone operating in America, engaging in signal mimicry, serving to try to undermine WikiLeaks and provide false evidence to support CrowdStrike's claims (starting the day after those claims were first published).

There's even been evidence that raises questions about the authenticity of some of the malware that was discovered at the DNC.

The Year Ahead

I am seeking out new topics to investigate going forward. 

I'll also be keeping an eye on the deep state's uses and abuses of technology, will aim to expose attempts to censor public opinion, will try to keep readers informed of efforts to control public perception online (it's been a growing problem for years but things have really escalated since 2014/15) and challenge the mainstream media when they distort or deceive on the topics of technology and hacking. 

If you have ideas, tips, information or evidence you'd like investigating, I can be contacted here, via Twitter DMs (always open) or by email at: defianet [at] protonmail [dot] com.