Yesterday the news site "The Intercept" released a leaked Top Secret N.S.A. document that is supposed to be the evidence that the Russian's changed the vote tally and hacked the election. What this document actually says is lackluster and more of the same information we have been hearing since even before the hacking described in the document occurred. First for the authenticity of the document, it does look authentic and highly secret using the marking Top Secret//SI//ORCON/ Rel to USA, FVEY/FISA. The document claims the Russian General Staff Main Intelligence Directorate executed spear phishing operations against two companies employees who used VR systems hardware and software. The spear phishing was possibly aimed at gathering information about those systems. This description is all the report says. In fact it doesn't provide evidence of even some of it's claims for example the document's culprit is the GRU which is Russia's military intelligence, it never describes any evidence of how they know it's the GRU which is at the root of the accusation. The document just starts off with:
"Russian General Staff Main Intelligence Directorate actors (CENSORED) executed cyber espionage operations.."
after this there is no proof or evidence of how they know it was these Russian actors. The actors names are censored supposedly by the "The Intercept". Why? To protect the Russian actors or to protect an ongoing investigation? This brings different questions to mind. How do they know these actors are connected to the GRU? This intelligence report doesn't seem to be very accurate or well written. The report continues to describe the alleged activities of the GRU as executed phishing operations on August 24, 2016 and October 27 to November 1, 2016. There was a separate operation on October 19,2016. The first operation seems to be to intended to retrieve the users credentials of 7 emails at company 1, the company's name is not used. Of the 7 emails, 3 of the emails rejected the phishing. In the second operation it seems the actors used the credentials they gained from the first to make an email with trojanized microsoft documents. The documents were user guides on how to use the EVID software. EVID software is made by VR systems which makes software and hardware for voter registration at polling stations. The actors sent this email to 122 emails of known government organizations. The document says that the probable reason this was done is to infect the targeted computers so that they could be used to acquire persistent information on the user's computer. The third operation seems to be a test operation that was sent to a election office in American Samoa that was rejected. Does this document prove the Russians hacked the election? No. Is it valuable information? Yes. The document describe an operation where hacker's were trying to phish to gather information. The question who did the hacking and what information did they receive? As mentioned before there is no proof mentioned on how they know it's the Russians. "The Russia hacked into the election story" has been around for awhile. Back in June 2016 the FBI was sending warnings to states about "bad actors" trying to get into the voter registration databases. In September 2016 Former F.B.I. director James Comey testified that there was scanning of voter registration databases and some cases of actual entering of the databases. He said the F.B.I. was looking hard at Russian hackers who might disrupt the election. Many reports at this time came out of attempted phising attempts. What this means is that this is old news being rehashed in a different way. The F.B.I. and D.H.S. seem to be very involved in announcing phising attempts and defensive measures at this time. The media used this in their "Russia hacking the election" narrative. Of all the attempts at the time no evidence of any actual tampering with the election were made. This NSA document does the same it describes spear phising but it doesn't actually explain what was stolen if anything and never describes any tampering with the vote. Other than the technical data most of it seems like presumption. The document is filled with words like: likely, potentially and presumably. The document sumarizes the results of this activity by saying:
"The (censored) actors were probably trying to obtain information associated with election-related hardware and software applications. It is unknown whether the aforementioned spear-phishing deployment successfully compromised all the intended victims, and what potential data from the victim could have been exfiltrated. However, based upon subsequent targeting, it was likely that at least one account was compromised."
This report seems half baked and the reason is because it's a report of a ongoing investigation. It offers no concrete evidence other than there was three spear phising operations in August, October, and November respectively. If the reader believes that the Russian's did it, then he has faith in the F.B.I. since they have offered no actual evidence so far. To be clear it's not to say the Russians are not the culprits in fact its "probable" that they are but no evidence has been shown. This document leaves us in square one almost as if to remind us of information we all were aware of last year. Next we should examine that the document claims the information became available to them on April 2017. Yes you read that right April 2017, which means the document is claiming it's unrelated to all the anti-phising work that was done during the same time this document claims these events occurred. This in itself is very questionable. How this source became available only on April 2017 why did it take so long. The NSA report doesn't seem to mention sources not even under the parts censored by "The Intercept". "The Intercept" seems to have censored mostly the names of the supposed Russian "actors", a email adress, and possibly the NSA unit responsible for the report. The document itself seems to censor its sources which is bizarre for a Top Secret document. If reports and news stories this day in age contain just presumptions then this media outlet could make a connection between the time the information became available and the lack of information made available. That connection is that it's possible the NSA acquired this information from a third party Cyber-Security firm.There are many such firms out there but one comes to mind. Crowdstrike the Democratic party's favorite cyber-security firm and source for the Russian election interference information used to anounce in December 2016 that the Russian interfered in the election. Information that has never been released. This of course is a possibility and could explain the date of information for this document. The next interesting event related to this story is the arrest of the leaker which happened yesterday right after the release of the story on the same day. The culprit, 25 year old Reality Leigh Winner who was busted for leaking the document is a ex-Air Force intelligence linguist who works now for a intelligence defense contractor called Pluribus International Corporation. Don't think this is some quiet unknown type that just had to leak information because of some grave injustice somebody like Edward Snowden. No this woman even has a twitter presence showing her obsessive hatred of Donald Trump. Shes has tweeted the very common leftist attack used which is that Trump is a piece of shit. She has also tweeted that he's not her president. Her political inclinations are not a secret and in her tweets under her possible birth given name Sara Winners she is a climate change believer, black lives matter activist, muslim apologist, dakota pipeline leftist. In other words shes the type that believes everything CNN tells her. Her and the fact she got caught the same day her leaked documents were released raises flags in my opinion. This might be a way for the establishment to control the narrative. This might be another way for the establishment to control the Trump administration. In the next days the media will have a new story to propagate and a new heroine. This story is like a gift after the Paris Agreement debacle for the left since the American public were not outraged by the story and in fact it seems the public somewhat supported the president. This gives the media something to attack Trump with for the next week. What evidence is there? The NSA report is lackluster and only confirms information we already knew a year ago and it's leaker is a left wing activist.
From Article: https://www.americanalttimes.com/single-post/2017/06/06/The-NSA-Report-Offers-No-Evidence-Of-Vote-Hacking
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Thanks for the good article
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