Special Counsel Robert Mueller is readying criminal charges against Russian hackers allegedly responsible for leaking damaging emails “designed to hurt Democrats in the 2016 election.”
NBC News reports:
Much like the indictment Mueller filed last month charging a different group of Russians in a social media trolling and illegal-ad-buying scheme, the possible new charges are expected to rely heavily on secret intelligence gathered by the CIA, the FBI, the National Security Agency (NSA) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), several of the officials say. […] Mueller’s consideration of charges accusing Russians in the hacking case has not been reported previously. Sources say he has long had sufficient evidence to make a case, but strategic issues could dictate the timing. Potential charges include violations of statutes on conspiracy, election law as well as the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.
The sources say the possible new indictment — or more than one, if that’s how Mueller’s office decides to proceed — would delve into the details of, and the people behind, the Russian intelligence operation that used hackers to penetrate computer networks and steal emails of both the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta.
Several political pundits and tech analysts have long said the DNC “hack” was not a hack, but rather a leak from someone inside the organization.
Earlier this month, internet entrepreneur Kim Dotcom took to Twitter to once again attempt to dispel the mainstream narrative surrounding the Democratic National Committee hacking scandal.
“Let me assure you, the DNC hack wasn’t even a hack. It was an insider with a memory stick. I know this because I know who did it and why,” adding “Special Counsel Mueller is not interested in my evidence. My lawyers wrote to him twice. He never replied. 360 pounds!” tweeted Dotcom.
Let me assure you, the DNC hack wasn’t even a hack. It was an insider with a memory stick. I know this because I know who did it and why. Special Counsel Mueller is not interested in my evidence. My lawyers wrote to him twice. He never replied. 360 pounds!https://t.co/AGRO0sFx7s https://t.co/epXtv0t1uN
— Kim Dotcom (@KimDotcom) February 18, 2018
As The Gateway Pundit’s Jim Hoft previously reported, DotCom dropped a bomb last May when he claimed to have evidence that former DNC worker Seth Rich was involved in the leaked emails released by WikiLeaks.
Kim Dot.Com: “I KNOW THAT SETH RICH WAS INVOLVED IN THE DNC LEAK.”
He admitted earlier that month that he was part of an operation along with Seth Rich to get stolen DNC emails to Wikileaks.
A mysterious IT specialist, who goes by the name The Forensicator, published a detailed report last July that appears to disprove the theory that the DNC was hacked by Russia.
The documents were copied on July 5th, five days before Seth Rich was murdered.
The Forensicator summarized the complex report into 10 bullet points.
The report as laid out by The Forensicator:
Based on the analysis that is detailed below, the following key findings are presented:
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On 7/5/2016 at approximately 6:45 PM Eastern time, someone copied the data that eventually appears on the “NGP VAN” 7zip file (the subject of this analysis). This 7zip file was published by a persona named Guccifer 2, two months later on September 13, 2016.
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Due to the estimated speed of transfer (23 MB/s) calculated in this study, it is unlikely that this initial data transfer could have been done remotely over the Internet.
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The initial copying activity was likely done from a computer system that had direct access to the data. By “direct access” we mean that the individual who was collecting the data either had physical access to the computer where the data was stored, or the data was copied over a local high speed network (LAN).
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They may have copied a much larger collection of data than the data present in the NGP VAN 7zip. This larger collection of data may have been as large as 19 GB. In that scenario the NGP VAN 7zip file represents only 1/10th of the total amount of material taken.
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This initial copying activity was done on a system where Eastern Daylight Time (EDT) settings were in force. Most likely, the computer used to initially copy the data was located somewhere on the East Coast.
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The data was likely initially copied to a computer running Linux, because the file last modified times all reflect the apparent time of the copy and this is a characteristic of the the Linux ‘cp’ command (using default options).
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A Linux OS may have been booted from a USB flash drive and the data may have been copied back to the same flash drive, which will likely have been formatted with the Linux (ext4) file system.
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On September 1, 2016, two months after copying the initial large collection of (alleged) DNC related content (the so-called NGP/VAN data), a subset was transferred to working directories on a system running Windows. The .rar files included in the final 7zip file were built from those working directories.
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The computer system where the working directories were built had Eastern Daylight Time (EDT) settings in force. Most likely, this system was located somewhere on the East Coast.
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The .rar files and plain files that eventually end up in the “NGP VAN” 7zip file disclosed by Guccifer 2.0 on 9/13/2016 were likely first copied to a USB flash drive, which served as the source data for the final 7zip file. There is no information to determine when or where the final 7zip file was built.
The most important aspect of the report is the “estimated speed of transfer (23 MB/s)” at which the documents were copied. It’s inconceivable DNC documents could have been copied at such speed from a remote location.
