The Democratic lie about the Wikileak emails is dangerous and irresponsible.
It is very unlikely the Russian government was directly involved in the damning emails leaked to Wikileaks. By calling Putin a liar and launching a cyber attack against Russia the Democrats are playing a very dangerous game with a very dangerous opponent.
The U.S. is gearing up for a cyberwar against Russia and in response they are threatening possible nuclear retaliation — all because the Democrats decided to blame Russia for the leak of tens of thousands of embarrassing and damaging emails released to the American people. Putin insists that his government had nothing to do with the leaks and it is appearing more and more likely he is telling the truth. But is it too late? Have the Democrats backed themselves into a corner that will lead to war?
Hillary Clinton famously claimed that “17 agencies” had confirmed the Russians were behind the massive email leaks that targeted Democrats this election season. The reality is that only one government official from a single agency indicated that “[he] believed, based on the scope and sensitivity of these efforts, that only Russia’s senior-most officials could have authorized these activities.” Belief is far from confirmation and the more we learn about the attacks the less likely a ‘state-actor’ is behind the leaks.
Hillary’s source is no other than DCI James Clapper, a 75-year-old retired Air Force general. You may recall that three years ago Clapper was caught lying to Congress when he claimed the NSA wasn’t collecting any type of data on millions of Americans — emails provided by Wikileaks proved he was lying and as a result 26 Senators demanded his resignation — even the media suggests Clapper lied under oath and obstructed justice. Clapper is not a fan of Wikileaks as they have tarnished his otherwise exemplary government career — he has a vested personal interest in attacking Wikileaks by attempting to connect them with the Russian government.
Before asking who it is important to ask how. Clinton and Clapper claim that only a ‘state-actor’ could be behind the attack. The Chinese and the Russians governments have very advanced cyber capabilities — perhaps even more advanced than our own. However, the emails obtained by Wikileaks weren’t the result of sophisticated cyberwar technology — they were simple social engineering. No advanced decryption technologies were used. There is literally nothing about the attacks themselves that point to a ‘state-actor’. Instead the attacks were very basic — any 15 year old with a laptop could have pulled these attacks off. Here is how they did it:
First, the ‘hackers’ identified approximately 4,000 individuals including politicians, government employees, military personnel, journalists, members of the DNC, as well as members of Hillary Clinton’s campaign. Next they used a very common and low tech attack called “spear-phishing”. Each target received the following message:
Approximately 70% of the 4,000 emails were opened and of those 1,400 of the targets clicked on the link in the email to reset their Gmail password. Famously many of the targets, like Clinton’s campaign chair John Podesta, changed their passwords — giving the ‘hackers’ full access to their email accounts. At the end of the day this isn’t “hacking” but social engineering — no technology was created or used in these exploits — the ‘hackers’ simply took advantage of naive internet users.
The media is reporting that the source of the attacks were likely one of the following hacker collectives: Cozy Bear, APT 29, Fancy Bear, APT28, Pawn Storm, Sofacy Group, or Sednit. These groups are largely based in Eastern Europe and Russia — and there has always been the assumption that they operate with the support of elements of the Russian government. However, there is no proof or evidence of their involvement today — as there was in hacking incidents that took place in the Ukraine during the invasion of the Crimea — in those incidents, unlike the current attacks, there was cyrillic writing contained in the malicious code. CIA Director Michael Hayden admitted that if these groups are involved it doesn’t appear that the Kremlin is trying to influence the outcome of the election explaining, “They are not trying to pick a winner, they’re trying to mess with our heads.”
The Democratic Party is deeply embarrassed by the contents of the leaked emails and their ultimate impact won’t be felt for years — hundreds of criminal investigations may result from some of the revelations. Careers will be ruined — the devastation to the Democratic Party could be catastrophic. But is it worth going to war over?
