The investigation methods used to come to the conclusion that the Russian Government led the hacks of the DNC, Clinton Campaign Chair John Podesta, and the DCCC were further called into question by a recent BuzzFeed report by Jason Leopold, who has developed a notable reputation from leading several non-partisan Freedom of Information Act lawsuits for investigative journalism purposes.
The whole things gets even more disturbing the more you look.įor example, Counterpunch put out a very important article earlier today on the topic, adding several crucial nuggets of information. Either that, or something else was potentially at play namely, a desire to push the narrative that Russia hacked the DNC, irrespective of the facts. Seems like pretty extraordinary incompetence. Officials there initially were unaware of the CrowdStrike assertions. After investigating, they determined that CrowdStrike misinterpreted their data and hadn’t reached out beforehand for comment or clarification.ĬrowdStrike declined to answer VOA’s written questions about the Ukraine report, and Alperovitch canceled a March 15 interview on the topic. In a December statement to VOA’s Ukrainian Service, spokeswoman Ilina Dimitrova defended the company’s conclusions. VOA first contacted IISS in February to verify the alleged artillery losses. CrowdStrike never contacted him before or after its report was published, he told VOA. Yaroslav Sherstyuk, maker of the Ukrainian military app in question, called the company’s report “delusional” in a Facebook post. The challenges to CrowdStrike’s credibility are significant because the firm was the first to link last year’s hacks of Democratic Party computers to Russian actors, and because CrowdStrike co-founder Dimiti Alperovitch has trumpeted its Ukraine report as more evidence of Russian election tampering. Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense also has claimed combat losses and hacking never happened. IISS disavowed any connection to the CrowdStrike report.
The CrowdStrike report, released in December, asserted that Russians hacked into a Ukrainian artillery app, resulting in heavy losses of howitzers in Ukraine’s war with Russian-backed separatists.īut the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) told VOA that CrowdStrike erroneously used IISS data as proof of the intrusion. cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike has used to buttress its claims of Russian hacking in the presidential election. Here’s some of what we learned:Īn influential British think tank and Ukraine’s military are disputing a report that the U.S.
In yesterday’s post, Credibility of Cyber Firm that Claimed Russia Hacked the DNC Comes Under Serious Question, I examined how CrowdStrike, the cybersecurity firm hired by the DNC to look into its hacking breach, had been exposed as being completely wrong about a separate attack it claimed originated from the same group it claimed broke into DNC systems, and supposedly works for Russia’s military intelligence unit, GRU. What is CrowdStrike? Firm Hired by DNC has Ties to Hillary Clinton, a Ukrainian Billionaire and GoogleĪs usual, the rabbit hole gets much deeper the more you look.