DNC hack

belated senate intel report

see wikileaks

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Democratic National Committee cyber attacks - Wikipedia

The Democratic National Committee cyber attacks took place in 2015 and 2016,^[1] in which two groups of Russian computer hackers infiltrated the Democratic National Committee (DNC) computer network, leading to a data breach. Cybersecurity experts, as well as the U.S. government, determined that the cyberespionage was the work of Russian intelligence agencies.

Forensic evidence analyzed by several cybersecurity firms, CrowdStrike, Fidelis, and Mandiant (or FireEye), strongly indicated that two Russian intelligence agencies separately infiltrated the DNC computer systems. CrowdStrike, which removed the hacking programs, revealed a history of encounters with both groups and had already named them, calling one of them Cozy Bear and the other Fancy Bear, names which are used in the media.^{[2][3][4][5][6}]

On December 9, 2016, the CIA told U.S. legislators that the U.S. Intelligence Community had concluded Russia conducted the cyberattacks and other operations during the 2016 U.S. election to assist Donald Trump in winning the presidency.^[7] Multiple U.S. intelligence agencies concluded that specific individuals tied to the Russian government provided WikiLeaks with stolen emails from the DNC, as well as stolen emails from Hillary Clinton's campaign chairman, who was also the target of a cyberattack.^[7] These intelligence organizations additionally concluded Russia hacked the Republican National Committee (RNC) as well as the DNC, but chose not to leak information obtained from the RNC.^[8]

Cyber attacks and responsibility

Cyber attacks that successfully penetrated the DNC computing system began in 2015. Attacks by "Cozy Bear" began in the summer of 2015. Attacks by "Fancy Bear" began in April 2016. It was after the "Fancy Bear" group began their activities that the compromised system became apparent. The groups were presumed to have been spying on communications, stealing opposition research on Donald Trump, as well as reading all email and chats. Both were finally identified by CrowdStrike in May 2016. Both groups of intruders were successfully expelled from the DNC systems within hours after detection. These attacks were part of a group of attacks targeting U.S. government departments and several political organizations, including 2016 campaign organizations.^{[2][3][4][5][6}]

On July 22, 2016, a person or entity going by the moniker "Guccifer 2.0" claimed on a WordPress-hosted blog to have been acting alone in hacking the DNC.^[9][10] He also claimed to send significant amounts of stolen electronic DNC documents to WikiLeaks. WikiLeaks has not revealed the source for their leaked emails.^[11] However, cybersecurity experts and firms, including CrowdStrike, Fidelis Cybersecurity, Mandiant, SecureWorks, ThreatConnect, and the editor for Ars Technica, have rejected the claims of "Guccifer 2.0" and have determined, on the basis of substantial evidence, that the cyberattacks were committed by two Russian state-sponsored groups (Cozy Bear and Fancy Bear).^[12]

According to separate reports in The New York Times and The Washington Post, U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded with "high confidence"^[13] that the Russian government was behind the theft of emails and documents from the DNC.^[13][14] While the U.S. intelligence community has concluded that Russia was behind the cyberattack, intelligence officials told The Washington Post that they had "not reached a conclusion about who passed the emails to WikiLeaks" and so did not know "whether Russian officials directed the leak."^[14] A number of experts and cybersecurity analysts believe that "Guccifer 2.0" is probably a Russian government disinformation cover story to distract attention away from the DNC breach by the two Russian intelligence agencies.^{[2][3][4][5][15}]

President Obama and Russian President Vladimir Putin had a discussion about computer security issues, which took place as a side discussion during the then-ongoing G20 summit in China in September 2016. Obama said Russian hacking stopped after his warning to Putin.^[16]

In a joint statement on October 7, 2016, the United States Department of Homeland Security and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence stated that the US intelligence community is confident that the Russian government directed the breaches and the release of the obtained material in an attempt to "… interfere with the US election process."^[17][18][19]

Background

As is common among Russian intelligence services, both groups used similar hacking tools and strategies. It is believed that neither group was aware of the other. This type of operation is antithetical to American computer intelligence methods, for fear of undermining or defeating intelligence operations of the other. However, this has been common practice for the Russian intelligence community since 2004.^[3][5][20]

This intrusion was part of several attacks attempting to access information from American political organizations, including the 2016 U.S. presidential campaigns.^[21] Both "Cozy Bear" and "Fancy Bear" are known adversaries of the United States, who have extensively engaged in political and economic espionage that benefits the Russian Federation government. Both groups are believed to be connected to the Russian intelligence services. Also, both access resources and demonstrate levels of proficiency matching nation-state capabilities.[citation ^needed]

"Cozy Bear" has in the past year infiltrated unclassified computer systems of the White House, the U.S. State Department, and the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff. According to CrowdStrike, other targeted sectors include: Defense, Energy, Mining, Financial, Insurance, Legal, Manufacturing, Media, Think tanks, Pharmaceutical, Research and Technology industries as well as universities. "Cozy Bear" observed attacks have occurred in Western Europe, Brazil, China, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand, South Korea, Turkey and Central Asia.^[3][5]

"Fancy Bear" has been operating since the mid-2000s. CrowdStrike reported targeting has included Aerospace, Defense, Energy, Government and the Media industries. "Fancy Bear" intrusions have occurred in United States, Western Europe, Brazil, Canada, China, Republic of Georgia, Iran, Japan, Malaysia and South Korea. Targeted defense ministries and military organizations parallel Russian Federation government interests. This may indicate affiliation with the Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU, a Russian military intelligence service). Specifically, "Fancy Bear" has been linked to intrusions into the German Bundestag and France's TV5 Monde (television station) in April 2015.^[3][5] SecureWorks, a cybersecurity firm headquartered in the United States, concluded that from March 2015 to May 2016, the "Fancy Bear" target list included not merely the DNC, but tens of thousands of foes of Putin and the Kremlin in the United States, Ukraine, Russia, Georgia, and Syria. Only a handful of Republicans were targeted, however.^[22]

Hacking the DNC

On January 25, 2018, Dutch newspaper de Volkskrant and TV program Nieuwsuur reported that in 2014 and 2015, the Dutch Intelligence agency General Intelligence and Security Service (AIVD) had successfully infiltrated the computers of Cozy Bear and observed the hacking of the head office of the State Department and subsequently the White House, as well as the Democratic Party, and were the first to alert the National Security Agency about the cyber-intrusion.^[23][24]

In 2015, the NSA apprised the FBI and other agencies of the DNC intrusions which the Dutch had secretly detected, and on August 15, 2015, the Washington field office first alerted DNC technical staff of the compromise of their systems.^[25] Much later, the lack of higher level communications between the DNC and the FBI was seen by the DNC as an "unfathomable lapse" and it wasn't until April 2016 when legal authorizations to share sensitive technical data with the government finally apprised DNC leaders that their systems had been penetrated.^[26]

"Cozy Bear" had access to DNC systems since the summer of 2015; and "Fancy Bear", since April 2016. There was no evidence of collaboration or knowledge of the other's presence within the system. Rather, the "two Russian espionage groups compromised the same systems and engaged separately in the theft of identical credentials".^[5][20][27] "Cozy Bear" employed the "Sea Daddy" implant and an obfuscated PowerShell script as a backdoor, launching malicious code at various times and in various DNC systems. "Fancy Bear" employed X Agent malware, which enabled distant command execution, transmissions of files and keylogging, as well as the "X-Tunnel" malware.

DNC leaders became aware of the compromise in April 2016. These attacks broadly reflect Russian government interest in the U.S. political system, as well as political leaders' policies, tendencies and proclivities while assessing possible beneficial outcomes. The attacks also broadly reflect Russian government interest in the strategies, policies, and practices of the U.S. Government. This also globally reflects foreign governments' interest in ascertaining information on Donald Trump as a new entry into U.S. political leadership roles, in contrast to information likely to have been garnered over the decades pertaining to the Clintons.^[3][5]

The DNC commissioned the cybersecurity company CrowdStrike to defeat the intrusions. Its chief technology officer, Dmitri Alperovitch, who is also a cybersecurity expert, stated:

CrowdStrike stands fully by its analysis and findings identifying two separate Russian intelligence-affiliated adversaries present in the DNC network in May 2016[...] We've had lots of experience with both of these actors attempting to target our customers in the past and know them well. In fact, our team considers them some of the best adversaries out of all the numerous nation-state, criminal and hacktivist/terrorist groups we encounter on a daily basis. Their tradecraft is superb, operational security second to none and the extensive usage of 'living-off-the-land' techniques enables them to easily bypass many security solutions they encounter.^[5]

Other cybersecurity firms, Fidelis Cybersecurity and FireEye, independently reviewed the malware and came to the same conclusion as CrowdStrike—that expert Russian hacking groups were responsible for the breach.^[28] In November 2017, US authorities identified 6 Russian individuals who conducted the hack.^[29] Beginning in December 2016 the Russian government arrested Sergei Mikhailov, a high ranking government cyber-spy, Ruslan Stoyanov, a private sector cyber-security expert, Georgy Fomchenkov, a former government cyber-spy, and Dmitry Dokuchaev, a Mikhailov associate and charged them with aiding U.S. intelligence agencies which the New York Times associated with the DNC hacking.^[30][31]

Donor information

Although the DNC claimed that no personal, financial, or donor information was accessed, "Guccifer 2.0" leaked what he, she or they claimed were donor lists detailing DNC campaign contributions to Gawker and The Smoking Gun.^[32][33] However, this information has not been authenticated, and doubts remain about Guccifer 2.0's backstory.^[34]

Guccifer 2.0

Main article: Guccifer 2.0

Main article: 2016 Democratic National Committee email leak

In June 2016, a person or person(s) claimed to be the hacker who had hacked the DNC servers and then published the stolen documents online.^[35] "Guccifer 2.0" later also claimed to have leaked 20.000 emails to WikiLeaks.^[36][37]

U.S. intelligence conclusions

[](https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Intelligence_Community_Assessment_-_Assessing_Russian_Activities_and_Intentions_in_Recent_US_Elections.pdf&page=7)ODNI declassified assessment of "Russian activities and intentions in recent U.S. elections"

The U.S. Intelligence Community tasked resources debating why Putin chose summer 2016 to escalate active measures influencing U.S. politics.^[38] Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper said after the 2011–13 Russian protests that Putin's confidence in his viability as a politician was damaged, and Putin responded with the propaganda operation.^[38] Former CIA officer Patrick Skinner explained the goal was to spread uncertainty.^[39] U.S. Congressman Adam Schiff, Ranking Member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, commented on Putin's aims, and said U.S. intelligence agencies were concerned with Russian propaganda.^[38] Speaking about disinformation that appeared in Hungary, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, and Poland, Schiff said there was an increase of the same behavior in the U.S.^[38] Schiff concluded Russian propaganda operations would continue against the U.S. after the election.^[38]

On December 9, 2016, the CIA told U.S. legislators the U.S. Intelligence Community concluded Russia conducted operations during the 2016 U.S. election to assist Donald Trump in winning the presidency.^[7][40][41] Multiple U.S. intelligence agencies concluded people with specific individuals tied to the Russian government gave WikiLeaks hacked emails from the Democratic National Committee (D.N.C.) and additional sources such as John Podesta, campaign chairman for Hillary Clinton.^[7] These intelligence organizations additionally concluded Russia hacked the Republican National Committee (R.N.C.) as well as the D.N.C.—and chose not to leak information obtained from the R.N.C.^[8] The CIA said the foreign intelligence agents were Russian operatives previously known to the U.S.^[7] CIA officials told U.S. Senators it was "quite clear" Russia's intentions were to help Trump.^[40] Trump released a statement December 9, and disregarded the CIA conclusions.^[7]

FBI involvement

A senior law enforcement official told CNN:

The FBI repeatedly stressed to DNC officials the necessity of obtaining direct access to servers and data, only to be rebuffed until well after the initial compromise had been mitigated...These actions caused significant delays and inhibited the FBI from addressing the intrusion earlier.^[1]

The FBI therefore had to rely on an assessment from CrowdStrike instead,^[1] who were hired by the DNC to investigate the cyber attacks.^[42]

U.S. legislative response

Members of the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee traveled to Ukraine and Poland in 2016 and learned about Russian operations to influence their affairs.^[43] U.S. Senator Angus King told the Portland Press Herald that tactics used by Russia during the 2016 U.S. election were analogous to those used against other countries.^[43] On November 30, 2016, King joined a letter in which seven members of the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee asked President Obama to publicize more information from the intelligence community on Russia's role in the U.S. election.^[43][44] In an interview with CNN, King warned against ignoring the problem, saying it was a bipartisan issue.^[45]

Representatives in the U.S. Congress took action to monitor the National security of the United States by advancing legislation to monitor propaganda.^[46][47] On November 30, 2016, legislators approved a measure within the National Defense Authorization Act to ask the U.S. State Department to act against propaganda with an inter-agency panel.^[46][47] The legislation authorized funding of $160 million over a two-year-period.^[46] The initiative was developed through a bipartisan bill, the Countering Foreign Propaganda and Disinformation Act, written by U.S. Senators Rob Portman (Republican) and Chris Murphy (Democrat).^[46] Portman urged more U.S. government action to counter propaganda.^[46] Murphy said after the election it was apparent the U.S. needed additional tactics to fight Russian propaganda.^[46] U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee member Ron Wyden said frustration over covert Russian propaganda was bipartisan.^[46]

Republican U.S. Senators stated they planned to hold hearings and investigate Russian influence on the 2016 U.S. elections.^[48] By doing so they went against the preference of incoming Republican President-elect Donald Trump, who downplayed any potential Russian meddling in the election.^[48] U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain and U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr discussed plans for collaboration on investigations of Russian cyberwarfare during the election.^[48] U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker planned a 2017 investigation.^[48] Senator Lindsey Graham indicated he would conduct a sweeping investigation in the 115th Congress.^[48]

President Obama order

On December 9, 2016, President Obama ordered the entire United States Intelligence Community to conduct an investigation into Russia's attempts to influence the 2016 U.S. election — and provide a report before he left office on January 20, 2017.^[49][50][51] Lisa Monaco, U.S. Homeland Security Advisor and chief counterterrorism advisor to the president, announced the study, and said the intrusion of a foreign nation into a U.S. national election was an unprecedented event that would necessitate further investigation by subsequent administrations in the executive branch.^[49] The intelligence analysis will take into account data from the last three presidential elections in the U.S.^[50] Evidence showed malicious cyberwarfare during the 2008 and 2016 U.S. elections.^[50]

References

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Trump says “Russia, if you’re listening” was a joke. There’s tape proving otherwise. | Vox

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Trump says “Russia, if you’re listening” was a joke. There’s tape to prove otherwise.

Trump is layering lie upon lie to rewrite the history of his encouragement of Russian hackers.

by Aaron Rupar

Sep 29, 2020,

Trump accused reporters this weekend of mischaracterizing comments he made in July 2016 publicly encouraging Russian hackers to attack Hillary Clinton. But the way he described those comments is completely at odds with reality, and there’s video to prove it.

“Do you remember when I said, ‘Russia, if you’re listening, find her emails,’ or whatever the hell I said? ‘Find her emails,’ and then we all laughed together, 25,000 people in a stadium,” Trump said at a rally in Middletown, Pennsylvania, on Saturday. “They cut it off exactly before we all started to laugh together, right? And for two years they’ve been saying, ‘He dealt with Russia. He asked Russia to please get her emails,’ or whatever the hell we were asking ... the whole place cracks up with me ... this is how dishonest these people are.”

This is no doubt part of his never-ending effort to discredit the media.

Watch:

Trump made the remarks in question during his first campaign, saying, “Russia, if you’re listening — I hope you are able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing. I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press. Let’s see if that happens.”

But Trump did not say this to a cheering and laughing crowd at one of his rallies. He actually said it in front of a handful of reporters during a news conference at his Doral property in Florida. That news conference wound up being his final one before the election, in large part because of the negative stir his remarks generated.

Furthermore, nobody laughed when Trump said it, and his comments are just as bad in context as they are when the “Russia, if you’re listening” line is considered on its own. Here’s the footage:

Jim Acosta of CNN, the reporter who asked the question that prompted Trump to say “Russia, if you’re listening” at the July 2016 news conference, tweeted on Tuesday morning that “the reporters at the news conference didn’t laugh. And Trump didn’t appear to be joking.”

The president seems to be trying to turn reality on its head, even though there’s tape to prove otherwise.

Trump is spitting on his supporters and telling them it’s raining

Retconning the incident has become a staple of Trump’s campaign speeches. On September 19 in Fayetteville, North Carolina, for instance, Trump brought it up and claimed “everybody laughed” and “it was a joke,” then added the lie about it happening at a rally for the first time over the weekend.

Even if Trump didn’t mean for his comments to be taken seriously, Russian hackers apparently did. According to Robert Mueller’s indictment of 12 Russian military intelligence officials, on the same day Trump made those comments, Russian hackers “attempted after hours to spearphish for the first time email accounts at a domain hosted by a third-party provided and used by Clinton’s personal office. At or around the same time, they also targeted seventy-six email addresses at the domain for the Clinton Campaign.”

Trump has made clear in the years since that he doesn’t think foreign interference in American elections is a bad thing, insofar as it helps him. In October 2019, Trump flatly told reporters that he thought the Chinese and Ukrainian governments “should investigate the Bidens.” Those comments were widely condemned but were defended as just a joke by Republican members of Congress like Kevin McCarthy and Roy Blunt, even though footage of the comment showed Trump was serious.

Trump’s comments about the July 2016 news conference were especially shameless, but they were far from the only brazen lie he pushed in Middletown. He told his supporters that just prior to the coronavirus hitting the US, “we were coming together ... I was getting calls from stone-cold, hard-line Democrats,” even though in reality he had just been through an impeachment trial. He claimed 35,000 people attended his Friday evening rally in Newport News, Virginia, but local reports indicate there were around 4,000. And he appeared to fabricate stats about excess mortality in order to mislead people about how hard the US has been hit by Covid-19.

Trump once advised his supporters in 2018 to “just remember — what you’re seeing and what you’re reading is not what’s happening.” He’s not subtle about it.

See More:

2020 Presidential Election

Donald Trump

Politics

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/11/less-redacted-mueller-report-released-on-eve-of-election-day-reveals-more-about-the-dnc-hacks-investigation/}:

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'Mind-blowing' passages released from unsealed Mueller report on eve of Election Day

Meaghan Ellis November 03, 2020

A newly-released and less-redacted version of Robert Mueller's investigation into the Democratic National Convention (DNC) server hack revealed details about prosecutors' investigation into Julian Assange, WikiLeaks, President Donald Trump's close advisor, Roger Stone, and the decision not to charge them for their involvement.

Based on the report, although it was confirmed that WikiLeaks leaked the stolen DNC emails back in July and October 2016, and that Stone appeared to have sufficient knowledge of the impending leak prior to the emails going public, "investigators 'did not have sufficient evidence' to prove active participation in the hacks or knowledge that the electronic thefts were continuing," according to Buzzfeed News.

The report also suggested there was no way to indicate that the hack was beneficial for Trump's first presidential campaign.

"In addition, federal prosecutors could not establish that the hacked emails amounted to campaign contributions benefitting Trump's election chances and furthermore felt their publication might have been protected by the First Amendment, making a successful prosecution tenuous."

Many have taken to Twitter with their reactions to the new release while criticizing U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr for suppressing politically damaging information that could have impacted Trump's presidential campaign.

The president's previous written testimony also appears to clash with the unsealed evidence in the Mueller report. In his written responses, Trump claimed he "could not recall discussing WikiLeaks with Mr. Stone."

Buzzfeed also offered a side-by-side comparison of both reports to show the distinct differences between the two. In many cases, full passages were suppressed from the previously released version of the report.

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https://www.alternet.org/**2020/08/**this-is-what-collusion-looks-like-gop-led-senate-report-far-more-devastating-than-mueller-probe

lots of docs in twt not here

‘This is what collusion looks like’: GOP-led Senate report ‘far more devastating’ than Mueller probe

Written by Igor Derysh / Salon August 18, 2020

The Senate Intelligence Committee’s final report on its bipartisan Russia investigation revealed even more numerous contacts between President Donald Trump’s advisers and Russian operatives than former special counsel Robert Mueller’s report.

The committee, which is chaired by Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., on Tuesday released its fifth and final report, totaling nearly 1,000 pages,following a three-year bipartsian investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election. The report documents the extent to which Russia sought to influence the election — and members of Trump’s team welcoming their assistance.

“The Senate report — even more extensive than the Mueller investigation — paints a far more devastating picture of Russian intelligence operatives’ access to the Trump campaign, describing far more insidious connections than even Mueller did in his report,” Politico’s Kyle Cheney wrote.

The report, like Mueller’s, did not conclude that Trump’s campaign coordinated with Russia, but it found that Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort worked with a “Russian intelligence officer” and handed him internal campaign data. The report also suggested that Manafort might also be linked to Russia’s hack of the Clinton campaign.

“The committee obtained some information suggesting that the Russian intelligence officer, with whom Manafort had a longstanding relationship, may have been connected to theG.R.U.’s hack-and-leakoperation targeting the 2016 U.S. election,” the committee’s Democrats wrote. “This is what collusion looks like.”

The report found that Konstantin Kilimnik, a longtime associate of Manafort, was a “Russian intelligence officer” who might be connected to Russia’s “hack and leak operation.” (Manafort provided internal Trump campaign polling data to Kilimnik.)

While the Senate Russia report mentioned Kilimnik 819 times, the House Republican report did not mention him once. The Senate report also found that Kilimnik later “almost certainly helped arrange some of the first public messaging that Ukraine had interfered in the U.S. election.” Trump has repeatedly echoed the claim that Ukraine interfered in the election — not Russia.

Another part of the report also cited evidence raising the “possibility of Manafort’s potential connection” to the hack and leak operation, though the evidence was redacted.

The report described Trump’s former campaign chief as a “grave counterintelligence threat,” who worked with Russian operatives before and after the election.

The report also found thatTrump did discuss WikiLeaks with longtime adviser Roger Stone, even though he told Mueller’s team that he did “not recall” doing so. It also revealed that Stone directed an associate to request a leak of hacked emails by Clinton’s top aide when the infamous Access Hollywood tape dropped. The emails were published a half hour after the release.

Like the Mueller report, the Senate report also detailed efforts by Trump and his team to impede the years-long probe.

Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., the vice chairman of the committee, urged the public to “review the documented evidence of the unprecedented and massive intervention campaign waged on behalf of then-candidate Donald Trump by Russians and their operatives and reach their own independent conclusions.”

Rubio, however, tried to spin the report as favorable for the president.

“We can say, without any hesitation, that the committee found absolutely no evidence that then-candidate Donald Trump or his campaign colluded with the Russian government to meddle in the 2016 election,” he said in a statement.

“What the committee did find however is very troubling,” he added. “We found irrefutable evidence of Russian meddling.”

But Rubio’s statement brushed over actions by Trump’s advisers, as well as the president’s own statements to investigators.

One part of the report notes that Trump told Mueller in written responses that he did “not recall” discussing WikiLeaks with longtime adviser Roger Stone, who was later convicted in the former special counsel’s probe before being granted clemency by the president.

“Despite Trump’s recollection, the committee assesses that Trump did, in fact, speak with Stone about WikiLeaks and with members of his campaign about Stone’s access to WikiLeaks on multiple occasions,” the report said.

The report also noted that WikiLeaks “likely knew it was assisting a Russian intelligence influence effort” by publishing stolen Democratic emails.

Stone “obtained information indicating” that Clinton campaign chief John Podesta would “be a target of an upcoming release, prior to WikiLeaks releasing Podesta’s emails . . . Stone then communicated his information to Trump,” the report said.

Stone directed an associate to tell WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to “drop the Podesta emails immediately” the day the Trump campaign learned about the looming Access Hollywood tape.

The report also noted that the Senate investigation was met with “unprecedented potential executive privilege claims” from the White House.

“The committee was surprised by these assertions, because they were made inconsistently and because they have no basis in law,” the report said.

“The Trump campaign publicly undermined the attribution of the hack-and-leak campaign to Russia and was indifferent to whether it and WikiLeaks were furthering a Russian election interference effort,” the report added.

The report further concluded that Donald Trump Jr. might have obstructed the investigation, but the panel declined to pursue the issue due to “time and resource considerations.”

Trump Jr. participated in the infamous Trump Tower meeting with Kremlin-linked lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya about obtaining dirt on Hillary Clinton. Veselnitskaya’s ties to the Russian government “were far more extensive and concerning than what had been publicly known,” the report said.

The report concluded by warning that “what happened to the United States in 2016 should be an alarm bell.”

“Russia is actively interfering again in the 2020 U.S. election to assist Donald Trump, and some of the president’s associates are amplifying those efforts,” the report said. “The Russian intelligence services’ assault on the integrity of the 2016 U.S. electoral process, and Trump and his associates’ participation in and enabling of this Russian activity, represents one of the single most grave counterintelligence threats” to the homeland.

wapo: https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/senate-intelligence-trump-russia-report/2020/08/18/62a7573e-e093-11ea-b69b-64f7b0477ed4_story.html

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National Security

Trump’s 2016 campaign chair was a ‘grave counterintelligence threat,’ had repeated contact with Russian intelligence, Senate panel finds

ByKaroun Demirjian and

Ellen Nakashima

August 18, 2020

President Trump’s 2016 campaign chairman posed a “grave counterintelligence threat” due to his interaction with people close to the Kremlin, according to a bipartisan Senate report released Tuesday that found extensive contacts between key campaign advisers and officials affiliated with Moscow’s government and intelligence services.

In its report, the Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee states that Trump’s then-campaign chair Paul Manafort worked with a Russian intelligence officer “on narratives that sought to undermine evidence that Russia interfered in the 2016 U.S. election,” including the idea that purported Ukrainian election interference was of greater concern.

It found that a Russian attorney who met with Manafort, along with the president’s son, Donald Trump Jr., and his son-in-law Jared Kushner at Trump Tower in 2016, had “significant connections” to the Kremlin. The information she offered them was also “part of a broader influence operation targeting the United States that was coordinated, at least in part with elements of the Russian government,” the report stated.

But the panel also concluded that the FBI’s handling of Russian threats to the election was “flawed” and that the bureau gave “unjustified credence” to allegations about Trump’s Russia ties made in a dossier compiled by former British spy Christopher Steele, “based on an incomplete understanding of Steele’s past reporting record.”

Document: Read the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report on Russian interference in the 2016 election]

The Senate Intelligence Committee’s three-and-a-half year investigation stands as Congress’s only bipartisan examination of Russian interference in the 2016 election. The panel, significantly, agreed that the FBI overestimated Steel’s reliability and that Manafort and other aides exposed the campaign to undue Russian influence. But its leaders were noticeably divided along party lines in how they interpreted the report’s significance, and several committee members — including its acting chairman Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) — endorsed dissenting conclusions about Trump’s own culpability.

The partisan divisions are a sign that the panel’s tome likely will not put to rest the political wrangling over how seriously to treat foreign interference in U.S. democracy as the country heads into its most divisive election in modern history.

“After more than three years of investigation by this Committee, we can now say with no doubt, there was no collusion,” a group of six panel Republicans, including Rubio, wrote in a statementinstead accusing the Democratic Party of coordinating with foreign actors to produce Steele’s dossier.

“In 2016, the Democratic Party, using a series of arm’s length transactions, hired a foreign citizen to seek out dirt on a political opponent, provided by foreign sources,” the Republicans wrote, attacking the FBI for “sloppy work and poor judgment.”

Five Democrat senators — including Kamala D. Harris (D-Calif.), the party’s 2020 vice-presidential nominee — asserted the report “unambiguously shows that members of the Trump Campaign cooperated with Russian efforts to get Trump elected.” Referring specifically to their findings on Manafort, the Democrats wrote, “This is what collusion looks like.”

The intelligence committee’s vice chairman, Sen. Mark R. Warner (D-Va.), who did not sign onto the Democrats’ dissenting views, noted “a breathtaking level of contacts between Trump officials and Russian government operatives that is a very real counterintelligence threat to our elections,” and he encouraged “all Americans to carefully review the documented evidence of the unprecedented and massive intervention campaign waged on behalf of then-candidate Donald Trump by Russians and their operatives and to reach their own independent conclusions.”

The committee’s past chairman Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.), who oversaw the bulk of the investigation and also steered clear of the GOP’s dissent, struck a position in the middle.

“One of the Committee’s most important — and overlooked — findings is that much of Russia’s activities weren’t related to producing a specific electoral outcome, but attempted to undermine our faith in the democratic process itself,” he said in a statement. “Their aim is to sow chaos, discord, and distrust. Their efforts are not limited to elections. The threat is ongoing.”

Senate panel told Justice Dept. of suspicions over Trump family members’ Russia testimony

Burr and Warner launched the committee’s probe before Trump’s inauguration in January 2017 and sustained the bipartisan investigation over the following three and a half years, even as other Congressional investigations into the same matter faltered along partisan lines. Since the Senate Intelligence Committee began its probe, former special counsel Robert S. Mueller III also released a 448-page report on Russian interference in the 2016 election — and Trump was impeached and acquitted after Democrats accused him of coercing Ukrainian leaders to interfere in the 2020 election.

Though the committee’s probe covers much of the same turf as Mueller’s investigation, it was different in nature. Mueller was running a criminal probe; the Senate committee was conducting an intelligence investigation — a distinction that helps to explain some of nuanced differences between their conclusions.

The Senate panel’s probe, which was mostly driven by the committee’s bipartisan staff, included more than 200 witnesses and considered evidence relating to Russian disinformation, Trump’s personal, business and campaign contacts with Russians and the transition period following the 2016 election.

At one point, the document all but concludes that Trump aides were duped and manipulated by Russian interests they were too callow to understand.

“Russian officials, intelligence services, and others” acting in concert with the Kremlin “were capable of exploiting the transition team’s shortcomings,” the report concluded. “Based on the available information, it is possible — and even likely — that they did so.”

The report also presents a damning portrait of the Trump campaign’s hasty move in March 2016 to assemble a foreign policy team, asserting that it had recruited inexperienced people without thoroughly vetting them and thus potentially exposed itself to Russian influence.

“Ultimately,” the committee wrote, “the foreign policy team exposed the Trump Campaign to significant counterintelligence vulnerabilities.”

The committee pointed to Trump campaign aide George Papadopoulos, who attempted to secure a face-to-face meeting between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin through “highly suspicious” contacts with people close to the Russian government. Ultimately, investigators concluded, Papadopoulos “was not a witting co-optee of the Russian the Russian intelligence services. The panel also found that while Russia seemed to show an interest in campaign adviser Carter Page, investigators “found no indication that Page had useful Campaign information for the Russian intelligence services to extract, nor meaningful influence for them to exploit.”

The committee did find however that Putin personally directed the 2016 hack-and-leak campaign targeting the Democratic Party, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and the Clinton campaign. The anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks “actively sought and played a key role in the Russian campaign and very likely knew it was assisting a Russian intelligence influence effort,” the report stated, surmising that a Russian military spy agency, known as the GRU, transferred hacked emails to WikiLeaks likely because it offered a more effective platform for publicity than the GRU’s own methods.

Yet investigators could not “reliably determine the extent of authentic, nonpublic knowledge” Trump’s friend Roger Stone had about WikiLeaks’s coming releases and shared with the campaign.

The panel noted that its investigation was hampered by several witnesses’ refusing interviews and to produce documents, citing Fifth Amendment rights that protect against self incrimination. These included Stone, Manafort and Rick Gates, the campaign’s deputy chair at that time. The panel’s request to interview Julian Assange was rebuffed.

The committee also outright accused Blackwater founder and Trump supporter Erik Prince of stonewalling its investigation, saying that it was “hampered by a lack of cooperation” and that his account of a controversial 2017 meeting in the Seychelles alongside a Russian official was “brief and deceptive.”

The committee previously released other volumes detailing aspects of its inquiry. Those reports focused on U.S. election security, Russia’s use of social media in disinformation campaigns, the Obama administration’s response to the perceived threat in 2016 and the intelligence community’s joint assessment that Russia had interfered in an attempt to tip the scales in Trump’s favor.

Yet the panel’s effort to maintain a bipartisan approach has not saved it from partisan scrutiny. Last year, the panel came under fire from Senate Republicans after issuing a subpoena for Donald Trump Jr. to come in for a second round of testimony.

After his testimony, Trump Jr. was one of several witnesses that the panel referred to the Justice Department for closer scrutiny over discrepancies between their testimony and that of Gates, the ex-deputy campaign chair who was a key witness in Mueller’s probe.

Earlier this year, Burr stepped aside as panel chairman after coming under scrutiny over stocks he sold in industries hit badly by the coronavirus pandemic. Rubio has been serving as acting chairman in his place.

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https://www.fastcompany.com/40538571/jailed-russian-hacker-heres-how-i-hacked-the-u-s-election

3/5/18

DARIA SOLOVIEVA

MOSCOW–Konstantin Kozlovsky is ready to talk. The 29-year-old blonde-haired Russian hacker at the center of the intrigue surrounding the Kremlin’s cyberattacks on the 2016 U.S. presidential election currently sits in a high-security prison with the forbidding name of Matrosskaya Tishina (Sailor’s Silence) in northeastern Moscow. Kozlovsky is officially charged with stealing millions from Russian banks, buthe’d prefer to brag about how he built the software used to hack the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and other U.S. targets.

At a small hearing in a Moscow court earlier this month, with only a handful of media outlets present,Kozlovsky said he was ready to present detailed evidence that the Kremlin was directly involved in a series of high-profile attacks, including compromising the DNC’s computer systems in 2016,as well as those of the U.S. government, military, social media companies, and leading U.S. publishers.

In an interview with Fast Company conducted over the last two weeks via a verified representative, Kozlovsky was able to provide more details for his claims about the role of the Russian government, and how the program he developed was designed to wreak havoc.

“I’m ready to collaborate with the U.S. specialists, to show evidence and to confirm information,” he said in response to questions.Kozlovsky claims the program he developed, the so-called LDCS, was able to “replace information on Twitter, Facebook, Google and leading U.S. media outlets.” But he didn’t go into more details, so it remains unclear how the program really works and how extensively it was used during and after the 2016 election. It appears similar to trojans, a type of malware disguised as legitimate software that enables hackers to get full access to your computer, allowing them to change and delete files, monitor your computer activities, or steal your confidential information.

Kozlovsky noted that the Russians’ use of social media for propaganda purposes, as described by the defendants named in the indictment recently handed down by special prosecutor Robert Mueller, actually played a less significant role in achieving Russia’s objectives than hacking.

Since Kozlovsky’s been in jail since late 2016, he doesn’t know the current activities of Russian hackers, but said it’s likely they are using his software to manipulate news reports. “The FSB could easily continue to develop and add other information resources.”

On February 13, Kozlovsky asked the court for an IT specialist to prove his claims, a request he tells Fast Company was never granted. He also says that his detainment at Matrosskaya Tishina has been extended through May 18.

VICTIMS RANGED FROM OLIGARCHS TO THE OLYMPIC COMMITTEE

Born in the Russian city of Sverdlovsk (now Yekaterinburg), Kozlovsky rose to prominence primarily by hacking Russia’s financial institutions. He is one of 50 members of a hacker group called Lurk, which successfully hacked “all of Russia’s banks,” according to Group-IB, a cybersecurity company based in Moscow. Kozlovsky was been in prison for almost a year and eight months.

The tale of how someone like Kozlovsky found himself in prison, caught up in the middle of a high-stakes international drama involving Russia’s counterintelligence agencies, rogue hackers turned government agents, and allegations of Russia’s multilayered plot to interfere in the U.S. elections reveals much about Russia’s cybersecurity landscape and the murky relationship between the country’s counterintelligence operations and criminal hacking groups.

The cyberfraud charges against Kozlovsky include “organization of criminal community,” as well as the creation and distribution of harmful software programs. Lurk, the group he belonged to, reportedly stole more than $50 million (3 billion rubles) over a period of five years, according to Group-IB’s data.

Back in December, Kozlovsky first claimed his role in hacking the DNC amid the heated U.S. primary season in 2016, saying he was **acting on the orders of Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB),the country’s counterintelligence agency that has retained the ethos and global ambitions of the Soviet era.

Outside of court hearings every few months, Kozlovsky has relied on his Facebook page to fill in the blanks.

In a recent post, Kozlovsky confirmed his involvement in the attacks on the U.S. Democratic Party, the World Anti-Doping Agency, the Olympics Committee, and FIFAon the orders of FSB Major Dmitry Dokuchaev, who worked at the agency’s Center for Information Security. He was one of four intelligence officials arrested a year ago and accused of treason by Russia, a move that rattled the cybersecurity community in Russia and beyond.

Dokuchaev began to communicate with Kozlovsky in 2005, collecting compromising material to recruit him and become his handler, according to Kozlovsky’s version of events. Kozlovsky says his testimony detailing his connection to Dokuchaev and his work for the FSB was omitted from the official record by Russian authorities.

Prominent cybersecurity experts in the country tend to find Kozlovsky’s account convincing. “I believe this is really true,” says Pavel Vrublevsky,a cybersecurity expert and founder of CronoPay, a payments operator with offices in Moscow and Amsterdam, of Kozlovsky’s recruitment account. Vrublevsky has had his own run-in with FSB, serving one and a half years in prison after being found guilty of hiring bot makers to attack a rival company. He is an official witness in the Dokuchaev case.

“If Kozlovsky was an informant of Dokuchaev, and therefore was the organizer of Lurk, then Dokuchaev was the true organizer of Lurk,” Vrublevsky says, noting the Russian government “is not ready” to investigate the Lurk story fully. “This may lead to even more questions about how that department of FSB actually operated,” he says.

Dokuchaev has disputed this version of events and denies knowing Kozlovsky, reports RBK, a Russian business publication.

According to the FBI, Dokuchaev is responsible for a range of cybercrimes, including “gaining unauthorized access to the computer networks of and user accounts hosted at major companies providing worldwide webmail and internet-related services in the Northern District of California and elsewhere.”

DOES HIS SOFTWARE REALLY WORK ON SUCH A SCALE?

Still, Kozlovsky’s claims have not been independently verified, especially when it comes to the software capabilities he describes.

“The technology described, LDCS, it’s quite a typical code called podmena or substitute in Russian slang, mainly used for changing real advertising links for someone else’s illegal promotion or for illegal bank fraud operations,” Vrublevsky says. “In reality, however, it likely can’t be done–because if a fraud like this occurs on a massive scale, the antivirus software blocks it almost immediately.”

Russian officials have repeatedly denied any involvement in the U.S. electoral process.

In the United States, for more than a year, high-level officials have acknowledged “the Russian intelligence services hacked into a number of enterprises in the United States, including the Democratic National Committee.”

But few answers have been provided in terms of characterizing the scope of Russia’s cyber attack and measures taken to prevent future operations.

In the U.S., while the major intelligence agencies have presented evidence of Kremlin-linked hacking, President Donald Trump remains unconvinced, tweeting his skepticism and expressing doubts in public. Last week, U.S. Cyber Command and Director Admiral Mike Rogers told lawmakers that Trump hasn’t told him to confront the Russian cyber threat. Indeed, the U.S. seems unprepared for the strong likelihood of cyberattacks in this year’s midterm elections, though intel chiefs are convinced they’re on the way.

“There should be no doubt that Russia perceives that its past efforts have been successful and views the 2018 midterm U.S. elections as a potential target for Russian influence operations,” Dan Coats, the director of national intelligence, recently said. “Frankly, the United States is under attack.”

When it comes to the voter registration systems, Jeanette Manfra, the head of cybersecurity at the Department of Homeland Security, downplayed the effectiveness of Russia’s attack.

“We saw a targeting of 21 states, and an exceptionally small number of them were actually successfully penetrated,” she told NBC News earlier this month.

A recent report from the Center for American Progress evaluating election security in 50 states found no state receive an “A” grade in terms of their cybersecurity standards and voting requirements. Forty states received a “C” grade or below.

The FBI and the Department of Homeland Security’s cybersecurity division could not be reached for comment by phone or email.

The White House has not responded to or acknowledged all the findings from different government agencies on Russia-related cybercrimes.

In thelatest round of indictments in Mueller’s wide-ranging investigation, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein said that 13 Russian nationals and three Russian entities used social media posts, online ads, and rallies to disseminate propaganda “primarily intended to communicate derogatory information about Hillary Clinton, to denigrate other candidates such as Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, and to support Bernie Sanders and then candidate Donald Trump.”

A day before the Mueller indictments, the White House took an unusual step and accused the Russian military of “the most destructive and costly cyberattack in history”, the so-called Not Petya attack across Europe, Asia, and the Americas in June 2017. The White House characterized the attack as a part of the Kremlin’s “effort to destabilize Ukraine,” vowing to retaliate with “international consequences.”

When it comes to Russia’s efforts to destabilize the U.S. and its electoral process, as highlighted in the Mueller indictments, the Trump administration had a much more muted and vague response.

“It is more important than ever before to come together as Americans,” President Trump said in a statement in response to the indictments. “It’s time we stop the outlandish partisan attacks, wild and false allegations, and far-fetched theories, which only serve to further the agendas of bad actors, like Russia, and do nothing to protect the principles of our institutions.”

If he is ever allowed the opportunity to prove his claims via an independent IT specialist, and if his claims can be independently verified, this testimony alone will not reveal the extent of Russia’s operations or leave any of the U.S. government entities, private companies, or media organizations any less exposed in the upcoming midterm elections.

But it will be a step toward understanding Russia’s cyberwarfare landscape, the extent of Moscow’s interference, and what the U.S. is up against.

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