In the hours since a trove of emails from the Democratic National Committee were leaked on WikiLeaks, evidence has mounted that Julian Assange and friends obtained them from a hacking group on Russia’s payroll.
Defense One, a sister publication to The Atlantic, reported that considerable circumstantial evidence suggested that the leak was part of data gleaned over the last two years by two hacking groups with links to Russia–FANCY BEAR and COZY BEAR. After the DNC revealed in June that it had been hacked, it retained CrowdStrike, a cybersecurity firm, to investigate the hack.
CrowdStrike quickly discovered the fingerprints of FANCY BEAR and COZY BEAR, which it described as “some of the best adversaries” they have ever faced. COZY BEAR first hacked into the DNC in 2014, while FANCY BEAR followed suit in April 2016.
Further evidence came, ironically, from a script kiddie who claimed to be the real cracker. A guy named “Guccifer 2.0” claimed that he was behind the hack. However, the metadata provided in the documents that Guccifer “leaked” had Russian signatures.
8) Lol. Russian #opsec fail. pic.twitter.com/NdxGJP5izS
— P̵̛wn̷̕̕ A̶͡ll͜͝͝ T̡̛̕h̷̶̀͠͡e̷̵̶̷ T̵͜͢h̸̸́͟i̕ng͝s͡ (@pwnallthethings) June 15, 2016
According to Dan Goodin of Ars Technica, that document was edited by someone whose name translates to “Feliks Dzerzhinsky”–a play on the name of the man who founded the KGB. He also found that when the hackers converted one document from Word to PDF, it generated a number of broken links with the message “Error! Hyperlink reference not valid” in Russian.
Thomas Rid of Motherboard revealed some pretty strong technical evidence that the DNC hack was orchestrated by the GRU, the Russian military intelligence agency. He found that the same “command-and-control” IP that was used in the DNC hack was also used in a hack on the German Bundestag–a caper that has been linked to the GRU.
When Strategic Cyber Ventures CEO Tom Kellermann saw the leaked emails on WikiLeaks, he immediately concluded that they bore “all the hallmarks of tradecraft.” He further argued that the only way this leak made sense would be if the Kremlin wanted to “empower one candidate against another.” Specifically, he suspects that the Kremlin orchestrated the leak to help Donald Trump.
The Hillary Clinton campaign has the same hunch. Campaign manager Robby Mook told CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday that he thought that the leaked emails were a concerted effort to help Trump defeat Hillary Clinton. Watch here.
Mook doesn’t think it’s a coincidence that the leaked emails came to light just before the Democratic National Convention–and shortly after Trump let it be known that he couldn’t guarantee coming to the aid of NATO allies who weren’t contributing financially to the alliance.
The Trump campaign scoffed at the notion that this was a quid pro quo. However, for once, RNC chairman Reince Priebus was even more tone deaf than Trump.
Reince Priebus says it doesn't matter who hacked the DNC
— Judd Legum (@JuddLegum) July 25, 2016
No, Reince. It’s entirely possible that the Kremlin, or agents acting with Vladimir Putin’s knowledge and approval, are directly trying to influence the results of our election. If you seriously think that doesn’t matter, you’re delusional.
Let’s be clear. Based on the contents of those emails, Debbie Wasserman Schultz could not remain as DNC chairwoman. If any DNC staffers thought it was a good idea to use Bernie Sanders’ religion as an attack angle, that is a sign of lack of leadership.
But in light of the evidence that this leak was a Kremlin production, the closest parallel I can draw is to the Boston Mafia being snuffed out based primarily on evidence from Whitey Bulger. Any good that was done as a result of the Boston mob being packed off to jail was more than negated by the fact that it was part of a concerted effort by Bulger to increase his own power in the Boston underworld.
This is no different. While Wasserman Schultz needed to go, any good from her ouster is offset by the fact that it came as the indirect result of a Kremlin operation. And that would be the case even if Putin wasn’t trying to put Trump in the White House.
