Seth Rich : A Primer

This is a post from r/The_Donald. Visit the original post by following the link below.

https://www.reddit.com/r/The_Donald/comments/6mfgye/seth_rich_and_the_dnc_leaks_explained_a_primer/

Part 1:

As a bit of a primer, it's important to understand that although US intelligence agencies have stated that Russia hacked the DNC's emails, they have been wrong about hacking attribution before. Most recently, the FBI claimed North Korea hacked Sony a couple of years ago, but it turned out to have been just a disgruntled insider.

http://archive.is/lpTzU.

Hacking attribution is notoriously difficult. Quoting Mark McArdle, CTO at cyber security firm eSentire, "While CrowdStrike’s reported evidence and observations seem like a reasonable conclusion to reach, we cannot dismiss the fact that none of this evidence is 100% reliable." This is because "[the hackers] have invested significant time and resources masking their identity prior to the operation’s start. They employ basic precautions like making sure their tools never communicate with a server based in the country where the attack originated. Instead, they’ll make the communication appear to originate from another nation and buy domain names in different countries."

For more information on the difficulties of hacker attribution, see: False Flags and Mis-Direction in Hacker Attribution
Now that we know hacker attribution is difficult, let's take a look at the metadata from the original Guccifer 2.0 leaks, which were attributed to Russia. According to the Joint Statement from the Department Of Homeland Security and Office of the Director of National Intelligence on Election Security:
The recent disclosures of alleged hacked e-mails on sites like DCLeaks.com and WikiLeaks and by the Guccifer 2.0 online persona are consistent with the methods and motivations of Russian-directed efforts. These thefts and disclosures are intended to interfere with the US election process.

Adam Carter wrote an excellent report analyzing the documents published by Guccifer 2.0 here and if you have any doubts that Guccifer 2.0 is affiliated with the DNC, you should read that in full. According to Carter's analysis, "Metadata suggests it took only 30 minutes to go from a DNC tech/data strategy consultant creating documents to Guccifer2.0 tainting them - all occurring on a date that Guccifer2.0 claimed to be after he was locked out of the DNC Network - occurring on the same day that Guccifer2.0 emerged." The timeline is important:
June 12, 2016 - Assange states "we have upcoming leaks in relation to Hillary Clinton which are great" and, when pressed whether WL had stuff "not yet in the public domain", confirmed "we have emails related to Hillary Clinton which are pending publication. That is correct."

June 14, 2016 - DNC releases a statement explaining that they've discovered their servers were hacked. - They make mention of "Trump Opposition Research".

June 15, 2016 - Crowd Strike updates a report on malware that they found on the DNC's server during an investigation in May, suggesting that the malware was injected by Russians.

June 15, 2016 - Someone choosing to adopt the name of hacker recently in the news ("Guccifer", whom was in court the previous month), steps forward, calling himself Guccifer2.0 and claiming responsibility for the hack. He affirms the DNC statement and claims to be a source for Wikileaks. The first 5 documents he posts are purposefully tainted with 'Russian Fingerprints' and the first of those documents just so happens to be the "Trump Opposition Research" the DNC announce on the previous day.

What happened, was the DNC realized they had a leaker and quickly acted to make the "leaks" damaging to Trump by "leaking" Trump opposition research and then implanting "Russian fingerprints" on the leaks.

As shown in Carter's report, "The Donkey In A Bear Costume Made A Mistake." The metadata shows the document being created 30 minutes before Guccifer2.0 appears to have gotten his hands on it. Someone with access to DNC files created empty word documents with Russian author names and changed the default language to Russian, and then pasted the "leaks" into those new files and published them everywhere they could. The US intelligence community took this as evidence of Russian attribution. Notably, the only files Guccifer 2.0 ever had were Trump opposition research. He later claimed to have been the source when Wikileaks published the real DNC leaks months later, but he never leaked them in advance or gave any indication that he knew what else would be leaked. Again, the original report is worth reading in its entirety.
http://g-2.space/

With that background, it's easy to understand why the DNC refused to allow the FBI or anyone else to view their hacked computers:
DNC rebuffed request to examine computer servers

FBI SAYS THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY WOULDN'T LET AGENTS SEE THE HACKED EMAIL SERVERS

Comey: DNC denied FBI's requests for access to hacked servers

Additionally, it is very telling that Crowdstrike retracted portions of its Russian attribution report after receiving much criticism from the cyber security industry. Cyber Firm Rewrites Part of Disputed Russian Hacking Report It's also worth pointing out that Crowdstrike is essentially the cyber security arm of the DNC and has ties to Hillary.
In Part 2, I'm going to tell the story about the man many of us here believes to be the real hero and the evidence that suggests he was the real leaker and paid the ultimate price for it. You know his name.

SPEZ:
Credit to /u/Keiichi88 (please don't dox, CNN), I should have mentioned that the debunked North Korean Sony hacks have other similarities. First, the intelligence agencies initially defended the attribution by claiming they had been independently tracking the hackers in North Korea for two years and didn't only rely on third party analysis. BETTER YET guess which third party company originally made the attribution?? That's right, none other than fucking Crowdstrike!