RETRACTION ISSUED by Cybersecurity “Experts” who claimed Putin Hacked U.S. Election

A cyber security firm with credibility issues first alleged that Russian hacking cost Hillary the election.

When the DNC got hacked last year, they hired cybersecurity “expert” Crowd Strike to investigate.

In June 2016, the firm alleged that the Russian government hacked the DNC. To deflect attention away from liberal corruption, Democrats seem ready to pay for whatever evidence they need their “experts” to find.

Through this narrative, the Left attempted to delegitimize the election and transition. Further, their efforts continue with the presidency of Donald Trump.

In a report in January, Obama-era leaders from the FBI, CIA, NSA, and 12 other intelligence agencies relied on Crowd Strike’s investigation to conclude that Russians hacked the U.S. elections. Moreover, they insinuated that Russian President Vladimir Putin himself tipped the scales in favor of then-candidate Donald Trump.

Crowd Strike’s investigation is the only known forensic evidence linking the Kremlin to the cyber attacks. To date, the DNC won’t allow the FBI to independently examine its servers.

Then we have another wrinkle.

Last month, the chief technology officer of Crowd Strike, Dmitri Alperovitch, and president Shawn Henry refused to testify before the House Intelligence Committee about Russian interference in the U.S. election. One can imagine what Leftists would say about this move if they felt Crowd Strike’s testimony would bolster their lie narrative.

Crowd Strike now faces many questions regarding its credibility.

In March, Crowd Strike quietly retracted portions of a December report asserting that Fancy Bear, the same Russian hacker of the DNC, used the same software to hack into Ukrainian military technology and compromise their weaponry. Crowd Strike alleged the hack allowed Russia to destroy 80% of Ukrainian howitzers in a recent undeclared war.

However, it was revealed that figure came from a pro-Putin ‘propaganda’ blogger who now abandons the claim. Blogger ‘Colonel Cassad,” a self-described ‘bullhorn of totalitarian propaganda,’ wrote the article on a pro-Russian website called The Saker.

Both the Ukrainian military and British think tank International Institute for Strategic Studies denounced Crowd Strike’s data as wildly inaccurate.

Crowd Strike’s March correction demonstrated their capacity to lie. A note at the top of the report declared an “amendment” to the December report due to “an update” from IISS.

But that didn’t stop the liberal media from promoting this unverified fiction.

NBC News, Foreign Policy, and The Guardian circulated the error-ridden report. Then, Crowd Strike chief technology officer Dmitri Alperovitch used the Washington Post to promote it as well:

“The fact that [these hackers] would be tracking and helping the Russian military kill Ukrainian army personnel in eastern Ukraine and also intervening in the U.S. election is quite chilling.”

Or it would be, if not for their false data.

Critics now question Crowd Strike’s intel-gathering skills.

Cybersecurity expert Jeffrey Carr said this is ‘a pattern’ for Crowd Strike that compromises their credibility.

“It shows a pattern, that Crowd Strike’s intelligence reports were clearly a problem. They just found what they wanted to find. … They didn’t stop for a moment to question it, they didn’t contact the primary source. This is like an elementary school-level analysis.”

Carr stated previously that there was “zero technical evidence to connect those Russian-speaking hackers to any Russian government department.”

Crowd Strike claimed Fancy Bear and Cozy Bear not only hacked the DNC system, but are also are directly linked to the Russian government. An assertion that intelligence agencies cannot independently verify, but readily confirm.

In December, the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI produced a 13-page report about Russian hacking that repeated Crowd Strike’s conclusion about hacker links to Russian intelligence services. The agencies’ public explanations draw heavily from Crowd Strike findings.

Security Editor for Ars Technica, Dan Goodin criticized the U.S. intelligence community’s conclusions:

“Instead of providing smoking guns that the Russian government was behind specific hacks, [the report] largely restates previous private-sector claims without providing any support for their validity.”

In short, the Russian story proves false…again. It’s the Russian Ruse.