Problems for Hillary Clinton are increasing. After John Schindler got the ball rolling on Clinton's #EmailGate WikiLeaks front man Julian Assange announced more publications of emails from Clinton's time as secretary of state.
Now he could honour his promise. A hacker calling himself in reference to Romanian »Guccifer« somewhat uninspired »Guccifer 2.0« broke into the internal network of the Democratic National Committee (DNC). The hacker declared that he had access since over a year to internal emails, chats, lists of donors (billionaires are listed separately, including people like Steven Spielberg or Oprha Winfrey), and reports of the Democrats, including documents from Clinton's private computer from her time as secretary of state.
They say there were no secret docs! Lies again! Here is a secret document from Hillary’s PC she worked with as the Secretary of State.
He also claims to have given these documents to WikiLeaks. Nevertheless attribution of cyber attacks is difficult there is reason to belive that the hacker »Guccifer 2.0« is close to Russian security circles. Apart from the points reported by the Washington Post Twitter user @pwnallthethings found further indications for a Russian involvement.
A few observations about this op 1) Another data point in Russian SIGINT strategically leaking stolen data to push a particular narrative.
– @pwnallthethings 23:49 - June 15 2016
Some of the files as reported by Gawker who alongside »The Smoking Gun« were the first to report were edited by someone going by the name »Felix Edmundovich«. The name is written in Cyrrilic and my point to the head of Russia's first secret police Felix Edmundovich Dzerzhinsky. Could well be that Russia's spies are remembering their forefathers.
Another conspicuity are error messages in Russian language in one of the Word documents published by »Guccifer 2.0« which points to the use of a Russian language version of MS Word.
Yet another Twitter user remarks that the special usage of brackets as a smiley was a characteristic of Russian internet culture.
@pwnallthethings note also the smiley used. ))) right after a word is something I closely associate with Russian internet culture.
– @mlowdi 01:13 - June 16 2016
Also an indication is the usage of a pirated version of Microsoft's Office 2007, in this case a version cracked by »Grizli777« whose work is apparently much appreciated, as a quick search suggests, among Romanians and Russians. In this context the remark of another Twitter user is interesting who suggests that the Russian interior ministry likes to resort to pirated copies of MS Office.
@pwnallthethings @_fl01 My favorite part of the semi-regular hacks from Russian Interior Ministry is that they all use pirated MS Word there
– @AricToler 02:59 - June 16 2016
The original Guccifer recently declared that he hacked Hillary Clinton's private email server and copied some of her emails. While doing so he said to have seen about 10 different IP addresses accessing the server giving grounds for the assumption that a Russian intelligence agency is in possession of some, if not all, emails then secretary of state Hillary Clinton send and received over this server. In order to get this trove out in the public for propagandistic gain and to rid it of the malus of material that has been hacked by state or quasi-state actors purely for power political use (»leak laundering«) a »whistleblowing organisation« like WikiLeaks, which as long been regarded as a front organisation for Russian intelligence, comes in handy. In the name of transparency the election campaign of the democratic nominee could be dealt a severe blow, if not even the final one. The motive of the Russian should here be seen as the prevention of a US president Hillary Clinton: her republican counterpart Donald Trump is far more friendly minded than her towards Russian president Vladimir Putin.
This text is the English translation of the German original published on June 16.