While CrowdStrike, which was hired by the DNC to investigate the intrusions and whose findings are described in a new report, had always suspected that one of the two hacker groups that struck the DNC was the GRU, RussiaвЂ™s military intelligence agency, it had only medium confidence. To begin with, Crowdstrike initially gauged its certainty as to the identity of the hackers with вЂњ medium confidence.вЂќ However, a later development, announced in late December and touted by theВ Washington Post, boosted this to вЂњhigh confidence.вЂќ The reason for this newfound near-certainty was their discovery that вЂњFancy BearвЂќ had also infected an application used by the Ukrainian military to target separatist artillery in the Ukrainian civil war.

This lack of accountability may be changing, however, because CrowdstrikeвЂ™s case for attributing the hacking of the DNC to the Russians is falling apart at the seams like a cheap sweater. When it comes to cybersecurity estimates of attribution, no one holds the company that makes the claim accountable because thereвЂ™s no way to prove whether the assignment of attribution is true or false unless (1) there is a criminal conviction, (2) the hacker is caughtВ in the act, or (3) a government employee leakedВ the evidence. Likening attribution claims of hacking incidents by cybersecurity companies to intelligence assessments, Carr notes that, unlike government agencies such the CIA, these companies are never held to account for their misses: Neither are claims of attribution admissible in any criminal case, so those who make the claim donвЂ™t have to abide by any rules of evidence (i.e., hearsay, relevance, admissibility). вЂњItвЂ™s important to know that the process of attributing an attack by a cybersecurity company has nothing to do with the scientific method,вЂќ writes Carr:Д¬laims of attribution arenвЂ™t testable or repeatable because the hypothesis is never proven right or wrong.

Yet as Jeffrey Carr and other cyberwarfare expertsВ have pointed out, this methodology is fatally flawed. These alleged вЂњhacker groupsвЂќ are not associated with any known individuals in any way connected to Russian intelligence: instead, they are identified by the tools they use, the times they do their dirty work, the nature of the targets, and other characteristics based on the history of past intrusions. The allegation вЂ“ now accepted as incontrovertible fact by the вЂњmainstreamвЂќ media вЂ“ that the Russian intelligence services hacked the Democratic National Committee (and John PodestaвЂ™s emails) in an effort to help Donald Trump get elected recently suffered a blow from which it may not recover.Д¬rowdstrike is the cybersecurity company hired by the DNC to determine who hacked their accounts: it took them a single day to determine the identity of the culprits вЂ“ it was, they said, two groups of hackers which they named вЂњFancy BearвЂќ and вЂњCozy Bear,вЂќ affiliated respectivelyВ with the GRU, which is Russian military intelligence, and the FSB, the Russian security service.

The atlantic council dnc server hack