• March 29, 2024

DNC Hacking Solved? Maybe, And It Wasn’t the Russians

Major revelations point towards democratic IT experts as possible source in DNC and John Podesta hackings.

Imran Awan — the lead suspect in a criminal probe into breaches of House of Representatives information security systems — possessed the password to an iPad used by then-Democratic National Committee Chairperson Debbie Wasserman Schultz when DNC emails were given to Wikileaks, the Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group has learned.

Buzzfeed reported that the Sergeant-at-Arms told staff that the subjects were four men who were brothers and one woman. It did not name them. It quoted one of the affected members as saying “they said it was some sort of procurement scam, but now I’m concerned that they may have stolen data from us, emails, who knows.”

Through their work for Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the five family members working for congressional democrats had access to the DNC network.  Since Podesta had been a former DNC official, they also had a direct line to him.  Especially since Podesta’s password was “password.”  Investigators found out that family members had a private server, where they transferred information to.

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It was later discovered that Imran had accepted $100,000 from an alleged Iraqi businessman.

From The Daily Caller:

 

Rogue congressional staffers took $100,000 from an Iraqi politician while they had administrator-level access to the House of Representatives’ computer network, according to court documents examined by The Daily Caller News Foundation’s Investigative Group.

The money was a loan from Dr. Ali al-Attar, an Iraqi political figure, and was funneled through a company with “impossible”-to-decipher financial transactions that the congressional information technology (IT) staffers controlled.

That gives the Awans motive, opportunity and and means.  The three ingredients needed to convict a person in criminal court.  But, surely the FBI would have been able to spot the access and transfer of data by the Awans when they examined the DNC server, right?  No.  The DNC refused to allow the FBI examine the server.  That leads me to ask how the FBI and CIA were able to attribute the hacking to the Russians and why the Awans were not the prime suspects.

Don’t look now, but you are being played.

From CNN:

Washington (CNN)The Democratic National Committee “rebuffed” a request from the FBI to examine its computer services after it was allegedly hacked by Russia during the 2016 election, a senior law enforcement official told CNN Thursday.

“The FBI repeatedly stressed to DNC officials the necessity of obtaining direct access to servers and data, only to be rebuffed until well after the initial compromise had been mitigated,” a senior law enforcement official told CNN. “This left the FBI no choice but to rely upon a third party for information. These actions caused significant delays and inhibited the FBI from addressing the intrusion earlier.”

 

 

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