Evidence – much better evidence than has been produced so far – is building that any hacks – as opposed to leaks – that were done to the DNC were likely done by Ukrainian hackers as a false flag to get Russia blamed for them.

Everyone should read these articles:

Why Crowdstrike’s Russian Hacking Story Fell Apart – Say Hello to Fancy Bear
http://jfmxl.sdf.org/USA/20170103-why-crowdstrike-s-russian-hacking-story-fell-apart-say-hello-to-fancy-bear.html

Did a Ukrainian University Student Create Grizzly Steppe?
http://jfmxl.sdf.org/USA/20170106-petri-krohn-did-a-ukrainian-university-student-create-grizzly-steppe.html

Russia Hacking the Election the Inside Story
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2016/12/russia-hacking-election-inside-story-2.html

I had been suspicious of the Russian theory due to Jeffrey Carr’s articles on Medium (Google for them, they are vital to understanding the issues) which debunk most of the evidence. I wondered why it was that the equally logical
possibility that Ukrainian hackers might have done the hacks as a false flag operation to frame Russian for them was being ignored completely.

I noted that the “evidence” that the compile times for the malware were allegedly during “Russian business hours.” If you look at the time zone maps, you’ll see Moscow is just one hour ahead of Kiev, Ukraine. So that “evidence” was meaningless.

Secondly, I read an article by WordFence, a company which does WordPress blog security, that the PHP malware used was provably Ukrainian and open source, i.e., available to anyone aware of it. There is nothing “Russian” about it.

Then I found the above articles which pretty clearly show connect the dots evidence that the head of CrowdStrike, the company that the FBI RELIED ON for the “evidence”, is run by an anti-Russian Russian ex-pat who has DIRECT connections to Ukrainian ultra-nationalists who are DIRECTLY connected to the Democratic National Committee and who themselves have DIRECT connections to apparently competent Ukrainian hackers. I mean these articles lay it out in chapter and verse based on publicly available data.

I now believe that it is entirely possible that the entire DNC “hack” accusation is a false flag operation organized by Ukrainian individuals, with or without Ukrainian state help, and with or without the knowledge of the Clinton campaign, for the purpose of further ruining US relations with Russia.

The DNC documents themselves were likely “leaked”, not “hacked”. But hacks were done solely for the purpose of getting Russia blamed for them.

This is potentially a HUGE story. If the head of rowdStrike – and possibly members of the DNC itself or the Clinton campaign organization – were knowingly in league with Ukraine ultranationalists who in turn were in contact with
competent Ukraine hackers in a false flag attempt to increase the bad relations between the US and Russia
for their own political reasons, this would be a massive conspiracy which would put egg on the faces of everyone involved, including the entire US intelligence apparatus, the mainstream media and many other people. The entire
Russia-bashing industry would be called into question.

I suspect that what happened is as follows:

1) The DNC and the Clinton campaign decided to tar Trump with the “Russian agent” meme.

2) At some point the DNC and the Clinton campaign became aware that there were one or more serious leaks of information from the DNC – leaks, not hacks.

3) At this point the DNC and the Clinton campaign decided to fake a Russian hacking effort in order to 1) cover the leaks, and 2) use it to continue to tar Trump as a “Russian agent.”

4) In order to make a believable case, they contacted some ultranationalist Ukrainians who were involved in the election and who had contact with some reasonable competent anti-Russian Ukrainian hacker collectives. These
collectives faked a Russian hack of the DNC.

5) They then called in CrowdStrike, which was already on the DNC/Clinton payroll, a company headed by an anti-Putin Russian ex-pat who would be ready to “validate” the “Russian hack” by accepting flimsy circumstantial and spoofable “evidence” as sufficient for attribution.

6) Then they refused to allow the FBI to use their own infosec forensic experts to inspect the evidence, relying on CrowdStrike officer Shawn Henry’s background as a former FBI Assistant Director to deflect the FBI into accepting
CrowdStrike’s “investigation” as adequate.

The latter fact pretty much makes clear that the DNC and the Clinton campaign knowingly colluded with Ukrainian nationalists to influence the election.

So far from the situation being “Russia influenced the election for Trump”, it looks like “Ukrainians influenced the election for Clinton.”

This may all sound like “conspiracy theory”. There is of course no proof to date of any of this. But the circumstances are just as likely as the theory that Russia decided to “influence the election” by hacking the DNC using the most incompetent hackers and poorest OPSEC they could produce, leaving a trail pointing directly at them.

The one thing we can know is that in intelligence and hacking operations, Occam’s Razor – the notion that the simplest solution is usually correct – does not apply. There is too much obfuscation, misdirection and manipulation involved in such operations.

The theory that someone has conducted a false flag operation to frame Russia for hacks is at least as credible as the idea that Russia would attempt to influence the election by randomly hacking the DNC. The latter really makes no sense, given the probability that whatever hacks Russia could do would be less influential on the election than the actions of the candidates themselves – which the Russians would know. And the Russians would also know that if caught, there could be serious repercussions in relations with the US – which means not using incompetent third-party hacker groups who leave trails and use outdated
malware.

Some investigative journalists need to follow up on the articles cited above and see where they lead. If this theory is proven, it will be Pulitzer Prize for someone – and major egg for the US intelligence community, the mainstream media, and the infosec community.