CrowdStrike Part Of The Fed Family | Global Outage Update Glitch? Or Part Of The Plan | Was It A Test Run?
AllNewsPipeline.com
Susan Duclos
While CrowdStrike is heavily in the news due to their "update" outage debacle, it bears noting they have been in the news before, way back during the chaos that came from the DNC server hack which CrowdStrike was immediately cited to blame Russia for embarrassing emails published by Wikileaks.
Let us take a little trip down memory lane in regards to CrowdStrike, shall we?
Russia was blamed for the hack into the DNC (Democrat National Committee) and Hillary Clinton emails that were published by Wikileaks back during the 2016 campaign cycle. The DNC hack linked above is to the WayBack Machine since the original searchable database at Wikileaks leads to an error page.
There are a few moving parts to this article, so let us begin with the fact that the DNC refused to allow the FBI to inspect their hacked servers and instead went to a private company, CrowdStrike.
The FBI requested direct access to the Democratic National Committee’s (DNC) hacked computer servers but was denied, Director James Comey told lawmakers on Tuesday.
The bureau made “multiple requests at different levels,” according to Comey, but ultimately struck an agreement with the DNC that a “highly respected private company” would get access and share what it found with investigators.
“We’d always prefer to have access hands-on ourselves if that’s possible,” Comey said, noting that he didn’t know why the DNC rebuffed the FBI’s request.
"CrowdStrike, the private security firm in question, has published extensive forensic analysis backing up its assessment that the threat groups that infiltrated the DNC were associated with Russian intelligence."
So it was CrowdStrike alone that determined that the hack to the DNC server was perpetrated by Russia.
Special Counsel Robert Mueller used the CrowdStrike findingsfor Report on the Investigation into Russian Interference in the 2016 Presidential Election, without any legitimate federal agency double checking their work.
The DNC then decommissioned more than 140 servers after
Nearly a year later, documents from the House Intelligence Committee, revealed by testimony of Shawn Henry, described as a CrowdStrike chief, with others referring to him as a president, that "there was never any direct evidence that Russia actually stole any files from the DNC."
They only had "circumstantial" evidence or "indicators", which could be mimicked by any hostile foreign nation that wanted to blame Russia.
Jason Ross over at Medium, summed it up at the time in the following manner," The Intelligence Committee knew this the whole time. Mueller knew this the whole time. But it was kept secret from the public until Thursday’s release of declassified versions of 53 interviews conducted by that committee."
Ross also detailed a bit about Mr. Henry:
He worked at the FBI for over 24 years, and received his last promotion, to executive assistant director of the Criminal, Cyber, Response, and Services Branch, from Robert Mueller in 2010. He was hired by CrowdStrike Services the same month that he retired from the FBI in 2012. According to his CrowdStrike bio, Henry “oversaw half of the FBI’s investigative operations, including all FBI criminal and cyber investigations worldwide, international operations, and the FBI’s critical incident response to major investigations and disasters.”
Just one big happy Fed family, eh?
Making DNC's use of CrowdStrike, while refusing FBI inspections, even more dubious in hindsight, CrowdStrike, in 2017 the group was forced to "revise," another report which as used to "buttress claims of Russian hacking," in the 2016 presidential election.
U.S. cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike has revised and retracted statements it used to buttress claims of Russian hacking during last year's American presidential election campaign. The shift followed a VOA report that the company misrepresented data published by an influential British think tank.
In December, CrowdStrike said it found evidence that Russians hacked into a Ukrainian artillery app, contributing to heavy losses of howitzers in Ukraine's war with pro-Russian separatists.
VOA reported Tuesday that the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), which publishes an annual reference estimating the strength of world armed forces, disavowed the CrowdStrike report and said it had never been contacted by the company.
Ukraine's Ministry of Defense also has stated that the combat losses and hacking never happened.
Apparently they enjoy accusing Russia of things that never happened!
Yet it was a CrowdStrike report that the FBI used without verification, also used by Special Council Meuller while investigation the great Russian Collusion Hoax, to determine Russia hacked the DNC.
From another VOA report we see "The challenges to CrowdStrike’s credibility are significant because the firm was the first to link last year’s hacks of Democratic Party computers to Russian actors, and because CrowdStrike co-founder Dimiti Alperovitch has trumpeted its Ukraine report as more evidence of Russian election tampering."
BOTTOM LINE
CrowdStrike's history, their mistakes, and their rush to blame Russia for anything, and in some cases, when nothing happened, indicates that America, and the global community, should not be so quick to believe these latest claims that the massive, world disrupting outage, came from a simple "update" as they claim.
Frankly I am surprised they didn't try to blame Russia for their most recent outages.
Original Article: http://allnewspipeline.com/CrowdStrike_Global_Outage.php
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