Author Russian Presidential Press and Information Office
Guest essay by Eric Worrall
h/t Willie Soon – Mother Jones thinks the Climategate email leak and the Democrat Podesta Email hack were all part of a grand Russian conspiracy to subvert the West.
7 Years Before Russia Hacked the Election, Someone Did the Same Thing to Climate Scientists
“Why does this story sound so darned familiar?”
REBECCA LEBER AND AJ VICENSJANUARY/FEBRUARY 2018 ISSUE
One Saturday morning in June, two days after the president had announced his intention to withdraw the United States from the landmark Paris climate agreement, Michael Mann was tweeting about Donald Trump.
Mann, a Penn State professor who is one of the world’s most prominent climate scientists, was thinking about the daily barrage of revelations surrounding Russia’s efforts to help Trump win the previous year’s election. The hacked Democratic documents posted on WikiLeaks. The media craze over private emails that had been ripped out of context. Smear campaigns circulating on social media.
“#Russia #Wikileaks #HackedEmails #Sabotaged #ClimateAgreements,” tweeted Mann. “Why does this story sound so darned familiar?”
Seven years earlier, Trump was riffing on a very different set of hacked emails. The real estate mogul had called into Fox News after a blizzard to declare that climate change was a hoax. Trump claimed that “one of the leaders of global warming” had recently admitted in a private email that years of scientific research were nothing but “a con.”
…
In hindsight, the Climategate hack, clearly timed to disrupt the Copenhagen negotiations, looks like a precursor to the hack that helped shape the outcome of the 2016 election. That’s how John Podesta, the Clinton campaign chairman whose stolen emails were posted on WikiLeaks in the final weeks of the campaign, sees it. The parallels go beyond the hacks themselves. “I think it was the intentionality of influencing the public debate,” he says.
…
At the time, some observers openly wondered whether Russia might have orchestrated the Climategate hack. Investigators and other experts haven’t found much to support that hypothesis—the true culprit remains a mystery. Mann himself has pointed to the incident’s “curious connections” to Russia and WikiLeaks, but he, too, notes there’s no specific evidence that Moscow was to blame. Still, Mann sees other ways in which the episode was similar to what Hillary Clinton experienced in 2016. Both hacks, he notes, were “intended to impact the global political scene in a significant manner.”
Podesta, a leading advocate of climate action during the Obama years, describes Climategate as an early example of hackers conspiring “to take the fruits of illegal behavior, weaponize them, then use them in a political context.” And though the emails contained no evidence of scientific misconduct, Podesta notes, climate change deniers successfully used them to “change public perception and increase skepticism about the need for action at a pivotal moment.”
…
Sound familiar? Russian intelligence agents followed a strikingly similar blueprint in 2016 after they hacked the Democratic National Committee, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, and Podesta’s personal Gmail account.
“If you were a Russian operative [and] pitching influence ops for the DNC, and somebody’s like, ‘Eh, I don’t know about that,’ literally you just turn around and go, ‘Look at how well it worked [with Climategate],’” says Jake Williams, a cybersecurity expert and former analyst at the National Security Agency. “I wouldn’t necessarily say one influenced the other, but certainly it’s good proof that that’s a technique that works.”
To access Podesta’s emails, the hackers used a targeted phishing attack that led his office to inadvertently turn over his login credentials. The DNC was hacked by two groups associated with Russian intelligence—one starting in 2015 and another in 2016—also via targeted phishing attacks. Tens of thousands of emails were eventually made public, along with Democratic fundraising reports and other planning materials. Batches of the stolen documents were given to individual news outlets, while other chunks were published directly to the blog of Guccifer 2.0—an online persona thought to be a front for Russian intelligence.
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Read more: http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2017/12/climategate-wikileaks-russia-trump-hacking/
The Podesta hack and the Climategate leak were very different events.
The Podesta hack was ridiculously unsophisticated. Anyone with minimal software development training or a few illicit third party scripts could set up a similar hack. In my opinion as a software expert there is no reason to think the Posdesta hack was specifically aimed at Podesta. The hackers probably had no idea what they had stolen until they analysed their haul. These kinds of hacks are normally aimed at 10s of thousands of potential victims, in the hope someone will be stupid enough to click the fake web link. There was no secrecy about how the Podesta emails were stolen.
From Wikipedia;
… SecureWorks concluded Fancy Bear had sent Podesta an email on March 19, 2016 that had the appearance of a Google security alert, but actually contained a misleading link—a strategy known as spear-phishing. (This tactic has also been used by hackers to break into the accounts of other notable persons, such as Colin Powell). The link—which used Bitly, a URL shortening service—brought Podesta to a fake log-in page where he entered his Gmail credentials. The email was initially sent to the IT department as it was suspected of being a fake but was described as “legitimate” in an e-mail sent by a department employee, who later said he meant to write “illegitimate.” …
Read more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Podesta_emails
Climategate in my opinion was an inside job by a whistleblower. The “sophisticated technique” used by the offender to conceal their location was likely a proxy server or series of proxy servers – computers which relayed the original file transfer request through a series of different computers, to conceal the back trail. The computer which was accessed which “could not be accessed easily” was probably an orphan computer sitting on a forgotten part of the network, likely with no password protection. FOIA was worried about being identified, so FOIA was likely someone known to at least some of the people whose emails he or she leaked.
… The incident began when a server used by the Climatic Research Unit was breached in “a sophisticated and carefully orchestrated attack”,[5] and 160 MB of data[8] were obtained including more than 1,000 emails and 3,000 other documents.[18] The University of East Anglia stated that the server from which the data were taken was not one that could be accessed easily, and that the data could not have been released inadvertently.[19] Norfolk Police later added that the offenders used methods that are common in unlawful internet activity, designed to obstruct later enquiries.[5] The breach was first discovered on 17 November 2009 after the server of the RealClimate website was also hacked and a copy of the stolen data was uploaded there.[20] RealClimate’s Gavin Schmidt said that he had information that the files had been obtained through “a hack into [CRU’s] backup mail server.”[21] At about the same time, a short comment appeared on Stephen McIntyre’s Climate Audit website saying that “A miracle has happened.” …
Read more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climatic_Research_Unit_email_controversy
It is not impossible that some spy agency orchestrated both incidents, but neither incident demonstrated an unusual level of technical sophistication. A superficial read of the descriptions of both incidents make the incidents seem the work of criminal masterminds – but exagerating the prowess of the opposition is what people do when someone makes them look like incompetents.
The use of Russian servers is not evidence of Russian involvement. There is a good reason hackers and whistleblowers often choose to publish sensitive material on Russian servers; Russian servers are generally beyond the legal jurisdiction of Western governments and Western law enforcement agencies. The owner of a US file share server could have been intimidated into censoring the content of their server, of removing the material as soon as it was discovered, and could have been forced to surrender details of whoever saved the file on their server.
There is evidence Russia is concerned about Western obsession with Russian political interference. Putin recently accused Russia conspiracists of “Political Schizophrenia”. I’m not suggesting that Russia should be given a free pass – but scapegoating Russia for every domestic political setback without substantive evidence of actual Russian involvement could have dangerous consequences.
So it wasn’t the Russians then who corrupted the the models? Who did that then?
Sh! don’t tell anyone but ( GRIFF ) ?
Remember, SOM: The Russian climate model is the only one with anything close to accurate predictions.
Do these Dimocrats not get get the implications of what they are saying? If the material on Podesta’s email account and the DNC is all sweetness and light, instead of stuffed with dirty tricks on how they plan to undemocratically screw Bernie Sanders out of a fair contest and all the other slimy activities he, Hillary and Wasserman Schultz were up to, the usual civilized communications would be boring and of no interest to anyone.
Ditto the climategate emails, even if they contained catty remarks about other colleagues is ok. The fact that they conspired to break the law re FOI, gatekeep sceptical papers out of journals, engaged in intimidation of editors forcing some to resign for publishing sceptics, character assassinations, advise on destroying public documents and climate data and employing “tricks” to make data do what you want it to, is the rub!
What Mother Jones has done in the hands of bankrupt Dem ‘strategists’ is tie the ugly smarminess of Climategate to the same cesspit that was the DNC/Podesta/HRC/Debbie communications. If you were given a chance to dig into Sister Teresa’s or Podestas emails for dirt which would be the best one to choose. Tarring Podesta/DNC/Hillary/Debbie with the same brush from climategate is so revealing of these lost souls. They are mired so deep in the swamp they think that the only thing horrible that was done was revealing the muck to the people. The actual devious, undemocratic, felonious plans they had for the people seems okay to this lot. Thanks Mother Jones for revealing the underbelly of this beast. It has more clout coming from yourselves.
Gee Rebecca, before sallying forth on other adventures of this sort, I suggest takin it to Father Jones for a first look.
The same Russian outfit appears to have hacked the IOS and WADA concerning the banning of the Russian team from the Olympics.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-olympics-cyber/russians-may-be-planning-hack-to-cast-shadow-on-olympics-researchers-idUSKBN1F031G?feedType=RSS&feedName=sportsNews
Canadians should be more concerned about how their political process is subverted by US Foundations…
http://fairquestions.typepad.com/files/vivian-krause-who-is-behind-leadnow.pdf
http://fairquestions.typepad.com/files/who-is-dogwood-7dec2017.pdf
Canadians, most of whom could not tell you how OUR government works, spend most of their time discussing how Trump is going to be impeached/charged under the Logan Act/tar and feathered.
My neighbour is obsessed with American politics, and when Justice Scalia died tried to lure me into a deep discussion about his replacement.
“Can you name a single Canadian Supreme Court Justice”?
“Um….”
“Thanks for playing…”
The way Canadian politics works, does it even matter if they have a Supreme Court?
Did Justice Scalia just die or was he pushed?
What did the doctor who attended say?
What did the autopsy conclude?
What did he supposedly die of?
Are “heart attack guns” available?
Why would Putin want Trump instead of Clinton?
Putin makes money selling oil- with Trump the price will stay low because he will encourage production, whereas Hilary would try to stop production and send the price higher.
Working with Trump– he might say anything at anytime apparently. Hilary reads from cue cards written by others. Which would Putin prefer?
Finally, I don’t know how much the Russians spend at Trump resorts, but I think Putin must have approved the 70-100 million dollars the highly connected Russian operatives gave Hilary.
Of course Putin would want you to think he would want the other guy…
I have a difficult time understanding why Russia, with it’s economy as it is, would want to donate tens of millions of dollars to a “charitable” American foundation. Doesn’t make sense.
Does Russia typically donate to charities in the United States?
“Does Russia typically donate to charities in the United States?”
No, they don’t. But Russians are perfectly happy paying money to a charity if they get something of value from doing so, like American uranium.
TA January 12, 2018 at 8:41 pm
“Does Russia typically donate to charities in the United States?”
No, they don’t. But Russians are perfectly happy paying money to a charity if they get something of value from doing so, like American uranium.
Except of course they didn’t get any American uranium, the deal was all about Kazakh uranium.
Also Frank Giustra isn’t Russian he’s Canadian.
“But Russians are perfectly happy paying money to a charity if they get something of value from doing so, like American uranium.”
Or, like the opportunity to slow down American energy products on the world market:
Putin Is Funding Green Groups to Discredit Natural Gas Fracking
By Kevin Mooney On 7/11/17 at 12:44 PM
http://www.newsweek.com/putin-funding-green-groups-discredit-natural-gas-fracking-635052
Well, Phil, the FBI had an inside informant on this Hillary/Russian Uranium One deal, so we are going to know all the gory details in the future, and you will be proven wrong about there being no Russian involvement.
TA January 13, 2018 at 9:13 am
Well, Phil, the FBI had an inside informant on this Hillary/Russian Uranium One deal, so we are going to know all the gory details in the future, and you will be proven wrong about there being no Russian involvement.
Well what I posted was: “Except of course they didn’t get any American uranium, the deal was all about Kazakh uranium.
Also Frank Giustra isn’t Russian he’s Canadian.”
Frank Giustra is the friend of Bill Clinton who owned the canadian company which bought the stake in the Kazakh uranium mines, he subsequently sold his stake in the company to Uranium One in 2007. He then made a large donation to the Clinton Foundation ($131 million) in 2007. The russians purchased a minority share in Uranium One in exchange for an interest in a Kazakh mining venture in 2009, followed by the acquisition of a majority share following government approval in 2010. Uranium One became a wholly owned subsidiary of Rosatom in 2013, six years after Giustra sold his stake.
So the vast bulk of related donations to the Clinton Foundation were from one man, who sold his stake in the company three years before the russians acquired an interest in Uranium One, and 18 months before Hillary Clinton became Secretary of State.
The Russian economy is almost entirely dependent on oil and gas exports and keeping those prices as high as possible, while ensuring Europe remains reliant on Gazprom supplies.
Thus Putin and his Russia have every self-interest in perpetuating the climate hustle’s demise of Western economies and energy supplies. It would be against this self-interest to publish CRU’s dirty laundry.
This is merely John Podesta’s and the Dems attempt to misdirect away from their own IT incompetence. Meanwhile, not one of the exposed emails has been shown to be fake. That is, All the emails seen so far from the DNC and CRU were authentic and exposed their unethical behavior.
The russians hack.
The americans just use a FISA-702(17) Query
These are the culprits !!
Be afraid. Be very afraid.
Thought that was from the last Russian Bride magazine
BABUSHKA
Well, whoever did the ClimateGate hack, there is still a rather obvious Russian motive for discrediting the warmist movement – Russians are the world’s second largest exporter of oil, and the world’s largest exporter of natural gas. Any movement that results in a long term reduction in demand for hydrocarbons.wuuld obviously have huge impacts on Russia’s economy and ability to afford its worldwide geopolitical adventurism – and is a threat that the Russians cannot and would not ignore, or try to dampen with whatever tools it has. Russians have been masters of spycraft and developing “kompromat” and psyops ever since the days of the Bolshevik revolution a century ago.
Russians are already well known to have funded much of the anti-fracking movement in the USA and Canada – again, in order to depress the rapidly increasing supply of both oil and gas brought about by the fracking revolution. Depressing supply of competitive product has much the same effect as avoiding depressed demand for the same products.
The oldest saying in the world of investigations is, “follow the money”. He who benefits economically from any particular skulduggery is the most likely of potential perpetrators.
faulty logic Duane. You state “follow the money”, but don’t do so yourself. Oil prices were rising due to climate change alarmism and policies being enacted by western governments. If Russia were responsible for the hack, why would they release the emails at a time when prices were beneficial to Russian profits? Why not ride out the high profits and wait for demand to slow before releasing the emails?
Has there ever been an american national election in which no foreign country has attempted to influence the outcome?
Did the British, French and Spanish never try to influence US elections in the 1800’s and eariier?
Or the Germans, Russians, Mexicans, Canadians, Japanese, Chinese, Vietnamese, Irish or Israelis more recently?
In fact, Is there any s___hole country that has never at least wanted to influence american public opinion during an election?
OTOH, Is there any s___hole in this world that the US hasn’t mucked around in lately?
(If you answered NO to any of the above, i’ve got a new cryptocurrency going online soon and i’d like to offer it to you for a very special price. Deal?)
Funny you should mention “s___hole country” in your comment.
Turns out two Republicans in that meeting maintain they never heard that stated. One was Tom Cotton, so straight he’s being considered as the next CIA Director.
Would the Democrats be above discrediting the duly-elected president of the United States?
Or would they rather pay homage to a failed candidate that has mastered the art of political espionage?
…those sorry, brainwashed saps.
“Has there ever been an american national election in which no foreign country has attempted to influence the outcome?”
No, there hasn’t, and there is no evidece that Russians had any effect on the American election.
I saw an interview with one of the Russian trolls who supposedly was trying to influence the election, and he said that he sat in a big building with lots of other paid trolls and they sent out texts every day to try to make some point or other, but he said most people didn’t pay attention to what they were writing.
The Russian trolling was aimed more at disrupting the process than in favoring any one candidate. If they could cause turmoil then they were happy, and thanks to the efforts of the American Leftwing media, they have caused lots of turmoil by planting lies in the Dirty Dossier. Once they did that, their work was done and the Democrats and the MSM took over from there, pushing the Trump/Russia narrative.
There is no Trump/Russia collusion, and it is getting more obvious every day. The focus is going to change to the Hillary/Russia collusion story in the future.
Duane, increasing American production of oil and gas poses a far greater threat to Russia than any green schemes do. The war on coal increases demand for natural gas, and it will be many years before electric vehicles put a dent in demand for oil.
Regardless of who did the hacks, our world is a better place for both.
.climategate was clearly a sickened insider – end of story
There is somethings the two examples have in common. The leaks expose information that is very damning relating to the authors of the emails such that they represent activities that amount to conspiracies to deceive the public and also whilst there have been complaints that the info was leaked there has been no denials that the info wasn’t true. To me they are both just examples of criminals being caught red handed.
There IS one marked similarity between climategate and the DNC-Podesta leak: both seem to have been leaks, not hacks, meaning neither had anything to do with Russia, which would make no sense in any case. Russia, whose main export is oil, has been severely hurt by both leaks, since both weakened the power of those who are trying to block fossil-fuel development in the West.
Obama’s official policy goal was “european gas prices” in the U.S., meaning about $8/gal. Trump’s is “energy dominance.” Under the eco-Democrats Russia gets rich. Under Trump Russia will sink beneath the waves.
We now know that it was Hillary who actually colluded with Russia to influence the 2016 election, using FusionGPS as a middleman to buy phony Russian dirt on Trump (the Steele dossier), and that Obama-Hillary weaponized our own intel agencies to participate in this illegal collusion with Russia to attack an opposition candidate.
The level of criminality is somewhat surprising, even to veteran Clinton watchers, but in terms of the motivations of the different players it all makes proper horse-sense. The othr way, not so much. Even a horse would shake its head at the idea of Russia trying to undermine the West’s anti-fracking eco-left.
The anti-fracking movement has been exposed as directly funded by Russia. We KNOW which side Russia is on. The only reason they aren’t funding Michael Mann is that Al Gore already gave him and the other consensoids $100b to play with.
Thank God . Looks like the Russians are Americans best friends for exposing this massive deep state and pharma corruption.
Sad when our main adversary is more reliable than the bureaucrats, of whom 95% are Democrats, that populate our Deep State.
This is why we’re at a disadvantage with the stupidest voters.
Is there any doubt this crap will be parroted by the rank and file progressive/warmists?
No doubt at all. The Leftwing hardcore will believe every bad thing said about Trump and the Republican Party. They are not objective about these things.
“Mann himself has pointed to the incident’s “curious connections” to Russia and WikiLeaks”
Looks like a bit of conspiracy ideation!
Why Mann, (fraud by his own doing) is still employed by Penn State points to “curious connections”.
Then again, the guy thinks WUWT is a massively funded organization….
And yet no one involved with Climategate or Podesta’s has ever claimed the emails themselves were fabricated.
And they have no problem with Peter Gleich fabricating a “Heartland” document.
It is interesting that leftists now blame everything on “the Russians,” even when there’s not a speck of evidence. Joe McCarthy would love it.
A far-left climate activist on FB asserted with certainty the other day that the Russians were responsible for the Climategate “theft.” I asked him for evidence. He cited this ridiculous article:
https://www.newscientist.com/blogs/shortsharpscience/2009/12/since-over-1000-confidential-e.html
The article reported:
“…according to the Independent’s Shaun Walker… a senior member of the IPCC has voiced suspicions that the hack job was not the handy work of a lone amateur but that of a ‘highly sophisticated, politically motivated operation.'”
That was apparently the basis for his certainty that “the Russian’s”[sic] did it.
Evidence is entirely optional to committed leftists.
Factual according to Liberal standards…
“voiced suspicions”, possibly, maybe, potentially, chance, likely (aka SWAG)
“according to”, anonymous, unnamed, confidential source (aka gossip)
“member of IPPC”, Gore, Hansen, Mann (aka highly biased)
“not the handy work”, plot by big-oil, conspiracy (aka tin-foil hat)
Hope Russia takes MotherJones to court for Slander.
Everyone has missed the obvious Russian connection in this international drama:
Boris Badenov and Natasha Fatale.
This nefarious collusion has their fingerprints all over the place. Boris and Natasha are up to their old tricks again! (Mueller take note)
https://youtu.be/4txmBNCAXg8
Same level of comedy from the MSM.
It would be really funny if someone dropped the names of one of my favorite cartoons to one of the 20 or 30 year old “msm reporters” out there and hint that they were the connection between Trump and Putin and see if it got anywhere.
Mac
Rocky Squirrel and Bullwinkle Moose are on it. And doing a better job than Mueller.
SQUIRREL! MSM.
It was Russian spies that whipped up US resistance within the American Colonies which led to the US Declaration of Independence.
The pesky Russians get everywhere.
Not only that. They have deep placement sleepers from the population left in Alaska when they sold it to you. Alaskan politicians always muttering about seizing the means of production and destroying the capitalist system.
What is clear is that the article’s authors, motherjonesy, Podesta and his propaganda machines and manniacal utterly fail to comprehend what a “hack” is, entails or actually reveals.
To these characters, it is a racy techy word they can use for inspiring fear amongst the gullible.
A concept that brings back the thought regarding any sufficiently advanced science is viewed as magic by poorly educated shysters and fools.
“To these characters, it is a racy techy word they can use for inspiring fear amongst the gullible.”
Exactly right!
What does it even mean to say “The Russians hacked the election”? No-one has ever claimed that they changed a single vote. They certainly did not hack the voting machines, the Soros operatives did that!
When someone on the Left falls for a phishing scam, it because they are SO SMART that it can only be a highly sophisticated effort of a malevolent enemy, of course.
No other explanation is allowed that might give someone the wrong idea.
Cute imagination, but I want the sayloon.com writers to expand on this; how did ‘Russia’ know to hack EAU, and why did they think it necessary to essentially help their western E&P competition by doing so? I bet they can uncover a Russian plot to destroy the world in a Dr. Evil style.
Friday Funny for sure.
The Mother Jones Stupid is strong on this one.
However good work by their “reporter” as this article is another own goal,slash load aim fire…
Congratulation you got both feet,your own.
Tying Climate Gate and the DNC emails together is brilliant.
What they do have in common, might be enough to irritate one or two of their readers.
We have persons holding positions of public trust, abusing the hell out of that trust,lying to and ripping off the public, the upshot being today, when a progressive person makes accusations of bad behaviour, you can bank on it.
That the behaviour they decry and accuse their opponents of ..Is exactly what they ,the accuser,are actively engaged in.
So go forth Mother Goose, may you expose all the evil in your world.
Just don’t look to hard at the facts, messengers are far easier to shoot.
Oh, I guess the progressive reporters might want to avoid mirrors.
” … We have persons holding positions of public trust, abusing the hell out of that trust,lying to and ripping off the public, the upshot being today, when a progressive person makes accusations of bad behaviour, you can bank on it. That the behaviour they decry and accuse their opponents of ..Is exactly what they ,the accuser,are actively engaged in.”
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That is called ‘projection’. They have been doing it for many, many years. Time for them to start eating their own ….