CrowdStrike, First Experts To Affirm Trump, Russia Election Hack Theory, Renege On Their Claims [Updated]

CrowdStrike, a group that was the first to affirm that Russia could have played a part in President Trump winning the 2016 U.S. election, have now reneged on some of their claims, Daily Mail has reported. Specifically, the Russian group of computer hackers known as Fancy Bear, which CrowdStrike blamed the DNC data breach on, may have not been involved after all.

CrowdStrike claimed back in June 2016 that Putin’s men were responsible for hacking the Democratic National Committee. This finding was used by the FBI, CIA and other top intelligence agencies in their investigations into Trump and Russia. It turns out, however, that there may not be as much truth to the claim than originally thought.

The below video took place in December 2016, around the time CrowdStrike indicated Fancy Bear were the ones who hacked DNC emails.

This could be a huge blow to the case of the Russians helping The Donald win the election, as CrowdStrike, unlike any U.S. intelligence agency, was permitted exclusive access to DNC computers, which in turn provided American government investigators with the fuel they needed to proceed with their probe on a link between the Kremlins and the president.

Sources indicate that last month CrowdStrike withdrew certain claims from a report the group authored in December 2016, though no one reported on the withdrawn data until now. The document that information was removed from contained information about the alleged Russian hacking group Fancy Bear, which CrowdStrike had declared was behind the DNC hack.

https://instagram.com/p/BQwfDNhAGn1/

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As part of this report, CrowdStrike also claimed that Fancy Bear had used the same type of hacking tools to break into a Ukrainian weapons base. This claim began to fall apart when Ukrainian officials publicly denied there being any truth to it. It didn’t take long before it was discovered that the hacker investigators did not find the information about Ukraine’s military through their own investigatory techniques, but rather from the blog of a Russian who calls himself “Colonel Cassad.”

This deceitful activity by CrowkStrike puts into question their trustworthiness as well as if they’re influenced by some political agenda.

Two members of CrowdStrike recently rejected requests by the House Intelligence Committee to answer questions vis-à-vis Moscow having an impact on the 2016 election.

Furthermore, CrowdStrike is reportedly actively trying to put a damper on scrutinization into their data-finding techniques. They’ve yet to respond to sources in light of this seemingly damaging finding.

Trump supporters on Twitter, many of whom seem to have known about this revelation before any mainstream outlet reported on it, are voicing their reactions.

[Updated April 5, 2017 6:43 p.m. EST]

In addition to what appears to be faulty reporting, there exists evidence of more deceit, as both CrowdStrike and the DNC claim to have started working with one another at the end of April 2016, but evidence says otherwise. Sources indicate that the firm had been actively probing DNC devices to ascertain whether or not primary Democratic presidential nominee Bernie Sanders’ team had broke into their system to get unpublished data about voters.

Additionally, according to accounts by both DNC and CrowdStrike officials, investigators were keeping tabs on the DNC’s computational systems during a time in which most of the emails were stolen. It was during this same time period that highly disadvantageous messages were leaked into the public domain, which contradicts with Democrats’ claim that they were aware they were being breached, as one would think they’d be smart enough not to include potentially ruinous content in their emails if they knew there was a great chance it could be exploited.

It should be noted here that although CrowdStrike made changes to the same report that discussed the involvement of Fancy Bear and Cozy Bear in the hacking of the U.S. election, according to an e-publication provided on the CrowdStrike website called Cyber Intrusion Services Casebook 2016, the company maintains that these groups were responsible for breaching the DNC. At this time, this claim by them has not changed.

[Featured Image by Alexander Zemlianichenko/AP Images]