The Homa Files

Some key points are being overlooked.

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Fueled by rumors and “secret intel assessment”, election-deniers are having a field day blaming Queen Hillary’s loss on the Russians and alleging that Trump is in Putin’s back pocket.

Beyond the hypocrisy of the Dems hissy fit over Trump’s  refusal (in debate #3) to commit to accepting the election results if they seemed tainted (<= ironic, isn’t it?), the deniers seem to be overlooking a couple of key points.

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For openers, there’s the big issue of meddling in another countries elections.

Of course, it’s seriously bad for a foreign government to be meddling in our elections. Period.

But, there is a certain “holier-than-thou” reaction.

Even the Washington Post concedes that “the United States has a well-documented history of interfering and sometimes interrupting the workings of democracies elsewhere.”

In the old days, it was Iran, Chile and Cuba.

In the Obama era, it has been funneling money to defeat Netanyahu in Israel and “violating a longstanding international understanding that world leaders don’t visit during election campaigns” in the run-up to Brexit.

Sometimes, what goes around, comes around.

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Yeah, but this was cyberhacking on a grand scale.

First, let’s talk scale.

Yahoo has fessed-up to having over 1 billion accounts hacked with personal information pilfered.

That’s billion with a “b”.

And, anybody remember the hacking of the Fed’s OPM (Office of Personnel Management)?

The hackers stole personnel files of some 20 million current and former federal employees, including contractors, family members and others who had undergone background checks for federal employment. Everything, from Social Security numbers to birth dates, even fingerprint records, was accessed through OPM networks.

Now, that’s a hack !

See Why the OPM Hack Is Far Worse Than You Imagine for more details

Was there mass hysteria after the OPM hack?

Not that I can recollect.

How about an urgent report on the President’s desk in a couple of weeks?

Nope.

So, according to NPR: “One year after the OPM data breach, it’s still unclear how exactly the data were stolen.”

That’s some all-hands-on-deck super-sleuthing for you.

OK, so Wiki got its hands on about 50,000 Podesta & DNC emails.

That’s only a bit more than Team Clinton BleachBit to destroy evidence related to her private server investigation.

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The hackers got their hands on sensitive information

Sure, the hackers distributed some potentially embarrassing stuff.

I say “potentially” because it’s not obvious to me that any Dem operatives actually got embarrassed.

And, it can’t possibly have been a surprise to anybody that Hillary is truth-challenged; that Team Clinton wasn’t fond of a major swatch of the American citizenry, including some big groups like Catholics; that NBC, CNN, WaPo and NYT were swimming in the Clinton tank.

All the emails did was confirm the obvious.

To my surprise, there wasn’t any classified info released.

Contrast that to FBI reports that “foreign actors undoubtedly breached” Hillary’s server which was proven to contain classified information … some at the highest level of classification.

And, the plot thickens …

According to the NY Times: “It very likely that the Clinton server had been breached, but the intruders were far too skilled to leave evidence of their work.”

Hmmm

I guess the Russians aren’t among the Clinton-server hackers, right?

They only left their fingerprints on the Podesta-DNC hack.

Really?

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The Kemlin was trying to get Trump elected.

Please.

There is a sharp difference between being pro-Trump and being #NeverHillary.

I know, because I’m firmly in the latter camp.

Yeah, Trump has business dealings in Russia and he wisecracked about Putin turning over Hillary’s deleted emails.

But, does anybody really believe that Trump will be a Putin puppet?

I think that’s a reach.

Trump sure hasn’t shown any particular favoritism towards Russia.

Remember, it was Obama-Clinton, Trump,  who yanked Poland’s missile defense shield,  held back military equipment from the Ukrainians, ceded Crimea to the Ruskies, promised “more flexibility after the election,” and outsouced Syrian redline enforcement to Russia.

On the other hand, even Hillary says:

“Vladimir Putin himself directed the covert cyberattacks against our electoral system, against our democracy, apparently because he has a personal beef against me”.

According to NPR, Clinton ties the “beef” to Russia’s parliamentary elections in 2011, which as secretary of state, Clinton said were “unfair, not free, illegitimate.”

Geez, is it that hard to fathom that the guy is among the millions who just don’t like her?

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Obviously, the hack was pro-Trump since no GOP emails were published.

Let me offer a couple of alternative hypotheses:

(1) The GOP was hacked, too … but there was no new dirty laundry left to spew after the brawling primaries, or

(2) The GOP takes cybersecurity a bit more seriously than the Dems do.

According to the WSJ : “Russian hackers tried to penetrate the computer networks of the Republican National Committee, using the same techniques that allowed them to infiltrate its Democratic counterpart. But the intruders failed to get past security defenses on the RNC’s computer networks.”

The latter hypothesis carries some sway with me given the lack security on the Clinton server and details of the Podesta hack.

Podesta clicked on a spear-phishing link.

C’mon, man.

Every IT department and cybersecurity expert warms not to do that.

The hackers didn’t come in through some obscure backdoor.

A moron clicked on a dangerous link … and predictably, all hell broke loose.

I’d call that a self-inflicted wound.

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AMEN.

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#HomaFiles

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This entry was posted on June 1, 2017 at 6:59 am and is filed under 2016 Presidential Election, Clinton, Hillary, Cybersecurity - cybercrime, Hacking - Hackers, Trump, Donald. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.