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On June 21, 2016, the character Guccifer 2.0 arranged to be interviewed, by means of e-mail, by a journalist named Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai (aka "Motherboard"). In that interview, Guccifer 2.0 provided a plausible explanation of how he had hacked the Democratic National Committee (DNC) computer system, beginning in the summer of 2015 and ending on June 12, 2016, when the computer system had been rebooted.
Although Guccifer 2.0 purported to be a Romanian, I speculate (see my Part 10) that he actually was an American employee of the NGP VAN company, which maintained some databases on the DNC computer system. In his NGP VAN position, he enjoyed some administrative access on the DNC computer system.
It was not actually in the summer of 2015 that this NGP VAN employee "hacked" that system. Rather, it was sometime during the period from April 15 to May 2, 2016 (dates explained in my Part 10) that he used his administrative access to place onto the DNC system a computer virus. He did so in order to collect files that would reveal the DNC's partisan support of Hillary Clinton in her primary-election race against Bernie Sanders. The computer virus had been developed by Russian Intelligence, but he had obtained it from an inadequately protected CIA collection of foreign computer viruses.
CrowdStrike found the computer viruses on the DNC computer system and removed them by June 12, 2016. After the viruses had been removed, CrowdStrike rebooted the system. If so, then how did Guccifer 2.0 (or Russian Intelligence) know that the system was rebooted on that date?
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Here is the interview's relevant passage, where the reboot date is specified:
Motherboard:
Tell me about the DNC hack. How did you get in?
Guccifer 2.0:
I hacked that server through the NGP VAN soft [software], if u understand what I’m talking about.
Motherboard:
So that was your entry point, what happened next?
Guccifer 2.0:
I used 0-day exploit of NGP VAN soft [software] then I installed shell-code into the DNC server. it allowed me to intrude into DNC network. They have Windows-based domain architecture. then I installed my Trojans on several PCs. I had to go from one PC to another every week so Crowdstrike couldn’t catch me for a long time. I know that they have cool intrusion detection system. But my heuristic algorithms are better.
Motherboard:
When did you first hack them?
Guccifer 2.0:
Last summer [2015].
Motherboard:
And when did you get kicked out?
Guccifer 2.0:
June 12 [], when they rebooted their system.
The NGP VAN employee thus revealed a secret hacking route on the DNC computer system. Perhaps he himself had discovered the route during his own work on the DNC system. Perhaps he learned about it from CrowdStrike's findings. A real hacker -- in particular, a Romanian hacker or a Russian Intelligence hacker -- would not reveal such a hacking route so gratuitously.
The NGP VAN employee revealed this hacking route in order to deflect any further investigation that might eventually discover himself as the actual culprit who placed the virus on the computer system.
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Russian Intelligence never had anything to do with hacking the DNC computer system. Russian Intelligence had developed the computer virus that CrowdStrike found on that system. However, that computer virus was in the possession of the CIA, and it eventually came into the possession of a NGP VAN employee, who put it on that system for his own political reasons.
The non-involvement of Russian Intelligence in the placement of the virus on the DNC computer system has many ramifications in the following events. Since the CIA and FBI believed mistakenly that Russian Intelligence was involved, those two organizations foolishly whipped up a stupid hysteria about Russian meddling the the USA's 2016 election and an even stupider hysteria that Trump and some of his supporters were collaborating with Russian Intelligence.
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Since Russian Intelligence had nothing to do with the placement of the virus on the DNC computer system, then the FBI did not have any true information that Russian Intelligence was hacking the DNC computer system. Keep in mind that in the third week of April 2016, an unidentified FBI official requested the DNC's computer logs and that on April 29, this same FBI official initiated a conference call in which he informed a DNC computer expert and Michael Sussman that the FBI suspected that the DNC system was being hacked by Russian Intelligence.
What was the basis of that FBI suspicion? The only basis was the false reporting that FBI Counterintelligence was receiving from Christopher Steele.
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Concluded in Part 12
