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<\/a><\/p>\nby LEE STRANAHAN
\nBreitbart.com<\/p>\n
A list of witnesses scheduled to appear at a House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Open Hearing on \u201cRussian Active Measures\u201d contains a glaring problem: the only technical experts scheduled to testify are from CrowdStrike. CrowdStrike is a\u00a0firm hired by the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and has become the primary source of the narrative about \u201cRussian hacking\u201d of the 2016 election and has acted as a mouthpiece for the Democrats since last June.<\/h2>\n
The initial witness list released by House Intelligence includes a number of intelligence officials, all appointed during the Obama administration, such as former CIA Director John Brennan, former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, and former Acting Attorney General Sally Yates, but the sole technical people on the invitation list are two representatives of CrowdStrike, President Shawn Henry, and the co-founder Dmitri Alperovitch.<\/p>\n
Breitbart News has interviewed tech experts<\/a>\u00a0who\u00a0do not agree with the CrowdStrike assessment or Obama administration\u2019s claims that the DNC\/DCCC hacks clearly committed by Russian state actors, with much criticism aimed at the FBI\/DHS Joint Analysis Report (JAR) \u201cGrizzly Steppe\u201d that was released at the end of December. As ZDNet reported<\/a> after the JAR report was released by the Obama administration on the same day that they announced sanctions against Russia:<\/p>\n The JAR included \u201cspecific indicators of compromise, including IP addresses and a PHP malware sample.\u201d But what does this really prove? Wordfence, a WordPress security company specializing in analyzing PHP malware, examined these indicators and didn\u2019t find any hard evidence of Russian involvement. Instead, Wordfence found the attack software was P.AS. 3.1.0, an out-of-date, web-shell hacking tool. The newest version, 4.1.1b, is more sophisticated. Its website claims it was written in the Ukraine.<\/p>\n Mark Maunder, Wordfence\u2019s CEO, concluded that since the attacks were made \u201cseveral versions behind the most current version of P.A.S sic<\/a> which is 4.1.1b. One might reasonably expect Russian intelligence operatives to develop their own tools or at least use current malicious tools from outside sources.\u201d<\/p>\n True, as Errata Security CEO Rob Graham pointed out in a blog post, P.A.S is popular among Russia\/Ukraine hackers. But it\u2019s \u201cused by hundreds if not thousands of hackers, mostly associated with Russia, but also throughout the rest of the world.\u201d In short, just because the attackers used P.A.S., that\u2019s not enough evidence to blame it on the Russian government.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Independent cybersecurity experts, such as\u00a0Jeffrey Carr<\/a>, have cited numerous errors that the media and CrowdStrike have made in discussing the hacking in what Carr refers to as a \u201crunaway train<\/a>\u201d of misinformation.<\/p>\n