Hacking

People stand outside the Democratic National Committee (DNC) headquarters in Washington (AP/Paul Holston)
WASHINGTON, D.C.– In the latest complication for the “Russiagate” scandal, a new analysis has suggested that files and email stolen from the Democratic National Committee (DNC) were copied to a USB drive by someone with physical access to a computer that had DNC server access, indicating that the committee’s records were not hacked remotely by foreign actors, as has been alleged.

A series of large scale cyber-attacks have hit Russia and Ukraine.
In Russia, the attacks have thus far been limited to the Rosneft oil company and its subsidiary Bashneft.
Rosneft is currently in court suing Vladimir Yevtushenkov, the owner of Sistema, a company accused of embezzling assetsfrom Bashneft.
In a Twitter statement Rosneft said that the company hopes the attacks were not related to the legal action.

The floor of the main lobby of the Central Intelligence Agency in Langley, Va., Saturday, Jan. 21, 2017. (AP/Andrew Harnik)
The whistleblowing site WikiLeaks is back with yet another Vault 7 series related document. This one is called “Cherry Blossom” program which gives a glance at the wireless hacking capabilities of The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

Twitter bot armies are now being used to attack Qatar.
Cyber warfare is not new in the Gulf, but the current Saudi-led onslaught against the tiny state of Qatar is seeing the most formidable instance of it yet being deployed, as Doha’s brothers-turned-enemies eye to dominate the war for narratives, in the media and on social media.

Reality Winner, shown here in her booking photo, is being held by federal authorities at the Lincoln County, Ga. jail after leaking NSA documents to a reporter at The Intercept,, June 7, 2017 (Lincoln County (Ga.) Sheriff’s Office via AP)
Long having built its reputation on reports derived from classified information provided to them by leakers, The Intercept now finds itself in the unpleasant position of having burned – or outed – one of its anonymous sources.

A detail from a top-secret NSA report on an alleged Russian military intelligence operation targeting the U.S. election infrastructure. (Photo: NSA via Intercept)

The New York Times published an article with the headline “Vladimir Putin Hints at Russian Role in Hacking of U.S. Election”.  This totally false headline was replaced by a misleading headline reading, “Putin Hints at U.S. Election Meddling by ‘Patriotically Minded’ Russians”. As of 18.53 Moscow time on 1 June 2017 this second headline is currently on the New York Times website.

The National Cybersecurity Agency of France has concluded that the cyber-hacking of emails relating to then French Presidential Candidate Emmanuel Macron and his colleagues had nothing to do with Russia.
In a statement from the French cyber-security agency’s head Guillaume Poupard it was confirmed that the hacking was “so generic and simple that it could have been practically anyone”.
He went on to say that the hacking was likely the work of a lone individual who could have been based in any country.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has given an interview with France’s Le Figaro in which he said that Russia had “no special expectations” about the election of US President Donald Trump.
Putin then described how a US President can often have his ideals totally crushed by what is known as the deep state upon entering the White House. Putin likened Trump’s inability to implement his desire to change US policy towards Russia with Barack Obama’s failure to shut down the still operational Guantanamo Bay prison camp in spite of campaigning on the pledge to shut it down.

Shawn Helton
21st Century Wire 
In this age of hyper-real media propaganda, some stories published by mainstream media whether true or not, can be used as a ‘red herring’ to provide an all to convenient mask for other politically charged news releases.