#TrumpSet/ConspiracySet LAWST: 13 Russian Officials Identified as Part of DNC Hack UPDATE: 12 More

[Stone Cold]

English, breh.

If you're gonna try to insult me, do it properly. :bpufedup:



You still have yet to acknowledge the fact that multiple cybersecurity firms--OTHER than CrowdStrike--analyzed the DNC's servers and came to the same conclusion.

Not to mention that four US intelligence orgs independently verified this--without relying on CrowdStrike's initial analysis.



What's your excuse now?

The independent cyber security firms didn't analyze the actual DNC server even the FBI dont have that access right now

 

[Black Panther]

Here's my response

Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity

A New Report Raises Big Questions About Last Year’s DNC Hack

I addressed this in a previous [locked] thread.

I feel like I should address this article you keep posting, as well as one @newworldafro posted in another thread (that was marked as spam and rightfully so ) that sources this Consortium report:

A New Report Raises Big Questions About Last Year’s DNC Hack

I work in IT as my day job. My job involves some infosec (mostly blue team focused), so I have some expertise with some of the concepts discussed.

Spoiler

I'm pretty sure neither you nor @newworldafro will be convinced by this post, and you'll probably keep citing it elsewhere, but since helpdesk is currently slow and I'm caught up on my projects, so I decided to read both articles and I got a little time to do a semi-detailed analysis

One sec.

Not too long after I started reading, I found something pretty problematic with one of their key claims.

The Key Event

July 5, 2016: In the early evening, Eastern Daylight Time, someone working in the EDT time zone with a computer directly connected to the DNC server or DNC Local Area Network, copied 1,976 MegaBytes of data in 87 seconds onto an external storage device. That speed is much faster than what is physically possible with a hack.

The Nation article breaks it down a little further.

Forensicator’s first decisive findings, made public in the paper dated July 9, concerned the volume of the supposedly hacked material and what is called the transfer rate—the time a remote hack would require. The metadata established several facts in this regard with granular precision: On the evening of July 5, 2016, 1,976 megabytes of data were downloaded from the DNC’s server. The operation took 87 seconds. This yields a transfer rate of 22.7 megabytes per second.

These statistics are matters of record and essential to disproving the hack theory. No Internet service provider, such as a hacker would have had to use in mid-2016, was capable of downloading data at this speed. Compounding this contradiction, Guccifer claimed to have run his hack from Romania, which, for numerous reasons technically called delivery overheads, would slow down the speed of a hack even further from maximum achievable speeds.

 

[Black Panther]

So this is their key claim. There are several other claims made, but I'm speaking on what I know.

Internet speeds are usually measured in megabits per second (Mbps). A bit is the smallest unit of data we typically work with.

These two articles refer to 1,976 megabytes being downloaded in 87 seconds, or approximately 22.7 megabytes per second.

For reference, there are eight bits in one byte. By the same scale, we can also say there are eight megabits in one megabyte.

One megabit is 1 million bits. So there are eight million bits in a megabyte.

You follow me? Good.

It's actually pretty common to confuse megabits with megabytes; the distinction isn't really meaningful for most people.

However, if we're talking about something being "IMPOSSIBLE" then it is necessary to distinguish the two. Let's say this: the claim is that it is "impossible" to download data at 22.7 megabytes per second.

If we measure this by the standard measure of megabits per second (Mbps), 22.7 MB/s breaks down into 181.6 Mbps.

Guccifer 2.0 (who claimed credit for the hack) would have to have at least a connection speed of 181 Mbps. Is this "impossible"?

Spoiler

 

[Black Panther]

Here's a video of a Comcast user getting 180 Mbps on Comcast.



The Nation article also cites the idea of "delivery overheads" that further affect the speed of the connection, given that Guccifer 2.0 claimed to be in Romania, but surprise!

Which country has the #1 fastest peak internet connection in Europe and #10 fastest in the world? :bpohh:

Romania*!

*Source

A delivery overhead wouldn't have much of an effect. Romania gets an average peak connection speed of 89.9 Mbps (which again, is an average,meaning much higher individual speeds can be achieved, especially if a commercial connection is being used).

So either the analysts unintentionally fudged their numbers, or you have some high-level infosec guys who have never heard of a fiber optic connection.

 

[the cac mamba]

OP is in full flailing mode.....one whole year anniversary of spewing bullshiit is coming up and all those talking points are straight doo doo.

Black Panther... I bestow upon you a more appropriate name ....The Black Pamper

 

[Stone Cold]

I addressed this in a previous [locked] thread.

The following table isolates a sequence of 20 files in the FEC directory. That sequence has two large files (108 MB and 228 MB) which will contribute to a much higher estimated transfer rate. (Note: some rows are hidden to improve presentation; the total size shown is for the entire group of files, which is almost 400 MB).

This peak rate of 38 MB/s is much closer to the practical maximum transfer speed of a USB-2 storage device. The theoretical maximum speed for USB-2 is 60 MB/s, but for various technical reasons, it is closer to 55 MB/s. The practical maximum, due to various implementation issues is approximately 45 MB/s. In practice, realized speeds are noticeably lower than that.
Peak (38 MB/s) Transfer Speed

 

[Stone Cold]

Overall Transfer Speeds are Impacted by a Single Directory, “CNBC/Portfolio”, which has Many Small Files
The NGP VAN files have a directory called “CNBC/Portfolio”, which has 1900 small files, all 28 bytes in size. The measured copy speed for that directory is noticeably slow because there is noticeable overhead when creating many small files. Two possible reasons for this slow down when copying small files are: (1) there is overhead (esp. with USB-2 devices) when having to “turn around” communication with the device where reads and updates of directory entries are interleaved with writes to the file and (2) the operating system takes special actions (which require more writes to the device) to ensure that the file system remains in tact across a system crash.

The fact that this “CNBC/Portfolio” directory has a couple thousand tiny files explains why the calculated overall 23 MB/s average rate is slower than might be seen with a more typical distribution of file sizes. There are approximately 2300 files in the NGP VAN collection. The 1900 files in the “CNBC/Portfolio” directory are a big chunk (80%) of all the files by count, but a tiny percentage (0.02%) of the total file size. Yet, the transfer time for that directory is 14% of the total transfer time.

The observations made above highlight the impact that a single directory had on overall (average) transfer times. The fact that this directory with many small files had a significant impact on overall transfer speed underlines the importance of running tests with the actual files in the NGP VAN collection in order to derive accurate results.

 

[Black Panther]

The independent cyber security firms didn't analyze the actual DNC server even the FBI dont have that access right now

Do you think physical access to a server is necessary to conduct a forensic analysis?

I'll let you cook

The following table isolates a sequence of 20 files in the FEC directory. That sequence has two large files (108 MB and 228 MB) which will contribute to a much higher estimated transfer rate. (Note: some rows are hidden to improve presentation; the total size shown is for the entire group of files, which is almost 400 MB).

This peak rate of 38 MB/s is much closer to the practical maximum transfer speed of a USB-2 storage device. The theoretical maximum speed for USB-2 is 60 MB/s, but for various technical reasons, it is closer to 55 MB/s. The practical maximum, due to various implementation issues is approximately 45 MB/s. In practice, realized speeds are noticeably lower than that.
Peak (38 MB/s) Transfer Speed

What we can determine from the metadata--and from what we know about Guccifer 2.0--is that we don't know the exact methodology used to transfer the data, and we also don't know if he's actually in Romania (the VPN he used resolves to Romania).

We're not even mentioning the fact that Guccifer 2.0 was only the source of the emails to WikiLeaks; the actual hacking was attributed to FancyBear and CozyBear.

 

[Stone Cold]

Exclusion of this “CNBC/Portfolio” Directory with Many Small Files Brings the Overall Transfer Speed up to 28 MB/s.
The table below isolates the estimated transfer speed calculated for a large directory called “FEC”. Note that since all the files are under one top-level directory, there are no “time gaps”, which complicate the transfer speed estimate for other parts of the collection.

As we can see this “FEC” directory is over one third of the total NGP VAN collection by file size; it represents a large sample of 744 Megabytes. The average transfer rate is 28 MB/s.

 

[Stone Cold]

Do you think physical access to a server is necessary to conduct a forensic analysis?

I'll let you cook

boiii you better take this L

 

[Black Panther]

Exclusion of this “CNBC/Portfolio” Directory with Many Small Files Brings the Overall Transfer Speed up to 28 MB/s.
The table below isolates the estimated transfer speed calculated for a large directory called “FEC”. Note that since all the files are under one top-level directory, there are no “time gaps”, which complicate the transfer speed estimate for other parts of the collection.

As we can see this “FEC” directory is over one third of the total NGP VAN collection by file size; it represents a large sample of 744 Megabytes. The average transfer rate is 28 MB/s.

This is not the smoking gun you think this is. Sorry, son.

Show me conclusive proof that a USB thumb drive--or any similar removable storage drive--was used.

-Was there a driver installed once the thumb drive was plugged in? Was it generic?
-If not, where's the event logs that show that a removable storage drive was connected at the time of the file transfers?
-What's the model of the device the removable storage was inserted into, and what kind of USB ports does it have?

That's just off the top of my head.

Think deeper, son. :panthersafe:

 

[Stone Cold]

This is not the smoking gun you think this is. Sorry, son.

Show me conclusive proof that a USB thumb drive--or any similar removable storage drive--was used.

-Was there a driver installed once the thumb drive was plugged in? Was it generic?
-If not, where's the event logs that show that a removable storage drive was connected at the time of the file transfers?
-What's the model of the device the removable storage was inserted into, and what kind of USB ports does it have?

That's just off the top of my head.

Think deeper, son. :panthersafe:

Good questions.
You need to ask Donna those

 

[Black Panther]

Man, how can I even spin this...

Confused Math

• Black Panther
• Jul 16, 2017

 

[Stone Cold]

Projection

 

[re'up]

Now they start denouncing any and all government institutions, and this is where it gets real scary for the country as a whole, because the president is the #1 doing this. Of course, they were all for "law & Order" when it was an indictment against Hillary, or an investigation into Seth Rich's murder. Now, it's partisan.