From Philip Panaritis:
"Grizzly Steppe" hah
They released nothing, nada, zero, zilch, beyond fuzzy insinuations that in no way corroborate the Putin hacked our elections mendacity.
To wit, the report begins with this ominous assertion, "However, public attribution of these activities to RIS is supported by technical indicators from the U.S. Intelligence Community, DHS, FBI, the private sector, and other entities." Okay so far. There's a preponderance of evidence and we're about to find out the details.
But consider the slippery premise that the entire argument hangs on, "technical details regarding the tools and infrastructure used by the Russian civilian and military intelligence Services (RIS)." And that's it! No further distinction between the two crucially different categories provided, just "RIS", "RIS actors", or "RIS cyber-actors," from then on, except for one deviation at the bottom of page three where the authors helpfully denote another version of the culprit: "Actors likely associated with RIS are continuing to engage in spearphishing campaigns, including one launched as recently as November 2016, just days after the U.S. election."
Seriously? "Actors likely associated with RIS ..." What constitutes "associate with"? What does "likely" entail and how do these people differ from "RIS actors" above? They Got Nothing!
Of course "Russian civilian and military intelligence" is cleverly worded to imply that "Russian civilian" belongs to "intelligence services", instead of constituting its own category. So, unlike America where many hackers and hacking groups are clearly on their own and even adversarial to government intelligence agencies, in Russia, they're all known to and work for, an arm of we might say, the Kremlin. Credit card scammers, bored computer geeks, phishers and blackmailers, for the thrill of it malware designers, disaffected server techs, geeks with a grudge against the US Olympic Hockey Team, phishing and retired military techs with time on their hands, ... all their deeds are explicitly directed by Russian spy agencies and personally approved by Putin. That's plausible! They Got Nothing!
Page four of the "report" lays out all 48 of the cool names our American spies came up with for "Reported Russian Military and Civilian Intelligence Services (RIS)" like "Onionduke", "Sandworm," and my personal favorite "Crouching Yeti". And while at first it seemed odd and a lil heavy-handed that "Grizzly Steppe" was the only name in 49 to specify a particular geographic feature indelibly associated with Russia, once you run into "Fancy Bear," "Energetic Bear," and "COZYBEAR," the ursine pedigree of "Grizzly" is apparent. Oh, don't forget "reported" -- still another wishy-washy, mealy-mouthed, lower branch on the decline of certainty and attribution.
They Got Nothing!
And they think we're stupid and brainwashed.
The Mainstream Media is already selling it as conclusive proof.
