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Guccifer 2.0 accidently outs himself as a Russian spook

by on26 March 2018


One slip up has given the game away

While most people have suspected Guccifer 2.0 works for Russian intelligence and is not the  peace-loving Romanian activitist he claimed, actual evidence has been thin on the ground.

Sure, his infamous DNC hack of 2016 did help bring down Hillary Clinton's presidentai campaign, but that did not mean that he was working for the Russians who wanted someone who owed them money in the White House. 

Official reports from the intelligence community at the time, as well as common sense, pegged Guccifer 2.0 not as the Romanian activist he claimed to be, but a Russian operative, but they would say that, after all they claimed that the world is round and man landed on the moon.

Fortunately once, Guccifer 2.0 failed to log into the usual VPN that disguised their traffic. As a result, they left one honest IP trace at an unnamed social media site.

That IP address, "identified Guccifer 2.0 as a particular GRU officer working out of the agency's headquarters on Grizodubovoy Street in Moscow".

According to the Daily Beast  previous work by security researchers had suggested this, but it's the first I've heard of evidence this direct. Assuming it's genuine, it's a sobering reminder of how fragile anonymity is on the internet -- one click and the whole thing comes crashing down.

Trump’s longtime political adviser Roger Stone admitted being in touch with Guccifer over Twitter’s direct messaging service. Stone published an article on the pro-Trump friendly Breitbart News calling on his political opponents to “Stop Blaming Russia” for the hack.

Guccifer famously pretended to be a “lone hacker” who perpetrated the digital DNC break-in. Few believed it at the time but Motherboard proved he was not a native Romanian speaker. Based on forensic clues in some of Guccifer’s leaks, and other evidence, a consensus quickly formed among security experts that Guccifer was completely made up.

 

Last modified on 26 March 2018
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