We Now Have Evidence The Russian Hacking Narrative Was Physically Impossible

The publication that revealed a classified National Security Agency report on alleged Russian attempts to hack US election-related systems treats the report as possible evidence that Russia tried to rig the vote. More likely, however, the Kremlin expected the vote to be rigged in favor of Hillary Clinton.




According to the leaked report, the Russian military intelligence, GRU, ran a spear-phishing campaign targeting the employees of VR Systems, a voting hardware and software producer. At least one of its employee accounts apparently was compromised. Then the hackers used the harvested credentials to trap local government officials in charge of organizing elections. Emails, coming credibly from a VR Systems employee, contained malware that would have allowed the GRU (although the report provides no clues as to how the attribution was made) to control the computers of these local officials. The NSA doesn’t seem to have determined whether the hackers managed that with any of their targets.



Reality Winner, 25, the NSA contractor accused of leaking the report to the Intercept, an online news organization, had an apparent motive: Her Twitter feed (under the name Sara Winners) shows she was disappointed when Donald Trump won the election.



So far, Russia’s alleged help to Trump in the 2016 election has amounted to Russian sources stealing and publishing emails and documents related to the Clinton campaign. That’s not particularly dangerous to Trump unless it can be shown that his campaign colluded with the hackers — or that Russia tried to influence the actual vote count. The report appears to imply just that.



In reality, even if the allegedly GRU-affiliated hackers got into the computers of local officials in the states where VR Systems technology was used, they couldn’t have changed the election outcome.