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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsTrump's 'Missing DNC Server' Is Neither Missing Nor a Server
https://www.thedailybeast.com/trumps-missing-dnc-server-is-neither-missing-nor-a-server?ref=homeTrumps Missing DNC Server Is Neither Missing Nor a Server
The president can spout conspiracy theories all he wants. But the DNC turned over all its key data to the FBI after it got hacked. And that info wasnt stored on a single server.
Kevin Poulsen
07.16.18 9:58 PM ET
Donald Trump turns to right-wing conspiracy theories when hes cornered, and he was cornered on Monday. Standing feet away from Vladimir Putin at a press conference following their Helsinki tete-a-tete, a reporter challenged Trump to condemn Putin for Russias election interference, in front of the world.Instead, the world watched as the President of the United States took Putins side against his own Justice Department and his own intelligence agencies, and launched into a rambling discourse about Hillary Clintons emails and a supposedly missing DNC server that hides the truth about Putins innocence.
The server is saying shut up.
The server Trump is obsessed with is actually 140 servers, most of them cloud-based, which the DNC was forced to decommission in June of 2016 while trying to rid its network of the Russian GRU officers working to help Trump win the election, according to the figures in the DNCs civil lawsuit against Russia and the Trump campaign. Another 180 desktop and laptop computers were also swapped out as the DNC raced to get the organization back on its feet and free of Putins surveillance.
Its true that the FBI doesnt have the DNCs computer hardware. Agents didnt sweep into DNC headquarters, load up all the equipment and leave Democrats standing stunned beside empty desks and dangling cables. Theres a reason for that, and it has nothing to do with a deep state conspiracy to frame Putin.
Trump and his allies are capitalizing on a basic misapprehension of how computer intrusion investigations work. Investigating a virtual crime isnt a like investigating a murder. The Russians didnt leave DNA evidence on the server racks and fingerprints on the keyboards. All the evidence of their comings and goings was on the computer hard drives, and in memory, and in the ephemeral network transmissions to and from the GRUs command-and-control servers.
When cyber investigators respond to an incident, they capture that evidence in a process called imaging. They make an exact byte-for-byte copy of the hard drives. They do the same for the machines memory, capturing evidence that would otherwise be lost at the next reboot, and they monitor and store the traffic passing through the victims network. This has been standard procedure in computer intrusion investigations for decades. The images, not the computers hardware, provide the evidence.
snip//
Theres a final bit of evidence that the FBI got what it wanted from the DNC, and it was filed in the U.S. District Court in Washington DC last Friday: 29-pages of inside details showing exactly how and when the GRUs hackers moved through the DNCs network on their mission to help Trump.
If the president really wants to know what the DNC server is saying, its all in the indictment against Putins hackers. He just has to listen.
superpatriotman
(6,247 posts)There's a Pakistani guy running around with this server and we need to see what's on it.
WTF?
Tommy_Carcetti
(43,157 posts)Ligyron
(7,622 posts)llmart
(15,535 posts)who doesn't understand technology other than how to do a tweet.
What an ignoramus!
ToxMarz
(2,166 posts)And these carefully crafted talking points are being fed to Trump because they will resonate with their "common sense wisdom".
yuiyoshida
(41,829 posts)He says, "MR. President, STFU and pay your damn dinner bill! "
Maeve
(42,279 posts)And remember, the TreasonWeasel still talks about Hillary 'acid washing' her emails because he can't tell computers from jeans.
babylonsister
(171,042 posts)smirkymonkey
(63,221 posts)He sounds like a complete moron, as usual.
HipChick
(25,485 posts)panader0
(25,816 posts)He said server so many times I lost count. No answer to the question, just server, server, server.
ET Awful
(24,753 posts)may or may not have had in place and how it was engineered, stored, etc.
Wounded Bear
(58,618 posts)Roy Rolling
(6,911 posts)Trump is hopelessly ignorant about computers and cyber warfare. Just tell him the server was deported back to Russia. That should keep him busy for a while.
B Stieg
(2,410 posts)Another of your important and informative posts. Digital computing IS the new battleground and, potentially, locus for the next World War.