Guccifer 2.0 Game Over – Year End Review
Guccifer 2.0 Game Over – Year End Review Adam Carter – DisObedient Media
It’s almost two years since I started investigating Guccifer 2.0.
Since then, largely thanks to several other independent researchers and their contributions, much has been discovered. The purpose of this article is to go back over all of the discoveries made during the last two years, as well as the various challenges received, and to provide an up-to-date status on the validity of different areas of research into Guccifer 2.0. The articles and findings at issue are as follows:
- Guccifer 2.0’s First Documents
- NGP-VAN Archive Study
- CF.7z Archive Study
- Language Analysis
- Blogging & Social Media Activity
- Potential Ties To DCLeaks
- E-Mail Suggesting Operations In Us Time Zone
- Loaded For Guccifer – UCT +3
- West Coast Fingerprints
- Impact Of Documents Released
- Guccifer 2.0’s Russian Fingerprints
- Determination To Attribute Self To WikiLeaks, DCLeaks, etc.
- CrowdStrike’s Absence Of Evidence
- Mueller’s Indictment
- GRU Frames Russia & Manufactures Evidence To Support CrowdStrike?
Guccifer 2.0’s First Documents
The files that Guccifer 2.0 initially pushed to reporters appear to have been constructed through a process that involved them being deliberately tainted with Russian metadata, a Russian stylesheet entry and in some cases embedded Russian error messages.
- In February 2017, the first major discovery relating to this (that several of Guccifer 2.0’s documents contained identical RSIDs) was made and reported on by u/tvor_22 in the article “Russia and WikiLeaks: The Case of the Gilded Guccifer.”
- The Nation, while facing pressure to retract their article referencing Forensicator’s NGP-VAN research called in an independent expert whom, while technically competent, did make some claims about RSIDs in relation to observations made on Guccifer 2.0’s early RTF file releases. The challenge here though was based on inaccurate assumptions. (We know this because we actually tested the assumptions and ultimately showed that objections raised here were unsubstantive.)
