I just read the National Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center (NCCIC) Joint Accountability Report (JAR), JAR-16-20296, titled “GRIZZLY STEPPE – Russian Malicious Cyber Activity“, (whew), that is supposedly the PROOF that Russians influenced the 2016 Presidential election. You can read a copy of the report HERE.

In the famous words of Lt. Sulu of the Starship USS Enterprise, “Oh my“.

The majority of the report is a bunch of BOVINE EXCREMENT, to put it kindly.  It’s sad that this conglomeration of word salad is the best that all the 3-Letter Agencies, DHS, FBI, CIA, et al, could come up with.  If I were grading the report, I’d give it an “F”.

The bottom line of the report is that at least two individuals, one at the DNC, and the other, John Podesta, were tricked into divulging their email passwords to a bad guy and their emails were stolen.  This one sentence pretty much sums up all 13 pages of the report.

As to whether or not Putin was behind this, the report attributes the ‘hacking’ of the emails to “Russian civilian and military intelligence Services (RIS)“.  The report only IMPLIES that Russian Intelligence, may or may not have been responsible.  That’s a definite “sort of maybe” accusation of Putin’s involvement.  Sheesh, if you want to implicate the man, just say it.  “We have direct evidence that Vladimir Putin was responsible for authorizing the attacks”.  If the evidence is classified and cannot be publicly disclosed, just say so.  I’d be okay with that.

In order to puff up the length of the report, the “authors” put in a statement, “In foreign countries…” the bad guys did bad things. They needed to include “foreign” attacks to make the idea of Russian involvement more dramatic and ominous, as well as to make the report longer. These “foreign” attacks had nothing to do with the election controversy.

Here’s my summary analysis of the report:

1 page saying John Podesta and someone at the DNC got tricked into giving up their email passwords.  NO NEWS HERE.  They imply the Russians tricked them.

1 page consisting of two illustrations that tries to explain “phishing”.  A waste of a page

1 page which has a chart listing 48 viruses and malware that might be Russian related.  Only 2 of the 48 listed have any association with the election controversy.   A wast of a page.

1 page that has a code snippet of generic “Yara signature” code. This is a complete red herring because they don’t include the actual signature “string” which might point to something of substance.  I think someone put this in to try and bamboozle the layman reader because it looks all techie, but it describes absolutely nothing of any importance.  Another waste of a page.

8 pages of bloat that says don’t be an idiot like Podesta and teach your network administrators to do the job they are supposed to do.  Yet more wasted pages.

1 page that says how to contact the NCCIC.  After reading the report, this too is a waste of a page, if this is the best that they can come up with.

The report is 13 pages of puffery and very little of it is of any substance.

Just in case you don’t know what “phishing” is, it’s a scheme where a bad guy sends you an email that says there is a problem with one of your accounts and you need to log into this “special” website using your username and password to “fix” the problem. The report says “At least one targeted individual” stupidly clicked the links and gave up their personal information. Looks like John Podesta was “at least one” of those idiots. Once the bad guys had access to the accounts they downloaded the emails.  There is some inference that the bad guy did place a virus or malware into the user’s email account most likely to catch future password changes.

Supposedly the report is the EVIDENCE that led to the decision by the administration to expel 35 Russians from the US.

Don’t get me wrong on my position.  Stealing information is WRONG!  My criticism is of this poorly written report that was issued.  The Russian regime is still made up of bad guys who do bad things.

I believe we should only trust the Russians about as far as we can toss a bowl of Bosrscht.