Iranian Hackers Compromised Roger Stone’s Email Eight Years After Russian Hackers Exfiltrated DNC Emails
DOJ unsealed the indictment against three Iranian hackers it accuses of targeting Donald Trump’s campaign (as well as a bunch of other victims, including one of his top State Department officials).
Perhaps the most remarkable detail is this.
On May 25, 2016, Russian hackers started exfiltrating the emails from the DNC that Trump and his rat-fucker would exploit to beat Hillary Clinton.
On May 23, 2024 — two days short of eight years, to the day — Iranian hackers first compromised one of two Roger Stone email accounts they hacked.
As noted, Trump waited to call the FBI, in part because Susie Wiles was worried the FBI would make them hand over their email server (as Hillary had done during the campaign where Trump beat her). As a result, Iranian hackers remained in the account of Victim 11 — from whom they stole the JD Vance vetting materials, among other things — for two months.
According to the indictment, Iranian hackers were in Roger Stone’s account (what must be his Hotmail account) for almost a month, from May 24 to June 20.
On June 15, the hackers used Roger’s account to try to hack another Trump account (probably Susie Wiles), though that failed, which may have led Microsoft to cop on, leading to the expulsion of hackers from the Hotmail account.
After they were kicked out of that account they got into his Gmail account, apparently for a day.
Now, I might allow myself to feel a touch of schadenfreude that Roger Stone has been victimized in the same kind of influence operation he exploited against Hillary.
Except for this: As I keep saying, one of the reasons this is worse — more dangerous — than what happened to Hillary is that these people are also trying to exact revenge for the killing of Qasem Soleimani. The indictment says that almost verbatim: One of the goals of this operation was to “steal information relating to current and former U.S. officials that could be used to advance the IRGC’s malign activities, including ongoing efforts to avenge the death of Qasem Soleimani.” The indictment describes that the hackers successfully targeted someone who played a key role in the Abraham Accords in Trump’s State Department, then started making travel reservations for the person using their stolen passport.
They’re not just using this information to affect the election. They’re using it to track people.
It turns out it was never fun and games.
Ah yes, what goes around comes around. “Très agréable”, as Google Translate would have me say, late on a Friday.
What strikes me is that the DOJ indictment says that one of the goals of the operation was to “steal information … that could be used to advance the IRGC’s malign activities, including ongoing efforts to avenge the death of Qasem Soleimani.””
Interesting, the mindset of the government there. Avenging said death is “malign”? Wasn’t that death, itself, a malign avengement? As this blog noted a few years back, it came at the tail end of a twenty year streak of horrid actions by the US: “Behind it all is a belief that the most powerful nation in the world shouldn’t have to tolerate any resistance to its power, and may break rules and norms — to say nothing of causing untold chaos in other places — to quash it. Purportedly sane mainstream politicians set the precedent that it was okay to commit war crimes as a misguided shortcut in defending America.”
https://www.emptywheel.net/2020/01/03/twenty-years-of-continuity/
Yes, it was never fun and games.
yeah, “malign” is a loaded word, emotional and opinion, not one that should be used in a legal document.
“Mala in se” is a bedrock principle of the Common Law categorisation of criminal activities, applying to conduct evil in itself and in its consequences and effects eg murder, rape, arson etc etc.
Malign or malignant are therefore words which have a venerable history of usage within criminal pleadings, court documents and judgments.
Plotting assassinations and extra-judicial killings are malign. Revenge, being a wild justice, is a malign consequence of malign acts.
Access to Susie Wiles account “until on or about August 13, 2024”? Lordy, that was after public reporting and comments by the campaign
Pretty sure the Wiles hack was unsuccessful. The main hack at the campaign is someone different. And the lawyer, who took a while to get cleaned out.
My mistake there.
Also my mistake that it’s their personal email and not a campaign email.
Judging from past experience, do any Trumpsters make a distinction?
Maybe # 11 is Caroline Wiles? Or Kimberly Guilfoyle?
And #12:
“Well, here’s another nice mess you’ve gotten me into, Stanley.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C0xR5CzMbmM
What I find interesting is the MSM’s reluctance to participate in the release of the materials. Unlike in 2016 where the next tranche of stolen materials was eagerly awaited, now none are willing to report on even relatively tame information like the op research into Vance. Hopefully this signals a new cautiousness being exercised by the editorial staff: A reluctance to be pawns in a wider game.
That said, I wonder whether the lesson has been learned, or rather, if it is related to the home team being hacked. What if the next time the same happens to the visiting side, the publications begin again in earnest?
At that time, we will be treated to a fluid interpretation of “newsworthy”.
I wonder if the MSM hasn’t been baited properly by other outlets.
The 2016 dossier having provenance related to Singer’s Free Beacon might have improved uptake.
Off topic but tangentially related: I swear the caliber of trolls lately has been pathetic.
As if this site would permit a username like “username” or “admin.”
Give it up and go find another site to harass.
I know I should be more incensed by the Iranians doing this, but all I can think is ‘play stupid games, win stupid prizes’.
Here’s where I admit my error in distrusting the authenticity of the stories of Trump’s team being hacked because I figured Stone was too smart to let it happen to his own accounts.
Would Stone have accepted and opened emails from Ginnie Thomas — a well-faked Ginnie Thomas? or a hacked Ginnie Thomas? O_o
Well, there ya go. Or from someone in one of his sex clubs, for that matter.
Failure of imagination on my part, for sure.
yes, yes he would. Because he’s not a computer expert and doesn’t check things. (I bet he still doesn’t know that you can check a link by mousing over it.)
Rayne,
Do you wonder if Ginnie has been influenced herself? I have been thinking about this non stop since J6. Most of the reading on Ginnie seems to imply she is heavily influenced by FB. Would it be hard to target her via FB w an influence campaign?
I recall FB ads from 10 years ago being able to get super duper granular, so much so they had to change the rules for discrimination because the ads were too targeted and started to discriminate protected classes. Why wouldn’t a foriegn (or domestic) actor be able to force feed all sorts of crazy 4chan boomer baiting falsehoods to a particular person or group of people? I am not sure if that is possible, but if I wanted to influence a particular person unregulated social media seems like a good place to start.