Crowdstrike cashes in

Remember Crowdstrike? It's the company that single-handedly thwarted Putin's hacker invasion, or something like that.
They've been on a winning streak.

Red hot cyber security start-up Crowdstrike has just put a $3bn valuation on its head after raising $200m in a Series E financing round.

Crowdstrike's valuation was only 1/6th the size two year's ago.
Just days later, Crowdstrike struck it big.

The company that helped chase Russian hackers out of the Democratic National Committee’s networks before the 2016 election will now be protecting government information held in computer clouds, the company said Thursday.

The cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike, which has assisted with many of the most high profile computer breaches of the past five years, received an authorization to operate on cloud-based government systems that are deemed “moderate impact level” under the government’s Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program, or FedRAMP, according to a news release.

Good for them. So why should we care if this company has landed a huge government contract?
We should care because of the countless political connections, and their suspicious involvement in the new rising Cold War with Russia.

russians-are-under-my-bed.jpg

The only source of the report of the DNC hack was a private company, Crowdstrike.

As far as we know, the FBI still has not examined the DNC server that Russia allegedly hacked.
There has been no corroboration or second opinion on who may have hacked the server. The only source for this claim is CrowdStrike, who began monitoring the DNC system on May 5th, 2016, according to DailyMail.com.
The DNC also reportedly paid $168,000 to CrowdStrike.

You might think that with so much dependent on this private organization, that there would be more attention paid to their record, background, and connections to the Democratic Party.

In April 2016, two months before the June report that alleged a Russian conspiracy, former President Barack Obama appointed Steven Chabinsky, the general counsel and chief risk officer for CrowdStrike, to the Commission on Enhancing National Cybersecurity.

It's hard to ignore how incredibly odd it is to leave critical evidence that effects a major foreign policy decision on a private firm that was hired out by the DNC. Making it even more odd is the response.

The problem with this story is that, like the Iraq-WMD mess, it takes place in the middle of a highly politicized environment during which the motives of all the relevant actors are suspect. Nothing quite adds up.
If the American security agencies had smoking-gun evidence that the Russians had an organized campaign to derail the U.S. presidential election and deliver the White House to Trump, then expelling a few dozen diplomats after the election seems like an oddly weak and ill-timed response.

Into this tense and politically-charged environment Crowdstrike has done a major "Oops!" concerning their hacking accusations regarding Russia.

U.S. cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike has revised and retracted statements it used to buttress claims of Russian hacking during last year's American presidential election campaign. The shift followed a VOA report that the company misrepresented data published by an influential British think tank.
In December, CrowdStrike said it found evidence that Russians hacked into a Ukrainian artillery app, contributing to heavy losses of howitzers in Ukraine's war with pro-Russian separatists.
VOA reported Tuesday that the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), which publishes an annual reference estimating the strength of world armed forces, disavowed the CrowdStrike report and said it had never been contacted by the company.
Ukraine's Ministry of Defense also has stated that the combat losses and hacking never happened.

In other words, Crowdstrike invented fake news to buttress their DNC hacking claim.
This is huge.

Even more suspicious, the Co-Founder of CrowdStrike Dmitri Alperovitch is a senior fellow on the anti-Russian Atlantic Council.
The Atlantic Council is the primary source of false, and eventually disproven hysterical accusations about Russia, that get picked up by the news media.
Even worse, the Atlantic Council is trying to lie us into a war against Russia, much like Bush/Cheney lied us into invading Iraq.

Paul Craig Roberts calls The Atlantic Council: The Marketing Arm of the Military/Security Complex.
Well, remember the very first Everyone-Is-A-Putin-Puppet article? The one using the web site Propornot? Well, people looked into that.

So, who's behind this poor attempt at shaping the narrative. Over the last week 2 independent researchers have both published their findings online. These 2 bits of research were both attempting to identify the clandestine group behind Prop or Not. The first bit of research was done using data forensics to identify the owners, and the second used linguistic analysis. Both pieces of research independently came to the conclusion that the main man behind Prop or Not is Atlantic Councils, Michael Weiss.
Michael Weiss is an author, the senior editor for The Daily Beast, a columnist for Foreign Policy, and a frequent national security contributor for CNN. He’s also editor-in-chief of The Interpreter, a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and co-chair of the Russia Studies Center at the Henry Jackson Society.

That's not the only "coincidence". There is also too close of ties to the Hillary campaign.

The firm’s CTO and co-founder, Dmitri Alperovitch, is a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, a think tank with openly anti-Russian sentiments that is funded by Ukrainian billionaire Victor Pinchuk, who also happened to donate at least $10 million to the Clinton Foundation.
In 2013, the Atlantic Council awarded Hillary Clinton it’s Distinguished International Leadership Award.

A Ukrainian oligarch who was a big donor to the Clinton campaign.
What a coincidence!
It's just a coincidence that a company who's founder has an anti-Russian political agenda, and very close ties to the pro-war Washington establishment, who then tells the warmongers exactly what they want to hear (even openly lying), gets rewarded with an enormous government contract.
A contract that will enable the company to keep telling us about the Russian hackers invasion.

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antitrust

NSS Labs has filed an antitrust lawsuit against CrowdStrike, Symantec, and ESET, alleging that the organizations have conspired to restrict independent product testing through AMTSO membership.
On Wednesday, the security product testing company's CEO, Vikram Phatak, said that the antitrust lawsuit relates to vendors which "are actively conspiring to prevent independent testing that uncovers product deficiencies to prevent consumers from finding out about them."

Among these vendors, Phatak claims, are CrowdStrike, Symantec, and ESET.

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dystopian's picture

Dmitri, Crowdstrike, the Atlantic Council, Hillary, the DNC, are all in it together. IMHO Crowdstrike and Dmitri bear as much responsibility for Russiagate as any body or entity. They are fascist F'rs. The entire 'hide the hard drive' BS fiasco is obviously because it held incriminating information. For our nation to base threats of WW III on Dmitri's word, a proven liar when it comes to falsely accusing Russia of wrong-doing is absolutely asinine and ridiculous. They are off their rockers at the top.

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We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.
Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.
both - Albert Einstein

snoopydawg's picture

@dystopian

that went missing during the FBI investigation? We know some of them were deliberately destroyed and when the FBI finally got around to interviewing Hillary that they didn't bother collecting her computers or phones. And that her lawyer, Cheryl Mills who had been given immunity was allowed to be present at the interview. Can the clown car hold anymore clowns?

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Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

@dystopian funded heavily (100 million)by google, or its parent company, according to this link.

http://www.jewishpress.com/indepth/columns/aaron-klein/quick-takes-15/20...

Eric Schmidt is (or was) president of the parent.

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dfarrah

It got the contract from Republican administration that it has accused of being in league with Russia to control elections.

Surely this was a sole source award not a competitive bid? Why would a Trump appointee do this? Utter incompetence?

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I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.

So Crowdstrike helped chase Russian hackers out of the DNC computers? Erh, ah, this was after the fact that Russian hackers got in. Good job. In article about contract, touted them in Sony hack. Again, the hackers got in. Crowdstrike simply blamed the North Koreans. Have no bookmark for article but their job as in DNC was to remove liablity by pointing at untouchable foreign actors. Hey, forget about hacking which revealed Bernie was cheated. Look Russians! Look North Koreans! We are innocent!!!

Does Crowdstrike actually have the smarts for preventative security measures and software? I get the feeling we will see press releases from them about how the Russians tried to hack the cloud data, but Crowdstrike chased them down and prevented the hacking.

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essays ever, gjohnsit.

In other words, Crowdstrike invented fake news to buttress their DNC hacking claim.
This is huge.

It really is huge. And the fact that the FBI never examined or had access to the DNC server means that there could be much more evidence of crime in the DNC's communications, besides the voter suppression and money laundering evidence in the emails released by Wikileaks, than has been made public. Even if there were evidence of Russian or other hacking, the DNC desperately didn't want the FBI to have access to their server.

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-It seems that there is an infinite market for any information that is Rusophobic in nature. Those who are creating this stuff are anti-Russia and realize the willing market to hear this junk, therefore this junk is gainfully propagated as truth.

- The recent release of exchanges between Clinton and Yeltsin released to the public have created an uproar in Russia. This is complete evidence that Yeltsin was a traitor to his country and Clinton took complete advantage of this in every case, for the single favor of financing Yeltsin's re-election. This was the ultimate meddling in an election by a foreign power. One has to wonder if US paranoia is caused by the observation that if Russia got Trump elected it would be the greatest payback in history. We screwed Russia by electing a total clown to office (Yeltsin), and then Russia repaid the favor by electing the ultimate clown to the US Presidency (Trump). There is no chance whatsoever that Russia put Trump in office, but they would have been justified in doing so.

- Rusophobia is geopolitical a huge mistake. Russia, China and the US are the most important countries in the world. I might include the EU, but it has no independent will and is therefore incapable as being a world actor. We are currently in a multipolar world. The US needs to wake up to this and define a stable relationship with the world. We are only 5% of the population and 15% of the worlds PPP-GDP, and decreasing every year. We do not have anything close to the clout required to dictate to the rest of the world. By demanding subservience the US is chasing away any good will. What will the world look like in 5-10 years. I think that the rest of the world will not look favorably towards the US. Between financial and military arrogance the US will wind up being no country's friend, except perhaps the UK, who are more than willing to double down on complete loss of empire. (Blaming Russia for Skripal poisoning is utterly irrational, but see my first point above.) Russia is positioned between the Far East, Europe and the Middle East, has infinite resources, a strong economy and a powerful state-of-the-art military. Wow, there is no way that the US can compete in the long run. The US is desperately trying to paint Russia as the bad guy. It's all projection. Where has the Russian Federation illegally invaded another country? or tortured? or hacked an election?, or overthrown a democratically elected government, or killed millions of civilians? Just who is the bad guy here?

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Capitalism has always been the rule of the people by the oligarchs. You only have two choices, eliminate them or restrict their power.

@The Wizard all of this?

After all, the yahoo came to Congress expecting it to bow to him.

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dfarrah

@dfarrah
Netanyahu is a family friend of Jared Kushner, how did Putin become the focus of foreign influence on Trump?

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@Linda Wood a bit on the intertubes (some of it appears to be true on this matter) and it is clear that Israel and prominent Jews have a huge role in the Russia insanity.

I'm not complaining about the post-gjohnsit is one of my favorites-but there are so many connections, who can keep up with it all?

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dfarrah

dervish's picture

@Linda Wood let alone tell the truth about it.

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"Obama promised transparency, but Assange is the one who brought it."

@The Wizard Russiagate has become big business. There is of course the extra billions upon billions generated for the defense industry with increasing budgets here and in Europe. This includes government monies for state sponsored anti-Russian propaganda groups.

And then down the line to "cyber security" companies, authors, media companies and figures, consultants, "insta experts", government grants to universities to do research and ferret out Russian propaganda, etc.

The prevasiveness has become utterly astonishing. A recent piece by a Tufts university prof. cautinoned that Putin will very well "hack the Boy Scouts". I am sure soon there will be merit badges for turning in your parents for reading Russian propaganda.

One of thee most important pernicioius aspects of Russiagate is that it has become the basis and foundation for the justification of censorship. And of course the censorship has gone way beyond anything Russian related but to even FaceBook literally closing down an article on the Kavanaugh nomination by long time "liberal" Think Progress.

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Thanks, gjohnsit!

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"Freedom is something that dies unless it's used." --Hunter S. Thompson

@bobswern post nowadays?

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dfarrah

@bobswern articles a lot.

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dfarrah

WheninRome's picture

@bobswern bobswern!

omg. I love bobswern! More bobswern!

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received a huge chunk of funding from Warburg Pincus (WP), of which Timothy Geithner is president. Also, they have common board members.

All roads seem to include the Clintons.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/bloggers/3511472/posts?page=22

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dfarrah

Bob In Portland's picture

One good thing about Crowdstrike is that they find what you want them to find.

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Bob In Portland's picture

One good thing about Crowdstrike is that they find what you want them to find.

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