Hacker Guccifer 2.0, who claimed to have stolen the Democratic National Committee (DNC) mails –including that of Hillary Clinton – just before the US presidential elections in 2016, is reportedly a front for Kremlin's intelligence team known as GRU (Main directorate of the general staff of the Russian Armed Forces).
The crucial evidence regarding the GRU connection was unearthed by Federal Bureau of Intelligence (FBI) agents while tracking IP address of posts on social media platforms by Guccifer 2.0, reported The Daily Beast.
Guccifer 2.0 has reportedly been under the scanner soon after the hacker confessed to having breached the DNC network and sent the confidential information to WikiLeaks. Guccifer 2.0 began releasing the emails in July 2016, months before the US presidential elections. Many believe that the email leak was the primary reason for Hillary Clinton's upset loss to Donald Trump.
Since then, Guccifer 2.0 has been very active online through blogs on WordPress, posts on Twitter and other social media platforms. In all the posts, the hacker claimed to be a Romanian and that the moniker Guccifer 2.0 was a tribute to the national idol Marcel Lazăr Lehel, who shot to notoriety after hacking computers of famous artists and politicians in 2013.
Roger Stone, who was one of the advisors of Donald Trump campaign, had openly claimed that he had contacted Guccifer 2.0. Stone had stated that the hacker was a native of Romania and urged critics to not to link the DNC hacking to Russia.
Many private and government security agencies in the USA were not convinced with Guccifer 2.0's backstory. Now, FBI officials have found a crucial evidence that suggests Guccifer 2.0 is not a Romanian, but a GRU agent or a team of officers.
The FBI officials have been working for more than two years conducting forensic tracing of online footprints of Guccifer 2.0, who happened to use Elite VPN service that hid the original IP address and always pointed to some server in France, reports said.
But, a slip up by a GRU official has revealed the original identity of the hacker. The agent apparently logged in to an American social media company website with the VPN service off and US Federal agents were quick to get hold of the original IP address, which they traced to the GRU's headquarters on Grizodubovoy Street in Moscow.
The news of FBI's new finding comes just a month after special counsel Robert Mueller, who is leading the probe into the alleged meddling in the US presidential election, charged 13 Russians in the case. Mueller's report also accused Internet Research Agency, which apparently used social media platforms to illegally promote Donald Trump's presidential campaign and also ran fake propaganda on his opponent Hillary Clinton. But, there was no direct accusation on Kremlin's intelligence agencies for meddling in the presidential election.
Now, in the light of the new evidence, Mueller has reportedly decided to rope in the FBI officials who cracked the Guccifer 2.0 origin to broaden the scope of the investigation. Many believe that it would even lead to the doorstep of the White House.
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