The hacking of HBO and the “Russian meddling” campaign

The recent leak of confidential HBO files by hackers calling themselves “Mr. Smith” has underscored the contrived and unsubstantiated character of the official narrative of alleged Russian hacking of the US elections.

The online publication of troves of HBO material by hackers demanding a multi-million-dollar ransom undercuts the claims of US intelligence agencies, transmitted uncritically by the media, that it was the Russian government, under the personal direction of President Vladimir Putin, that hacked into the computers of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and Hillary Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta and funneled politically damaging information to WikiLeaks for publication last summer.

Both the Russian government and WikiLeaks have repeatedly denied that Russia had any connection to the leak of Democratic emails, and neither the US government nor the media has, in the course of more than a year of anti-Russian agitation, produced any serious factual evidence to support their claims.

But endless reports by newspapers such as the New York Times and the Washington Post, citing unnamed intelligence and government sources and cyber theft “experts” linked to the CIA, FBI and other state agencies, have claimed that the hacking of the Democrats had to be the work of Russian intelligence agencies, in part because only the Russians are sufficiently sophisticated and diabolical to carry out such an operation.

The massive hack of HBO, however, is but the latest case demonstrating the proliferation of hacker groups all over the world that employ advanced technology and methodology to successfully attack giant corporations, which use the most expensive and…