Notorious Hacker Makes 'Bombshell' Claim: "I Got Inside Hillary's Completely Unsecured Server"

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 05/04/2016 23:33 -0400
Guccifer
In a dramatic development that could lead to renewed focus on Hillary Clinton's email server scandal, NBC reports that the Romanian hacker who first exposed Hillary Clinton's private email address is making a "bombshell" new claim: that he also gained access to the former Secretary of State's "completely unsecured" server.
"It was like an open orchid on the Internet," Marcel Lehel Lazar, who is better known by his handle Guccifer which he used when he first unveiled the formerly unknown domain name of Hillary personal server one year ago, told NBC News in an exclusive interview from a prison in Bucharest. "There were hundreds of folders."

Cynthia McFadden, right, with the Romanian hacker Guccifer in Romania
As previously reported, Lazar was extradited last month from Romania to the United States to face charges he hacked political elites, including Gen. Colin Powell, a member of the Bush family, and former Clinton advisor Sidney Blumenthal.
NBC further reports that according to a source with knowledge of the probe into Clinton's email setup told NBC News that with Guccifer in U.S. custody, investigators fully intend to question him about her server.
To this point Lazar, 44, has not provided documentation to back up his claims, nor has he released anything on-line supporting his allegations, as he had frequently done with past hacks. The FBI's review of the Clinton server logs showed no sign of hacking, according to a source familiar with the case.
Brian Fallon, national press secretary for Clinton's presidential campaign, said Guccifer's claims were baseless. "There is absolutely no basis to believe the claims made by this criminal from his prison cell," said Fallon. "In addition to the fact that he offers no proof to support his claims, his descriptions of Secretary Clinton's server are inaccurate. It is unfathomable that he would have gained access to her emails and not leaked them the way he did to his other victims.
"We have received no indication from any government agency to support these claims, nor are they reflected in the range of charges that Guccifer already faces and that prompted his extradition in the first place," Fallon added. "And it has been reported that security logs from Secretary Clinton's email server do not show any evidence of foreign hacking."
That strawman, of course, now puts Hillary in harms way as it redoubles attention on a scandal that many had decided was likely going to blow over. All that Trump will have to do now is find confirmation that Lazar is telling the truth and suddenly Clinton's email transgressions will get a renewed lease on life at the worst possible moment, just as a federal judge opened the door to interviewing Hillary Clinton as part of a review into her use of a private email server while secretary of State.
All this is happening just as as Hillary thought she had managed to put her email scandals behind her.
According to The Hill, Judge Emmet Sullivan of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia laid out the ground rules for interviewing multiple State Department officials about the emails, with an eye toward finishing the depositions in the weeks before the party nominating conventions.
Clinton herself may be forced to answer questions under oath, Sullivan said, though she is not yet being forced to take that step.
“Based on information learned during discovery, the deposition of Mrs. Clinton may be necessary,” Sullivan said in an order on Wednesday. [READ THE ORDER BELOW] Discovery is the formal name for the evidence-gathering process, which includes depositions.
“If plaintiff believes Mrs. Clinton’s testimony is required, it will request permission from the Court at the appropriate time.”

In his order, Sullivan pointed to revelations from the emails appearing to show officials trying to evade demands of FOIA.

In one email, for instance, Mull told Abedin that Clinton’s emails “would be subject to FOIA requests” if she used a department-issued BlackBerry, even though her identity would remain secret. Abedin responded that the idea “doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.”

In February, Sullivan ruled that the evidence-gathering process could proceed, and the two sides have been haggling since then.

Sullivan had previously suggested that Clinton could be forced to respond to questions, but his order on Wednesday offered the clearest indication that it remains a real possibility.

The order comes in the course of a lawsuit from conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch, and leaves open the possibility that Clinton will be forced to answer detailed questions on the eve of her formal selection as the Democratic presidential nominee about her creation of the server.
While it is unclear yet if Hillary will be deposed, Sullivan ordered at least six current and former State Department employees to answer questions from Judicial Watch, which has filed multiple lawsuits over the Clinton email case. Among these are longtime Clinton aide Huma Abedin, former chief of staff Cheryl Mills, under secretary for management Patrick Kennedy, former executive secretary Stephen Mull and Bryan Pagliano, the IT official believed to be responsible for setting up and maintaining the server. The judge also ordered the State Department to prepare a formal answer
about Clinton’s emails. Donald Reid, a senior security official, may
also be asked to answer questions, if Judicial Watch so decides.
More importantly, that process is scheduled to be wrapped up within eight weeks, putting the deadline in the final week of June, and well ahead of the presidential election.
* * *
Judicial Watch brought suit against the State Department under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) in an effort to bring Abedin’s emails to light. The lawsuit has since evolved into a battleground over Clinton’s use of the private server.
Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton called Wednesday’s order “a significant victory for transparency and accountability,” and promised that it would shine a light on Clinton’s email practices.
“Judicial Watch will use this discovery to get all of the facts behind Hillary Clinton’s and the Obama State Department’s thwarting of FOIA so that the public can be sure that all of the emails from her illicit email system are reviewed and released to the public as the law requires,” he said in a statement.
* * *
Any deposition would surely roil the presidential race and force her campaign to confront the issue, which has dogged her for a year. Once again, this is precisely what Trump will pounce on and will be sure to make it the centerpiece of all his upcoming debates with

See court documents here:
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-05-04/notorious-hacker-makes-bombshell-claim-i-got-inside-hillarys-completely-unsecured-se

'Easily & Repeatedly’: Romanian hacker on gaining access to Hillary Clinton’s server

Published time: 5 May, 2016 04:27Edited time: 5 May, 2016 04:29

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U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton © Jim Young / Reuters

The Romanian hacker, “Guccifer” said breaching former secretary of state Hillary Clinton’s personal server in early 2013 was easy and repeatable. Separately, a federal Judge said he may call on Clinton to testify in a records case. 

 Gruccifer says he has 2 gigabytes of Hillary data hidden. "Too hot" & deals w/ national security

“For me, it was easy…easy for me, for everybody,” Marcel Lehel Lazar, who goes by the moniker “Guccifer,” told Fox News in an exclusive interview from a Virginia jail where he is being held.
Lazar, 44, is the hacker who first exposed Hillary Clinton’s private email address. Her server held nearly 2,200 emails containing information now deemed classified, and another 22 designated as “Top Secret.”
Lazar was extradited from Romania to the United States last month to face charges for hacking the email accounts of political elites, including General Colin Powell, a member of the Bush family, and former Clinton advisor Sidney Blumenthal. It was Clinton’s friendship with Blumenthal and her “completely unsecured” server that gave Lazar access to the secretary of state’s email.
“It was like an open orchid on the Internet,” Lazar told NBC News in an interview earlier this year when he was in prison in Bucharest. “There were hundreds of folders.”
Lazar alleges he compromised Blumental’s AOL account in March of 2013 and then used that as a stepping stone to Clinton’s server, which he said he accessed “like twice,” though he described the contents as “not interest[ing] to him at the time.”
“I was not paying attention. For me, it was not like the Hillary Clinton Server, it was like an email server she and others were using with political voting stuff,” Lazar told Fox.
Lazar gave Fox and NBC News no proof to back his claims and would not provide copies of the emails that he says he downloaded.
Lazar told Fox that he guessed Blumenthal’s security question after doing extensive research on the web. Once inside Blumenthal’s account, he saw dozens of messages from Clinton’s email address.
“For examples, when Sidney Blumenthal got an email, I checked the email pattern from Hillary Clinton, from Colin Powell, from anyone else to find out the originating IP. …When they send a letter, the email header is the originating IP usually,” Lazar explained.
“Then I scanned with an IP scanner,” he added.
An IP, or Internet Protocol address, is a unique numerical label assigned to each device (e.g., computer, printer) that serves two functions – as identification for host or network interface, as well as for location addressing. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, said “a name indicates what we seek. An address indicates where it is. A route indicates how to get there.”
Lazar alleges that he came across evidence indicating others were on the Clinton server as well.
“As far as I remember, yes, there were …up to 10, like, IPs from other parts of the world,” he told Fox.
Democratic presidential frontrunner Hillary Clinton has maintained that her server was not compromised, telling Andrew Mitchell of MSNBC on Tuesday that she had no indication that her server had been breached by foreign hackers.
Her campaign office issued a statement responding to Lazar’s account
“There is absolutely no basis to believe the claims made by this criminal from his prison cell. In addition to the fact he offers no proof to support his claims, his descriptions of Secretary Clinton’s server are inaccurate,” said the Clinton campaign. “It is unfathomable that he would have gained access to her emails and not leaked them the way he did to his other victims.”
A source with knowledge of the probe into the email setup told NBC News that investigators fully intend to question Lazar about Clinton’s server now that he is in US custody.
Lazar faces trial on September 12 in the Eastern District of Virginia. He has pleaded not guilty to a nine-count federal indictment for alleged hacking crimes in the US.
He told Fox that he wants to cooperate with the US government and alleges he has hidden two gigabytes of data that is “too hot” and “it is a matter of national security.”
A federal judge told The Associated Press on Wednesday that he may order Clinton to testify under oath about whether she used the private email server to evade public records disclosures.
US District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan signed an order granting a request from the conservative legal advocacy group Judicial Watch to question six current and former State Department staffers about the creation and purpose of the private email system. Those on the list include former chief of staff Cheryl Mills, deputy chief of staff Huma Abedin, and Undersecretary Patrick Kennedy.
Judicial Watch filed a Freedom of Information Act request in 2013 seeking records related to Abedin’s outside work as a paid consultant for Clinton’s charitable foundation, and a financial firm with ties to the Clintons. The question at hand is whether a State Department search, which failed to find thousands of emails Clinton exchanged with her aids, including Abedin, using private email addresses, was thorough enough. The State Department says those emails were unavailable at the time of the request.
Also to testify is former State Department IT staffer Bryan Pagliano, who installed and maintained Clinton’s server. Pagliano has been granted immunity by the Department of Justice for cooperating with the FBI in its ongoing criminal investigation.
Depending on what might be learned from those depositions over the next eight weeks, Judge Sullivan in his order said a sworn deposition from Hillary Clinton “may be necessary.”
More than three dozen civil lawsuits have been filed over public records requests related to Clinton’s time as secretary of state from 2009 to 2013, including one filed by the AP.