5 ms·

This sounds terribly amateurish, and even unfair. I have a hard time believing that the 40-50 other software forensics experts didn't recognise ASCII in hex, o

This sounds terribly amateurish, and even unfair. I have a hard time believing that the 40-50 other software forensics experts didn't recognise ASCII in hex, or bother converting these files even if they didn't. If I understand correctly, he only analysed a tiny proportion of the data. Junk or not, it doesn't disprove that the remaining majority held key evidence. He "determined that nothing in the file was related to the 2020 presidential election". What is "determined" here? It sounds like this was more of a gaming of the system than it was a forensic investigation. There must be an awful lot missing here. Edit: Having read the full report now, I am of the opinion that this was a(n attempted) fraudulent competition by a wealthy moron, exploited by an unscrupulous parasite with the good fortune of misleading arbitrators into a skewed perception of the competition terms that guaranteed his success. Both of them acted disgracefully; this should have been a criminal matter dealing with the fraud, and the other hack shouldn't have a dime to show for it.

carlmr 3y ago
All the files were modified post election. The files he did check where all just meaningless lists of IP addresses in RTF documents.
- jongjong 3y ago
  How can you say that a list of IP addresses is meaningless without investigating who was behind them? There can be a lot of information there. The idea that someone would set up some kind of hacker convention and offer a reward for hundreds of experts to parse through gigabytes of random fake data that they intentionally created sounds beyond insane. What is the motive for that? I didn't even hear about this convention, so it can't be a PR stunt... It's just not believable. If that's where we're at, we might as well believe the majority of conspiracy theories which are less far-fetched than this.
  - carlmr 3y ago
    >What is the motive for that? Isn't that obvious? Create enough smoke to make people believe there's a fire.
- HaroldBolt78 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - carlmr 3y ago
    There are, but then you have to show in court how you got these files. Which since they were created just before the competition, apparently wasn't possible. Even if someone did all you said and accidentally changed the file modification date, you should have some original data source with an earlier file modification date.
paulgb 3y ago
As I read it, his forensics was unsophisticated (who trusts file modified dates on files that have clearly been copied?), but his analysis was enough to give him the confidence to call Lindell’s bluff, which none of the others did. The author thought that Lindell was sending everyone on a wild goose chase with irrelevant data, and Lindell couldn’t defend against that claim in arbitration.
- HaroldBolt78 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - paulgb 3y ago
    Due to a history of dishonest promotional contests, contest law in the US is actually pretty strict. It doesn’t surprise me at all that if you put on a contest and misrepresent some aspect of it, the court will not be happy. > his witnesses gave conflicting answers to critical questions like “What exactly was in the data you provided to the experts and how was it related to the November 2020 U.S. presidential election?” (As to “his lawyers must have really screwed up”, given what I know about Lindell, my priors on that are high)
tehwebguy 3y ago
This is practically the best possible outcome actually: a scammer loses $5M for staging a fraudulent contest.
SkyMarshal 3y ago
> Junk or not, it doesn't disprove that the remaining majority held key evidence. That’s not how proof works. The burden of proof is on Lindell to prove his claims true, not Zeidman or the public to disprove some unsubstantiated claims like this.
satisfice 3y ago
This isn’t steganography, man. Lindell produces files from somewhere (unspecified) of some (unspecified) nature and without explanation makes a claim that they show evidence of crime X. The goal in this situation cannot be to prove that there is no data here related to crime X. That would be equivalent to proving that a seemingly random string of bits cannot possibly encode a secret message. The goal is to show that it is implausible that the files could represent evidence of crime X, given the circumstances in which the data was encountered. Not only did the author accomplish this, but the real telling point is that, with five million dollars at stake, Lindell could produce no substantial rebuttal from any of those 50 other hackers, nor any other expert who could say words to the effect that “this is PCAP data even though it is in a format never before associated with PCAPs” or “the reason the data appears to be recently created is [plausible explanation X]”

carlmr 3y ago

All the files were modified post election. The files he did check where all just meaningless lists of IP addresses in RTF documents.

jongjong 3y ago
How can you say that a list of IP addresses is meaningless without investigating who was behind them? There can be a lot of information there. The idea that someone would set up some kind of hacker convention and offer a reward for hundreds of experts to parse through gigabytes of random fake data that they intentionally created sounds beyond insane. What is the motive for that? I didn't even hear about this convention, so it can't be a PR stunt... It's just not believable. If that's where we're at, we might as well believe the majority of conspiracy theories which are less far-fetched than this.
- carlmr 3y ago
  >What is the motive for that? Isn't that obvious? Create enough smoke to make people believe there's a fire.
HaroldBolt78 3y ago
[flagged]
- carlmr 3y ago
  There are, but then you have to show in court how you got these files. Which since they were created just before the competition, apparently wasn't possible. Even if someone did all you said and accidentally changed the file modification date, you should have some original data source with an earlier file modification date.

paulgb 3y ago

As I read it, his forensics was unsophisticated (who trusts file modified dates on files that have clearly been copied?), but his analysis was enough to give him the confidence to call Lindell’s bluff, which none of the others did. The author thought that Lindell was sending everyone on a wild goose chase with irrelevant data, and Lindell couldn’t defend against that claim in arbitration.

HaroldBolt78 3y ago
[flagged]
- paulgb 3y ago
  Due to a history of dishonest promotional contests, contest law in the US is actually pretty strict. It doesn’t surprise me at all that if you put on a contest and misrepresent some aspect of it, the court will not be happy. > his witnesses gave conflicting answers to critical questions like “What exactly was in the data you provided to the experts and how was it related to the November 2020 U.S. presidential election?” (As to “his lawyers must have really screwed up”, given what I know about Lindell, my priors on that are high)

tehwebguy 3y ago

This is practically the best possible outcome actually: a scammer loses $5M for staging a fraudulent contest.

SkyMarshal 3y ago

> Junk or not, it doesn't disprove that the remaining majority held key evidence. That’s not how proof works. The burden of proof is on Lindell to prove his claims true, not Zeidman or the public to disprove some unsubstantiated claims like this.

satisfice 3y ago

This isn’t steganography, man. Lindell produces files from somewhere (unspecified) of some (unspecified) nature and without explanation makes a claim that they show evidence of crime X. The goal in this situation cannot be to prove that there is no data here related to crime X. That would be equivalent to proving that a seemingly random string of bits cannot possibly encode a secret message. The goal is to show that it is implausible that the files could represent evidence of crime X, given the circumstances in which the data was encountered. Not only did the author accomplish this, but the real telling point is that, with five million dollars at stake, Lindell could produce no substantial rebuttal from any of those 50 other hackers, nor any other expert who could say words to the effect that “this is PCAP data even though it is in a format never before associated with PCAPs” or “the reason the data appears to be recently created is [plausible explanation X]”