Before we break out the rocket launchers in response to reports that Russian hackers have targeted the Ukrainian gas company Burisma, let’s consider the source of that information: a single cybersecurity start-up, whose founder is a Democrat and who won’t say anything about how he knows that the hacking actually happened.
The New York Times and the Washington Post on Monday reported that technology company Area 1, founded by Democratic donor Oren Falkowitz, has found that Burisma’s internal cyber system was breached by Russian hackers.
“In this instance, the hackers set up fake websites that mimicked sign-in pages of Burisma subsidiaries, and have been blasting Burisma employees with emails meant to look like they are coming from inside the company,” the New York Times story said.
There has yet to be any corroboration of this by Burisma (the seedy company at the center of President Trump’s impeachment, and which paid Joe Biden’s son Hunter hundreds of thousands of dollars for unknown services), Russia, or U.S. intelligence.
No, the only evidence that any breach occurred is an assertion by Falkowitz, who is trying to get his company, Area 1, off the ground and turn it into a leading cybersecurity firm.
In a brief phone interview on Tuesday, Falkowitz declined to tell me exactly how his firm would have identified the alleged hacking of Burisma.
He said that Area 1 has developed a “technology platform” that uses “sensors” to stop breaches that begin with phishing attempt, which take place when a bad actor sends fake emails with malware to an individual in order to gain access to internal systems.
I asked Falkowitz if he could identify the clients of his who would have benefited from Area 1’s service in this particular case involving Burisma. “We don’t comment on who our customers are,” he said.
I also asked if he could offer more information about the “sensors” that his firm uses to target phishing activity. Where are they? How did they retrieve any information relating to Burisma or Ukraine or Russia?
“I’m not going to get into that,” he said.
That’s fine, but then why should anyone take his word for it on the hacking of Burisma?
Nowhere in the New York Times story nor the Washington Post’s is it mentioned that Falkowitz is providing services to Democrats running for president at no charge. He told me on the phone that Area 1 is charging any candidate $1,337 per year, but campaign donation records show that he donated that exact same amount to the presidential campaigns of Elizabeth Warren and Cory Booker. (Falkowitz also gave money to Democratic Rep. Joe Kennedy and Republicans Will Hurd and John Kasich, though both Kasich and Hurd have been Trump critics.)
Maybe Russians really have breached Burisma’s internal systems. But I’m not going to take it as fact on the word of a single U.S.-based Democrat-run security firm which, for all we know, might have created this controversy as a publicity stunt.
