In January 2020, the little-known Area 1 IT company of American origin published a short report about how hackers tried to access computers of Ukrainian Burisma gas production company. Russia was appointed responsible for the cyber attack. The entire evidence, as usual, was only made up around the Russians use to do so, and only Russian hackers necessarily needed Hunter Biden compromised. Why should Burisma computers have discrediting evidence to a son of the ex-VP of the U.S.? Read about it in one of my previous investigations here.

After the publication of a minor report with absolutely unfounded accusations, all U.S. media sympathetic to Democrats reported to the public about Trump's ties to Russian hackers and the Russian government. Naturally, no “independent” American journalist was confused that this report and its authors were tied to the main beneficiary of this scandal – the Democratic Party of the United States.

Oren Falcowitz, the Area 1 CEO, is a donor of the Democrats as well as a cyber security consultant for Biden's campaign. He was previously an employee of the US Cyber Command and the NSA. Moreover, the Director of Research and Development in Area 1 is John Morgan, the “full-time” Democrat, who is a member of the New Hampshire State Senate (the 23rd constituency), and before that was a long-term contractor of the U.S. Department of Defense. Unfortunately, none of the America’s “journalism bests“ paid attention to these smocking barrels.

The fact is that the whole story happened on the eve of Trump's impeachment vote in the U.S. Senate, and Democrats urgently needed to come up with new “evidence” of the U.S. President's collusion with Russia. A whole operation was developed. But as we now know, it didn't do. The Senate has removed all suspicions from Trump.

In the United States, such interference in political processes could have serious legal consequences. Therefore, Democrats, having used their connections in the State Department and the intelligence community, engaged the Ukrainian security services and their hackers to simulate an attack on Burisma. Most likely, they created fraudulent sites and letters for a phishing attack and tried to leave “Russian traces”, which were then referred to in Area 1. For example, the report says that hackers used resources of Yandex, the Russian IT-giant, as a service for sending phishing mails. It was enough for a closely affiliated Area 1.

Meanwhile, any independent expert would confirm that this looks absolutely unconvincing, and it is absurd to draw conclusions about anyone’s responsibility on such grounds. In principle, all accusations and arguments of high-profile hacking against China, Iran, Russia, North Korea are based on assumptions, guesses, and etc.

Ukrainian propaganda media, such as Inforesist and Gromadske, were again among the first to notify their readers about the alleged cyber attack on Burisma. Then the Ukrainian police got involved, which started investigations regarding the fact of attacks and even requested assistance from the FBI. Since then, however, no one has heard anything about the outcome and is unlikely to ever hear.

Interestingly, Burisma itself stayed away from all this media noise and did not even confirm its servers had been hacked. Karina Zlachevskaya, the directors board member, and daughter to Nikolai Zlachevski? the owner of the company, refused to comment on the incident.
As for Ukraine, this influence operation can be seen as another episode of the country's interference in U.S. domestic political processes, along with the disclosure of Yanukovych's secret bank.