The Guccifer Affair - M.N.: Doesn't it smell like the Russian Intelligence operation with the intent to derail Mrs. Clinton's candidacy?

M.N.: Doesn't it smell like the Russian Intelligence operation with the intent to derail Mrs. Clinton's candidacy? It has some similarities with the Snowden affair: to hack and collect the information and then to use a "third party" - a patsy as a cover and presumable source. How easy is it to "guess the answers" to security questions based on the published biographical data? Did the unemployed cab driver have the opportunity and resources to process the enormous amount of information on a significant number of targets to ferret out these clues? What is the significance that "the hacker's IP address was traced to Russia"? Apparently this question remains open. Was it a deliberate trace, a "signature"? 
"The FBI's review of the Clinton server logs showed no sign of hacking, according to a source familiar with the case." 
I think, the main question is, should Mrs. Clinton be held responsible for using a personal email server, which she thought will be more secure and what so many other officials did (hacking attacks on State Department, White House, etc., etc. confirm this line of thought) if the allegations of security breach is the product of foreign intelligence operation and the attempt to interfere with the American elections?

• Source: No 'coincidence' Romanian hacker Guccifer extradited amid Clinton probe | Fox News
• Hacker 'Guccifer' extradited from Romania, appears in U.S. court | Reuters
• Guccifer - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
• Guccifer - Google Search

Source: No 'coincidence' Romanian hacker Guccifer extradited amid Clinton probe

Former law enforcement and cyber security experts said the hacker, whose real name is Marcel Lehel Lazar, could – now that he’s in the U.S. – help the FBI make the case that Clinton’s email server was compromised by a third party, one that did not have the formal backing and resources of a foreign intelligence service such as that of Russia, China or Iran. 

[M.N.: What about the informal "backing and resources of a foreign intelligence service such as that of Russia, China or Iran"?]... 

The indictment went on to note that using his alias of Guccifer on Blumenthal’s account, “Lazar attempted to conceal his identity by accessing the account from a proxy server located in Russia.”... 

In early 2013, news outlets including Russia Today and The Smoking Gun published memos from Guccifer, with excerpts of exchanges between Blumenthal and Hillary Clinton about Libya including details following the 2012 Benghazi terrorist attack... 

Rosca emphasized that, “Guccifer has no programming skills and guessed passwords of prominent public figures after reading their biographies.” These included books written by Hillary Clinton, Colin Powell and former president George W. Bush, who were also victimized by Guccifer’s hacking.     

“[Lazar] is a simple and delusional man who has a conspiratorial streak and perhaps wasn’t aware of the damage he was causing. His wife and daughter are back in Romania worrying about him and they have not received a phone call yet since he has been in the U.S.”

Rosca said Lazar also claimed to have stashed “unpublished hacked material in the cloud, some of it relating to the Middle East. … He said he was expecting to collaborate with U.S. security services when the time is right. Presumably that would be now.”... 

Hosko, who is not part of the current email probe, read the Guccifer indictment and told Fox News that Guccifer’s technical skills and intent “show the relative ease of getting very close to someone in a high place in government. Not only Hillary Clinton, but Colin Powell and George W. Bush. … It’s important on a couple of levels. Here is an individual in a relatively poor Eastern European country who was able to intrude on sensitive emails about activities in Benghazi.” 

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On March 20, 2013, USA Today reported that Guccifer had successfully hacked the e-mail account of former aide to president Bill Clinton, Sidney Blumenthal.^[8] He distributed private memos sent to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton involving recent events in Libya, including the September 11, 2012 Benghazi attack.^[9] Before distributing the memos, he copied and pasted the text into his own new documents, then reformatted them with pink backgrounds and Comic Sans font.^[9] The hacker's IP address was traced to Russia, however there was no certainty as to whether this was his actual location or whether he had used a proxy to hide his true location... 

His hacking tools consisted of a desktop computer, a cellphone, an internet connection and lots of patience and persistence. He used the simple technique of finding personal information about his victims online and then using this to guess the correct answers to security questions. At the time of his arrest, Guccifer was an unemployed taxi driver.^[14]

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When pressed by NBC News, Lazar, 44, could provide no documentation to back up his claims, nor did he ever release anything online 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."