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> There was evidence that some of the leaked emails were subtly altered to make them look worse

This is a lie. The emails were cryptographically signed, they have not been altered.




No, not all of the emails were cryptographically signed.


But the majority, including many of the most damaging ones, were signed.


>The majority...many

Notice I never said all or even most of the emails were altered.

That some of them may have been subtly altered was one point of my argument.


If an email that wasn't part of the public debate was altered, who cares? The simple fact is that, of all the emails that were covered by the media, the Clinton campaign was unable to point to a single one and say it was altered.


It looks like a very large number of the emails from podesta's inbox weren't signed. I have seen no evidence that all or even most of the emails that were part of the public discourse were actually signed.


Let's not pretend cryptographic signing of emails makes them immune to tampering. This makes it essentially a guarantee that they were not modified between Point A and Point B but that's about it.

I'm not saying they were or weren't modified nor am I saying it's even a good theory they were modified but we shouldn't make cryptographic signing sound more capable than it is.


? Can you explain? My understanding is that the signatures are still on the dumped emails and that one purpose of digital signatures is non repudiation - essentially immunity to tampering.


The most obvious method of attack is to steal the email server's private key. Something a state level attacker is probably capable of.

There were a few other methods of attack proposed when this first came out. The most likely was the vulnerability of 1024 bit RSA that was used here. There are concerns that 1024 bit RSA may be vulnerable to well financed attackers.


Has anybody alleged that the private key was stolen or cracked? Can you cite anything at all or is this just conspiracy theory?


It's not a conspiracy theory because I'm not alleging it happened, but it is likely something that the Russian government is capable of.

Given that very real possibility, the digital signatures aren't ironclad proof, which is what the poster above was saying.




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