Young Russian denies she aided election hackers: ‘I never work with douchebags’!

Selected excerpts from:

Young Russian denies she aided election hackers: ‘I never work with douchebags’!

The Guardian
Shaun Walker and Sam Thielman

January 6, 2017
 
"White House claims Alisa Shevchenko was involved in hacking the US election but in an interview she says authorities misinterpreted facts or were fooled.
...
After a week in which Russian interference in the election – apparently with the goal of helping Donald Trump to victory – has dominated the news agenda, Shevchenko has spoken out to decry the sanctions against her.

Shevchenko told the Guardian she was furious at her company’s inclusion on the list, and denied ever having knowingly worked for the Russian government. She communicated via encrypted email, from a location she said was “a wild countryside area a few hours away from Bangkok”.

In answers that were defiant, and occasionally abrasive, she decried the “insane level of hysteria around the entire ‘Russian hacking’ story”.

She suggested that the US authorities were guilty either of “a technically incompetent misinterpretation of the facts” or had been fooled by a “counterfeit in order to frame my company”. Those who could have had an interest in framing her could include competitors, US intelligence or Russian intelligence, with the goal of screening the real culprits, Shevchenko said.

“A young female hacker and her helpless company seems like a perfect pick for that goal. I don’t try to hide, I travel a lot, and am a friendly communicative person. And most importantly, I don’t have any big money, power or connections behind me to shrug off the blame. So really, it could be anyone.”

...

Shevchenko specialises in finding so-called “zero-days”, previously undisclosed software bugs that could leave companies vulnerable. “We have not only searched for bugs but exploited them, but only with the customer’s sanction,” she said. She said she never hired anyone she knew to have a criminal background for her companies.

Shevchenko said she had been approached repeatedly by people she believed to be from the Russian government. She insisted, however, that she had always rejected the advances. She said she had not been threatened or intimidated as a result.

A 2014 profile of Shevchenko in Russian Forbes magazine noted that she worked with DialogNauka, a Russian company that listed among its clients the Russian ministry of defence and parts of the security services. Questioned by the Guardian, she insisted that none of her own work for DialogNauka “was even remotely possible to use as a nation-state attacks supply”.

Shevchenko said she had turned down plenty of offers of work on ideological grounds: “I never work with douchebags. I only work with honest and open people that I feel good about.” Asked directly if she had ever worked on a government contract in any capacity, she answered “not that I know of”.

Shevchenko said ZOR was closed more than a year ago, because it was difficult and expensive to do the requisite public relations work required to drum up business. She now works as a “one-man army”, she said."

Please read rest of the article at https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jan/06/russian-hacker-putin-election-alisa-shevchenko

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