Cybersecurity Consultant Was Outed for Ties to Moscow, So Why Is He Meeting Top Trump Officials in D.C.? https://www.thedailybeast.com/cybersecurity-consultant-was-outed-for-ties-to-moscow-so-why-is-he-meeting-top-trump-officials-in-dc?source=twitter&via=desktop by @A_SHEKH0VTS0V

2019: A German national accused by German CI officials of being part of a Russian influence op came to the US & met with a host of US DHS cybersec officials & public utility companies + corporate execs from Amazon & Microsoft—all seemingly unaware of his status in

Nov. 11, 2019
Hans-Wilhelm Dünn, president of the German Cyber-Security Council, a Berlin-based non-governmental association, visited the DHS in D.C. He posted photos on Twitter showing him smiling beside Dep Assistant Sec Richard Driggers and a number of other DHS officials.

Several days earlier, on his first night in the US, Dünn dined with Michael Chertoff, former secretary of DHS, now CEO of the Chertoff Group, a security risk and management company.

~6mos before he arrived in the US, Dünn was publicly exposed in the German media as having numerous links to Russian intelligence & influence ops, including one financed by US-sanctioned oligarch Yevgeny Prigozhin aka “Putin’s Chef” (IRA/Concord/Wagner)

“As a result of the exposés the German government announced it was distancing itself from Dünn’s Cyber-Security Council (CSRD) owing to its proximity to a high-ranking officer” from Russia’s FSB, Vladislav Sherstyuk.

“Sherstyuk was a spymaster, determined to exploit communications to steal US secrets and protect Russia against espionage of the same kind.”

— Andrei Soldatov, Irina Borogan
The Red Web

“Since 2007, Sherstyuk has rented out the Atlas lodge-hotel in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, in the Bavarian Alps not far from NATO’s Marshall Center for Security Studies, to host an annual cybersecurity conference, drawing all manner of international attendees including US officials”

Since Russia’s occupation of Crimea and especially after the GRU hacked the Democratic Party correspondence, U.S. officials have mostly shied away from this conference.

‘“This looks very much like Russian influence, like a Russian influence strategy,” Gerhard Schindler, the former head of Germany’s Federal Intelligence Service, told broadcaster ARD about the memorandum in June 2019.’

‘Schindler added that the title of Dünn’s registered association, Cyber-Sicherheitsrat Deutschland, was “confusingly similar” to the government’s own Nationaler Cyber-Sicherheitsrat (National Cyber-Security Council), founded in 2011.’

“Especially abroad,” Schindler said, “it can look like someone is speaking for the German Federal Republic, which is not the case at all.”

The confusing similarity was likely the point.

“Dünn’s social media postings demonstrate that his engagement with Western security experts and government officials has coincided with his work for a series of Kremlin-connected enterprises, many involving members of fascistic political parties in Europe.”

“An official from a NGO is far less threatening to a government official, and hostile foreign intelligence services are certainly interested in recruiting from that sector.”

— @Mpolymer,
former CIA acting chief of operations for Europe

March 2018
Dünn travelled to Russia’s Krasnodar region where, in the name of the CSRD, he had served as an “electoral observer” during the presidential ballot. that was described by the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Eu (OSCE) as “choice without real competition,”

OSCE also noted “inappropriate pressure” on voters and the absence of critical media coverage.

“Dünn was far more complimentary about the vote in southern Russia than any legitimate international observer mission.”

2018, Dünn joined another Russian “electoral observation” mission, this one run by the Association for Free Research and International Cooperation (AFRIC), an organization overseen and financed by Yevgeny Prigozhin

“The mission was to support Prigozhin’s operatives who were working to help manage the election of Emmerson Mnangagwa several months after he seized power in Zimbabwe from Robert Mugabe, his former colleague in the Zimbabwe African National Union – Patriotic Front party.”

“The AFRIC observers were dispatched to provide glowing reports of a free and fair ballot at polling stations.”

“Dünn was part of a small team that included Serbian ultra-nationalist Dragana Trifkovic and Swedish neo-Nazis Sanna Hill and Vavra Suk.

The tour even featured a photo-op at the home of Robert Mugabe, the longtime Zimbabwean dictator ...ousted in a military coup in 2018.”

“He was therefore involved with three different key Russian intelligence or influence operations, occupying a similar position to the fringe, far-right activists who make up the Kremlin’s most agents of influence.”

“So why was he granted access to top-level U.S. cybersecurity personnel and establishments?

And why did so many Americans, including those with security clearances, agree to meet Dünn in the first place?”

2014
“Dünn met with Melissa Hathaway, the former head of President Obama’s Cyberspace Policy review, and made two further tours in 2018 including to the California Public Utility Commission.”

“The latter set of trips followed Dünn’s electoral “observation” missions to Russia & Zimbabwe. Only weeks after he returned from Harare, Dünn posted a photo of the NSA headquarters in Fort Meade, Maryland.”

“None of his background would have been hard to pick up from even an open-source counterintelligence survey. Dünn advertised everything on his own Twitter feed. He’d also been the subject of several news reports on German newspapers” & TV just before he arrived in DC in Nov 2019.

“After D.C., [the German with ties to Russian Intelligence] traveled to Seattle, where he held meetings at and toured the headquarters of Microsoft and Amazon, and then to Los Angeles, for another summit with DHS officials at the mayor of LA’s Cyber Security Center”

“Americans weren’t the only ones ... oblivious to the German’s Moscow connections. He was also granted meetings in 2018 in Paris with Guillaume Poupard, director general of the National Agency for Information System Security, as well as other senior law enforcement figures”

“The following year, just weeks after the ARD programme went out, he was participating at a cybersecurity conference in Estonia.”

“It seems likely that the official-sounding nature of his organization, its membership of major companies, and its close prior cooperation with the German government, enabled Dünn to evade scrutiny and gain privileged access.”

“Dünn appears to have used the CSRD as a vehicle to gain access to some of the top cybersecurity officials in the world, not only in the countries discussed above, but also Israel, the U.K., and numerous other European states.”

“Particularly concerning are [the German with Russian Intelligence ties]’ visits to critical infrastructure-related security centers such as the California Public Utilities Commission, the North American Electric Reliability Corporation or the New York Fire Department.”

“In Germany, Dünn’s.. ties have registered more urgently, at least at certain levels of government, while his connections to other, lower levels appear to have indemnified him.”

“His former business partner, friend and cofounder of CSRD, Arne Schönbohm, now heads the Federal Office for Information Security (BSI), Germany’s cyberdefense agency.”