Reversing C++ String And QString

After the rust string overview of its internal substructures, let's see if c++ QString storage is more light, but first we'r going to take a look to the c++ standard string object:

At first sight we can see the allocation and deallocation created by the clang++ compiler, and the DAT_00400d34 is the string.

If we use same algorithm than the rust code but in c++:

We have a different decompilation layout. Note that the Ghidra scans very fast the c++ binaries, and with rust binaries gets crazy for a while.
Locating main is also very simple in a c++ compiled binary, indeed is more  low-level than rust.

The byte array is initialized with a simply move instruction:
        00400c4b 48 b8 68        MOV        RAX,0x6f77206f6c6c6568

And basic_string generates the string, in the case of rust this was carazy endless set of calls, detected by ghidra as a runtime, but nevertheless the basic_string is an external imported function not included on the binary.

(gdb) x/x 0x7fffffffe1d0
0x7fffffffe1d0: 0xffffe1e0            low str ptr
0x7fffffffe1d4: 0x00007fff           hight str ptr
0x7fffffffe1d8: 0x0000000b        sz
0x7fffffffe1dc: 0x00000000
0x7fffffffe1e0: 0x6c6c6568         "hello world"
0x7fffffffe1e4: 0x6f77206f
0x7fffffffe1e8: 0x00646c72
0x7fffffffe1ec: 0x00000000        null terminated
(gdb) x/s 0x7fffffffe1e0
0x7fffffffe1e0: "hello world"

The string is on the stack, and it's very curious to see what happens if there are two followed strings like these:

  auto s = string(cstr);

  string s2 = "test";

Clang puts toguether both stack strings:
[ptr1][sz1][string1][null][string2][null][ptr2][sz2]

C++ QString datatype

Let's see the great and featured QString object defined on qstring.cpp and qstring.h

Some QString methods use the QCharRef class whose definition is below:

class Q_EXPORT QCharRef {
    friend class QString;
    QString& s;
    uint p;

Searching for the properties on the QString class I've realized that one improvement that rust and golang does is the separation from properties and methods, so in the large QString class the methods are  hidden among the hundreds of methods, but basically the storage is a QStringData *;

After removing the methods of QStringData class definition we have this:

struct Q_EXPORT QStringData : public QShared {
    QChar *unicode;
    char *ascii;
#ifdef Q_OS_MAC9
    uint len;
#else
    uint len : 30;

What Is Cybersecurity And Thier types?Which Skills Required To Become A Top Cybersecurity Expert ?

What is cyber security in hacking?

The term cyber security  refers to the technologies  and processes designed  to  defend computer system, software, networks & user data from unauthorized access, also from threats distributed through the internet by cybercriminals,terrorist groups of hacker.

Main types of cybersecurity are

Critical infrastructure security

Application security

Network Security 

Cloud Security 

Internet of things security.

These are the main types of cybersecurity used by cybersecurity expert to any organisation for safe and protect thier data from hack by a hacker.

Top Skills Required to become Cybersecurity Expert-

Problem Solving Skills

Communication Skill

Technical Strength & Aptitude

Desire to learn

Attention to Detail 

Knowledge of security across various platforms

Knowledge of Hacking

Fundamental Computer Forensic Skill.

These skills are essential for become a cybersecurity expert. 

Cyber cell and IT cell these are the department  in our india which provide cybersecurity and looks into the matters related to cyber crimes to stop the crime because in this digitilization world cyber crime increasing day by day so our government of india also takes the immediate action to prevent the cybercrimes with the help of these departments and also arrest the victim and file a complain against him/her with the help of cyberlaw in our constitution.

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DOWNLOAD COWPATTY WIFI PASSOWORD CRACKING TOOL

COWPATTY WIFI PASSWORD CRACKING TOOL

CoWPAtty is a wifi password cracking tool. Implementation of a dictionary attack against WPA/WPA2 networks using PSK-based authentication (e.g. WPA-Personal). Many enterprise networks deploy PSK-based authentication mechanisms for WPA/WPA2 since it is much easier than establishing the necessary RADIUS, supplicant and certificate authority architecture needed for WPA-Enterprise authentication. Cowpatty can implement an accelerated attack if a precomputed PMK file is available for the SSID that is being assessed. Download coWPAtty wifi password cracking tool.

It's a pre-built tool for Kali Linux which you can find in the /usr/local/bin directory. It's also available for the windows but it doesn't work as fine as it does in the Kali.

DOWNLOAD COWPATTY WIFI PASSWORD CRACKING TOOL

For windows, you can download it from here. As it becomes pre-built in Kali, you do not need to download it. You just have to follow the path /usr/local/bin directory to find it in your Kali Linux OS.

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Many Ways Of Malware Persistence (That You Were Always Afraid To Ask)

TL;DR: Are you into red teaming? Need persistence? This post is not that long, read it ;)

Are you into blue teaming? Have to find those pesky backdoors? This post is not that long, read it ;)

In the previous post, I listed different ways how a Windows domain/forest can be backdoored. In this new post, I am digging a bit deeper, and list the most common/known ways malware can survive a reboot, just using local resources of the infected Windows system. The list is far from complete, and I would like to encourage everyone to comment on new methods, not yet listed here.

From an incident response point of view, one of the best strategies to find malware on a suspicious system is to search for suspicious entries that start with the system. In the good old days, you had to check for 2-3 locations to cover 99% of the infections. Nowadays, there are a thousand ways malware can start. The common ones automatically start whenever Windows starts (or the user logs in), but some tricky ones are triggered by other events.

Autoruns

My favorite choice when it comes to malware persistence is Sysinternals tools, Autoruns. In this paragraph, I mainly quote the official built-in help, but bear with me, it is still interesting.

On a side note, there are some problems with the Autoruns tool: it can only run on a live system. (EDIT: This is not true, Autoruns can analyze offline systems as well! Thanks to a comment from Justin.) And usually, this is not the case - I usually have dd images. And although VBoxManage can convert the dd images to VirtualBox disk image format, usually I don't have the time and storage to do that. This is where xmount awesomeness is here to rescue the day. It can convert dd and Encase images on-the-fly in-memory to Virtualbox format. Just attach the disk image to a new Virtualbox machine as the main boot HDD, modify the CPU/disk/controller settings until Windows starts instead of crashing, and voila, you can boot your forensic image - without modifying a single bit on the original evidence dd file. Another problem with malware analysis on a live system is that a good rootkit can fool the analyst easily. 

For quick wins, I usually filter out Microsoft entries, look for per-user locations only and check for unverified (missing or invalid Authenticode) executables. This usually helps to find 90% of malware easily. Especially if it has a color like purple or pink, it is highly suspicious. To find the rest, well, one has to dig deeper.

Zeus "hiding" in the usual random directory - check the faked timestamp

To implement "poor-mans monitoring", regularly save the output of Autoruns, and during incident response, it will be highly valuable. Howto guide here.

Logon

"This entry results in scans of standard autostart locations such as the Startup folder for the current user and all users, the Run Registry keys, and standard application launch locations." 

There are 42 registry keys/folders at the moment in Autoruns, which can be used to autostart a malware. The most common ways are the HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run and the C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Startup folder.

One of my favorite regarding this topic is the file-less Poweliks malware, 100% pure awesomeness. Typical ring 3 code execution.

Explorer

"Select this entry to see Explorer shell extensions, browser helper objects, explorer toolbars, active setup executions, and shell execute hooks". 71 registry keys, OMG. Usually, this is not about auto-malware execution, but some of them might be a good place to hide malware.

Internet explorer

"This entry shows Browser Helper Objects (BHO's), Internet Explorer toolbars and extensions". 13 registry key here. If a malicious BHO is installed into your browser, you are pretty much screwed.

Scheduled tasks

"Task scheduler tasks configured to start at boot or logon." Not commonly used, but it is important to look at this.

I always thought this part of the autostart entries is quite boring, but nowadays, I think it is one of the best ways to hide your malware. There are so many entries here by default, and some of them can use quite good tricks to trigger the start.

Did you know that you can create custom events that trigger on Windows event logs?

Did you know you can create malware persistence just by using Windows tools like bitsadmin and Scheduled tasks?

Scheduler in the old days

Scheduler in the new days

Services

HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services is a very commonplace to hide malware, especially rootkits. Check all entries with special care.

Drivers

Same as services. Very commonplace for rootkits. Unfortunately, signing a driver for 64-bit systems is not fun anymore, as it has to be signed by certificates that can be chained back to "Software Publisher Certificates". Typical startup place for Ring 0 rootkits. 

Starting from Windows 10, even this will change and all drivers have to be signed by "Windows Hardware Developer Center Dashboard portal" and EV certificates.

Codecs

22 registry keys. Not very common, but possible code execution.

Boot execute

"Native images (as opposed to Windows images) that run early during the boot process."

5 registry keys here. Good place to hide a rootkit here.

Image hijacks

"Image file execution options and command prompt autostarts." 13 registry key here. I believe this was supposed for debugging purposes originally.

This is where the good-old sticky keys trick is hiding. It is a bit different from the others, as it provides a backdoor access, but you can only use this from the local network (usually). The trick is to execute your code whenever someone presses the SHIFT key multiple times before logging into RDP. The old way was to replace the sethc.exe, the new fun is to set a debug program on sethc.

If you see this, you are in trouble

AppInit

"This has Autoruns shows DLLs registered as application initialization DLLs." Only 3 registry keys here. This is the good old way to inject a malicious DLL into Explorer, browsers, etc. Luckily it is going to be deprecated soon.

Known DLLs

"This reports the location of DLLs that Windows loads into applications that reference them." Only 1 registry key. This might be used to hijack some system DLLs.

Winlogon

"Shows DLLs that register for Winlogon notification of logon events." 7 registry keys. Sometimes used by malware.

Winsock providers

"Shows registered Winsock protocols, including Winsock service providers. Malware often installs itself as a Winsock service provider because there are few tools that can remove them. Autoruns can disable them, but cannot delete them." 4 registry keys. AFAIK this was trendy a while ago. But still, a good place to hide malware.

Print monitors

"Displays DLLs that load into the print spooling service. Malware has used this support to autostart itself." 1 registry key. Some malware writers are quite creative when it comes to hiding their persistence module.

LSA providers

"Shows registers Local Security Authority (LSA) authentication, notification and security packages." 5 registry keys. A good place to hide your password stealer.

Network providers

"Missing documentation". If you have a good 1 sentence documentation, please comment.

WMI filters

"Missing documentation". Check Mandiant for details.

Sidebar gadgets

Thank god MS disabled this a while ago :)

We all miss you, you crappy resource gobble nightmares

Common ways - not in autoruns

Now, let's see other possibilities to start your malware, which won't be listed in Sysinternals Autoruns.

Backdoor an executable/DLL

Just change the code of an executable which is either auto-starting or commonly started by the user. To avoid lame mistakes, disable the update of the file ... The backdoor factory is a good source for this task. But if you backdoor an executable/DLL which is already in Autoruns listed, you will break the Digital Signature on the file. It is recommended to sign your executable, and if you can't afford to steal a trusted certificate, you can still import your own CA into the user's trusted certificate store (with user privileges), and it will look like a trusted one. Protip: Use "Microsoft Windows" as the codesigner CA, and your executable will blend in.

See, rootkit.exe totally looks legit, and it is filtered out when someone filters for "Hide Windows entries".

Hijack DLL load order

Just place your DLL into a directory which is searched before the original DLL is found, and PROFIT! But again, to avoid lame detection, be sure to proxy the legitimate function calls to the original DLL. A good source on this topic from Mandiant and DLL hijack detector.

Here you can see how PlugX works in action, by dropping a legitimate Kaspersky executable, and hijacking the DLL calls with their DLL. 

Hijack a shortcut from the desktop/start menu

Never underestimate the power of lame tricks. Just create an executable which calls the original executable, and meanwhile starts your backdoor. Replace the link, PROFIT! And don't be a skiddie, check the icon ;) I have seen this trick in adware hijacking browsers a lot of times.

IE hijacked to start with http://tinyurl.com/2fcpre6

File association hijack

Choose the user's favorite file type, replace the program which handles the opening with a similar one described in the previous section, and voila!

COM object hijack

The main idea is that some COM objects are scanned for whether they are on the system or not, and when it is registered, it is automatically loaded. See COMpfun for details.

Windows Application Compatibility - SHIM

Not many people are familiar with Windows Application Compatibility and how it works. Think about it as an added layer between applications and the OS. If the application matches a certain condition (e.g. filename), certain actions will take place. E.g. emulation of directories, registry entries, DLL injection, etc. In my installation, there are 367 different compatibility fixes (type of compatibility "simulation"), and some of those can be customized.

Every time IE starts, inject a DLL into IE

Bootkits 

Although bootkits shown here can end up in Autoruns in the drivers section (as they might need a driver at the end of the day), I still think it deserves a different section.

MBR - Master boot record

Malware can overwrite the Master boot record, start the boot process with its own code, and continue the boot process with the original one. It is common for rootkits to fake the content of the MBR record, and show the original contents. Which means one just have attached the infected HDD to a clean system, and compare the first 512 bytes (or more in some cases) with a known, clean state, or compare it to the contents shown from the infected OS. SecureBoot can be used to prevent malware infections like this.

There is a slight difference when MBR is viewed from infected OS vs clean OS

VBR - Volume boot record

This is the next logical step where malware can start it's process, and some malware/rootkit prefers to hide it's startup code here. Check GrayFish for details. SecureBoot can be used to prevent malware infections like this.

BIOS/UEFI malware

Both the old BIOS and the new UEFI can be modified in a way that malware starts even before the OS had a chance to run. Although UEFI was meant to be more secure than BIOS, implementation and design errors happens. Check the Computrace anti-theft rootkit for details.

Hypervisor - Ring -1 rootkit

This is somewhat special, because I believe although rootkit can run in this layer but it can't persist only in this layer on an average, physical machine, because it won't survive a reboot See Rutkowska's presentation from 2006 But because the hypervisor can intercept the restart event, it can write itself into one of the other layers (e.g. install a common kernel driver), and simply delete it after it is fully functional after reboot. Update: There is a good paper from Igor Korkin about hypervisor detection here.

SMM (System Management Mode) malware - Ring -2 rootkit

Somehow related to the previous type of attacks, but not many people know that System Management Mode can be used to inject code into the OS. Check the DEITYBOUNCE malware for more details ;) Also, abusing Intel Dual Monitor Mode (DMM) can lead to untrusted code execution, which basically monitors the SMM mode.

Intel® Active Management Technology - Ring -3 rootkit

According to Wikipedia, "Intel Active Management Technology (AMT) is hardware and firmware technology for remote out-of-band management of personal computers, in order to monitor, maintain, update, upgrade, and repair them". You can ask, what could possibly go wrong? See Alexander Tereshkin's and Rafal Wojtczuk's great research on this, or Vassilios Ververis thesis about AMT. 

As not many people click on links, let me quote the scary stuff about AMT:

• Independent of the main CPU
• Can access host memory via DMA (with restrictions)
• Dedicated link to NIC, and its filtering capabilities
• Can force host OS to reboot at any time (and boot the system from the emulated CDROM)
• Active even in S3 sleep!

Other stuff

Create new user, update existing user, hidden admins

Sometimes one does not even have to add malicious code to the system, as valid user credentials are more than enough. Either existing users can be used for this purpose, or new ones can be created. E.g. a good trick is to use the Support account with a 500 RID - see here, Metasploit tool here.

Esoteric firmware malware

Almost any component in the computer runs with firmware, and by replacing the firmware with a malicious one, it is possible to start the malware. E.g. HDD firmware (see GrayFish again), graphic card, etc.

Hidden boot device

Malware can hide in one of the boot devices which are checked before the average OS is loaded, and after the malware is loaded, it can load the victim OS.

Network-level backdoor

Think about the following scenario: every time the OS boots, it loads additional data from the network. It can check for new software updates, configuration updates, etc. Whenever a vulnerable software/configuration update, the malware injects itself into the response, and get's executed. I know, this level of persistence is not foolproof, but still, possible. Think about the recently discovered GPO MiTM attack, the Evilgrade tool, or even the Xensploit tool when we are talking about VM migration.

Software vulnerability

Almost any kind of software vulnerability can be used as a persistent backdoor. Especially, if the vulnerability can be accessed remotely via the network, without any user interaction. Good old MS08-067...

Hardware malware, built into the chipset

I am not sure what to write here. Ask your local spy agency for further information. Good luck finding those!

More links

Tools I highly recommend:

• Sysinternals Autoruns
• GMER
• DLL hijack detector
• PCHunter
• Mandiant Redline
• Volatility
• Kansa

For more information, check this blog post, part 1, part 2

Update 2017-04-29: A very nice list of Office persistence: https://labs.mwrinfosecurity.com/blog/add-in-opportunities-for-office-persistence/

Update 2017-10-23: Persistence via Security Descriptors and ACLs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SeR4QJbaNRg

Update 2018-07-25: Backdooring LAPS https://rastamouse.me/2018/03/laps---part-1/
https://rastamouse.me/2018/03/laps---part-2/ 

I would like to thank to Gabor Pek from CrySyS Lab for reviewing and completing this post.

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Why (I Believe) WADA Was Not Hacked By The Russians

Disclaimer: This is my personal opinion. I am not an expert in attribution. But as it turns out, not many people in the world are good at attribution. I know this post lacks real evidence and is mostly based on speculation.

Let's start with the main facts we know about the WADA hack, in chronological order:


1. Some point in time (August - September 2016), the WADA database has been hacked and exfiltrated

2. August 15th, "WADA has alerted their stakeholders that email phishing scams are being reported in connection with WADA and therefore asks its recipients to be careful"  https://m.paralympic.org/news/wada-warns-stakeholders-phishing-scams
3. September 1st, the fancybear.net domain has been registered

   Domain Name: FANCYBEAR.NET
   ...
   Updated Date: 18-sep-2016
   Creation Date: 01-sep-2016

4. The content of the WADA hack has been published on the website
5. The @FancyBears and @FancyBearsHT Twitter accounts have been created and started to tweet on 12th September, reaching out to journalists
6. 12th September, Western media started headlines "Russia hacked WADA"

7. The leaked documents have been altered, states WADA https://www.wada-ama.org/en/media/news/2016-10/cyber-security-update-wadas-incident-response

The Threatconnect analysis

The only technical analysis on why Russia was behind the hack, can be read here: https://www.threatconnect.com/blog/fancy-bear-anti-doping-agency-phishing/

After reading this, I was able to collect the following main points:

1. It is Russia because Russian APT groups are capable of phishing
2. It is Russia because the phishing site "wada-awa[.]org was registered and uses a name server from ITitch[.]com, a domain registrar that FANCY BEAR actors recently used"
3. It is Russia because "Wada-arna[.]org and tas-cass[.]org were registered through and use name servers from Domains4bitcoins[.]com, a registrar that has also been associated with FANCY BEAR activity."
4. It is Russia, because "The registration of these domains on August 3rd and 8th, 2016 are consistent with the timeline in which the WADA recommended banning all Russian athletes from the Olympic and Paralympic games."
5. It is Russia, because "The use of 1&1 mail.com webmail addresses to register domains matches a TTP we previously identified for FANCY BEAR actors."

There is an interesting side-track in the article, the case of the @anpoland account. Let me deal with this at the end of this post.

My problem with the above points is that all five flag was publicly accessible to anyone as TTP's for Fancy Bear. And meanwhile, all five is weak evidence. Any script kittie in the world is capable of both hacking WADA and planting these false-flags.

A stronger than these weak pieces of evidence would be:

• Malware sharing same code attributed to Fancy Bear (where the code is not publicly available or circulating on hackforums)
• Private servers sharing the IP address with previous attacks attributed to Fancy Bear (where the server is not a hacked server or a proxy used by multiple parties)
• E-mail addresses used to register the domain attributed to Fancy Bear
• Many other things

For me, it is quite strange that after such great analysis on Guccifer 2.0, the Threatconnect guys came up with this low-value post. 

The fancybear website

It is quite unfortunate that the analysis was not updated after the documents have been leaked. But let's just have a look at the fancybear . net website, shall we?

Now the question is, if you are a Russian state-sponsored hacker group, and you are already accused of the hack itself, do you create a website with tons of bears on the website, and do you choose the same name (Fancy Bear) for your "Hack team" that is already used by Crowdstrike to refer to a Russian state-sponsored hacker group? Well, for me, it makes no sense. Now I can hear people screaming: "The Russians changed tactics to confuse us". Again, it makes no sense to change tactics on this, while keeping tactics on the "evidence" found by Threatconnect.

It makes sense that a Russian state-sponsored group creates a fake persona, names it Guccifer 2.0, pretends Guccifer 2.0 is from Romania, but in the end it turns out Guccifer 2.0 isn't a native Romanian speaker. That really makes sense.

What happens when someone creates this fancybear website for leaking the docs, and from the Twitter account reaches out to the media? Journalists check the website, they see it was done by Fancy Bear, they Bing Google this name, and clearly see it is a Russian state-sponsored hacker group. Some journalists also found the Threatconnect report, which seems very convincing for the first read. I mean, it is a work of experts, right? So you can write in the headlines that the hack was done by the Russians.

Just imagine an expert in the USA or Canada writing in report for WADA:
"the hack was done by non-Russian, but state-sponsored actors, who planted a lot of false-flags to accuse the Russians and to destroy confidence in past and future leaks". Well, I am sure this is not a popular opinion, and whoever tries this, risks his career. Experts are human, subject to all kinds of bias.

The Guardian

The only other source I was able to find is from The Guardian, where not just one side (it was Russia) was represented in the article. It is quite unfortunate that both experts are from Russia - so people from USA will call them being not objective on the matter. But the fact that they are Russian experts does not mean they are not true ...

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2016/sep/15/fancy-bears-hackers--russia-wada-tues-leaks

Sergei Nikitin:
"We don't have this in the case of the DNC and Wada hacks, so it's not clear on what basis conclusions are being drawn that Russian hackers or special services were involved. It's done on the basis of the website design, which is absurd," he said, referring to the depiction of symbolically Russian animals, brown and white bears, on the "Fancy Bears' Hack Team" website.

I don't agree with the DNC part, but this is not the topic of conversation here.

Alexander Baranov:
"the hackers were most likely amateurs who published a "semi-finished product" rather than truly compromising information. "They could have done this more harshly and suddenly," he said. "If it was [state-sponsored] hackers, they would have dug deeper. Since it's enthusiasts, amateurs, they got what they got and went public with it.""

The @anpoland side-track

First please check the tas-cas.org hack https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=day5Aq0bHsA  , I will be here when you finished it. This is a website for "Court of Arbitration for Sport's", and referring to the Threatconnect post, "CAS is the highest international tribunal that was established to settle disputes related to sport through arbitration. Starting in 2016, an anti-doping division of CAS began judging doping cases at the Olympic Games, replacing the IOC disciplinary commission." Now you can see why this attack is also discussed here.

• My bet is that this machine was set-up for these @anpoland videos only. Whether google.ru is a false flag or it is real, hard to decide. It is interesting to see that there is no google search done via google.ru, it is used only once. 
• The creator of the video can't double click. Is it because he has a malfunctioning mouse? Is it because he uses a virtualization console, which is near-perfect OPSEC to hide your real identity? My personal experience is that using virtualization consoles remotely (e.g. RDP) has very similar effects to what we can see on the video. 
• The timeline of the Twitter account is quite strange, registered in 2010
• I agree with the Threatconnect analysis that this @anpoland account is probably a faketivist, and not an activist. But who is behind it, remains a mystery. 
• Either the "activist" is using a whonix-like setup for remaining anonymous, or a TOR router (something like this), or does not care about privacy at all. Looking at the response times (SQLmap, web browser), I doubt this "activist" is behind anything related to TOR. Which makes no sense for an activist, who publishes his hack on Youtube. People are stupid for sure, but this does not add up. It makes sense that this was a server (paid by bitcoins or stolen credit cards or whatever) rather than a home computer.

For me, this whole @anpoland thing makes no sense, and I think it is just loosely connected to the WADA hack. 

The mysterious Korean characters in the HTML source

There is another interesting flag in the whole story, which actually makes no sense. When the website was published, there were Korean characters in HTML comments. 

https://web.archive.org/web/20160913013727/http://fancybear.net/

When someone pointed this out on Twitter, these Korean HTML comments disappeared:

https://web.archive.org/web/20160914231209/http://www.fancybear.net/

These HTML comments look like generated HTML comments, from a WYSIWYG editor, which is using the Korean language. Let me know if you can identify the editor.

The Russians are denying it

Well, what choice they have? It does not matter if they did this or not, they will deny it. And they can't deny this differently. Just imagine a spokesperson: "Previously we have falsely denied the DCC and DNC hacks, but this time please believe us, this wasn't Russia." Sounds plausible ...

Attribution

Let me sum up what we know:

It makes sense that the WADA hack was done by Russia, because:

1. Russia being almost banned from the Olympics due to doping scandal, it made sense to discredit WADA and US Olympians
2. There are multiple(weak) pieces of evidence which point to Russia

It makes sense that the WADA hack was not done by  Russia, because: 

1. By instantly attributing the hack to the Russians, the story was more about to discredit Russia than discrediting WADA or US Olympians.
2. In reality, there was no gain for Russia for disclosing the documents. Nothing happened, nothing changed, no discredit for WADA. Not a single case turned out to be illegal or unethical.
3. Altering the leaked documents makes no sense if it was Russia (see update at the end). Altering the leaked documents makes a lot of sense if it was not Russia. Because from now on, people can always state "these leaks cannot be trusted, so it is not true what is written there". It is quite cozy for any US organization, who has been hacked or will be hacked. If you are interested in the "Russians forging leaked documents" debate, I highly recommend to start with this The Intercept article
4. If the Korean characters were false flags planted by the Russians, why would they remove it? If it had been Russian characters, I would understand removing it.
5. All evidence against Russia is weak, can be easily forged by even any script kittie.

I don't like guessing, but here is my guess. This WADA hack was an operation of a (non-professional) hackers-for-hire service, paid by an enemy of Russia. The goal was to hack WADA, leak the documents, modify some contents in the documents, and blame it all on the Russians ...

Questions and answers

• Was Russia capable of doing this WADA hack? Yes.
• Was Russia hacking WADA? Maybe yes, maybe not.
• Was this leak done by a Russian state-sponsored hacker group? I highly doubt that.
• Is it possible to buy an attribution-dice where all six-side is Russia? No, it is sold-out. 

To quote Patrick Gray: "Russia is the new China, and the Russians ate my homework."©

Let me know what you think about this, and please comment. 

Update: As TheGrugq pointed out, Guccifer has been found to alter documents https://www.reddit.com/r/EnoughTrumpSpam/comments/4uyih3/russian_hackers_altered_emails_before_release_to/?st=IUJDLSIE&sh=e195e908

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