Hackers connected to the Russian government broke into the servers of the Democratic National Committee and stole opposition research on Donald Trump, the cybersecurity experts responding to the intrusion said Tuesday.
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News from The Washington Post states that the compromise was so thorough that the hackers could access all of the DNC’s email and chat traffic, and have had access to the network for some time before a major computer cleanup booted them off. The intruders have now been “kicked out” and the network secured, according to DNC chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz. The hackers also targeted the campaigns of Trump, the presumptive GOP presidential nominee; and Hillary Clinton, the presumptive Democratic nominee; as well as several GOP political action committees, officials told the Post. “We’re perceived as an adversary of Russian Federation”.
Much of the data the hackers received from the opposition research likely would have been made public at some point anyway, but it’s clear some people in Russian Federation have an interest in Donald Trump. They likely didn’t even know the other was in the systems, he added.
“It’s the job of every foreign intelligence service to collect intelligence against their adversaries”, CrowdStrike president Shawn Henry said.
He said the DNC is “absolutely” safer now, explaining that CrowdStrike did a full remediation this weekend and “kicked out both adversaries”.
The depth of the penetration reflects the skill and determination of the United States’ top cyber adversary as Russian Federation goes after strategic targets, from the White House and State Department to political campaign organizations.
“I absolutely rule out any possibility of any government or government structures involvement in it”, Dmitry Peskov, spokesman for Russian President Vladimir Putin, said in a message.
The group, which the firm has nicknamed “Fancy Bear”, is responsible for the theft of the Trump opposition research and is believed to work for Russia’s military intelligence service. It was this breach that set off the alarm, the Post reported.
CrowdStrike found that there were two Russian hacking groups involved in the hack attack.
Barack Obama and John McCain were also targeted by Chinese government-backed hackers during the 2008 presidential campaign, which sought access to emails and policy papers from advisors to both candidates.
Democratic National Committee leaders were tipped off to the hacking in late April.
“We have long seen that other nations have an acute interest in our presidential campaigns and candidates and are not above using clandestine means to gather intelligence on a prospective USA commander in chief, ” Schiff said.
He said the firm named two separate hackers Cozy Bear and Fancy Bear.
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As recently as last month, government officials said Trump’s and Clinton’s campaign networks were vulnerable to outside attacks, the Associated Press reported.
