Hackers affiliated with the Russian government have been tapping into the files of the Democratic National Committee for almost a year, targeting in particular the party’s opposition research about Donald Trump, officials say. Cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike confirmed the DNC’s suspicion.
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The Post quoted USA officials as saying Russian spies also targeted the networks of Trump and Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, as well as computers of some Republican political action committees. Neither campaign has publicly reported any related breaches.
Hillary Clinton told Telemundo in an interview that she only learned of the breach when it was made public Tuesday, calling the episode “troubling”. The attackers also had access to the DNC network for about a year, but the hackers were removed last weekend during a major computer cleanup campaign. He said the firm is confident the DNC’s network has eliminated the threat. US National Intelligence director James Clapper said last month he was aware of attempted hacks on campaigns and related organisations and that he expected to see more as the November presidential election nears.
In some respects, the files are a puzzling target: The most damning information was gathered for the express goal of being made public. “We fully expect that they will try to get back in”.
The firm’s CEO, Shawn Henry, who previously managed the FBI’s cyber division, said: “It’s the job of every foreign intelligence service to collect intelligence against their adversaries”.
“We’re perceived as an adversary of Russian Federation”.
Some have speculated whether the Russian government could theoretically use its new insider knowledge of the DNC’s anti-Trump research to tip the Republican standard-bearer off to the party’s plan of attack. “If that’s the case, what better resource could there be than the other side’s opposition research?”
Hacking is not uncommon during a presidential campaign.
But it seems the bears – or the Russian hackers – weren’t just looking to glean information about the Democratic Party in the latest hack. In December, the contractor that maintains sensitive voter files for candidates experienced a software glitch that allowed staffers from the campaign of Bernie Sanders to view confidential material owned by the Clinton campaign. The committee “treated this like the serious incident it is”, according a statement from Wasserman Schultz.
“Our team moved as quickly as possible to kick out the intruders and secure our network”, she said.
FSB was once run by Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Other researchers echo the assessment that the hack is workaday intelligence gathering.
“If they find something about a particular candidate of value that they can exploit, they will do it”, said Henry.
In April, the DNC was reportedly tipped off that outsiders had access to their systems. But in its report, CrowdStrike identified the culprits as two hacking organizations that have deep ties to Moscow.
According to reports, two separate groups entered the network, and one focused on internal communications over email and chat for almost a year before the breach was detected and cleaned up by cyber firm CrowdStrike.
According to CrowdStrike’s Dmitri Alperovitch, those actors, who were found to have been present on the DNC’s system since last summer, were privy to all content included in those communications – including email signatures and associated contact information, as well as the to and from address of the sender and recipient.
“Both adversaries engage in extensive political and economic espionage for the benefit of the government of the Russian Federation and are believed to be closely linked to the Russian government’s powerful and highly capable intelligence services”.
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COZY BEAR has a long history of infiltrating government databases, having been responsible for breaching the White House, State Department, and Joint Chiefs of Staff in addition to targeted organizations around the world.
