The involvement of the Justice Department’s national security division is a sign that the Obama administration has concluded that the hacking was sponsored by a state, people with knowledge of the investigation said.
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“The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) on Friday confirmed reports that it had been hacked, saying the breach is similar to the one that hit the Democratic National Committee (DNC)”.
As a result of that disclosure, party Chairwoman Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla., announced her resignation this week.
“The DCCC can confirm that we have been the target of a cybersecurity incident”, spokeswoman Meredith Kelly said in a statement.
“Based on the information we have to date, we’ve been advised by investigators that this is similar to other recent incidents, including the DNC breach”.
Hacking of the Democratic party’s emails caused discord among Democrats – party convention in Philadelphia, on which Democrats nominated Hillary Clinton as its presidential candidate, reflected this discord, indeed.
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump also sparked intense backlash after calling on Russian Federation to find Clinton’s missing emails. Then, “for some time”, information about campaign donations was funneled to that site instead of a legitimate fundraising company.
In Washington, the DCCC said early on Friday it had hired cyber security firm CrowdStrike to investigate. She said her organization is “continuing to take steps to enhance the security of our network in the face of these recent events”.
The DCCC had no additional comment late on Friday. But the campaign, through its lawyers, declined to provide the data, deciding that the FBI’s request for sensitive personal and campaign information data was too broad and intrusive, the source said.
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Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said on Thursday the US intelligence community was not yet sure who was behind the hack, but added: ‘There’s just a few usual suspects out there’. She embraced the historic nature of her candidacy, telling the crowd: “Nobody who looked like me was thought to be possible to run for president”. “Everybody should be cautious”.
