Some of the emails go back years. The FBI told staff it has no doubt that the Russian government was behind the hack, according to The New York Times, citing an anonymous staff member briefed on the matter. Most public attention focused on emails written by retired Gen. Philip Breedlove, formerly the supreme allied commander of North Atlantic Treaty Organisation. Emails from Breedlove’s personal account show him complaining that the Obama administration wasn’t paying enough attention to European security. One reason for that confidence is revealed today in a story by Reuters.
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An official with the DNC, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the committee took the threat very seriously, but would not comment on specific security steps taken.
The leak that exposed private email accounts from within the Democratic Party in July appears to be bigger than originally thought.
So far, it does not appear that the Russian hackers sought or gained access to any computer systems used by Trump, who is known to avoid e-mail, officials said. Republican US presidential nominee calls on hackers to access Hillary Clinton’s private account.
Similarly, a trove of “redacted” documents from the William J. Clinton Library were declassified and have been publicly available on the library’s website for several years, a spokeswoman for the library said. Simply because they were laundered through WikiLeaks does not render them less hot. “With this earlier stuff, it looks like they were experimenting”. A DCLeaks administrator, who identified himself by email as Steve Wanders, didn’t respond to written questions, including why much of the material focuses on Russia or Russian foreign-policy interests.
Along with Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, the top Democrat on the Senate’s intelligence panel, Mr. Schiff said the two have urged the White House to officially attribute the attacks to the hackers responsible as soon as the government has sufficient evidence to do so.
Security experts see links to a larger Russian information operation. The intelligence officials believed that the hack was backed up by two Russian intelligence agencies, a conclusion the Federal Bureau of Investigation did not share with the DNC when it first reached out to the group about its cybersecurity infrastructure in the fall.
Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, however, said the United States is not quite ready to blame Russian Federation for the attacks, and Obama appears to be taking his position.
The Democratic Governors’ Association is among the groups that were reportedly targeted.
The officials were not allowed to disclose information about the hack because US intelligence officials were monitoring the hacking using sources and methods they wanted to remain secret.
What’s more, the researchers have also linked a hacker that goes by the name Guccifer 2.0, and is suspected of working for Russian Federation, with DCLeaks. That claim was viewed skeptically, in part because the hacker didn’t appear to speak Romanian.
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The Times reported Thursday that intelligence officials and FBI investigators have begun notifying top Democratic officials on the Clinton campaign and in other groups including the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and potentially the Democratic Governors Association that their personal email accounts may have been hacked.
