The firm connected Fancy Bear to the Russian military intelligence service, and Cozy bear to the FSB, Russia’s security service.
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Shawn Henry, the president of CrowdStrike, said that foreign espionage operations commonly seek information about political campaigns.
CrowdStrike began assisting the DNC in May and identified the two groups, said Dmitri Alperovitch, the company’s co-founder and chief technology officer. It was first reported by the Washington Post.
Henry is a former head of the FBI’s cyber division and he noted that it is extremely hard for a civilian organisation to protect itself from a skilled and determined state such as Russian Federation.
In an unusual account of the incident provided on live television, Henry said the subsequent inquiry determined that the initial breach had occurred months before.
Cyber attacks against political candidates and organizations are common worldwide.
Matthew Dean is Fox News Channel’s Department of Justice & Federal Law Enforcement producer.
Trump has had a particularly interesting relationship with the Russian government over the previous year. “Instead, we observed the two Russian espionage groups compromise the same systems and engage separately in the theft of identical credentials”.
The FBI provided no immediate comment.
The top Democrat on the House of Representatives Intelligence Committee, Adam Schiff, said Tuesday he would not elaborate on the incident, but that Russian targeting should be expected. U.S. National Intelligence Director James Clapper said last month he was aware of attempted hacks on campaigns and related groups and he expected to see more as the November 8 presidential election nears.
COZY BEAR (also referred to in some industry reports as CozyDuke or APT 29) is the adversary group that past year successfully infiltrated the unclassified networks of the White House, State Department, and US Joint Chiefs of Staff.
US intelligence officials have said many previous assaults were linked to Chinese hackers.
The hackers were “looking for opposition research on Trump and his campaign” and “they did take opposition research on Trump”, Alperovitch told ABC News. The hackers were reportedly part of or working for the Russian government, and they managed to make off with a full database of opposition research.
Healey said that the Secret Service discovered in 2008 that Chinese spies had gotten into the files of Democratic nominee Barack Obama and Republican nominee John McCain. Both were kicked out this weekend, he said.
According to the security firm, the security breaches were likely the result of “spearphishing” emails that look legitimate but contain links or attachments that, when opened, deploy malicious software that give hackers access to internal networks (which is why I never open attachments).
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“The fact that they reached out to bring in help quickly was absolutely the right thing to do”, he said.
