Democratic Party’s computers breached by Russian hackers

Russian hackers have had access to Democratic National Committee secret files – including opposition research on Donald Trump – for over a year, according to a new report in The Washington Post.

Alperovitch noted that one of the groups which hacked the DNC is the same as the one that successfully infiltrated networks at the White House, State Department and the Joint Chiefs of Staff a year ago.

“When we discovered the intrusion, we treated this like the serious incident it is and reached out to [cyber security group] CrowdStrike immediately”. The intruders have now been “kicked out” and the network secured, according to DNC chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz. US officials said that the networks of Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton were targeted, though details remain hazy.

“In light of our increasingly adversarial relationship with Russian Federation after their invasion of Ukraine, we must expect that Russian Federation, in particular, will target our institutions relentlessly – and for those that are not well defended, successfully”.

The meeting between Clinton and Sanders was planned on June 7 when the former secretary of state secured enough delegates to become the presumed Democratic nominee, scoring victories in heavily populated states California and New Jersey.

The DNC hack reported Tuesday allowed access to the committee’s internal emails and chats as well as its opposition research on Donald Trump, the Post reported. “And a combination of [The Department of Homeland Security] and Federal Bureau of Investigation are doing what they can to educate both campaigns against a potential cyber threat”.

USA intelligence officials have said many previous assaults were linked to Chinese hackers. He was not sure how the intrusions occurred but suspected the hackers may have leveraged “spearphishing” emails to trick DNC employees into downloading malicious code onto their network.

As was outlined in CrowdStrike’s blogpost on Tuesday, the Russian group responsible for the intrusion into the DNC’s email system is the same one implicated in the breaching of unclassified networks belonging to the White House, State Department and U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff.

At the time of writing, the exact entry point of the hackers remains unclear however evidence suggests email phishing is likely to have played a key role in giving the hackers unfettered access to the sensitive information.

When asked why, Alperovitch said because “like everyone else in the world, the Russian government is keenly interested in who is Mr. Trump, what his foreign policy will be and what his relationship with Russia would be like”.

Less is known about the other group, nicknamed “Cozy Bear”. Unlike in the West, he said, different agencies function separately and often jockey for favor with Moscow.

CrowdStrike claimed to have identified two separate hacking groups working for the Russian security services.