What are Those Russian Hackers up to Anyway?

The security firm, Crowdstrike, has revealed that at least two hacker groups believed to be based in Russia have breached the Democratic National Convention’s computer network.

DNC officials confirmed to the Washington Post that hackers had indeed fully accessed their headquarters chats and emails as well as stolen key opposition research on Donald Trump.

DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz insists that the security of the DNC system is critical to its operation and the continued confidence of the state parties and campaigns the national party works with.

She said that when they discovered the intrusion, the DNC treated it like a “serious incident … and reached out to CrowdStrike immediately.” She added that their team moved as quickly as they could to eject the intruders and secure their network.

Crowdstrike identifies two groups of hackers – Fancy Bear and Cozy Bear – known to be aligned with the Russian government. It is unclear whether they are unaware of each other’s existence or perhaps competing for dominance in the Vladimir Putin regime intelligence community.

According to Crowdstrike, Cozy Bear breached the DNC over a year ago, while Fancy Bear targeted Trump’s files just recently. Cozy Bear typically employs spear-phishing emails as its entry point and Fancy Bear created spoofed web login pages for organizations it targets.

The goal was to steal staffers credentials, enabling the hackers to gain a foothold. Whatever their approach, both hacker teams inserted malware on the DNC’s PCs and servers so they could continually steal and then send information to “command-and-control” servers.

Spokesmen for Crowdstrike say that both groups changed their malware frequently and altered their “persistence” techniques in order to avoid deletion by antivirus programs and other sophisticated security measures.

The two groups have a long history of breaching targets according to the State Department. The White House believes the espionage is commissioned by the Russian government, probably by Putin himself.

Crowdstrike’s, Dmitri Alperovitch writes, “We identified advanced methods consistent with nation-state level capabilities including deliberate targeting and ‘access management’ tradecraft.”

He believes that the possibly adversarial teams are engaged in economic and political espionage that benefits the Russian Federation government. They are also believed to be closely linked to the highly capable and powerful intelligence services of the Russian government.

The hackers who breached the DNC have also probed both the networks of the Clinton and Trump campaigns, as well as a number of Republican political action committees. Insiders within the security community have little doubt that with the proper resources these state-sponsored hackers could have been thwarted.

Thomas Ptacek, co-founder of the security firm Matasano tweeted, “The only thing interesting about the DNC hack is that they got caught this time.”

But Trump says not so fast. He is suspicious of what he terms ‘alleged hacks’ on the DNC and raised doubts as to whether the Democratic Party might be using the issue as smokescreen for the release of information to purposefully sully his name.

He told Greta Van Susteren of Fox News that it was possible the DNC wasn’t hacked at all but rather wanted to get information out without appearing responsible.

The more than 200 pages of leaked files outline the presumptive Republican nominees personal history with sections titles “Trump is a liar” and “Trump has no core”. According to Trump, the “hacks” are actually a calculated move with hopes of distracting the public from Clinton’s flaws.

Trump told Politico, “”We believe it was the DNC that did the ‘hacking’ as a way to distract from the many issues facing their deeply flawed candidate and failed party leader. Too bad the DNC doesn’t hack Crooked Hillary’s, 33,000 missing emails.”

He adds that the information in question has been available for years, most of it either false or entirely inaccurate.

Crowdstrike’s Alperovitch warns that strikes may be a regular part of the 2016 presidential election. He believes this threat of foreign government hacks might extend well past November. Whether Trump is right or Russian hackers carried out these recent attacks, either scenario is troubling.

Either the DNC will do anything, including blame a foreign government and potentially create an international incident, to take the spotlight off of Clinton or a foreign government’s’ intelligence agency is seeking to influence a domestic election by choosing a side and disrupting the opposing campaign’s strategy.

There should be one thing both parties can agree on – intrusions by foreign governments do not have a place in American democracy.

~American Liberty Report


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