The Donald. (credit: Gage Skidmore)
A hack on the Democratic National Committee has given attackers access to a massive trove of data, including all opposition research into presidential candidate Donald Trump and almost a year's worth of private e-mail and chat messages, according to a published report.
In an article published Wednesday, The Washington Post reported that researchers with CrowdStrike, the security firm DNC officials hired to investigate and contain the breach, determined the intrusions were carried out by two separate hacker groups that both worked for the Russian government. One, dubbed Cozy Bear, gained access last summer and has been monitoring committee members' e-mail and chat communications. The other is known as Fancy Bear and is believed to have broken into the network in late April. It was the latter intrusion that obtained the entire database of Trump opposition and later tipped off IT team members the network may have been breached.
The DNC intrusion is just one of several targeting US political organizations, the WaPo said, with the networks of Trump, rival presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, and some republican political action committees also being targeted by Russian spies. Details about those campaigns weren't available. The hackers who penetrated the DNC network were expelled last weekend. No financial and donor information appears to have been taken, leaving analysts to suspect the attack was a case of traditional espionage and not the work of criminal hackers. According to Wednesday's report: