SOURCE:
POLITICOhttp://www.politico.com/story/2016/06/russian-government-hackers-broke-into-dnc-servers-stole-trump-oppo-224315by: Daniel Strauss
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Russian government hackers broke into the computer systems of the Democratic National Committee and accessed information about Democratic candidates as well as a database on opposition research against Donald Trump, POLITICO has confirmed.
The hackers had access to the information for approximately one year, but that access was wiped clean last weekend, The Washington Post reported, noting that the DNC said that no personal, financial or donor information had been accessed or taken.
In late April, the DNC's IT department noticed some suspicious behavior and contacted DNC chief executive officer Amy Dacey, according to a DNC official. Dacey reached out to DNC lawyer Michael Sussmann, a partner at the Perkins Coie law firm and a former federal prosecutor specializing in cybercrimes. Sussmann called Shawn Henry, the president of cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike, to get his company's help. Within 24 hours of the first signals that something was amiss, CrowdStrike was brought in to install monitoring software to analyze the details of who was responsible. The DNC has also been in contact with the FBI since the hack was discovered.
"The security of our system is critical to our operation and to the confidence of the campaigns and state parties we work with," said Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.), the DNC chairwoman, in a statement. "When we discovered the intrusion, we treated this like the serious incident it is and reached out to CrowdStrike immediately. Our team moved as quickly as possible to kick out the intruders and secure our network."
CrowdStrike designated two groups that gained access to the DNC's info. One, codenamed Cozy Bear, broke into the DNC last summer and had been monitoring the committee's emails and chats. The other group CrowdStrike dubbed Fancy Bear. It hacked into the DNC in April aiming to get opposition research files. The Fancy Bear breach is what tipped off DNC officials. Fancy Bear was able to gain access to all of the DNC's research staff computers.
In a blog post, CrowdStrike co-founder Dmitri Alperovitch said there was no coordination between the groups.
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