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DNC hires former Yahoo security chief in wake of 2016 hacks
The Democratic National Committee's (DNC) new chief security officer position has been filled, Wired reports. Bob Lord, who was previously Yahoo's chief information security officer prior to its acquisition by Verizon, will take over the position and will be working with both the national offices as well as smaller state offices. "I'll be working to protect my new colleagues at the DNC from the attackers who would prefer to keep us distracted from our mission of getting Democrats across the nation elected," Lord said in a statement. "And my job doesn't stop at the front door of the building -- my team and I will work with state parties to update their information security strategies and deployments to change the economics for the attackers."
Russian hackers had hundreds of US targets in addition to the DNC
Various US agencies continue to look into the role Russia played in last year's presidential election, and targets of those investigations include interactions between Trump advisors and Russian officials, ads purchased by Russian agents through social media sites like Facebook and Twitter and whether the Kremlin was involved in the DNC email hacks of last year. In regards to the latter, Russia has been suspected of being behind the hacks for quite some time and just this week, reports have surfaced that the US Department of Justice has pinpointed six Russian officials it believes to have been involved in the hacks. However, a report released today by the Associated Press suggests that the group behind the DNC email breaches actually had a much wider range of targets.
Russian hackers targeted Clinton's email before the elections
US intelligence agents are pretty sure the Russian government authorized the DNC hacks and leaked Hillary Clinton's emails. While the country continues to deny its involvement, security firm SecureWorks found evidence that it has been targeting Clinton even before the elections began. Apparently, a group of hackers (known by the names APT28, Sofacy and Fancy Bear) working for Russian military intelligence sent 19,315 malicious links to 6,730 people from March 2015 to May 2016. Their targets included Clinton, her campaign chairman John Podesta, her staff, known critics of the Russian government, members of the US military and diplomats around the world.
Trump adviser spoke with DNC hacker during the campaign
Roger Stone, an adviser to Donald Trump during his successful presidential campaign, exchanged private messages with Guccifer 2.0, the person (or group) that hacked and leaked documents from the Democratic National Committee in 2016. The DNC hack occurred in July and was followed by multiple other breaches of Democratic party systems. Stone and Guccifer 2.0 communicated via Twitter private messages in mid-August, according to The Washington Times. The messages were sent about two weeks after Stone published an article on Breitbart claiming Russia didn't hack the DNC -- Guccifer 2.0 did.
Obama opens investigation into cyber attacks on US election
President Barack Obama has ordered an investigation into cyber attacks and foreign influence during the 2016 US presidential election, Reuters reports. He's asking intelligence agencies to provide a report on the issue before he leaves office on January 20th, and the review will be shared with lawmakers and other stakeholders, homeland security adviser Lisa Monaco reportedly said. Monaco added that cyber attacks may have crossed a "new threshold" this year.
Top Russian officials authorized the DNC hack and others, US says
Russia directed the hack of the Democratic National Committee and other recent invasions of political organizations, according to the US Department of Homeland Security and Office of the Director of National Intelligence on Election Security. The collective US Intelligence Community says that the attacks were intended to disrupt the on-going US presidential election, and given the scope of the intrusions, only the most senior Russian officials could have authorized them.
Putin doesn't think it's important who hacked the DNC
Just before the Democratic National Convention kicked off in late July, Wikileaks published a trove of emails and other data that it acquired following a hack on the Democratic National Committee. The FBI started investigating, and very quickly it identified Russia as the likely source of the hackers. Now, Russian president Vladimir Putin is speaking out, denying his country's involvement in the incident -- but with some rather strange language.
Experts believe DNC hackers are behind a larger plot
Although it's not the hack Donald Trump called for, security experts believe the same Russian hacking group allegedly responsible for leaking 20,000 Democratic party emails to WikiLeaks is also behind another attack that hints at an even larger Russian plot to influence American politics. In the weeks before WikiLeaks posted those materials, another cache of emails was posted on a site called DCLeaks.com targeting a top NATO general, former high-ranking intelligence officials and billionaire George Soros' progressive philanthropy called the Open Society Foundation.
Democrats at the DNC were divided on last week's email hack
On Wednesday, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump stared directly into a camera during a press briefing and said: "Russia, if you're listening, I hope you're able to find the 30,000 [Hillary Clinton] emails that are missing. I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press." This remark came after thousands of hacked emails from the Democratic National Committee were released by Wikileaks; the FBI has indicated it believes Russia was behind the attack. Trump has since said he was being "sarcastic" and his campaign manager denied claims that the candidate was calling for Russia to hack anyone. But that didn't stop Democrats from denouncing his language in the strongest of terms. "This has to be the first time that a major presidential candidate has actively encouraged a foreign power to conduct espionage against his political opponent," said Hillary Clinton's campaign. (What the Clinton campaign didn't mention is that this sort of maneuvering isn't entirely unheard of, even within the Democratic party.)
