The US Presidential elections are a great source of information. This is also attracting state-sponsored hackers, such as the Russians who stole research on Donald Trump. Penetrating the computer network of the Democratic National Committee was a lot easier than anticipated apparently.

Russian Hackers Target American Political Campaigns

It goes without saying Donald Trump has been attracting a lot of attention so far, and not only because of his ludicrous and offensive statements. Russian state-sponsored hackers have obtained a lot of information on Trump, including email and chat traffic. Similar attacks were executed against Clinton and GOP political action committees.

It is rather disconcerting to think these Russian hackers had access to the Democratic National Committee computer network for close to a full year. All of them were kicked out this past weekend, as the DNC held a significant computer cleanup campaign. No financial or personal information has been taken, indicating this breach was part of traditional espionage.

Russia and the US have not seen eye to eye for quite some time now,and the Eastern European powerhouse has an interest in the US political system. Moreover, they want to explore all strengths and weaknesses of Presidential candidates, so they can take advantage of this information at a future stage.

CrowdStrike CEO Shawn Henry told the media:

“We’re perceived as an adversary of Russia.Their job when they wake up every day is to gather intelligence against the policies, practices and strategies of the U.S. government. There are a variety of ways. [Hacking] is one of the more valuable because it gives you a treasure trove of information.”

Albeit DNC officials were made aware of this unauthorized access in April of 2016, it still took them nearly two full months to undertake action. This type of behavior is unacceptable in this day and age of cyber attacks and data breaches. Fortunately, it proved rather easy to get rid of the intruders, which turned out to be two separate Russian hacker groups.

Source: Washington Post

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