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Democrats Security Politics

Russian Government Hackers Penetrated DNC, Stole Opposition Research On Donald Trump (washingtonpost.com) 160

Posted by msmash from the bridge-of-spies dept.
Russian government hackers penetrated Democratic National Committee's database and stole research on Donald Trump (could be paywalled; alternate source), according to a report on Washington Post. DNC officials and security experts say the hackers were able to read all e-mail and chats in the DNC system. Some of the hackers had been in the DNC system for a year, the report adds. They were expelled from the computer system this past weekend. Russian spies also targeted the computers of Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton and several GOP political action committees. From the report: The intrusions are an example of Russia's interest in the U.S. political system and its desire to understand the policies, strengths and weaknesses of a potential future president -- much as American spies gather similar information on foreign candidates and leaders. The depth of the penetration reflects the skill and determination of the United States' top cyber adversary as Russia goes after strategic targets, from the White House and State Department to political campaign organizations.
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Russian Government Hackers Penetrated DNC, Stole Opposition Research On Donald Trump More

Russian Government Hackers Penetrated DNC, Stole Opposition Research On Donald Trump

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  • Show of hands, was Hillary's email secure? (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Also, the DNC are a bunch of clowns. They're not a government agency and have to buy their IT security and it sure sounds like they went with the lowest bidder.

  • I heard the DNC used the same impenetrable firewall on their server than SecState Hillary used. Locked bathroom door and everything!

    • Well, maybe someone forgot to lock the door when the server was cleaned with a rag or something.

    • Well, your comment was meant as a joke . . . but let's take a look at reality. Could someone penetrate Hilary's illegal server . . . .? Probably, yes.

      Could someone force the dweeb who set the server up into giving away all the credentials? Definitely, yes. You would be surprised what you can be talked into, when someone is holding a blowtorch to your balls.

      • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

        by The Grim Reefer ( 1162755 )

        Could someone force the dweeb who set the server up into giving away all the credentials? Definitely, yes.

        I'll leave this [xkcd.com] here.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        Yes, someone could go through the trouble of physically abducting the server admin and torturing him, but it's just so much easier, faster, and cheaper to hack a mis-configured or unpatched server.

      • Wouldn't a honeypot work so much better? Just send over an attractive woman to throw herself at him.

      • Could someone force the dweeb who set the server up into giving away all the credentials? Definitely, yes. You would be surprised what you can be talked into, when someone is holding a blowtorch to your balls.

        That would never work because the dweeb in a blowtorch-free zone

  • firewall around his servers.

    • Re:Donal Trump needs to build a (Score:5, Funny)

      by Sheldon_Cooper_1 ( 4163171 ) on Tuesday June 14, 2016 @11:14AM (#52315723)

      firewall around his servers.

      And make Mexico pay for it.

  • suspected Russian government hackers (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward

    As far as I am aware only the united states admits to cyber espionage.

  • Russian spies also targeted the computers of [...] Hillary Clinton

    Certainly if there was incriminating evidence of something diabolical in her email server, the Russians would have found it, would they not have? Why would they wait to release it?

    • Re:So they're going to release Hillary news when? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Tanktalus ( 794810 ) on Tuesday June 14, 2016 @11:21AM (#52315807) Journal

      You don't think they could imagine more useful purposes to put that information?

      Maybe they don't want Obama to know what they know. Maybe they want to wait for HRC to get into the White House (everyone knew she'd be running this year) to blackmail her. The Russians have absolutely zero interest in American justice being served, why would they release it at all?

      • Re:So they're going to release Hillary news when? (Score:5, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 14, 2016 @11:44AM (#52316019)

        One comment on the radio is that Clinton had access to names of CIA operatives as part of her duties as head of the State Department, but those names were never identified within the email as an operative, so explicit searching would be difficult. By forwarding these emails to her personal server, and if her personal server was accessed as Guccifer claims it was, the hacker(s) would now have emails containing operative names.

        After the fact, the government is releasing emails as part of FOIA requests that are heavily redacted, and the reason on some documents is tagged as "B3 CIA PERS/ORG" indicating the redaction is of a name of a clandestine operative. A hacker with access to the original document can now easily go in and correlate the CIA tagged redacted document, and see the name of the individual who was redacted.

        At least 47 documents from her server (to date) have been tagged with this classification.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Britz ( 170620 )

        If you think you are a competing power to the US, there is nothing better that could happen to you than a Trump presidency (if you disagree and think a Trump presidency would be fine, just stop reading). China would most likely love to see that happen, because they want to extend their foothold in the South China Sea.

        I am not so sure about Russia. Deep down they must know they are a third rate country now, albeit with strategic nuclear weapons. Pressuring their neighbors only works, because those neighbors

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by rtb61 ( 674572 )

        Not correct, as this time the Russian government has a very powerful interest in exposing corruption in the US and forcing the US government to prosecute that corrupt because it completely disrupts that corrupt activity, which includes trying to fomet a cold war to increase arms sales, manipulation of diplomacy to disrupt normal trade and favour specific corporations and corruption of US intelligence services so they provide false data to promote war and arms sales.

        They will also release that information

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Salgak1 ( 20136 )

      Blackmail ? It's amusing, with Clinton as a candidate. But if they have something REALLY damaging, imagine what PRESIDENT Clinton would do to keep it from the public eye.

      Of course, then she'd have the problem of Danegeld. . .

    • are worth more than lump sum hush money.

    • Russian spies also targeted the computers of [...] Hillary Clinton

      Certainly if there was incriminating evidence of something diabolical in her email server, the Russians would have found it, would they not have? Why would they wait to release it?

      The President has a lot more resources to pay off a blackmail than a former SoS.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by mbkennel ( 97636 )
        | The President has a lot more resources to pay off a blackmail than a former SoS.

        Actually, not true in this case.

        The President has influence and authority, but authority which is mediated through legal processes, paper trail, and agencies with their own independent power. Maybe Obama could convince somehow the CIA to pay off some blackmail from their stash of unmarked bills used to pay overseas informants, but then, CIA would have tremendous blackmail potential over Obama.

        The Clintons have hundreds of mil

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by DaHat ( 247651 )

          And even if using the official office to assist the blackmailers, the 25th amendment makes it pretty easy to remove their power given their incapacity to faithfully excite the office.

        • What makes you think money is the preferred payment? How about you sit on your hands while we help Assad or do this thing in Ukraine. Or make peace with Iran so we can sell defense armaments to them again.

          There are a lot of methods for payment that do not directly involve money.

    • Re:So they're going to release Hillary news when? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by PolygamousRanchKid ( 1290638 ) on Tuesday June 14, 2016 @11:32AM (#52315913)

      When kiddies hack a system, they will brag about on Facebook. When professional spooks hack a system, you will probably never hear of it. If you have access to a great source of information, the best thing to do is to keep quiet about it. In that way, you can keep accessing the information.

      Depending on who you talk to, folks will say that Churchill knew that Germany was going to bomb Coventry. He decided not to order extra air defenses, because that would have alerted the Germans that their codes had been cracked.

      Toss curve balls, screw balls, and sliders at your enemy to confuse them, and get them chasing their own tails.

      In any case, this story stinks like a Cleveland Steamer: The Russians break into a DNC computer to steal info about Donald Trump? Give me a break! What did they steal about the Democratic Party?

  • in the toaster oven

    And once all 2.3 million outstanding ballots are counted in California (yes, as of today), you'll realize how wise that was.

  • . . . .they already have all they need on Clinton, from her email server. . . .

    The fact that they're looking for dirt on Trump, suggests that they think he might well be elected. . .

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by cdrudge ( 68377 )

      The fact that they're looking for dirt on Trump, suggests that they think he might well be elected. . .

      It doesn't suggest that at all. It would be pretty stupid for Russia not to look into the major political contenders of their primary adversary regardless whether they might win or not.

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
        Comment removed based on user account deletion

        • Russia doesn't fear the West. Putin just wants somebody to be the bad guy - and we do that splendidly. We're much less likely than Islam (in it's various incantations) to come back and bite. It also gives him an excuse to work on the military - something that's good for his hold on power and for his cronies pocket books.

    • The fact that they're looking for dirt on Trump, suggests that they think he might well be elected. . .

      Well duh, he is the presumptive candidate of one of the two dominant US political parties. His chances of becoming president of the US for the next 4 years are currently better than every other human on the planet except one (by some variable margin). ....uhhboy....

    • Trump is extremely popular in Russia. Everyone is rooting for him over there- both the government and ordinary citizens. They were probably gathering the stuff to hand over to him.

      The real puzzle here is, why does Hillary or anyone else need to do "opposition research" on Trump? He does it for you every time he opens his mouth.

      • There is Nothing Hillary can say or do will sway Trump Supporters period. There is Nothing Trump can say or do will sway Clinton Supporters period. I don't think either can win with just their supporters so the fight is going to be over the undecided and keeping the "Lean toward one due to the lesser of two evils" leaning the right way and to lesser getting the Bernistas to fall in line.
        Getting the leaning towards and undecided is the sweet spot, that's why in every election the true dyed-in-the-wool suppo

  • DNC server was allowed, and no laws were broken.

    There is no evidence Russians indeed hacked into the server.

    Any evidence that is available, can be easily falsified.

    And how exactly did they they penetrated? There were people working in DNC almost around the clock and no body, I repeat, nobody saw any of the attempts to penetrate.

    Also, those who claim inappropriate penetration, are of questionable character and should not be believed.

    • They had backup copies of the hard disks . . . but they crashed.

      There were backup copies, of the backups, but they have been recycled.

      And, last, but not least . . . "I'll take the fifth amendment and my $200,000 per year pension with me."

  • Bernie was the first... (Score:3)

    by mschaffer ( 97223 ) on Tuesday June 14, 2016 @11:22AM (#52315821)

    Bernie was the first to "compromise" data on DNC servers. Did we already forget just how bad some of the DNC data is protected?
    https://medium.com/@AmyKDacey/... [medium.com]

  • I'm sure the US (tries to) bust into the Russian political stuff also.

  • Trump opposition research: (Score:5, Funny)

    by fahrbot-bot ( 874524 ) on Tuesday June 14, 2016 @11:38AM (#52315973)

    Quote Trump directly.

  • The Russians look at national economic ascendancy like a zero sum game (that's why Russians are so poor).

    They think that if we get pushovers like Obama (who told Putin he was one reelection away from giving him everything Putin wanted) in office that the US will do worse and Russia will do better.

    Russia and the US could actually succeed together if they relaxed commercial barriers. Increased trade rewards value-adds at every stage and more people can compete to fulfill demand (i.e. more jobs).

    To me

  • Russians? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by whitroth ( 9367 ) <whitroth@[ ]ent.us ['5-c' in gap]> on Tuesday June 14, 2016 @11:46AM (#52316033) Homepage

    So, they had access for how long? A year? I don't suppose there's *any* chance that the open access that Bernie's folks looked at - one of the first reports I read, never repeated, was the guy in charge of the 4-person team had them look, to see if Hillary had gotten *their* info.

    And then the DNC "cleaned up"?

    I now believe *nothing* the DNC says about its computer systems, or security, since if they'd *actually* cleaned up... they would have caught the Russians *then*, not the beginning of May.

                        mark

    • The Bernie-Hillary cross-contamination was supposedly a lack of robust separation of two groups of authorised users, where this is the penetration by two groups of unauthorised users to probably everything. If they had the security cranked up, only the long-term cadre would have been able to learn how to use, because the volunteers would be their long enough to train.

  • The stolen file reads: "Trump is an arrogant classless bigoted blowhard who often changes his position and rarely offers specifics. Thus, he's a lot like Putin."

  • Way to go Debbie! (Score:4, Insightful)

    by cahuenga ( 3493791 ) on Tuesday June 14, 2016 @11:50AM (#52316093)
    Credit to the DNC and Big Media for spinning this so well. Putin only got got his hands on Trump research.... Nothing on Hillary.

    What a load.

    • Re:Way to go Debbie! (Score:5, Interesting)

      by xxxJonBoyxxx ( 565205 ) on Tuesday June 14, 2016 @12:02PM (#52316209)
      >> Putin only got got his hands on Trump research.... Nothing on Hillary.

      There were at least two foreign groups that owned the network. At least one grabbed the Trump material but there's also this rather shocking admission:
      "The intruders so thoroughly compromised the DNC&rsquo;s system that they also were able to read all email and chat traffic, said DNC officials and the security experts."

      https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/russian-government-hackers-penetrated-dnc-stole-opposition-research-on-trump/2016/06/14/cf006cb4-316e-11e6-8ff7-7b6c1998b7a0_story.html

  • DNC's research into Trump? (Score:5, Informative)

    by Orgasmatron ( 8103 ) on Tuesday June 14, 2016 @11:53AM (#52316119)

    ZOMG! Now the Russians know that Trump is racist, sexist, homophobic and Islamophobic. He wants to throw grandma out of the hospital to die on the street, or off a cliff, depending on the topic. At night he hands out fully automatic, laser guided "Assault Guns" with extra-lethal plastic parts to inner city toddlers and mentally unstable Democrats. In his spare time, he is the leader of a secret society of racists known as "the Police" that meets daily to discuss new ways to murder and/or frame innocent black children on their way to church.

    Seriously guys, the DNC's "opposition research" is chiseled in stone, and not exactly secret. They just swap out the name at the top.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by JustNiz ( 692889 )

      I supose you're one of those people that flatly refuse to acknowledge any of the tons of evindence in front of your face that Hilary is the leader of one of the biggest crime families in the US?

  • ... everybody.

  • Good news! The DNC is worth penetrating! (Score:3)

    by mveloso ( 325617 ) on Tuesday June 14, 2016 @12:14PM (#52316349)

    The silver lining is that the DNC may actually be worth penetrating! If the GRU thinks there may be something valuable in there then maybe the DNC actually does something of value.

  • I think that Trump himself is still trying to figure out what his foreign policies will be!

    Please let the American people know if you figure anything out!

  • Surprised that the Chinese didn't lock down their DNC espionage better in order to keep the drunk Russians out.

  • Sometimes looking in the wrong places... (Score:3)

    by DriveDog ( 822962 ) on Tuesday June 14, 2016 @12:49PM (#52316711)
    A lot of noise is made about foreigners buying influence (over US legislators and executives), but we don't hear much about blackmail. Which might mean that it's been very successful. If Wikileaks can find stuff in emails to get people in trouble, certainly the Russians can find stuff in emails with which to blackmail. The beauty of blackmail is that it's the gift that keeps on giving. The more you succumb to it, the more grip the blackmailer has over you.

  • Don't believe the SPIN (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Dorianny ( 1847922 ) on Tuesday June 14, 2016 @01:10PM (#52316911) Journal
    Hackers broke into the DNC to steal information about their opponent and not their candidate. Now thats some straight up spin. They stole everything that was there but I can guarantee you that they were far more interested in the internal info they had on the DNC candidate. BTW just because the logged-ip addressed point to Russian ip-blocks it doesn't mean that this was done by direction of the Russian government or even that the attack originated in Russia. Using compromised machines under the hackers controll as proxy servers to carry attacks on a 3d party is standard practice. Using machines in countries that are generally considered rivals and are unlikely to cooperate with U.S authorities in an investigation, makes a heck-of-a-lot of sense
    • >BTW just because the logged-ip addressed point to Russian ip-blocks it doesn't mean that this was done by direction of the Russian government or even that the attack originated in Russia. In case anyone was curious, the Former Soviet Union (and Russia in particular) tends to have the highest concentration of open proxy servers.

    • Stop trying to talk sense to the animals.
      The headline is all they need to know.

  • Enough With The Snarky Comments Already (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Marlin Schwanke ( 3574769 ) on Tuesday June 14, 2016 @01:13PM (#52316941)
    Do a little reading and you'll find that the Chinese are busy stealing all of our technology and preparing themselves to take out our infrastructure (power-grid, banking, etc.). On the other front the Russians are actively engaging in political sabotage via all means from hordes of message forum trolls to active hacking. Don't think that the upcoming "Brexit" vote isn't being watched with great interest, and actively promoted by the Russians. I remember a few years ago Putin predicting that we'd be in a civil war here in the states by about now. Don't think for a moment that he doesn't have a bunch of shills working the interwebs for Russian interests in fomenting unrest and discontent right here and now.

    • Putin shills instigating civil war in the US? Trump praising Putin and Putin all but endorsing Trump? Was Trump sent by the Russians to tear our country in two?

      (Hey, it's not any crazier than the other conspiracy theories that Trump touts.)

      • It isn't crazy at all. Read some better European newspapers. The EU types are right now trying to figure out how to handle the torrent of invective and propaganda coming out of a few troll factories operating out of Russia. They have hard documentation on this.

  • I noticed they collected "Research" on Donald Trump and not intelligence.

  • Something posters here seem to be missing. This didn't happen last week, it happened almost a year ago. So whatever they wanted to do with the dirt they found out about Trump, they've had it for over a year.

    Trump has been making oddly fanboyish statements about Putin for the last year. It *could* be that he honestly is a fan of that one mid-Eurasian dictator out of all the others like him out there. But the timing opens up other interesting possibilities.

    Trump has also conspicuously refused to release h

  • What if the Russians find out he's a racist, uninformed narcissistic orange bloviating dickhead? We need to protect that information!

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