So is this a version of 21st century Watergate? It seems Russian hackers wormed their way into DNC servers -- on TWO levels -- and stole emails along with opposition files on Donald Trump.
Which is interesting, given that they had access for more than a year, but the only thing reported as stolen were the oppo files, don't you think?
POLITICO reports:
"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.
"At DNC, COZY BEAR intrusion has been identified going back to summer of 2015, while FANCY BEAR separately breached the network in April 2016. We have identified no collaboration between the two actors, or even an awareness of one by the other. Instead, we observed the two Russian espionage groups compromise the same systems and engage separately in the theft of identical credentials," Alperovitch wrote.
DNC officials say that no personal employee information or voter or donor information seems to have been taken, but the investigation into the breach is ongoing.
Erick Erickson sees a sinister motive:
I no longer think these are all coincidences. The web of connections between the Trump campaign and Moscow continues to grow. At some point coincidences and happenstance collide. The Russians have taken Trump’s oppo file while Russian hackers harass anyone critical of Trump who himself will not criticize Putin.
Vladimir Putin is intent to have his man in the White House and Republicans are helping him.
Given Trump's bent toward fascism, I'm not sure Erickson is wrong about that.
