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

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.

Comments

Re:So they're going to release Hillary news when?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

DNC's research into Trump?

[Orgasmatron]

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.