Slashdot Mirror
Report: Russian Hackers Phished The DNC And Clinton Campaign Using Fake Gmail Forms (buzzfeed.com)
Citing a report from SecureWorks, BuzzFeed is reporting that Russian hackers "used emails disguised to look as Gmail security updates to hack into the computers of the Democratic National Committee and members of Hillary Clinton's top campaign staff":
The emails were sent to 108 members of Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton's campaign and 20 people clicked on them, at least four people clicking more than once, Secureworks' research found. The emails were sent to another 16 people from the DNC and four people clicked on them, the report said.
Researchers found the emails by tracing the malicious URLs set up by [state-sponsored hacking group] Fancy Bear using Bitly, a link shortening service... "We were monitoring bit.ly and saw the accounts being created in real time," said Phil Burdette, a senior security researcher at SecureWorks, explaining how they stumbled upon the the URLs set up by Fancy Bear.
The URL apparently resolved to accounts-google.com (rather than accounts.google.com), and Burdette says "They did a great job with capturing the look and feel of Google."
Researchers found the emails by tracing the malicious URLs set up by [state-sponsored hacking group] Fancy Bear using Bitly, a link shortening service... "We were monitoring bit.ly and saw the accounts being created in real time," said Phil Burdette, a senior security researcher at SecureWorks, explaining how they stumbled upon the the URLs set up by Fancy Bear.
The URL apparently resolved to accounts-google.com (rather than accounts.google.com), and Burdette says "They did a great job with capturing the look and feel of Google."
In the former USSR a lot of people, if not a majority, are still running broken Windows XP and even piratated Windows 3.1. I saw PCs with several botes running along simultaneously. These PCs do not receive security updates (or receie them from teh bot owners' servers).
Since these people do not use credit cards online, they do not care about security. It is so easy to simulate a hack from these parts or even DDoS attack, as bot owners can copy parts of text in Cyrillics directly from these PCs as de facto they co-own them too.
I would prefer a solid evidence like a witness account or copies of government documents. Russia cannot produce a single PC, notebook, or even a smartphone. I would not believe that it has got supernatural powers to enter firewalled hardened US government servers.