Russian Hackers Behind DNC Breach Seeking to Influence U.S. Election

Cyber actors linked to Russia’s intelligence service carried out a sophisticated cyber attack against Democratic National Committee computer networks in a bold attempt to influence the U.S. presidential election.

That’s the consensus view of U.S. intelligence agencies and private computer security firms regarding the covert intrusions by Moscow into DNC networks over the course of at least one year that resulted in the theft and release of sensitive internal information.

As with other state-sponsored cyber attacks, the White House is refusing to condemn the incident or take action despite ample electronic intelligence indicating the DNC hacking was a Russian cyber operation.

It is not the first major Russian cyber attack. Others in recent months have included cyber penetrations of the Pentagon’s Joint Staff email server and infiltrations of unclassified networks at the White House and State Department.

White House National Security Council spokesman Mark E. Stroh told The Cyber Threat it does not regard the DNC hacking operation as a Russian state-sponsored cyber attack. “That’s a supposition,” he said. “The USG has not made that determination.”

The comment suggests that the Obama administration is again avoiding any action in response to major and damaging cyber attack against the United States. Its questionable rationale is that the DNC attack cannot be linked to Russia without courtroom-level evidence, despite intelligence indicating that it is. The issue of attack attribution—the ability of intelligence agencies to conclusively link cyber intrusions to known state sponsors of cyber attacks—is once against letting the bad guys off the hook.

Former NSA cyber analyst Dave Aitel believes the DNC hack was not just a cyber intelligence-gathering operation. It was a cyber warfare strike against critical U.S. infrastructure, namely the political party system of the United States.

“The U.S. government has a decision to make here,” Aitel asserts. “If it does not come out strongly against this action by the Russian intelligence services now, then when will it?”

More