In June, Crowdstrike, a group that analyzes threats to network security, have found two separate Russian intelligence-associated antagonists inside the United States' Democratic National Committee (DNC) network. A comprehensive report detailing the attacks has been released.
A day after the findings have been released, Guccifer 2.0, an allusion to notorious hacker Guccifer, has claimed responsibility for the hack. However, the infiltrator has refuted Crowdstrike's statement that the operation is being handled by a lone hacker and that the Russians are in no way involved. The attacker has also taken credit for proving Wikileaks with many of the DNC files. A couple of weeks after, two cyber security companies, Fidelis Cybersecurity and Mandiant, have independently confirmed Crowdstrike's report that Russian hackers are responsible for the breach. They've also added that malware and methods considered as Russian trademarks are used. In a statement, Clinton spokesperson Nick Merrill has said that an analytics program maintained by the DNC and utilized by the campaign during the hack.
Russia's involvement in the unauthorized domain entry into the DNC has been traced to a malware that accessed the German Parliament in 2015. Thomas Rid, a professor at King's College in London, has discovered an identical command-and-control address hardcoded into the DNC malware. The malicious matter has originated from Russian military intelligence. Both the DNC and the German incidents share a common SSL certificate. However, the trail does not end there.
Traces of metadata in the documents have indications of Cyrillic translation. It is helpful that Guccifer 2.0 has claimed to be Romanian because along this path, a loophole has been revealed. The hacker is unable to char with motherboard journalists in coherent Romanian. Basically, this ploy of operating in the shadow is something that is within Russian norms, probably affiliated historically with the Cold War. The suspicion against Moscow is not without basis. Last year, email servers of the White House and the State Department including the President Barack Obama's Blackberry have been breached. The Kremlin has denied any involvement in the DNC attack.
Considering that the breach has happened in the midst of a heated tussle between presidentiables Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, the angle of the Republican Party manipulating things in order to gain an edge in the forthcoming elections came to light. Based on data unveiled by Wikileaks, both DNC chair Debbie Wasserman and Senator Bernie Sanders have been booted out of contention to pave way for Clinton's nomination. The Trump camp has denied claims of hack involvement. Senior communications adviser Jason Miller says that the Democratic presidential candidate has this problem wherever she goes.
