The Washington Post released a pretty explosive story last night at midnight. The private cybersecurity firm hired by the DNC to investigate the hacks, CrowdStrike, says they have “high confidence” that Russia’s military intelligence organization the GRU was behind the malware attacks that allowed them hacking access into the DNC.
“The GRU is used for both tactical intelligence collection in the battlefield in support of Russian military operations and also strategic active measures or psychological warfare overseas,” said Alperovitch, who is an expert on Russia and a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council. “The fact that they would be tracking and helping the Russian military kill Ukrainian army personnel in eastern Ukraine and also intervening in the U.S. election is quite chilling.”
CrowdStrike found that a variant of the Fancy Bear malware that was used to penetrate the DNC’s network in April 2016 was also used to hack an Android app developed by the Ukrainian army to help artillery troops more efficiently train their antiquated howitzers on targets.
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CrowdStrike has published a breakdown of how the Fancy Bear malware was deployed and used to track Ukrainian military here. There is still one outstanding player in the DNC hack and CrowdStrike is not yet sure of their identity or what the exact hierarchy of Russia’s cyber espionage apparatus looks like right now.
The other group that hacked the DNC also works for Russian intelligence, CrowdStrike reported earlier this year. But the firm is not sure if it is the more internally focused FSB, or the foreign intelligence arm, the SVR. Both grew out of the KGB.
That group, which CrowdStrike has called Cozy Bear, has not apparently been deployed in the influence operation, Alperovitch said. Rather, it is focused on traditional espionage. It is the group that is believed to have hacked unclassified networks of the State Department, White House and the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
We need a serious government investigation and not some dog, pony and Mitch McConnell show.
