If you have the time do watch the whole segment. This is something we should all be aware of.
Twelve Russian military officers have been indicted for breaking into the Democratic Party's computers, stealing compromising information and selectively releasing it to undermine candidates. Bill Whitaker reports on the case against them.
Posing as Guccifer 2.0, the Russians offered up stolen documents to Julian Assange's WikiLeaks and self proclaimed "dirty trickster" Roger Stone. It was all part of a broad campaign to disrupt the presidential election. But there was another, less well-known part of the Russian operation: to undermine Democrats running for Congress.
Kelly Ward Burton: It started as large document dumps, where Guccifer 2.0 was kind of taunting and saying, "I have more.”
Kelly Ward Burton: We reached out to them and asked them. You know, we-- we said, "We have been the victims of a cyberattack by a foreign adversary. Will you make a commitment not to use any of these stolen materials in the-- in the campaign, or in the 2016 election?" And they wouldn't make a commitment to do so.
She says in the months leading up to the elections, Russian tactics evolved. The indiscriminate document dumps became more frequent and strategic.
Bill Whitaker: Not a lot of people know that the Russians interfered in five congressional races here in Florida. When did you first get wind of it?
Marc Caputo: Well, I'd been paying attention, like the rest of the press corps, that Russia had been hacking and Russia had been trying to interfere in our election system. And then out of the blue I got contacted by this blogger, Hello Florida.
The blogger turned out to be this man, Aaron Nevins, one of the shadier political operators in the Sunshine State. The Republican strategist wouldn't talk to us on camera, but he did talk to special counsel Robert Mueller's investigators. He admits direct-messaging Guccifer 2.0, asking for any Florida-related documents. Seeing a willing participant, the Russians flooded Nevins with hacked materials.
Robert Anderson: The thing that you need to worry about with Russia and every one of their intelligence services is they will learn from these operations. They'll learn how easy it is to gain access to government and private accounts. They'll learn how quickly the information that they put in front of somebody will be disseminated. They will analyze everything they did right or wrong. And when they attack again, they will not come at you the same way.
