Technology
Russian hacker group allegedly attacked state democratic parties in the recurrence of the 2016 attacks
A Russian hacker group known as Fancy Bear attacked e-mails from Democratic State Parties in Indiana and California earlier this year as well as independent think tanks, Reuters said. The efforts were evidently unsuccessful and, according to Reuters, were flagged by Microsoft, including the Foreign Affairs Committee, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and the Centre for American Progress.
The Russian embassy denied Reuters the accusations, calling it false news.
Fancy Bear has been linked to GRU, a Russian military intelligence organization, and in 2018, the Department of Justice prosecuted 12 GRU officials for hacking the Clinton and DNC campaigns. Fancy Bear was recently related to the 2016 hacking of the Democratic National Committee and John Podesta, then Head of the Clinton party. Emails obtained via the hacking were released by WikiLeaks prior to the 2016 presidential election and were threatening to the Clinton campaign.
Despite assurances from the US intelligence community that the Russian government was behind the hack, President Trump consistently voiced skepticism that Russia was involved.
Microsoft said in a security study last month that Fancy Bear — also known as Strontium, or APT28—was still in search of targets for the upcoming presidential election. Most of the attacks were ineffective, according to Microsoft, but Reuters had previously confirmed that the hackers were targeting a communications company working with Joe Biden's presidential campaign and other influential Democrats. The Biden campaign said at the time that a foreign agent had attempted to break the campaign's non-campaign email addresses, but was not successful.
Yet Fancy Bear is nothing but relentless, and according to the cybersecurity company FireEye, it's proven to go past the standard hack to get the information it requires.
The unusual past of the company poses the prospect of follow-up to intelligence operations or other devastating events, FireEye warned customers in a message.
Image Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge
