It seems to be time for some good old-fashioned cyber espionage, as Russian hackers have broken into the Democratic National Committee’s (DNC) database. This was one of many cyber intrusions targeting American political organizations, and appears to be in an attempt at gathering information on presidential candidates, particularly GOP candidate Donald Trump.

News from The Washington Post states that the compromise was so thorough that the hackers could access all of the DNC’s email and chat traffic, and have had access to the network for some time before a major computer cleanup booted them off.

However, DNC also noted that no financial, donor, or personal information was accessed or compromised. The breach appears to be entirely for the purposes of espionage and information gathering, rather than profit. Hacking is, after all, an effective way to remotely gather information.

According to National Public Radio (NPR), security firm CrowdStrike has said two different groups of hackers were responsible. However, the groups were not working together, and both compromised the same systems and stole the same information. CrowdStrike also notes that the two groups have accessed unclassified networks of U.S. government departments before, so these hackers are far from amateurs.

It’s almost expected that hackers will break into the websites of presidential candidates, as it’s been a common occurrence over the past few campaigns. In this case, it seems the goal was to gather information on Trump, who was not perceived as a potential political figure until recently. Hillary Clinton, on the other hand, has been in the political spotlight for so long that there is already a trove of information about her.

Of course, the DNC has already responded to the incident. According to The New Civil Rights Movement, CrowdStrike has also installed software to analyze audit data, indicating who gained access when and how. Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz stated: “The security of our system is critical to our operation and to the confidence of the campaigns and state parties we work with. When we discovered the intrusion, we treated this like the serious incident it is and reached out to CrowdStrike immediately. Our team moved as quickly as possible to kick out the intruders and secure the network.”

This will not be the last incident we hear about this election cycle, but it was certainly an effective one, with around a year of infiltration and data gathering. Fortunately, no personal or financial information was put at risk, but it shines quite a light on cyber espionage nonetheless.

Image by Dennis Skley