In the span of fourteen months between March 2015 and May 2016, hackers likely working for Russia's military intelligence agency, the GRU, tried to hack 6,730 people all over the world, sending them around 19,315 malicious links. Their targets were several members of the US military, diplomats all over the world, Russian government critics, Hillary Clinton campaign staffers, and even Hillary Clinton herself, according to a new analysis.
We know about the full extent of their wide-ranging espionage operation because the hackers made a fatal mistake. The group, who is known to security experts as APT28, Sofacy, or Fancy Bear, was using the link shortener service Bitly to send out the phishing links, but they left their Bitly accounts public. That let researchers from the security firm SecureWorks track their phishing operation day by day, and figure out who they were trying to hack, including former National Security Advisor Colin Powell and Clinton's campaign chairman John Podesta, as Motherboard reported in October.
Thomas Rid, a professor at King's College, has now analyzed the the long list of targets collected by SecureWorks, unearthing even more evidence that the hacks against the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton campaign, as well as the subsequent leaks of stolen data were all part of the same disinformation operation from the Russian government. Rid's analysis also reveals that the hackers, and are widely believed to be working for the GRU, targeted the official campaign email address of Hillary Clinton herself.
Continue reading on Motherboard.
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