WASHINGTON DC – It was a bombshell. Operatives from two Russian spy agencies had infiltrated computers of the Democratic National Committee, months before the US national election.
One agency — nicknamed Cozy Bear by cybersecurity company CrowdStrike — used a tool that was “ingenious in its simplicity and power” to insert malicious code into the DNC’s computers, CrowdStrike’s Chief Technology Officer Dmitri Alperovitch wrote in a June blog post. The other group, nicknamed Fancy Bear, remotely grabbed control of the DNC’s computers.
By October, the Department of Homeland Security and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence on Election Security agreed that Russia was behind the DNC hack. On Dec. 29, those agencies, together with the FBI, issued a joint statement reaffirming that conclusion.
And a week later, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence summarized its findings (PDF)in a declassified (read: scrubbed) report. Even President Donald Trump acknowledged, “It was Russia,” a few days later — although he told “Face the Nation” earlier this week it “could’ve been China.”
On Tuesday, the House Intelligence Committee heard testimony from top intelligence officials, including FBI Director James Comey and NSA Director Mike Rogers. But the hearing was closed to the public, and new details on the hacking attacks haven’t emerged from either the House or the Senate’s investigations into Russia’s alleged attempt to influence the election.
However, during the Senate Judiciary Committee’s open hearing on Wednesday, Comey agreed that the Russian government was still influencing American politics.
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