The Russian state-sponsored hacker who claimed responsibility for stealing the Democratic National Committee’s research files on Donald Trump leaked over 200 of the opposition files to various news agencies on Wednesday.
The Washington Post first reported the compromised DNC network on Tuesday and how they got away with their research on the Republican presidential nominee.
Calling himself “Guccifer 2.0,” which is a reference to the Romanian hacker that discovered Hillary Clinton’s private server in 2013, the hacker told Gawker that his motive is to be “a fighter against all those Illuminati that captured our world.”
Titled the “ Donald Trump Report ,” the DNC documents are a kind of anti-Trump playbook where the real estate mogul is labeled as a “bad businessman” and “misogynist in chief,” and gives a summary of the Democratic Party’s strategy for undermining Trump’s presidential aspirations, according to Gawker .
A section titled “Top Narratives” outlines a seven-point attack on Donald Trump’s record and character. Also, there is a collection of comments and speeches given by Trump, plus an overall assessment of his political mindset.
Cyber security company CrowdStrike was in charge of the DNC’s server and claimed that they were penetrated by a “sophisticated” hacking group. But according to Guccifer 2.0, accessing the files was “easy, very easy.”
The cyber company first identified the group as “COZY BEAR” and “FANCY BEAR”— two “sophisticated adversaries” that “engage in extensive political and economic espionage for the benefit of the government of the Russian Federation,” according to Gawker .
“Guccifer may have been the first one who penetrated Hillary Clinton’s and other Democrats’ mail servers,” the hacker said on his website. “But he certainly wasn’t the last. No wonder any other hacker could easily get access to the DNC’s servers.
“Shame on CrowdStrike: Do you think I’ve been in the DNC’s networks for almost a year and saved only 2 documents? Do you really believe it?”
As proof, Guccifer 2.0 included a package containing donor registries and strategy files of “just a few docs from many thousands I extracted when hacking into DNC’s network.” He also included a financial spreadsheet that the DNC said was not accessed during the attack.
The intruders so thoroughly compromised the DNC’s system that they were able to read all email and chat traffic https://t.co/La3gqtnIy5
— Washington Post (@washingtonpost) June 14, 2016
Guccifer 2.0 said he is in possession of 100 GB worth of data that contains more donor lists, election programs, personal emails, action plans against Republicans, and other relevant information that he plans to release in the near future. He then ended the disclosure of compromised documents with confidential and secret memos that were allegedly from Hillary Clinton’s private server.
“The main part of the papers, thousands of files and mails, I gave to WikiLeaks. They will publish them soon. I guess CrowdStrike customers should think twice about company’s competence,” he wrote.
Donald Trump also issued a statement saying that the DNC actually hacked itself to distract voters from their “deeply flawed candidates and failed party leaders.”
NEW – Trump statement on Gawker report of alleged DNC oppo file – “we believe DNC did the ‘hacking” pic.twitter.com/Euwlko9Fex
— John Santucci (@JTSantucci) June 15, 2016
While the hacked information disclosed by Guccifer 2.0 may not affect Donald Trump’s campaign or even Hillary Clinton’s, the next batch of documents set to be released could rock the foundation of the presidential race.
[Photo by Chuck Burton/AP Images]