Hillary Clinton and the Democratic National Committee’s strategy has been outlined in the latest data dump by a hacker first reported to be Russian.
According to NBC News , the DNC first described the breach as a “disinformation campaign,” although some US officials suspected that it was espionage. Crowstrike, the third-party firm called in to secure the system and apprehend the hacker, first identified the perpetrators as Russians.
The firm then said in a statement that the hackers were looking at “political campaigns, strategies, and foreign policy plans.”
On Tuesday, the hacker then dumped a significant amount of data taken from the Democratic party’s systems. It included information that points to Hillary Clinton’s vulnerabilities as the party’s presumptive presidential nominee, including the email controversy.
A hacker just released a massive trove of previously unseen documents on Hillary Clinton https://t.co/v27iWYQtlw pic.twitter.com/rYV6rcqhnz
— Mother Jones (@MotherJones) June 22, 2016
The FBI is currently investigating whether Hillary Clinton broke government secrets when she used her personal email for professional correspondence while she was still the Secretary of State. The issue has been used by GOP presumptive nominee Donald Trump to attack Hillary Clinton in his campaign speeches.
A report from Daily Mail revealed that the latest data dump by the hacker shows how Hillary Clinton and the DNC have been trying to prepare her defense in light of all the issues surrounding her “including the most sensitive issues like email hacks.”
Another report claimed that the data leaked by the hacker also showed Hillary Clinton’s views on Benghazi, Israel, military, and LGBTQ issues.
Meanwhile, the hacker who calls himself Guccifer 2.0 talked to Motherboard , where he denied the earlier reports that he’s Russian. Instead, he said that he is a native of Romania.
A hacker claiming responsibility for the DNC hack has released financial info — and is promising even more leaks https://t.co/DprXrIibio
— Business Insider (@businessinsider) June 18, 2016
“I don’t like Russians and their foreign policy. I hate being attributed to Russia,” he added.
He called himself a “hacker, manager, philosopher, women lover.”
In his interview with Motherboard , Guccifer claimed to have hacked into the DNC computer system sometime in 2015, where he tapped into the weakness in NGP VAN, the software utilized by the party. He reportedly injected his Trojans into several PCs in the system, hopping from one unit to the next to avoid the anti-virus and intrusion scanners.
Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai, the Motherboard staff writer who interviewed Guccifer, explicitly states, “There’s no evidence whatsoever that the hacker really broke through via NGP VAN,” and also tweeted , “everything he told me is probably BS.”
As to the origins of his name, it’s really quite simple. “I also like Gucci,” he said.
His birth was denied by a senior DNC exec who emailed a statement to Motherboard to back the assessment of Crowdstrike over the nationality of the hacker.
“Our experts are confident in their assessment that the Russian government hackers were the actors responsible for the breach detected in April,” the statement read. “And we believe that the subsequent release and the claims around it may be a part of a disinformation campaign by the Russians.”
And it appears that Hillary Clinton’s troubles are mounting, as Bloomberg reported that the hackers may have penetrated the Clinton Foundation’s systems.
The data breach kicked off one of the biggest investigations involving the National Security Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the US Secret Service to make sure that the hacker or hackers were not after state secrets.
Hillary Clinton email probe centers on drone strikes in Pakistan https://t.co/FS4EtwqhHp pic.twitter.com/VlQPWhFT8w
— Boston Herald (@bostonherald) June 10, 2016
The FBI is already investigating Hillary Clinton for her use of private emails, but this investigation is supposed to be separate from that.
Glen Caplin, the spokesman for Hillary Clinton, said that they have not come across any substantial evidence that their presidential campaign has been compromised by the hackers.
Caplin explained, “We routinely communicate and cooperate with government agencies on security-related matters. What appears evident is that the Russian groups responsible for the DNC hack are intent on attempting to influence the outcome of this election.”
[Photo by J.D. Pooley/Getty Images]