How Russian Cyber Power Attacked The US
Who's To Blame: The FBI's failure to grasp the scope of the initial attacks on the Democratic party undercut efforts to minimize their impact.
When Special Agent Adrian Hawkins of the Federal Bureau of Investigation called the Democratic National Committee (DNC) in September 2015 to pass along some troubling news about its computer network, he was transferred, naturally, to the help desk.
His message was brief, if alarming. At least one computer system belonging to the DNC had been compromised by hackers, the federal investigators had named “the Dukes,” a cyberespionage team linked to the Russian government.
The FBI knew it well: The bureau had spent the last few years trying to kick the Dukes out of the unclassified email systems of the White House, the State Department and even the Joint Chiefs of Staff, one of the government’s best-protected networks.
Yared Tamene, the tech-support contractor at the DNC who fielded the call, was no expert in cyberattacks. His first moves were to check Google for “the Dukes” and conduct a cursory search of the DNC computer system logs to look for hints of such a cyber-intrusion. By his own account, he did not look too hard even after Special Agent Hawkins called back repeatedly over the next several weeks, in part because he wasn’t certain the caller was a real FBI agent and not an impostor.
“I had no way of differentiating the call I just received from a prank call,” Mr. Tamene wrote in an internal memo, obtained by The New York Times, that detailed his contact with the FBI.
It was the cryptic first sign of a cyber-espionage and information-warfare campaign devised to disrupt the 2016 presidential election, the first such attempt by a foreign power in American history. What started as an information-gathering operation, intelligence officials believe, ultimately morphed into an effort to harm one candidate, Hillary Clinton, and tip the election to her opponent, Donald J. Trump.
Watergate
Like another famous American election scandal, it started with a break-in at the DNC. The first time, 44 years ago at the committee’s old offices in the Watergate complex, the burglars planted listening devices and jimmied a filing cabinet. This time, the burglary was conducted from afar, directed by the Kremlin, with spear-phishing emails and zeros and ones.
What is phishing?
Phishing uses an innocent-looking email to entice unwary recipients to click on a deceptive link, giving hackers access to their information or a network. In “spear-phishing,” the email is tailored to fool a specific person.
An examination byThe New York Times of the Russian operation, based on interviews with dozens of players targeted in the attack, intelligence officials who investigated it and Obama administration officials who deliberated over the best response, reveals a series of missed signals, slow responses and a continuing underestimation of the seriousness of the cyberattack.
The DNC’s fumbling encounter with the FBI meant the best chance to halt the Russian intrusion was lost. The failure to grasp the scope of the attacks undercut efforts to minimize their impact. And the White House’s reluctance to respond forcefully meant the Russians have not paid a heavy price for their actions, a decision that could prove critical in deterring future cyberattacks.
The low-key approach of the FBI meant that Russian hackers could roam freely through the committee’s network for nearly seven months before top DNC officials were alerted to the attack and hired cyber-experts to protect their systems. In the meantime, the hackers moved on to targets outside the DNC, including Mrs. Clinton’s campaign chairman, John D. Podesta, whose private email account was hacked months later.
NYT: We Are In A New Era Of Espionage:
