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Report: Russian Group Hacked the Clinton Foundation

cyber security
AP
June 21, 2016

A group of Russian hackers breached the cyber security of the Clinton Foundation, according to a Bloomberg News report.

The hackers attempted to get information from at least 4,000 individuals associated with U.S. politics prompting U.S. officials to issue warnings to the presidential campaigns of Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, and Donald Trump.

The Clinton Foundation told Bloomberg News that it was not aware of any breach.

The Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation was among the organizations breached by suspected Russian hackers in a dragnet of the U.S. political apparatus ahead of the November election, according to three people familiar with the matter.

The attacks on the foundation’s network, as well as those of the Democratic Party and Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, compound concerns about her digital security even as the FBI continues to investigate her use of a personal e-mail server while she was secretary of state.

A spokesman for the foundation, Brian Cookstra, said he wasn’t aware of any breach. The compromise of the foundation’s computers was first identified by government investigators as recently as last week, the people familiar with the matter said. Agents monitor servers used by hackers to communicate with their targets, giving them a back channel view of attacks, often even before the victims detect them.

Before the Democratic National Committee disclosed a major computer breach last week, U.S. officials informed both political parties and the presidential campaigns of Clinton, Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders that sophisticated hackers were attempting to penetrate their computers, according to a person familiar with the government investigation into the attacks.

The Clinton campaign has said that it has been aware of hacking attempts from the Russians since April.

Documents released by the hackers have already revealed damaging information about Democratic operations, such as how party officials had a preference for Clinton early on in the primary process.