Tag: hacking

House Republican Campaign Committee Says It Was Hacked This Year

Senior House Republicans, including Speaker Ryan and Kevin McCarthy, the majority leader, were not aware of the breach until reporters reached out to them. Credit: Al Drago, The New York Times

WASHINGTON — The campaign committee for House Republicans discovered in April that the email accounts of several of its senior officials had been hacked by what analysts later concluded was a “foreign entity,” people who have been briefed on the case said on Tuesday, highlighting the continued vulnerability of the United States to interference in its elections.

The hack of the organization, the National Republican Congressional Committee, exposed thousands of emails from four senior aides for months, and perhaps longer. The hack was terminated when the staff members, alerted to the intrusion, changed their passwords. The committee called in the F.B.I. to investigate.

But the committee waited eight months — until after Republicans lost 40 seats and control of the House of Representatives in the midterm elections — to disclose publicly what had happened. It remains unclear who was behind the hack.

View the complete December 4 article by David E. Sanger and Emily Cochrane on The New York Times website here.

Alleged Russian hacker arrested in Spain

The following article by Artiz Parra and Raphael Satter of the Associated Press was posted on the Boston Globe website April 10, 2017:

FBI Director James Comey confirmed his agency was investigating alleged Russian interference in the presidential election when he testified in front of US House committee in March.

MADRID — An alleged Russian hacker has been detained in Spain at the request of American authorities, an arrest that set cybersecurity circles abuzz after a Russian broadcaster raised the possibility it was linked to the US presidential election.

Pyotr Levashov was arrested Friday in Barcelona on a US computer crimes warrant, according to a spokeswoman for Spain’s National Court, who spoke on condition of anonymity in line with court rules.

Such arrests aren’t unusual — American authorities typically try to nab Russian cybercrime suspects abroad because of the difficulty involved in extraditing them from Russia — but Levashov’s arrest drew immediate attention after his wife told Russia’s RT broadcaster that he was linked to America’s 2016 election hacking. Continue reading “Alleged Russian hacker arrested in Spain”