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Russia hackers had targets worldwide, beyond US election
The communications of ~4,700 G-Mail targets were hacked by Russian security agencies (GRU/FSB) continuously over a two year span.
The information siphoned-off in this Fancy Bear operation could easily run into terabytes of data.
Related: The Moscow Times | Digital 'Hit List' Exposes Thousands of the Kremlin's Favorite Hacking Targets
By RAPHAEL SATTER, JEFF DONN and JUSTIN MYERS
November 2, 2017
WASHINGTON (AP) — The hackers who disrupted the U.S. presidential election had ambitions well beyond Hillary Clinton’s campaign, targeting the emails of Ukrainian officers, Russian opposition figures, U.S. defense contractors and thousands of others of interest to the Kremlin, according to a previously unpublished digital hit list obtained by The Associated Press. The list provides the most detailed forensic evidence yet of the close alignment between the hackers and the Russian government, exposing an operation that stretched back years and tried to break into the inboxes of 4,700 Gmail users across the globe — from the pope’s representative in Kiev to the punk band ***** Riot in Moscow. “It’s a wish list of who you’d want to target to further Russian interests,” said Keir Giles, director of the Conflict Studies Research Center in Cambridge, England, and one of five outside experts who reviewed the AP’s findings. He said the data was “a master list of individuals whom Russia would like to spy on, embarrass, discredit or silence.” The AP findings draw on a database of 19,000 malicious links collected by cybersecurity firm Secureworks, dozens of rogue emails, and interviews with more than 100 hacking targets.
Secureworks stumbled upon the data after a hacking group known as Fancy Bear accidentally exposed part of its phishing operation to the internet. The list revealed a direct line between the hackers and the leaks that rocked the presidential contest in its final stages, most notably the private emails of Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta. “This is the Kremlin and the general staff,” said Andras Racz, a specialist in Russian security policy at Pazmany Peter Catholic University in Hungary, as he examined the data. “I have no doubts.” In the United States, which was Russia’s Cold War rival, Fancy Bear tried to pry open at least 573 inboxes belonging to those in the top echelons of the country’s diplomatic and security services: then-Secretary of State John Kerry, former Secretary of State Colin Powell, then-NATO Supreme Commander, U.S. Air Force Gen. Philip Breedlove, and one of his predecessors, U.S. Army Gen. Wesley Clark. The list skewed toward workers for defense contractors such as Boeing, Raytheon and Lockheed Martin or senior intelligence figures, prominent Russia watchers and — especially — Democrats. More than 130 party workers, campaign staffers and supporters of the party were targeted. The AP also found a handful of Republican targets.
The communications of ~4,700 G-Mail targets were hacked by Russian security agencies (GRU/FSB) continuously over a two year span.
The information siphoned-off in this Fancy Bear operation could easily run into terabytes of data.
Related: The Moscow Times | Digital 'Hit List' Exposes Thousands of the Kremlin's Favorite Hacking Targets
