Russian Cyber Warfare: The History of Russia’s State-Sponsored Attacks across the World by Charles River Editors

Author:Charles River Editors
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Charles River Editors
Published: 2019-02-26T16:00:00+00:00

The Election of 2016

Before analyzing the Russian interference in the United States presidential election of 2016, it is worth assessing the precedent and possible motives that may have guided the Kremlin to conduct it. In 1996, before the majority of Russia’s population was connected to the internet, the United States conducted low-tech version of election interference to secure the victory of the embattled incumbent, Boris Yeltsin. The initiative included on-the-ground support for the Yeltsin campaign by American-funded groups like the National Endowment for Democracy, the National Democratic Institute, and the International Republican Institute. Later, in 2006, the National Endowment for Democracy gave a $23,000 grant to an organization that employed Alexei Navalny, a future political nemesis of President Putin.[115] As late as 2016, the NED gave 108 grants totaling $6.8 million to organizations in Russia for purposes such as "engaging activists” and “fostering civic engagement.”[116] Thus, regardless of evidence of Russian interference, it is entirely feasible that influencing domestic American politics would have been on the Kremlin's “wish list” for years leading up to 2016.

Russia is thought to have “hacked” the 2016 election through two primary means: leaking confidential information that damaged the Hillary Clinton campaign and conducting an influence campaign using online news and social media platforms. According to American intelligence reports, in the months leading up to the election, Russian hackers infected more than 30 computers and stole more than 50,000 emails from the Democratic National Committee, ostensibly in an effort to sway the vote in favor of Republican candidate Donald Trump. Reports suggest that the campaign began with spear-phishing, which involved sending infected emails to targeted victims to gain access to their online accounts and computers. Russian military officers Ivan Sergeyvich Yermakov and Aleksey Viktorovich, of Russia’s intelligence agency, the GRU, are suspected to have sent a spear phishing email to John Podesta, Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman. The email contained a phony password reset link that allowed hackers to gain access to Podesta’s email credentials.[117] An estimated 300 other members of the Clinton campaign were targeted using the same techniques.

Then, in April 2016, using the stolen login information of a Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee employee, the hackers gained access to the organization's network and installed X-Agent malware, a backdoor toolset that allows hackers to record keystrokes, take screenshots, and exfiltrate files from infected systems back to a single command and control center. This was considered to be a “signature tool” of Fancy Bear.[118]

The hackers used the access they had gained to aggregate information that damaged the Clinton campaign, launching the webpage DCLeaks in June 2016 and sharing the information with platforms such as Wikileaks.[119] Leaked internal memos that illustrated the degree to which the DNC was financially dependent on the Clinton Foundation, along with other embarrassing information, prompted the resignation of Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the DNC chairwoman, on the eve of the DNC’s convention in July 2016.[120] After Trump’s victory in November 2016, a serious investigation into the perpetrators of the hacks and whether or not they had colluded with Russian intelligence units was launched under Special Counsel Robert Mueller.

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