Thousands of House GOP campaign committee emails were stolen in hack

[Swordsmyth]

The Republican Party's House campaign committee said (https://twitter.com/AP/status/1070005652284719104) it was a victim of "cyber intrusion" during the 2018 midterm campaign. Party officials told Politico that "thousands of sensitive emails" were stolen (https://www.politico.com/story/2018/12/04/exclusive-emails-of-top-nrcc-officials-stolen-in-major-2018-hack-1043309) in the National Republican Congressional Committee hack. The party has reported the incident to the FBI.

Hackers surveilled the accounts of four senior NRCC aides over several months, according to the officials. A security company that monitors the committee's network discovered the intrusion in April, and it alerted the NRCC along with its cybersecurity contractor.
Republican leaders, including Speaker Paul Ryan and House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, reportedly didn't know about the intrusion until Politico inquired about it Monday. The incoming NRCC chairman, Tom Emmer, was only briefed on the attack Monday too.
NRCC officials said they declined to disclose the intrusion as they feared doing so would disrupt their own investigation and attempts to find the hacker(s). The full extent of the attack is not yet clear, though donor information was not affected, according to the officials. The hacked emails don't appear to have been published, and nor was there any attempt at blackmail or threat made to the NRCC about exposing the information.

While the culprit remains unidentified, the officials suggested that a foreign entity was responsible. Before the midterms, it emerged (https://www.engadget.com/2018/11/04/pentagon-cyberattack-to-deter-russia-election-interference/) the Pentagon and intelligence agencies had plans for a counter cyberattack if Russia tried to interfere in the election, in which the GOP lost 40 seats and control of the House to the Democrats.

More at: https://www.engadget.com/2018/12/04/republican-house-campaign-committee-emails-stolen-hack/?yptr=yahoo

[TheCount]

Womp womp

[Swordsmyth]

The incompetence of the NRCC can be clearly seen by the abysmal results of the midterm elections for Congressional Republicans. But their incompetence goes even deeper when the situation surrounding the hack is reviewed.
In the past year and a half, the NRCC has paid (https://www.opensecrets.org/parties/expenddetail.php?cmte=NRCC&txt=Crowdstrike+Inc&cycle=2018) the cyber-security firm Crowdstrike $120,000 for “computer support.”
But even with the hefty payments, Crowdstrike was not able to identify the security breach, which occurred eight months ago in April.


Instead, it was a managed security services provider who identified the breach, and then alerted Crowdstrike, according to Politico (https://www.politico.com/story/2018/12/04/exclusive-emails-of-top-nrcc-officials-stolen-in-major-2018-hack-1043309). In response, the NRCC did not tell the public, or other Republican leaders, but did notify the FBI.

These revelations, showing incompetence from Crowdstrike, shouldn’t have been surprising.
Crowdstrike is the same cyber-security firm used by the Democratic National Committee (DNC) prior to the infamous email breach of the 2016 election, which resulted in their emails being leaked to WikiLeaks.
As the Daily Caller’s Luke Rosiak points out (https://dailycaller.com/2018/12/04/nrcc-crowdstrike-dnc-hack/), although Crowdstrike began responding to the email breach on May 5, 2016, the emails continued to be stolen for weeks:

“CrowdStrike was responding to the DNC’s hack as of May 5, 2016, but emails continued to be stolen for weeks. In fact, the majority of the emails WikiLeaks published were not even written until after May 5. That’s despite the fact that CrowdStrike claimed it knew within minutes that the problem was a specific virus and that it was tied to Russia.
CrowdStrike, which is led by a Russian ex-pat and a former FBI official, took until June 10, 2016, to replace all the software in a move it believed would put an end to the breach. The last DNC email WikiLeaks published was written on May 25.”


So despite the incompetence of Crowdstrike being on public display, the NRCC chose to have them work on their behalf.

More at: https://bigleaguepolitics.com/stupid-party-republicans-hacked-after-hiring-dncs-cyber-firm-that-was-previously-hacked/

[timosman]

Whatever it takes to maintain the 50/50 divide. :D

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