The Clinton Foundation is the latest major US political organization to have been breached in a large-scale operation by suspected Russian hackers ahead of the presidential election in November, it has been claimed.
Three people “familiar with the matter” told Bloomberg that government investigators identified a breach at the non-profit last week, after piecing together the hackers’ operations via the C&C servers used in attacks.
It’s thought that potentially embarrassing information relating to the Foundation’s activities could be made public and subsequently used by the Trump camp to score political points against Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.
The hackers responsible for long-running attacks on the Democratic National Committee and Clinton’s presidential campaign have also targeted at least 4000 individuals including party aides, advisers, lawyers and foundations over a seven-month period, Bloomberg claimed.
It’s believed there could be links to Russian state-sponsored groups. The Kremlin would certainly benefit from disseminating any information which could weaken the US and its next president on the international stage, although Moscow has denied any involvement.
Mark Kraynak, SVP and general manager of Enterprise Solutions at Imperva, claimed the incident proves all data has value, even if it’s not commercial.
“The problem is that the value to an intruder may be higher than it is to the data owner, at least until it is compromised,” he added.
“Situations like this are a great reminder of the need for all organizations to ensure the security of their data and that they have appropriate response mechanisms in place for the inevitable attack.”
In fact, both presidential hopefuls were warned back in May to expect a barrage of cyber-attacks during the forthcoming campaign.
At that time the FBI and DHS were said to be trying to educate officials on both campaigns to help them improve IT security – it seems with limited success.
Clinton is still under investigation by the FBI over her now infamous use of private e-mail channels to carry out official government business while secretary of state.