US DoJ Identifies at least 6 Russian Government officials Involved in DNC hack

The United States Department of Justice has gathered evidence to charge at least six Russian government officials involved in the 2016 DNC hack.

The United States Department of Justice has gathered evidence to charge at least six Russian government officials involved in the DNC hack during the 2016 Presidential election.

In the past months, US intelligence blamed Russia for cyberattacks aimed at influencing the 2016 Presidential Election in Donald Trump’s favour.

An FBI-DHS JAR report released in December 2016 implicated Russian hacking group APT28 and APT29 in attacks against 2016 Presidential Election.

Security experts from Mandiant who analyzed the cyber attacks also linked the hack to a cyber espionage campaign associated with the APT28 group.

Now, the Wall Street Journal reported that United States federal prosecutors could bring charges against the alleged unnamed Russian officials early next year.

“The Justice Department has identified more than six members of the Russian government involved in hacking the Democratic National Committee’s computers and swiping sensitive information that became public during the 2016 presidential election, according to people familiar with the investigation.” wrote the Wall Street Journal.

The identities of the six suspects are yet to be revealed.

The US federal intelligence investigators believe that Russian Government conducted a larger campaign that involved “dozens” of other Russian officials in the DNC hack and subsequent data leak.

The acted obeying a direct order of the Russian President Vladimir Putin, that always denied allegations.

The hackers who breached the DNC computer system in 2016 leaked thousands of stolen DNC emails, including personal and sensitive emails from Hillary Clinton campaign manager John Podesta.

The sensitive information was published by the WikiLeaks website.

This is the second time in 2017 when the US Government has charged Russian officials with hacking crimes, in March 2017, the US authorities charged two former Russian FSB agents and two hackers for 2014 Yahoo data breach that caused the exposure of 500 Million Yahoo Accounts.

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Pierluigi Paganini

(Securi ty Affairs – Russian Government officials, DNC hack)

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Pierluigi Paganini

Pierluigi Paganini is member of the ENISA (European Union Agency for Network and Information Security) Threat Landscape Stakeholder Group and Cyber G7 Group, he is also a Security Evangelist, Security Analyst and Freelance Writer. Editor-in-Chief at "Cyber Defense Magazine", Pierluigi is a cyber security expert with over 20 years experience in the field, he is Certified Ethical Hacker at EC Council in London. The passion for writing and a strong belief that security is founded on sharing and awareness led Pierluigi to find the security blog "Security Affairs" recently named a Top National Security Resource for US. Pierluigi is a member of the "The Hacker News" team and he is a writer for some major publications in the field such as Cyber War Zone, ICTTF, Infosec Island, Infosec Institute, The Hacker News Magazine and for many other Security magazines. Author of the Books "The Deep Dark Web" and “Digital Virtual Currency and Bitcoin”.