Souvenirs at a Clinton rally in
Philadelphia on Friday. Credit Mark Makela for The New York Times
1.
WASHINGTON — Computer systems used by Hillary Clinton’s presidential
campaign were hacked in an attack that appears to have come from Russia’s
intelligence services, a federal law enforcement official said on Friday.
2.
The apparent breach, coming after the disclosure
last month that the Democratic National
Committee’s computer system had been compromised, escalates an
international episode in which Clinton campaign officials have suggested that
Russia might be trying to sway the outcome of the election.
3.
Mrs. Clinton’s campaign said in a statement that
intruders had gained access to an analytics program used by the campaign and
maintained by the national committee, but it said that it did not believe that
the campaign’s own internal computer systems had been compromised.
4.
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee,
the fund-raising arm for House Democrats, also said on Friday that its systems
had been hacked. Together, the databases of the national committee and the
House organization contain some of the party’s most sensitive communications
and voter and financial data.
5.
Meredith Kelly, a spokeswoman for the
congressional committee, said that after it discovered the breach, “we
immediately took action and engaged with CrowdStrike, a leading forensic
investigator, to assist us in addressing this incident.”
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6.
The attack on the congressional committee’s
system appears to have come from an entity known as “Fancy Bear,” which is
connected to the G.R.U., the Russian military intelligence service, according
to an official involved in the forensic investigation.
7.
The same arm of Russia’s intelligence operation
was also implicated in the attack on the national committee, in which it gained
access to opposition research on Republicans, including the party’s
presidential nominee, Donald J. Trump.
8.
“It’s the same adversary,” the official involved
in the forensic investigation said. “These are sophisticated actors.”
9.
The F.B.I. said on Friday that it was examining
reports of “cyberintrusions involving multiple political entities” but did not
identify the targets of the attacks.
10.
The Clinton campaign used the program that was
hacked to analyze voter data, but it did not contain voters’ Social Security numbers or
credit card information, a campaign aide said. The campaign said it was
confident, based on a review by outside experts, that getting into the program
would not have allowed the hackers to gain access to the campaign’s internal
emails, voice mail messages or other data.
11.
The reports of attacks against Democratic Party
organizations began in mid-June, when the Democratic National Committee said
its computer systems had been breached by two groups of Russian hackers working
for competing government intelligence agencies. After that breach, WikiLeaks
last week released some 20,000 committee emails, many of them embarrassing to
Democratic officials, which led Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a Florida
congresswoman, to resign as the group’s leader.
12.
WikiLeaks’ founder, Julian Assange, has made it
clear that he hopes to harm Mrs. Clinton’s chances of winning the presidency,
opposing her candidacy on both policy and personal grounds. He has said that he
has more material about the presidential campaign that he could release, which
has raised the specter of more embarrassing disclosures just as Democrats try
to capitalize on the momentum coming out of their convention this week.
13.
American intelligence agencies have told the
White House they have “high confidence” that the Russian government was behind
the theft
of emails and documents from the Democratic National
Committee. But it is unclear whether the break-in was fairly routine
espionage or part of an effort to manipulate the election.
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18.
The attacks on the Clinton campaign and the
Democratic congressional committee were first reported by Reuters.
19.
It is unclear whether the reported breaches at
the national committee, the Clinton campaign and the congressional committee
were part of a single coordinated attack or a series of attacks aimed at the
Democrats, said the law enforcement official, who spoke on the condition of
anonymity.
20.
In a statement, the F.B.I. said that it “is
aware of media reporting on cyberintrusions involving multiple political
entities, and is working to determine the accuracy, nature and scope of these
matters.”
21.
Nick Merrill, a spokesman for the Clinton
campaign, said in a statement that “an analytics data program maintained by the
D.N.C., and used by our campaign and a number of other entities, was accessed
as part of the D.N.C. hack.”
22.
“Our campaign computer system has been under
review by outside cybersecurity experts,” he added. “To date, they have found
no evidence that our internal systems have been compromised.”
23.
The hacks have added another unexpected wrinkle
to the presidential campaign, with Mr. Trump asking Russia this week to “find”
some 30,000 deleted emails from Mrs. Clinton’s days as secretary of state.
(That statement, made well after the cyberattacks on the Democratic
organizations, was called borderline treasonous by some Democrats, and Mr.
Trump later said that he was being sarcastic.)
24.
Clinton campaign officials have suggested that
President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia could be trying to tilt the election to
Mr. Trump, who has expressed admiration for the Russian leader. But the
campaign officials acknowledge that they have no evidence. The Trump campaign
has dismissed the accusations about Russia as a deliberate distraction.
25.
The C.I.A. director, John O. Brennan, speaking
at the Aspen Security Forum, declined to comment on the specific allegations
but said that “obviously, interference in the U.S. election process is a very,
very serious matter, and I think certainly this government would treat it with
great seriousness.”
Eric Schmitt and David E. Sanger contributed reporting from Aspen, Colo.
A version of this article
appears in print on July 30, 2016, on Page A1 of the New York edition with the
headline: Russian Spies Said to Hack Clinton’s Bid. Order Reprints| Today's
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