Cyber security firm warns that Russian hackers are laying the groundwork to spy on US Senate.

Courtesy of Business Insider:  

The US Senate was targeted last year by the same hacking group that broke into the Democratic National Committee servers during the 2016 presidential election, according to the cybersecurity firm Trend Micro. 

The research firm found that phishing sites were set up by Pawn Storm, also known as Fancy Bear or APT28, mimicking the Senate's internal email system in an attempt to gain users' login credentials. 

"By looking at the digital fingerprints of these phishing sites and comparing them with a large data set that spans almost five years, we can uniquely relate them to a couple of Pawn Storm incidents in 2016 and 2017," the researchers wrote. 

They added that the phishing emails, while not advanced in nature, are often "the starting point of further attacks that include stealing sensitive data from email inboxes." 

The June 2017 phishing attempts would not have been the first time Russia tried to infiltrate the US Senate. In its extensive analysis of Fancy Bear's targets during the presidential election, the Associated Press found that Senate staffers Robert Zarate, Josh Holmes, and Jason Thielman were targeted between 2015-2016.

And just a reminder that the Trump Administration has done virtually NOTHING to protect the American people against these attacks. 

I'll leave it to you to imagine why that is.

The FBI failed to notify scores of Americans that they were being targeted by Russian hackers.

Courtesy of the AP: 

The FBI failed to notify scores of U.S. officials that Russian hackers were trying to break into their personal Gmail accounts despite having evidence for at least a year that the targets were in the Kremlin’s crosshairs, The Associated Press has found. 

Nearly 80 interviews with Americans targeted by Fancy Bear, a Russian government-aligned cyberespionage group, turned up only two cases in which the FBI had provided a heads-up. Even senior policymakers discovered they were targets only when the AP told them, a situation some described as bizarre and dispiriting. 

“It’s utterly confounding,” said Philip Reiner, a former senior director at the National Security Council, who was notified by the AP that he was targeted in 2015. “You’ve got to tell your people. You’ve got to protect your people.” 

The FBI declined to discuss its investigation into Fancy Bear’s spying campaign, but did provide a statement that said in part: “The FBI routinely notifies individuals and organizations of potential threat information.” 

Three people familiar with the matter — including a current and a former government official — said the FBI has known for more than a year the details of Fancy Bear’s attempts to break into Gmail inboxes. A senior FBI official, who was not authorized to publicly discuss the hacking operation because of its sensitivity, declined to comment on when it received the target list, but said that the bureau was overwhelmed by the sheer number of attempted hacks. 

“It’s a matter of triaging to the best of our ability the volume of the targets who are out there,” he said.

The AP did its own investigation and identified 19,000 lines of targeting data and over 500 organizations and people who were in the cross-hairs.

It might have been helpful for these people to know that they were being targeted, as they could have taken precautions that might have helped to curtail the attacks.

I consider myself to be a low level target, yet I have been inundated with phishing attempts for well over two years, and they continue today.

As predicted the release of information hacked from Congressional Democrats results in mayhem, confusion, and phishing attempts.

Courtesy of Politico:

House Democratic leaders on Saturday urged members to upgrade their security as staffers were flooded with vulgar, malicious emails and texts following a massive online dump of their contact information late Friday -- the latest fallout of a series of election-season cyberattacks primarily targeting the Democratic Party. 

Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, calling the incident a "sad course of events," wrote in a note to colleagues that she was changing her phone number and advised colleagues to do the same. An email from the Democratic Caucus told members and staffers whom to contact to do so. 

“I was in the air flying from Florida to California when the news broke,” Pelosi wrote. “Upon landing, I have received scores of mostly obscene and sick calls, voice mails and text messages.” 

Other aides told POLITICO that overnight they received dozens, even hundreds of spear phishing-style emails and texts, which are fake messages that lure recipients into clicking on malware-laded links, possibly infecting the entire device.

Yep undermining the Democrats ability to do their jobs and attempts to phish for more information, sounds like somebody is trying to impact an election to me.

Of course now we are hearing that the Russians targeted the Republicans as well.

Courtesy of The Hill:

A website tied to the hacking scandal of the Democratic Party has now posted a small batch of leaked emails from Republican campaigns and state GOP staffers. 

The emails on the site, known as DCLeaks, appear to be from state party officials and former Republican presidential candidates, including Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.). The messages range from June to October of 2015.

Boy that sure is convenient don't you think?

I mean right when folks are accusing Donald Trump and the Republicans of collusion with the Russians this hack is revealed.

Yep that right there is what you call "good timing."