Members of President Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign were attacked by Russian hackers, according to a report Friday.
While investigating Russian spy activity beginning the day after the 2016 election, cyber security firm Area 1 Security said it picked up on “small patterns” during a phishing campaign.
The firm looked at a decade’s worth of activity Russian spy group RUS2, which the report says is also known as the “Dukes, APT-29, or Cozy Bear.”
Cyber detectives say Cozy Bear, along with “Fancy Bear,” another Russian spy group tied to Russia’s military intelligence agency G.R.U., were behind the 2015 hack of the Democratic National Committee. Cozy Bear is also believed to have breached the State Department, White House and Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Through reverse engineering their database, Area 1 Security said it uncovered Cozy Bear targets dating back to the 2008 campaign. Previously it had been reported that hackers connected with the Chinese government targeted candidates Barack Obama and Sen. John McCain in 2008.
“[S]tate-sponsored Russian hackers have been targeting United States officials and politicians since at least 2007 through phishing attacks,” Blake Darche, a former NSA technical analyst who co-founded Area 1 Security, told Newsweek.
Not only were Obama campaign and field managers, named only by title, not name, included in a partial list of targets provided by Area 1 Security, but also officials in the Energy Department, White House and State Department, including the U.S. ambassador to Russia, from 2008 to 2016.
Area 1 Security says these targets are “still getting fresh attacks,” even as they’ve moved on to other jobs, including in think tanks, universities and the private sector, Newsweek reported.
The report comes out at a time when the FBI is investigating whether President Trump’s campaign had any ties to the Russian government. A report from the U.S. intelligence community in January blamed Russian actors for interfering in the 2016 campaign and tipping the election in Trump’s favor.
