Russia’s ‘Cozy Bear’ Breached the Systems of the Republican National Committee

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According to two people familiar with the situation, Russian government hackers broke into the Republican National Committee’s computer systems last week, at the same time a Russia-linked criminal group launched a huge ransomware attack. According to the sources, the government hackers were members of a group known as APT 29 or Cozy Bear. 

That organization has previously been linked to Russia’s foreign intelligence service and has been suspected of hacking the Democratic National Committee in 2016 and a supply-chain cyberattack involving SolarWinds Corp., which infiltrated nine US federal organizations and was revealed in December. It is unclear what data the hackers accessed or took, if any. The RNC has denied being hacked on many occasions. “There is no indication the RNC was hacked or any RNC information was stolen,” spokesman Mike Reed said. 

Chief of Staff Richard Walters claimed in a statement released after this story was posted that the RNC learned over the weekend that a third-party provider, Synnex Corp., had been breached. “We immediately blocked all access from Synnex accounts to our cloud environment,” he said. “Our team worked with Microsoft to conduct a review of our systems and after a thorough investigation, no RNC data was accessed. We will continue to work with Microsoft, as well as federal law enforcement officials, on this matter.”