The Democratic National Committee released a statement a couple of hours ago saying the attempted cyber attack by Russia on party candidates was fake. And was, in fact, a simulated phishing test attempted by white hat security analysts hired by Michigan Democratic Party.
Therefore, the statement which was released by DNC on Tuesday of a purported cyber attack by Russian intelligence funded hacking Group Fancy Bear is completely false and was a gaffe committed in a hurry.
Now, to those who aren’t aware of the latest situation in the cyber world, here’s a briefing on this particular issue.
On late Monday this week, Microsoft issued a public statement which said that it stopped a potential Russia linked cyber attack on few of the Midterm election probables of Democratic Party. The technology giant added in its statement that the attack was of Phishing genre and was conducted by creating 7 fake websites in order to collect the credentials of party candidates.
Cybersecurity firm Lookout Inc notified that a fake login page named VoteBuilder was doing rounds on the web and was created to collect usernames and password of Democrats in order to gain access to a massive cache of vote info.
When the issue was reported to FBI, it started its investigation and found on Wednesday that the attack was simulated by a third party funded by Michigan Democratic Party and was just a simulated phishing test launched on the party’s voter database to gauge the potential of the IT department’s response to cyber attacks.
FBI reported today to DNC that the attack was an attempted intrusion not from a foreign adversary and was just a simulation.
DNC Security Boss Bob Lord confirmed the news and released a press statement on this note.
Note- After the 2016 presidential elections, DNC is said to be conducting phishing drills on its committee staffers on a regular note. The latest is said to be one of those which missed the insights of the DNC Boss and moved to press alleging Russian Interference.
