Republican National Committee denies Russian hackers accessed data
The US Republican National Committee has denied that Russian hackers accessed data during a breach of third-party provider last week.
The hackers were part of APT29 or Cozy Bear, according to Bloomberg, citing two unnamed people familiar with the matter. The group is linked with Russia’s foreign intelligence service, the SVR, and was previously accused of hacking the Democratic National Committee in 2016, as well as carrying out the historic cybersecurity breach against SolarWinds, which affected about 100 US companies and nine federal agencies.
The RNC has said an investigation by Microsoft found that no RNC data had been accessed as a result of a hack of Synnex Corp, the third-party provider.
The RNC chief of staff, Richard Walters, told the New York Times: “Over the weekend, we were informed that Synnex, a third party provider, had been breached. We immediately blocked all access from Synnex accounts to our cloud environment.
“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.”
