Hacked Democratic Email Altered By Russians, New Report Reveals — Hacking Attack Much Wider Than Believed

At least one and, experts say, likely many more of the emails hacked and stolen last year from the Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton campaign were altered by the Russian intelligence operatives who hacked them, before being released on the internet and to the press, according to an explosive and sweeping new investigative report by the Associated Press published on Friday.

The AP report, for the first time, details how the Russian cyber-attackers carried out the massive hack against the Clinton campaign and the Democratic Party, revealing a vast, relentless, and sophisticated operation far more sweeping than has previously been reported. The entire AP report, “Inside Story: How Russians Hacked the Democrats’ Emails,” can be read by visiting this link.

According to the report, at least one of the emails released online June 15, 2016, by the hacking persona known as Guccifer 2.0 was altered to appear with the label “Confidential” in order to make it more attractive to reporters from the press. Additionally, though Gucifer 2.0 claimed that the email was hacked from the Democratic National Committee, it actually came from the email account of Clinton Campaign Chair John Podesta, whose account was also hacked by the Russian agents.

Though the Russian hackers infiltrated Podesta’s email on March 19 of last year, they waited until October 7 to release the full trove through the document-dumping site WikiLeaks. That was the same day the Donald Trump Access Hollywood tape was also released, on which Trump is heard bragging about committing sexual assault.

Though the AP report focused on only one email that was altered by the Russians, experts say that editing and tampering with hacked documents is a key element of the Russian cyber-warfare strategy, and that there were likely many more alterations contained within the trove of hacked emails released online by the Russians.

A study conducted earlier this year by the Canadian global security research group Citizen Lab, titled “Tainted Leaks: Disinformation and Phishing With a Russian Nexus,” showed a pervasive pattern of “tainting,” that is, tampering with documents by Russian hackers prior to releasing them or using them for nefarious purposes and how “tainted leaks are sometimes used… to infiltrate civil society targets, and to seed mistrust and disinformation.”

Both the DNC and Podesta hacked email releases were widely covered throughout the United States media, which reported on their contents in great detail — but the media rarely questioned whether the content of those emails had been altered or tampered with by the hackers who stole them.

But as early as August of 2016, a report in Foreign Policy Magazine revealed how emails in a separate Russian hack had been altered to paint a prominent political opponent of Russian President Vladimir Putin in a negative light, saying “Moscow-linked cyberthieves aren’t just stealing and releasing emails anymore — they’re altering them to smear one of Putin’s most vocal opponents.”

Guccifer 2.0 has been identified by U.S. intelligence agencies as a false persona created by Russian government hackers, but one of Donald Trump’s most trusted advisers, political “dirty tricks” specialist Roger Stone, communicated with Guccifer 2.0 during the presidential campaign last year, and appeared to know about the hacked Podesta emails months before they were released.

According to court documents released Monday by Russia investigation Special Counsel Robert Mueller, Trump campaign Foreign Policy Adviser George Papadopoulos was told by a Russia-linked contact in April of 2016 — just a month after the Podesta hack took place — that the Russians were in possession of “thousands” of emails that would provide “dirt” on Clinton.

The AP report also revealed the vast scope of the Russian hacking attack against Democrats and the Clinton campaign, discovering that at least 130 Democratic party workers and members of Clinton’s inner circle, including her top aide Huma Abedin — penetrating the campaign’s computers despite a “top of the line” cybersecurity system in place to prevent such an attack.

[Featured Image by Andrew Harnik/AP Images]