NYT: Russian hacking also targeted Democratic House candidates
A New York Times report reveals that Russia targeted more than just Hillary Clinton. They went after Democratic House candidates.
…a handful of Democratic House candidates became targets of a Russian influence operation that made thousands of pages of documents stolen by hackers from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in Washington available to Florida reporters and bloggers.
“It was like I was standing out there naked,” said Annette Taddeo [pictured], a Democrat who lost her primary race after secret campaign documents were made public. “I just can’t describe it any other way. Our entire internal strategy plan was made public, and suddenly all this material was out there and could be used against me.”
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The impact of the information released by the hackers on candidates like Ms. Taddeo in Florida and others in nearly a dozen House races around the country was largely lost in the focus on the hacking attacks against the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. But this untold story underscores the effect the Russian operation had on the American electoral system…
The intrusions in House races in states including Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, Ohio, Illinois, New Mexico and North Carolina can be traced to tens of thousands of pages of documents taken from the D.C.C.C., which shares a Capitol Hill office building with the Democratic National Committee…
The document dump’s effectiveness was due in part to a de facto alliance that formed between the Russian hackers and political bloggers and newspapers across the United States. The hackers, working under the made-up name of Guccifer 2.0, used social media tools to invite individual reporters to request specific caches of documents, handing them out the way political operatives distribute scoops. It was an arrangement that proved irresistible to many news outlets — and amplified the consequences of the cyberattack…
Guccifer 2.0 followed up on the release of lawmakers’ personal data with large caches of internal party documents, starting with some documents related to House races in Florida, including Ms. Taddeo’s contest…
Guccifer 2.0 even posted a cache of confidential documents focusing on Representative Ben Ray Luján, Democrat of New Mexico, the chairman of the D.C.C.C., who faced no serious challenger this year. Mr. Luján said it was a clear effort to send a message to the party leadership — that the hackers wanted to try to hurt Democrats at all levels of the party, from lesser known races in Florida to the leadership.
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