“How did the intelligence community know that the Russians hacked the Democratic National Committee? CrowdStrike told them so. From the March 20 House Intelligence Committee hearing …”
How did the intelligence community know that the Russians hacked the Democratic National Committee? CrowdStrike told them so. From the March 20 House Intelligence Committee hearing:
Congressman Will HURD: Have you been able to — when did the DNC provide access for — to the FBI for your technical folks to review what happened?
FBI Director COMEY: Well we never got direct access to the machines themselves. The DNC in the spring of 2016 hired a firm [CrowdStrike] that ultimately shared with us their forensics from their review of the system.
HURD: Director Rogers, did the NSA ever get access to the DNC hardware?
NSA Director ROGERS: The NSA didn’t ask for access. That’s not in our job…
HURD: Good copy. So director FBI notified the DNC early, before any information was put on Wikileaks and when — you have still been — never been given access to any of the technical or the physical machines that were — that were hacked by the Russians.
COMEY: That’s correct although we got the forensics from the pros that they hired which — again, best practice is always to get access to the machines themselves, but this — my folks tell me was an appropriate substitute.
HURD: The — at what point did the company and the DNC use — share that forensic information to you?
COMEY: I don’t remember for sure. I think June. I could be wrong about that.
ROGERS: The company went public in June of 16, with their conclusions. I would assume it was around that time.
COMEY: I think it was about the time — I think it was a little bit before the announcement, but I’ll say approximately June.
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For the work of CrowdStrike see the analysis of cyber expert Jeffrey Carr https://medium.com/@jeffreycarr
See also “Comey: DNC denied FBI’s requests for access to hacked servers” http://thehill.com/policy/national-security/313555-comey-fbi-did-request-access-to-hacked-dnc-servers