The Russian hackers linked with the military intelligence of the country who were accused of interfering in the 2016 US Presidential Election have again targeted the Democrats in California and Indiana as well as think tanks in New York City, Washington, as per reports.
The group that is known as Fancy Bear targeted the email accounts of the Democratic parties in the two states and also the Center for American Progress, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and the Council on Foreign Relations, as reported by Reuters. However, the Russian embassy located in Washington has denied such claims.
Hackers Targeted Democrats
An indictment of the Justice Department that was filed in 2018 linked the group to the hacking of the email accounts of the staff of Democratic presidential candidate Hilary Clinton. The agency confirmed that many of the attempted intrusions were internally flagged by Microsoft during summer and as yet there was no evidence of any kind of invasion of any targets.
The Indiana Democratic Party mentioned in a statement that it was not aware of successful intrusion while the chair of the California Democratic Party Chair Rusty Hicks accepted that it was targeted but stated that the effort was not successful.
The Russian embassy located in Washington DC referred to the report as 'fake news' mentioning in a statement, "We reaffirm that our country respects all processes taking place in the United States of America. We do not interfere in their internal affairs," as reported by the Newsweek. "This is all fake news. Russia does not conduct offensive operations in the cyber domain," it added.
Last month Microsoft made a revelation that Fancy Bear attempted to hack more than 200 organizations, many of which were linked to the election. Microsoft was able to link the cyber espionage campaign on the hackers through an apparent programming fault that allowed the company to spot a pattern of the attack unique to Fancy Bear, as reported by Reuters. As per Microsoft, the attackers also linked to China and Iran were trying to spy on those linked with President Donald Trump and the Democratic challenger Joe Biden.
