A Tale of Two Bears: The DNC Hack

On Tuesday, it came to light that the Democratic National Convention’s (DNC) network had been breached by not one, but two different hacker groups that are believed to work for the Russian government. The Washington Post reported that one group – designated Cozy Bear – was likely working for the FSB, the Russian internal security service, while the other – Fancy Bear – is likely associated with the GRU, the Russian foreign military intelligence agency.

The two services were not working together and indeed were pursuing different strategies geared towards obtaining different types of information. Cozy Bear had been loitering in the DNC network, undetected, for approximately a year, and appeared to be focused on passively monitoring communications. Fancy Bear, in contrast, gained access to the DNC’s network in April and immediately extracted opposition research information about Donald Trump.