The campaign arm of the Republican House hacked at mid-term in 2018



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Piracy, reported for the first time by Politico, was discovered by a salesman in April after e-mails from four of the committee's top advisers were monitored for months, a Republican official told AFP. intrusion to CNN.

Piracy comes weeks after Republicans in the House lose their majority and have seen Democrats win nearly 40 seats in the House. Testifying to the seriousness with which the committee thought the piracy was, they appealed to the law firm Covington and Burling to deal with the issue, as well as to Mercury Public Affairs to handle the public relations surrounding the intrusion.

After the NRCC The authorities then informed CrowdStrike, the cybersecurity company that helped the Democrats expel the Russians from their computer systems in 2016, and then shared information with the FBI during its investigation of the attacks by the election season. 19659003] Ian Prior, a spokesman for the committee, said Tuesday that he had been hacked "by an unknown entity".

"The NRCC can confirm that it was the victim of a cyber-intrusion by an unknown entity," said Prior. "The cybersecurity of the Committee's data is paramount and as soon as it has learned about the intrusion, the NRCC immediately launched an internal investigation and informed the FBI, which is currently investigating the case."

"To protect the integrity of this investigation, the NRCC will not issue any further comment on the incident," he added.

The use of pirated material during election campaigns has been a major concern since the 2016 campaign, when emails from the upper echelons of the Clinton campaign were leaked at the close. weeks of the campaign.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee was also hacked in 2016. Kremlin-backed hackers have released internal documents stolen from DCCC servers as part of the Russian government's considerable efforts to secure its own identity. to interfere in the American elections. Sensitive internal campaign documents were subsequently used in Republican ads.

NRCC and DCCC officials have engaged in protracted negotiations to avoid the use of pirated documents. Previously, discussions had failed months before polling day due to the erosion of trust between the parties.

Although he did not sign any agreement, the NRCC chief stated that the committee had not yet signed an agreement.

"We are not looking for stolen or hacked hardware, we do not want stolen or hacked hardware, we have no intention of using stolen or hacked hardware", said the president of the NRCC, Steve Stivers, of Ohio, at

NRCC piracy could prove embarrassing for Republicans, given that President Donald Trump mocked his political opponents when they were hacked by foreign actors and he congratulated the Republicans for investing in stronger cyberprotections.

Trump was informed during the transition by top US intelligence officials about the hacks of the Democratic National Committee. He jubilated in his first comments and said that the Republican National Committee was also targeted. ed but "had strong defenses against piracy and hackers failed".

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