Report: Russia resumes hacker attacks after Trump’s victory

MOSCOW, Nov 16 (PRIME) -- Before most Americans woke up November 9 and learned Donald Trump had won the presidential election, hackers linked to Russian intelligence had already launched a sweeping cyberespionage campaign to find out what his victory meant for Vladimir Putin’s government, NBC News reported late Tuesday on its Web site.

Russia has always placed a top priority on vacuuming up whatever intelligence it can about a new U.S. president and their top advisors and plans, to gain strategic advantage, Sean Kanuck, the nation’s first National Intelligence Officer for Cyber Issues from 2011 to 2016 told NBC News.

“And especially after the largest electoral upset in recent American history, it would be all the more important to collect as much information as possible on the new administration and its probable policies,” said Kanuck, now an affiliate with the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University.

As Team Trump ramps up the transition and then takes over the levers of power, Kanuck said, “I would expect it will only increase against all of his close confidants and advisors.”

The November 9 attack especially targeted “people who are or will be associated with the incoming administration,” according to Steven Adair, founder of Volexity, the cyber security firm that first disclosed the campaign.

“They want an early view of what happens before it becomes policy or law.”

Cybersecurity experts and current and former U.S. officials said they would have been surprised only if they did not see an aggressive post-election intel-gathering campaign by Russia. “I assume the need for intelligence is greater than normal right now. Nobody knows what’s going to be, what’s going to happen,” under Trump, said John Hultquist, director of cyberespionage analysis at the security firm iSIGHT Partners.

The attack came from the hacking crew known as Cozy Bear that U.S. officials have linked to earlier attacks on the Democratic National Committee, the White House, State Department and Joint Chiefs of Staff.

What is noteworthy, some said, was how quickly and aggressively the Russian-linked group is moving, especially when the new president-elect is the candidate Putin favored during the campaign.

End