{"id":21055,"date":"2017-11-27T15:10:32","date_gmt":"2017-11-27T15:10:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/c4isrnet\/uncategorized\/2017\/11\/27\/fbi-didnt-notify-many-us-officials-targeted-by-russian-hackers\/"},"modified":"2026-08-08T18:12:05","modified_gmt":"2026-08-08T18:12:05","slug":"fbi-didnt-notify-many-us-officials-targeted-by-russian-hackers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/c4isrnet\/home\/2017\/11\/27\/fbi-didnt-notify-many-us-officials-targeted-by-russian-hackers\/","title":{"rendered":"FBI didn’t notify many US officials targeted by Russian hackers"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

WASHINGTON (AP) \u2014 The FBI failed to notify scores of U.S. officials that Russian hackers were trying to break into their personal Gmail accounts despite having evidence for at least a year that the targets were in the Kremlin\u2019s crosshairs, The Associated Press has found.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nearly 80 interviews with Americans targeted by Fancy Bear, a Russian government-aligned cyberespionage group, turned up only two cases in which the FBI had provided a heads-up. Even senior policymakers discovered they were targets only when the AP told them, a situation some described as bizarre and dispiriting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s utterly confounding,\u201d said Philip Reiner, a former senior director at the National Security Council, who was notified by the AP that he was targeted in 2015. \u201cYou\u2019ve got to tell your people. You\u2019ve got to protect your people.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The FBI declined to discuss its investigation into Fancy Bear\u2019s spying campaign, but did provide a statement that said in part: \u201cThe FBI routinely notifies individuals and organizations of potential threat information.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Three people familiar with the matter \u2014 including a current and a former government official \u2014 said the FBI has known for more than a year the details of Fancy Bear\u2019s attempts to break into Gmail inboxes. A senior FBI official, who was not authorized to publicly discuss the hacking operation because of its sensitivity, declined to comment on when it received the target list, but said the bureau was overwhelmed by the sheer number of attempted hacks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a matter of triaging to the best of our ability the volume of the targets who are out there,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
In this image made from video, seen though an interior window, employees work in the offices of Secureworks in Atlanta on Oct. 4, 2017. Working off a list supplied by the cybersecurity firm, The Associated Press found that scores of U.S. diplomatic, military and government figures were not told about attempts to hack into their emails even though the FBI knew they were in the Kremlin\u2019s crosshairs. (AP Photo\/Marina Hutchinson)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The AP did its own triage, dedicating two months and a small team of reporters to go through a hit list of Fancy Bear targets provided by the cybersecurity firm Secureworks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Previous AP investigations based on the list have shown how Fancy Bear worked in close alignment with the Kremlin\u2019s interests<\/a> to steal tens of thousands of emails from the Democratic Party<\/a>. The hacking campaign disrupted the 2016 U.S. election and cast a shadow over the presidency of Donald Trump, whom U.S. intelligence agencies say the hackers were trying to help<\/a>. The Russian government has denied interfering in the American election.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Secureworks list comprises 19,000 lines of targeting data<\/a>. Going through it, the AP identified more than 500 U.S.-based people or groups and reached out to more than 190 of them, interviewing nearly 80 about their experiences.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many were long-retired, but about one-quarter were still in government or held security clearances at the time they were targeted. Only two told the AP they learned of the hacking attempts on their personal Gmail accounts from the FBI. A few more were contacted by the FBI after their emails were published in the torrent of leaks that coursed through last year\u2019s electoral contest. But to this day, some leak victims have not heard from the bureau at all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Charles Sowell, who previously worked as a senior administrator in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and was targeted by Fancy Bear two years ago, said there was no reason the FBI couldn\u2019t do the same work the AP did.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s absolutely not OK for them to use an excuse that there\u2019s too much data,\u201d Sowell said. \u201cWould that hold water if there were a serial killer investigation, and people were calling in tips left and right, and they were holding up their hands and saying, \u2018It\u2019s too much\u2019? That\u2019s ridiculous.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s curious\u201d
<\/b><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The AP found few traces of the bureau\u2019s inquiry as it launched its own investigation two months ago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In October, two AP journalists visited THCServers.com<\/a>, a brightly lit, family-run internet company on the former grounds of a communist-era chicken farm outside the Romanian city of Craiova. That\u2019s where someone registered DCLeaks.com, the first of three websites to publish caches of emails belonging to Democrats and other U.S. officials in mid-2016.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
FILE – In this Oct. 4, 2017, file photo, a motorcycle is parked outside the THCServers.com company headquarters, outside Craiova, southern Romania. The company based in a remote part of the eastern European country was used to register the website DCLeaks, which U.S. intelligence has accused of being a front for Russian spies. (AP Photo\/Vadim Ghirda, File)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

DCLeaks was clearly linked to Fancy Bear. Previous AP reporting found that all but one of the site\u2019s victims had been targeted by the hacking group before their emails were dumped online.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet THC founder Catalin Florica said he was never approached by law enforcement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s curious,\u201d Florica said. \u201cYou are the first ones that contact us.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

THC merely registered the site, a simple process that typically takes only a few minutes. But the reaction was similar at the Kuala Lumpur offices of the Malaysian web company Shinjiru Technology<\/a>, which hosted DCLeaks\u2019 stolen files for the duration of the electoral campaign.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Catalin Florica, who launched THCServers.com in 2013, poses for a portrait during an interview at the company’s headquarters, outside Craiova, southern Romania, Wednesday, Oct. 4, 2017. The company based in a remote part of the Eastern European country was used to register the website DCLeaks, which U.S. intelligence has accused of being a front for Russian spies. (AP Photo\/Vadim Ghirda)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The company\u2019s chief executive, Terence Choong, said he had never heard of DCLeaks until the AP contacted him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhat is the issue with it?\u201d he asked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Questions over the FBI\u2019s handling of Fancy Bear\u2019s broad hacking sweep date to March 2016, when agents arrived unannounced at Hillary Clinton\u2019s headquarters in Brooklyn to warn her campaign about a surge of rogue, password-stealing emails.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The agents offered little more than generic security tips the campaign had already put into practice and refused to say who they thought was behind the attempted intrusions, according to a person who was there and spoke on condition of anonymity because the conversation was meant to be confidential.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Questions emerged again after it was revealed that the FBI never took custody of the Democratic National Committee\u2019s computer server after it was penetrated by Fancy Bear in April 2016. Former FBI Director James Comey testified this year that the FBI worked off a copy of the server, which he described as an \u201cappropriate substitute.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMakes me sad\u201d
<\/b><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Retired Maj. James Phillips was one of the first people to have the contents of his inbox published by DCLeaks when the website made its June 2016 debut.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the Army veteran said he didn\u2019t realize his personal emails were \u201cflapping in the breeze\u201d until a journalist phoned him two months later.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe fact that a reporter told me about DCLeaks kind of makes me sad,\u201d he said. \u201cI wish it had been a government source.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Phillips\u2019 story would be repeated again and again as the AP spoke to officials from the National Defense University in Washington to the North American Aerospace Defense Command in Colorado.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Among them: a former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, retired Lt. Gen. Patrick Hughes; a former head of Air Force Intelligence, retired Lt. Gen. David Deptula; a former defense undersecretary, Eric Edelman; and a former director of cybersecurity for the Air Force, retired Lt. Gen. Mark Schissler.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Retired Maj. Gen. Brian Keller, a former director of military support at the Geospatial Intelligence Agency, was not informed, even after DCLeaks posted his emails to the internet. In a telephone call with AP, Keller said he still wasn\u2019t clear on what had happened, who had hacked him or whether his data was still at risk.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cShould I be worried or alarmed or anything?\u201d asked Keller, who left the spy satellite agency in 2010 and now works in private industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not all the interviewees felt the FBI had a responsibility to alert them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cPerhaps optimistically, I have to conclude that a risk analysis was done and I was not considered a high enough risk to justify making contact,\u201d said a former Air Force chief of staff, retired Gen. Norton Schwartz, who was targeted by Fancy Bear in 2015.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Others argued that the FBI may have wanted to avoid tipping the hackers off or that there were too many people to notify.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe expectation that the government is going to protect everyone and go back to everyone is false,\u201d said Nicholas Eftimiades, a retired senior technical officer at the Defense Intelligence Agency who teaches homeland security at Pennsylvania State University in Harrisburg and was himself among the targets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the government is supposed to try, said Michael Daniel, who served as President Barack Obama\u2019s White House cybersecurity coordinator.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Daniel wouldn\u2019t comment directly on why so many Fancy Bear targets weren\u2019t warned in this case, but he said the issue of how and when to notify people \u201cfrankly still needs more work.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cCloak-and-dagger\u201d
<\/b><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the absence of any official warning, some of those contacted by AP brushed off the idea that they were taken in by a foreign power\u2019s intelligence service.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI don\u2019t open anything I don\u2019t recognize,\u201d said Joseph Barnard, who headed the personnel recovery branch of the Air Force\u2019s Air Combat Command.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That may well be true of Barnard; Secureworks\u2019 data suggests he never clicked the malicious link sent to him in June 2015. But it isn\u2019t true of everyone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
This image shows a portion of a phishing email sent to a Washington area-based military analyst on Nov. 9, 2017. Scores of U.S. diplomatic, military and government figures were not told about attempts to hack into their emails even though the FBI knew they were in the Kremlin\u2019s crosshairs, The Associated Press has learned. (AP Photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

An AP analysis of the data suggests that out of 312 U.S. military and government figures targeted by Fancy Bear, 131 clicked the links sent to them. That could mean that as many as 2 in 5 came perilously close to handing over their passwords.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s not clear how many gave up their credentials in the end or what the hackers may have acquired.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some of those accounts hold emails that go back years, when even many of the retired officials still occupied sensitive posts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Overwhelmingly, interviewees told AP they kept classified material out of their Gmail inboxes, but intelligence experts said Russian spies could use personal correspondence as a springboard for further hacking, recruitment or even blackmail.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou start to have information you might be able to leverage against that person,\u201d said Sina Beaghley, a researcher at the RAND Corp. who served on the NSC until 2014.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the few cases where the FBI did warn targets, they were sometimes left little wiser about what was going on or what to do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rob \u201cButch\u201d Bracknell, a 20-year military veteran who works as a NATO lawyer in Norfolk, Virginia, said an FBI agent visited him about a year ago to examine his emails and warn him that a \u201cforeign actor\u201d was trying to break into his account.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHe was real cloak-and-dagger about it,\u201d Bracknell said. \u201cHe came here to my work, wrote in his little notebook and away he went.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Left to fend for themselves, some targets have been improvising their cybersecurity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Retired Gen. Roger A. Brady, who was responsible for American nuclear weapons in Europe as part of his past role as commander of the U.S. Air Force there, turned to Apple support this year when he noticed something suspicious on his computer. Hughes, a former DIA head, said he had his hard drive replaced by the \u201cGeek Squad\u201d at a Best Buy in Florida after his machine began behaving strangely. Keller, the former senior spy satellite official, said it was his son who told him his emails had been posted to the web after getting a Google alert in June 2016.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A former U.S. ambassador to Russia, Michael McFaul, who like many others was repeatedly targeted by Fancy Bear but has yet to receive any warning from the FBI, said the lackluster response risked something worse than last year\u2019s parade of leaks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOur government needs to be taking greater responsibility to defend its citizens in both the physical and cyber worlds, now, before a cyberattack produces an even more catastrophic outcome than we have already experienced,\u201d McFaul said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

___<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Donn reported from Plymouth, Massachusetts. Associated Press writers Vadim Ghirda in Carcea, Romania, Chad Day in Washington, Frank Bajak in Houston, Justin Myers in Chicago and Lori Hinnant in Paris contributed to this report.<\/i><\/p>\n\n\n\n

___<\/p>\n\n\n\n

EDITOR\u2019S NOTE \u2014 Raphael Satter\u2019s father, David Satter, is an author and Russia specialist who has been critical of the Kremlin. His emails were published last year by hackers<\/a> and his account is on Secureworks\u2019 list of Fancy Bear targets. He was not notified by the FBI.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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