The Slatest

Russian Hackers Reportedly Tried “DC Leaks” Site to Leak Emails Before Moving on to WikiLeaks

The Russian attempt at WikiLeaks?

Screenshot DCLeaks.com

It’s long been speculated that the Russian hackers widely speculated to have swiped tens of thousands of emails from the DNC still had more documents to dump. Now it appears the scope of the hack is much larger than originally thought, the New York Times reports, with the email accounts of as many as 100 Democratic Party officials and groups, like Democratic Governors’ Association, also being infiltrated.

To make matters worse, the reach of the Russian hackers appears to have extended well beyond the DNC, including a NATO commander. Bloomberg reports that a website—DCLeaks.com—has been the repository for some of the documents and contains telltale signs of Russian intelligence. The site was registered in April and most of  the documents were posted in June. The site appears to have been a testing ground of sorts, cyberespionage experts told Bloomberg, and may have been a precursor to WikiLeaks for the Russians as a means to leak the hacked documents. Here’s more from Bloomberg:

The e-mails and documents posted to the DCLeaks site in early June suggest that the hackers may have a broader agenda than influencing the U.S. presidential election, one that ranges from the Obama administration’s policy toward Russia to disclosures about the hidden levers of political power in Washington. It also means the hackers may have much left in their grab bag to distribute at will. The subjects of the DCLeaks site include a former ranking intelligence official who now works for a major defense contractor and a retired Army officer whose wife serves on the USS Nimitz, the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier. Some of the e-mails go back years.

The hackers appear to have had access to emails at George Soros’ Open Society foundation for a long as a year. They were also apparently monitoring former U.S. Gen. Philip Breedlove’s personal email as far back as 2012, when he was commander of the U.S. European Command and NATO Allied Command Operations.