CyberScoop: North Korea Nearly Hacked Hillary Clinton's Campaign

North Korean hackers reportedly accessed email accounts for multiple members of an advisory group working with Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign, CyberScoop reports.

The hackers used email accounts made to look like those of campaign officials to breach the accounts of employees of a Washington think tank. At least some of these employees provided East Asian policy advice to the Clinton campaign, occasionally communicating with staff members, according to a report obtained by CyberScoop.

"This phishing attack fits a pattern of previous successful attacks against [non-governmental organizations] and U.S. government-based entities which align to an Asian nexus. We are highly confident this is North Korea's RGB, focusing on intelligence gathering," an unnamed former U.S. official told CyberScoop.

"It sort of became really obvious, really quickly that this wasn't just someone spoofing sender information and sending us a computer virus," an anonymous former campaign associate told CyberScoop. "It seemed much more coordinated. They knew who everyone was and at least broadly, what we were talking about . . . I think they probably took advantage of that."

Although the email of Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta was compromised by a phishing email, the report obtained by CyberScoop does not indicate any connection between those emails and the ones sent by North Korean hackers.

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