12 Russians indicted for hacking into Democratic servers

Twelve Russian intelligence officers were indicted on Saturday for hacking into the servers of senior Democrats, including its presidential candidate Hillary Clinton in 2016, days ahead of a meeting between US President Donald Trump and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin.

According to the indictment, the 12 are members of the GRU, a Russian Federation intelligence agency within the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Russian military. These GRU officers engaged in a sustained effort to hack into the computer networks of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the Democratic National Committee, and the presidential campaign of Hillary, and released that information on the Internet under the names "DCLeaks" and "Guccifer 2.0" and through another entity, the indictment said. The indictment comes ahead of the crucial meeting of President Donald Trump with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin in Helsinki, Finland on July 16.

According to the indictment, Russian intelligence officials in 2016, began spear phishing volunteers and employees of the presidential campaign of Hillary Clinton, including the campaign's chairman. Through that process, officials in this unit were able to steal the usernames and passwords for numerous individuals and use those credentials to steal email content and hack into other computers. They also were able to hack into the computer networks of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) and the Democratic National Committee (DNC) through these spearphishing techniques to steal emails and documents, covertly monitor the computer activity of dozens of employees, and implant hundreds of files of malicious computer code to steal passwords and maintain access to these networks.