December 4, 2018

A Republican Party Server Was Hacked in April. Oddly, Though, Nothing Was Leaked.

Was Russia being the GOP server hack? I have no idea. Really. But I'm going to use this sinister stock illustration of Vladimir Putin and a shaky American flag anyway.Jaap Arriens/NurPhoto via ZUMA

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From Politico:

The House GOP campaign arm suffered a major hack during the 2018 election, exposing thousands of sensitive emails to an outside intruder, according to three senior party officials. The email accounts of four senior aides at the National Republican Congressional Committee were surveilled for several months, the party officials said. The intrusion was detected in April by an NRCC vendor, who alerted the committee and its cybersecurity contractor. An internal investigation was initiated and the FBI was alerted to the attack, said the officials, who requested anonymity to discuss the incident.

….None of the information accessed during the hack — thousands of emails from senior NRCC aides — has appeared in public, party officials said. And they said there were no attempts to threaten the NRCC or its leadership during the campaign with exposure of the information.

INCOMPETENT DEFENSES! EMBARRASSING TO GET HACKED LIKE THIS. EVERYONE IS SAYING DEM CYBERSECURITY MUCH BETTER.

WHY WASN’T PAUL RYAN NOTIFIED? COVERUP!

WHERE’S THE SERVER? WHY WON’T REPUBLICANS HAND IT OVER TO THE FBI? HAS IT BEEN ACID WASHED?

NO EMAILS LEAKED? DID NRCC MAKE DEAL WITH WIKILEAKS AND ASSANGE? MAYBE!

TOTAL DISGRACE THAT WE’RE ONLY HEARING ABOUT THIS 8 MONTHS AFTER IT HAPPENED!!!

HUGE $$$ PAID TO GOP LOBBYING FIRM TO INVESTIGATE HACK BUT NO RESULTS! WHAT ARE THEY HIDING?

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

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