A “lone hacker” calling themselves “Guccifer 2.0” has claimed responsibility for hacking the Democratic National Convention and says claims reports that the Russian government perpetrated the attack are false. The hacker also says the DNC lied about—or didn’t know the extent of—what was stolen.
Tuesday, the Washington Post reported that at least two groups of Russian government intelligence agency hackers had spent a year stealing the DNC’s opposition research on Donald Trump, as well as the organization’s chats and emails.
The DNC said that no financial information or secret documents were stolen; on a specially created Wordpress site, Guccifer 2.0 disputed those claims and dumped documents that the hacker says proves the DNC was lying. The original Guccifer is a Romanian man who hacked high-profile US government accounts and claimed to have hacked Hillary Clinton’s private email server.
“Guccifer may have been the first one who penetrated Hillary Clinton’s and other Democrats’ mail servers,” Guccifer 2.0 wrote. “But he certainly wasn’t the last. No wonder any other hacker could easily get access to the DNC’s servers.”
Tuesday, the security firm CrowdStrike said that it believed the hack was the work of sophisticated Russian government hackers. Guccifer 2.0 wrote that he or she was “very pleased the company appreciated my skills so highly))) But in fact, it was easy, very easy.”
To prove their claims, Guccifer 2.0 released a document called “Donald Trump Report,” a 237-page dossier about Trump that appears to be a summary of opposition research against the Republican presidential candidate. The report is divided into sections like “Trump is a liar,” “Trump Proposed Banning All Muslims,” and “Business Ventures.” The DNC did not respond to a request for comment about whether the report and the other documents released by Guccifer 2.0 are authentic, but the documents appear to be. Guccifer 2.0's claims were first reported by The Smoking Gun and Gawker.
Names redacted by Motherboard.
As I reported Tuesday, opposition research almost always is meant to eventually become public and, in this election, might not be very useful. So potentially more damaging for the Democrats are other documents published by the hacker such as an Excel file called “Big Donors” that appears to list 21 people who donated at least $500,000 to the DNC. Other Excel files claim to include other donor information as well as attendance information for fundraisers. The DNC said Tuesday that no financial information was included in the hack.
“Shame on CrowdStrike: Do you think I’ve been in the DNC’s networks for almost a year and saved only 2 documents? Do you really believe it?,” the hacker wrote.
Finally, Guccifer 2.0 claims to have stolen secret documents belonging to Hillary Clinton from the DNC. We have yet to verify this claim. One document he did publish is called “Promises and Proposals — National Security & Foreign Policy.”
The document appears to be from 2008 and includes what appear to be goals for Barack Obama’s first presidency (the White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the document). The document is interesting as it lays out in plain language what Obama planned to do, however, the document cites only public speeches and documents released by the Obama campaign and the Organizing for Action committee he set up after he won the election.
Guccifer 2.0 says the document comes from "Hillary Clinton's PC" but does not say why the document would be on DNC servers.
Guccifer 2.0 said they had passed the rest of the documents to WikiLeaks, who “will publish them soon.”
“Fuck the Illuminati and their conspiracies!!!!!!!!! Fuck CrowdStrike!!!!!!!!!,” the hacker said.
Motherboard has reached out to Guccifer 2.0 and will update this post if we hear back.
'Guccifer 2.0' Claims Responsibility for DNC Hack, Releases Docs to Prove it