DNC cyber attack by Russia highlighted delayed response, FBI chief says

DNC cyber attack by Russia highlighted delayed response, FBI chief says

WASHINGTON — Near the end of Monday’s extraordinary House committee hearing in which FBI Director James Comey dealt a double-barreled blow to the White House — acknowledging the existence of a wide-ranging counter-intelligence investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election — the director also made a less-noticed but striking concession about Russia’s unprecedented cyber assault on the American political system.

It took 10 months, Comey said, from the time the FBI first notified the Democratic National Committee of Russia’s intrusion in 2015 before the bureau was provided a forensic analysis of the hack into the sensitive electronic archives of the DNC.

The breach, which ultimately allowed a wave of embarrassing internal communications to stream into public view in the midst of a contentious general election, represented not only an unprecedented attempt to influence an election but also underscored a lack of urgency in the collective response to it.

“Knowing what we know now, would the FBI have done anything different in trying to notify the DNC of what happened?,’’ Rep. Will Hurd, R-Texas, asked.

“We’d have set up a much larger flare,’’ Comey responded, explaining that while agents made “extensive efforts’’ to notify the DNC, the committee never turned over its physical equipment to the bureau for examination and moved to hire a private firm to investigate.

“Yeah, we’d have just kept banging and banging on the door, knowing what I know now. I might have walked over there (to the DNC) myself, knowing what I know now.’’
Frustrated by inaction

The director's assessment, legal analysts said, echoes a long-standing frustration with the lack of a uniform response to cyber intrusions generally and the increasing risk posed by Russia and other global adversaries, who are seeking economic and national security advantages at the expense of the U.S. corporations and political institutions.

"Unfortunately, it always seems to take a major crisis for America to move to confront a problem,'' said Ron Hosko, a former chief of the FBI's Criminal Division. "Even after all that occurred in the past election, Russia and others are continuing their campaigns of intrusion. They are doing it because they have been emboldened by the inconsistent response and inaction.''

Hosko said the DNC's initial efforts to "quietly resolve" the intrusions discovered in 2015 without first seeking law enforcement assistance more commonly track the response of most commercial and institutional victims.

"I don't think there is a cohesive strategy of how to respond on either side — the victims or law enforcement,'' he said. "If they all are looking at their own equities in isolation, nobody will be the wiser except for the Chinese or the Russians.''