The Plot to Hack America: How Putin's Cyberspies and WikiLeaks Tried to Steal the 2016 Election

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The 2016 presidential election was already surreal—a former reality TV host fueled by white backlash had completed a hostile takeover of the Republican Party—before the bears emerged.

By the summer, as the campaign intensified, a WordPress page operated by someone claiming the mantle Guccifer2.0 was dumping embarrassing emails and memoranda stolen from the Democratic National Committee. When the anti-secrecy organization Wikileaks did the same thing, Guccifer2.0 claimed credit as the source; Wikileaks has kept its sourcing obscure. But the leaks showed the Democrats’ political apparatus to be petty, vindictive and determined to anoint Hillary Clinton as the Democratic nominee despite grassroots enthusiasm for challenger Bernie Sanders. Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz resigned.

Then something unexpected happened.

Cybersecurity researchers analyzing the committee network breach noticed that the particulars of the attack showed distinct patterns for gaining access—familiar patterns. Their tools were prohibitively expensive for random hackers, particularly their use of previously unknown software flaws. Instead, the researchers concluded, the hack was the work of two well-known groups tied to Russian intelligence. They are known by the weird names Fancy Bear and Cozy Bear.

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