WASHINGTON - With US President Donald Trump facing an impeachment trial over his efforts to pressure Ukraine to investigate former Vice-President Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden, Russian military hackers have been boring into the Ukrainian gas company at the centre of the affair, according to security experts.
The Russian tactics are strikingly similar to what American intelligence agencies say was Russia's hacking of e-mails from Hillary Clinton's campaign chairman and the Democratic National Committee during the 2016 presidential campaign. Then, as now, the Russian hackers from a military intelligence unit known formerly as the GRU, and to private researchers by the alias"Fancy Bear", used so-called phishing e-mails that appear designed to steal usernames and passwords, according to Area1, the Silicon Valley security firm that detected the hacking.