An Associated Press investigation takes a closer look at how Russian operatives first went phishing for access to Democrats' online data on March 10, 2016 and ultimately succeeded just one day later:
It wasn’t just a few aides that the hackers went after; it was an all-out blitz across the Democratic Party. They tried to compromise Clinton’s inner circle and more than 130 party employees, supporters and contractors.
(...)
Within hours of a second volley emailed March 11, the hackers hit pay dirt. All of a sudden, they were sending links aimed at senior Clinton officials’ nonpublic 2016 addresses, including those belonging to longtime Clinton aide Robert Russo and campaign chairman John Podesta.
Hackers used campaign addresses to get to personal gmail accounts, and on March 19, 2016, Podesta fell prey:
A malicious link was generated for Podesta at 11:28 a.m. Moscow time, the AP found. Documents subsequently published by WikiLeaks show that the rogue email arrived in his inbox six minutes later. The link was clicked twice.
Podesta’s messages — at least 50,000 of them — were in the hackers’ hands.
The FBI and Secureworks, a subsidiary of Dell Technologies, caught on in late March and discovered the Russian government-aligned Fancy Bear had been targeting Democrats for a while:
The group’s hackers seemed particularly interested in Democratic officials working on voter registration issues: Pratt Wiley, the DNC’s then-director of voter protection, had been targeted as far back as October 2015 and the hackers tried to pry open his inbox as many as 15 times over six months.
AP goes on to detail exactly how the stolen DNC emails made their way online, and it's all significant information. However, given that the Podesta emails leaked just one hour after the Donald Trump Access Hollywood sexual assault video surfaced, this quote from Russian-linked Guccifer 2.0 seems particularly noteworthy:
Guccifer 2.0 told one reporter he was thrilled that WikiLeaks had finally followed through.
“Together with Assange we’ll make america great again,” he wrote.
Inside story: How Russians hacked the Democrats’ emails (AP)