CrowdStrike embarrassed after lone hacker claims that he - and not the Russian government - hacked the Democrats

Lone hacker claims responsibility for Democratic Party security breach - but security firm stands by its claims

Security services company CrowdStrike has been embarrassed following claims it made earlier this week that Russian security services were behind an attack on the Democratic National Committee (DNC), when a lone hacker called Guccifer 2 claimed that he - and he alone - was behind the security breach.

The hacker posted a series of documents that appear to back up his claims, including a DNC report from December on Donald Trump, the Republican Party's candidate-elect. Guccifer 2 claimed that cracking the organisation's security was "very easy" and claimed that he also cracked the email services of the Democratic Party's candidate-elect Hillary Clinton.

"Guccifer may have been the first one who penetrated Hillary Clinton's and other Democrats' mail servers. But he certainly wasn't the last. No wonder any other hacker could easily get access to the DNC's servers," wrote the hacker in the blog posting.

He concluded: "The main part of the papers, thousands of files and mails, I gave to Wikileaks. They will publish them soon. I guess CrowdStrike customers should think twice about company's competence."

In a lengthy and detailed blog posting earlier this week, CrowdStrike claimed that it had been called in to investigate the breach of the DNC's network in April. It claimed to have found evidence that two groups linked to the Russian security services - who it dubbed Cozy Bear and Fancy Bear - were behind the attacks.

While Cozy Bear had infiltrated the network in August, and had access to email and instant messaging communications, the alarm was set off when Fancy Bear also attacked the organisation in a bid to find and exfiltrate documents with information about likely Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump.

In an update to its blog posting, which remains up, CrowdStrike said that it stands by its analysis. "Whether or not this posting is part of a Russian Intelligence disinformation campaign, we are exploring the documents' authenticity and origin. Regardless, these claims do nothing to lessen our findings relating to the Russian government's involvement, portions of which we have documented for the public and the greater security community," it claimed.