The Hillary Clinton campaign had not been warned by the FBI that it may have been breached by the same hackers who attacked the DNC. | AP Photo Trump campaign mocks report of latest Clinton hack

Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign acknowledged Friday night that hackers have breached a data program it shares with the Democratic National Committee, in the latest dose of bad cybersecurity news for Democrats since last week's release of politically explosive emails stolen from the DNC.

But the campaign insisted that its own computers were still secure — an assurance that didn't stop GOP rival Donald Trump's team from sticking in the knife.


"This seems to be a problem wherever Hillary Clinton goes," Trump campaign aide Jason Miller said in an email to POLITICO. "Hopefully this time there wasn't classified or top secret information that puts American lives at risk."

The Clinton campaign has blamed the DNC email thefts on Russia — as have numerous experts inside and outside the government — and has speculated that Vladimir Putin's regime may be trying to sway the presidential race to Trump.

The latest exchange came after Reuters reported Friday that cyber-intruders had "hacked" the Clinton campaign's computer network, although the news service did not specify the nature of the attack or say what information if any the hackers may have stolen. The New York Times later reported that hackers apparently linked to Russian intelligence services had attacked computer systems "used" by Clinton's campaign, but offered no other details.

One cybersecurity expert told POLITICO that the Reuters report may be related to a previously disclosed effort by Russian-backed hackers to use infected emails to try to gain access to top Clinton aides' Google accounts, as disclosed last month by the firm SecureWorks.

In response to the news reports, Clinton campaign spokesman Nick Merrill said hackers had gained access to "an analytics data program" maintained by the DNC, which was "used by our campaign and a number of other entities" — but by all appearances hadn't breached the campaign itself.

"Our campaign computer system has been under review by outside cyber security experts," Merrill said by email. "To date, they have found no evidence that our internal systems have been compromised.”

A Clinton campaign aide later added: "As noted in our earlier statement, an analytics data program maintained by the DNC, and used by our campaign and a number of other entities, was accessed as part of the DNC hack.

"The hackers had access to the analytics program's server for approximately 5 days. Separate from NGP/VAN, the analytics data program is one of the many systems that we access to conduct voter analysis, it does not include social security numbers or credit card numbers.

"Note: The hack of this analytics data program could not have resulted in access to Clinton campaign internal emails, voicemails, computers or other internal communications and documents according to our outside cyber security expert – they are completely independent systems.

The Obama administration has not publicly assigned blame for the DNC breach, despite pleas from dozens of security experts who say it's imperative for the U.S. to deter foreign aggression against its political system. The FBI said in a vaguely worded statement Friday that it "is aware of media reporting on cyber intrusions involving multiple political entities, and is working to determine the accuracy, nature and scope of these matters."

As recently as Tuesday, Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta told reporters at the party's convention in Philadelphia that he was confident in the campaign’s “robust security” system. He said the campaign had received no FBI warnings that it may have been breached by the hackers who had stolen politically explosive emails from the DNC.

But SecureWorks told POLITICO on Friday that it's “certainly plausible” that the latest attack is linked to a previously discovered attempt by Russian hackers to target Clinton’s top staffers using infected emails. The intruders sent fraudulent emails with malicious links to the personal Gmail accounts of 108 Clinton campaign staffers, who clicked on 20 of the links, researchers at the firm said last month.

SecureWorks identified the group targeting Clinton's campaign as the same Russian-backed hacker group that successfully attacked the DNC and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. Dubbed “Fancy Bear,” the group is suspected to have ties to the Russian military intelligence agency, or GRU.

The malicious links were concealed from the Clinton staffers using an online service called Bitly, which shortens long web addresses to make them less unwieldy but can also make them hard to verify, SecureWorks said. The hackers went after a wide range of staffers, including directors managing Clinton’s campaign finances, travel and communications strategy.

“It is certainly plausible that the extensive spearphishing campaign SecureWorks saw targeting the staffers of the Hillary Clinton Campaign for President, between March and May of 2016, could have led to a successful intrusion,” the company’s researchers told POLITICO on Friday.

The DNC emails, released July 22 by WikiLeaks, forced the resignation of DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz and stoked tension between the party's Clinton and Bernie Sanders wings. On Thursday, news reports revealed that hackers had also launched an attack aimed at donors to the DCCC.

Another major arm of the party, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, does not believe it has been hacked, spokeswoman Lauren Passalacqua said. “We have reviewed and haven’t been compromised to date,” she said.

The Obama administration typically doesn't assign public blame for cyberattacks, except in cases such as North Korea's assault on Sony Pictures in 2014. And it almost never does so when it believes the hacking amounts to traditional espionage, something the U.S. engages in as well.

But following the DNC breach, 32 experts from the bipartisan Aspen Institute Homeland Security Group wrote in

a statement Thursday that it's imperative for the administration to assign blame and "and take prompt actions" to deter cyberattacks that could affect the U.S. electoral system.

"This is not a partisan issue," wrote the experts, who included former CIA Director Michael Hayden and former Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff. "All parties should agree that foreign efforts to influence our elections through hacking and stealing confidential records must be deterred and thwarted through a strong and unified response."

Josh Gerstein, Cory Bennett and Seung Min Kim contributed to this report.