Mueller probe IDs long-hidden hackers

PARIS (AP) - The special counsel’s probe of the 2016 election is now directly linked to the Russian government. One of the Russian military intelligence officers indicted Friday by special counsel Robert Mueller was Lt. Aleksey Lukashev, an email phishing specialist who went by the alias Den Katenberg.

Katenberg has been in The Associated Press’ sights ever since his email was identified among a massive hacker hit list handed to the news agency by Secureworks last year.

It was that 19,000-line database that allowed the AP to reconstruct Katenberg’s digital movements, logging every malicious link he and his colleagues created between March 2015 and May 2016.

The data show that the malicious emails came in waves, some 20 or 30 of them at a time, aimed at diplomats, journalists, defense contractors and other Russian intelligence targets across the world.