Steve Marcus/Reuters
A cybersecurity expert hired by the Democratic National Committee to clean up the Russian malware from its servers said that they accidentally “accelerated [the hacker’s] timeline” by telling the press about the data theft, BuzzFeed News reported Wednesday. Robert Johnston, the CrowdStrike employee who found the Russian hack, reportedly told the DNC that similar hacks had been only for espionage purposes and that previously stolen data had not been publicly released. The DNC reportedly tried to get in front of the story by telling The Washington Post. “I believe now that they were intending to release the information in late October or a week before the election,” Johnston said. “... I don’t think the Russian intelligence services were expecting it, expecting a statement and an article that pointed the finger at them.”