RNC Says No Data Accessed in Synnex Breach

The Republican National Committee says none of its data was compromised in a cyberattack that involved B2B IT services provider Synnex.

Over the weekend, Synnex was the target of a cyberattack by threat actors who attempted to access “customer applications within the Microsoft cloud environment.” As part of the services it offers, Synnex manages cloud accounts for its customers.

One of Synnex’ customers is the Republican National Committee, which said on Tuesday that none of its data was accessed during the incident.

“Over the weekend, we were informed that Synnex, a third-party provider, had been breached. We immediately blocked all access from Synnex accounts to our cloud environment, said RNC Chief of Staff Richard Walters.

“Our team worked with Microsoft to conduct a review of our systems and after a thorough investigation, no RNC data was accessed. We will continue to work with Microsoft, as well as federal law enforcement officials, on this matter,” Walters added.

Synnex too said that it was working with Microsoft on a probe of the incident, underlining that its systems remained online throughout the attack, a hint that ransomware was not used in the incident.

“These actions could potentially be in connection with the recent cybersecurity attacks of Managed Service Providers, or MSPs,” Synnex said in a statement, adding that it is not an MSP, despite offering various services through its IT distribution business.

The company did not provide further information on the attack, but a Bloomberg report claims that Russian cyber-espionage group tracked as APT29 or Cozy Bear might have been involved. The same threat actor was accused of hacking into Democratic National Committee in 2016 and of orchestrating the cyberattack involving SolarWinds.

The attack on Synnex appears unrelated to the recent Kaseya ransomware attack, which impacted approximately 1500 organizations worldwide.

For more than three decades, the Fremont, California-based Synnex has been offering distribution, systems design and integration services to organizations in the information technology sector.

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