The 10 Biggest Data Breaches Of 2016

2. Democratic National Committee

As the presidential election campaign came down to its final days this fall, thousands of leaked emails from the Democratic National Committee were published on Wikileaks, reflecting poorly on the Democrats and arguably helping shape the outcome of the election. In October, the U.S. government said it believed Russia was behind the hacking of the DNC to steal the documents and emails in question. The CIA most recently said intelligence shows that Russia disproportionately targeted the Democratic Party with its nation-state attacks, with the Obama administration saying that Russian President Vladimir Putin authorized the attacks and claiming that Republican candidate Donald Trump - now the president-elect - knew of them personally. A report said Russia also attempted to hack the Republican National Committee, but the report said the attacks were less aggressive and failed to penetrate the group's systems. The attacks show the rising influence of nation-state attacks on some of the United States' most important systems.