[philman_36]

And why did they have to “decommission” all 140?

DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL COMMITTEE, Plaintiff, v. THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION, et al., Defendants. Case No. 1:18-cv-3501-JGK-SDA (page 31)

113. In order to remove the unauthorized users from its network, the DNC had to decommission more than 140 servers, remove and reinstall all software, including the operating systems, for more than 180 computers, and rebuild at least 11 servers. Of note... 114. Both CrowdStrike’s forensic analysis and the U.S. Government concluded that the DNC’s computer systems had been hacked by two independent, sophisticated Russian state-sponsored adversaries, both with a nexus to Russia’s intelligence services.⁷⁹

⁷⁹ Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Bureau of Investigation,GRIZZLY STEPPE –Russian Malicious Cyber Activity(December 29, 2016),available athttps://www.us-cert.gov/sites/default/files/publications/JAR_16-20296A_GRIZZLY%20STEPPE-2016-1229.pdf.

It doesn't say "Both CrowdStrike’s forensic analysis and the U.S. Government's forensic analysis concluded that the DNC’s computer systems had been hacked..."

Can't you just install a new hard drive and re-program it?

I suppose you could do that on laptops/computers. It seems they just reinstalled all the software, including the operating systems. If they didn't replace the hard drives they could still be vulnerable to BIOS/Boot Sector code hacks still resident on the old drives if they weren't cleaned up properly.

[zeestephen]

Thanks for the link to the DNC complaint against Russia.

I had completely overlooked that and had no idea it was in the public domain.