President Donald Trump held a press conference Wednesday at the United Nations, hours after the release of a summary of a call with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky.
The two met amid controversy over the July 25 call, where Trump appears to urge Zelensky to open an investigation into former vice president and current Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden’s son.
During the phone call, Trump referenced the cyber security company CrowdStrike.
What is CrowdStrike and why did he mention it?Here's what to know about CrowdStrike:
- According to the company's website, CrowdStrike is a "cloud-native endpoint protection platform built to stop breaches."
- CrowdStrike was founded by American George Kurtz and Dmitri Alperovitch, who was born in Russia. The company is based in the United States in Sunnyvale, California.
- CrowdStrike was hired to determine who hacked into the Democratic National Committee's servers in 2016.
- During its investigation into who hacked into DNC servers, the company said it found that two groups connected to the Russian government were responsible for the attack. They nicknamed the companies Cozy Bear and Fancy Bear.
- CrowdStrike determined that while Cozy Bear and Fancy Bear both hacked into the DNC network, they "identified no collaboration between the two actors, or even an awareness of one by the other."
- The company has worked for both the DNC and the Republican National Committee.
- In late 2016, CrowdStrike reported that it had found that a Ukrainian military application had been hacked by the Russian government. The hack "may have facilitated reconnaissance against Ukrainian troops," the company reported.
What did Trump say about CrowdStrike in the July phone call?
According to the transcript of the call released by the White House, Trump said:
“I would like you to do us a favor though because our country has been through a lot and Ukraine knows a lot about it. I would like you to find out what happened with this whole situation with Ukraine, they say CrowdStrike…”
“I guess you have one of your wealthy people... The server, they say Ukraine has it,” the memo continues. “There are a lot of things that went on, the whole situation. I think you’re surrounding yourself with some of the same people.”
What is it that Trump thinks CrowdStrike has to do with Ukraine?
Trump has said that he believes the DNC hid an incriminating server from the FBI prior to reporting the hack. He says he believes the missing server is somewhere in Ukraine and that information on that server would point to who really hacked into the DNC system.
In addition, during a press conference at the United Nations Wednesday, he said that the 33,000 emails deleted from a server kept at Hillary Clinton's New York home "could be in Ukraine." He did not elaborate on the comment.
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