Republican National Committee denies computer systems were breached by Kremlin-backed hackers 

• The Republican National Committee is denying its computer systems were breached by Kremlin-backed hackers 
• On Tuesday, a spokesperson for the RNC slapped down reporting from Bloomberg that said members of the hacker group 'Cozy Bear' breached the RNC
• 'Over the weekend, we were informed that Synnex, a third party provider, had been breached,' RNC Chief of Staff Richard Walters said 
• Walters added that after a thorough investigation the political party found that 'no RNC data was accessed' 
• 'Cozy Bear' is tied to Russia's foreign intelligence service and was previously blamed for the 2016 hack of the Democratic National Committee 
• Russian government-backed hackers are taking advantage of Friday's global ransomware attack to go after valuable intelligence targets 

The Republican National Committee is denying its computer systems were breached by Kremlin-backed hackers. 

On Tuesday evening, a spokesperson for the RNC slapped down reporting from Bloomberg that said members of the hacker group 'Cozy Bear' breached the political party's computer systems last week.

'Over the weekend, we were informed that Synnex, a third party provider, had been breached,' RNC Chief of Staff Richard Walters said in a statement. '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. 

'Cozy Bear' is tied to Russia's foreign intelligence service. 

The group was previously accused of breaching the Democratic National Committee during the 2016 presidential election cycle. 

It was also blamed for December's SolarWinds Corp. attack, which breached nine U.S. government agencies.  

Bloomberg reported the Synnex connection, with the company saying in a press release that 'it is aware of a few instances where outside actors have attempted to gain access, through Synnex, to customer applications within the Microsoft cloud environment.' 

'As our review continues, we are unable to provide any specific details,' Synnex's Michael Urban told Bloomberg News. 'As with any security issue, a full review of all companies, systems, third-party applications and related IT solutions must be completed before final determinations can be made.' 

Bloomberg reported that Russian government-backed hackers are taking advantage of the global ransomware attack to go after valuable intelligence targets. 

It is unclear if targeting Synnex was related to the ransomware attack. 

On Friday, hackers exploited a powerful remote-management tool run by Miami-based software company Kaseya in what is known as a supply-chain attack. 

Friday's attack hobbled businesses in at least 17 countries. 

It shuttered most of the 800 supermarkets in the Swedish Coop chain over the weekend because cash registers stopped working, and reportedly knocked more than 100 New Zealand kindergartens offline.

Kaseya said it believes only about 800 to 1,500 of the estimated 800,000 to 1,000,000 mostly small business end-users of its software were affected. 

They are customers of companies that use Kaseya's virtual system administrator, or VSA, product to fully manage their IT infrastructure.

Cybersecurity experts said, however, it is too early for Kaseya to know the true impact given its launch on the eve of the Fourth of July holiday weekend in the U.S.  

Ransomware criminals infiltrate networks and sow malware that cripples them by scrambling all their data. Victims get a decoder key when they pay up. Most ransomware victims don't publicly report attacks or disclose if they've paid ransoms.

In the U.S, disclosure of a breach is required by state laws when personal data that can be used in identity theft is stolen. 

Federal law mandates it when healthcare records are exposed.

Security researchers said that in this attack, the criminals did not appear to have had time to steal data before locking up networks. 

That raised the question whether the motivation behind the attack was profit alone, because extortion through threatening to expose sensitive pilfered data betters the odds of big payoffs.

President Joe Biden said Tuesday that damage to U.S. businesses in the biggest ransomware attack on record appears minimal, though information remained incomplete. 

Answering a reporter's question at a vaccine-related White House event, Biden said his national security team had updated him Tuesday morning on the attack.  

 'It appears to have caused minimal damage to U.S. businesses but we´re still gathering information,' Biden said. 'And I'm going to have more to say about this in the next several days.' 

An official at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, speaking on condition they not be further identified, said no federal agencies or critical infrastructure appear to have been impacted.