What to know about CrowdStrike, the cybersecurity company mentioned in Trump's phone call with Zelensky
WASHINGTON – The cybersecurity company CrowdStrike was thrust into the national spotlight Wednesday after the summary of a phone call between President Donald Trump and his Ukrainian counterpart showed Trump raised questions about the California-based technology company.
According to the summary released Wednesday, Trump asked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to look into an issue involving CrowdStrike during their July 25 conversation.
According to the summary, Trump told Zelensky: “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.”
In reply, Zelensky did not appear unwilling to explore the issue. “Yes it is very important for me and everything that you just mentioned earlier,” he said, according to the summary.
The release of the call summary came on the same day the White House released a related whistleblower complaint to Congress after withholding it for more than a month. That complaint was the beginning of what is now a growing scandal involving Trump's conversation with Zelensky and his request that Ukraine investigate his political rival, former vice president Joe Biden.
More: 'Deeply disturbing': Lawmakers read whistleblower complaint at center of Trump-Ukraine scandal
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The summary is not a verbatim transcript of the conversation between the two leaders, and is based on the memory and notes of staff who were assigned to listen to the call and memorialize it.
Trump’s statement about CrowdStrike appears to be a reference to questions about the physical location of the Democratic National Committee computer server that was infiltrated by hackers in the lead-up to the 2016 presidential election.
CrowdStrike performed the initial analysis of the cyber intrusion for the DNC, concluding with high certainty that it was the work of hackers connected to Russian intelligence services.
Since CrowdStrike’s 2016 finding of Russian involvement in the hacking, Republican lawmakers have said they want to know more about the basis for the company’s findings.
“I want to find out from the company [that] did the forensics what their full findings were,” Sen. Lindsey Graham told The Washington Times in 2017.
Based in Sunnyvale, California, CrowdStrike is a publicly-traded company co-founded in 2011 by American George Kurtz and Russian-born American Dmitri Alperovitch. It has done cybersecurity work for both the Democratic National Committee and the National Republican Congressional Committee, according to Federal Election Commission records.
In December 2016, a CrowdStrike report indicated the company found hackers backed by the Russian government attacked a Ukrainian military application with malware that “may have facilitated reconnaissance against Ukrainian troops.” CrowdStrike revised and updated its report after some of its findings were questioned the International Institute for Strategic Studies, a British think tank.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: CrowdStrike: Trump mentions tech company in call with Ukraine's Zelensky
