Russian Olympian Yuliya Stepanova and her husband Vitaly Stepanovs are with their son after an interview with Reuters at on July 28. ISAIAH DOWNING / Reuters file
At the same time Stepanova's WADA account was hacked, athletes from around the world started receiving emails, which appeared to come from WADA.
The emails linked to a fake WADA page, where the athletes were called to put in their credentials to the WADA system for the hackers to exploit. Experts call it a "phishing" attack and traced it back to a well-known group of Russian-backed hackers.
"We see a tremendous amount of activity of Russian actors across the board," said John Hultquist, manager of cyber espionage intelligence at the U.S.-based security firm FireEye.
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According to Hultquist, FireEye linked the phishing attack on WADA athletes to the Russian hacking group APT28 — Advanced Persistent Threat 28 — also nicknamed Fancy Bear. They did so while looking into the movements of this specific hacking group that they've been tracking for years.
Experts also point out, APT28 is the same group that was responsible for
hacking the U.S. Democratic National Committee, the DNC, earlier this year.
"The Russian actor APT 28 that we suspect is behind the DNC incident has certain infrastructure that we have seen used in this recent attack," Hultquist said.
Another cyber security group that looked into the breach, Threatconnect, came up with the same findings in a report published last week.
NBC News spoke with several security experts and intelligence officials who believe APT28, aka Fancy Bear, is directly linked to Russian intelligence.
Russian officials approached by NBC News would not comment, but in a statement WADA confirmed that Stepanova's account was the only one in its system accessed illegally, and that "Ms. Stepanova was a key whistleblower" for the agency's investigation which "exposed widespread doping in Russian Athletics."
Since the hack, Yuliya, Vitaly and their 3-year-old son are being hosted by friends until they can find a new place to hide.
"Its hard to move all the time," Stepanova said. "We would live to finally live quietly."
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