It was a full-scale cyber attack on the US election.

A foreign adversary sneaks into the computer networks of American political campaigns.

The hackers burrow in undetected for months and steal memos, emails, and policy papers.

No, this was not the Russian cyber attack against the 2016 election.

It happened eight years earlier, and the perpetrators were from another foreign power.

State-sponsored hackers from the People's Republic of China.

The Chinese had penetrated the campaigns of then-candidate Barack Obama,

and that of his Republican opponent, John McCain.

And yet the American people knew nothing about it until the day after election day,

when the first reference to the attack was reported by Newsweek magazine.

Only the identity of the hackers didn't become publicly known until years later.

We'll explore what happened and why you knew nothing about it at the time.

On today's very treason.

Hi, I'm Michael Isikov, Chief Investigative Correspondent for Yahoo News and co-host of Skull Duggery.

And I'm Dan Clydeman, Editor-in-Chief of Yahoo News and Co-host of Skull Duggery.

Every week we have a new Skull Duggery special in which we explore political

scandals and controversies of years past that you might have forgotten or only dimly remember.

But today's episode couldn't be more relevant in light of everything we are still learning

about the Russian attack on the election. There are some striking similarities between what

the Russians did in 2016 and what the Chinese did in 2008. But there are also some big differences.

Dan, it is fascinating that Newsweek got the first hint of this at the end of the 2008 campaign.

I know you were some big monkey market Newsweek at the time. I was well below you.

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