Reports: Sanders campaign accused of accessing Clinton data

WASHINGTON - A top data staffer for Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders has been fired amid allegations the campaign breached voter data from rival Hillary Clinton's campaign, media reports said on Friday.

The breach occurred for a brief period on Wednesday when staff at Sanders' campaign were able to view confidential information from the Democratic National Committee, according to the Washington Post and NBC, among others.

Sanders' campaign said in a statement the breach of the files, which contain voter information such as past support and donation history, was an isolated incident, media reports said. The campaign blamed it on an 'incompetent vendor who on more than one occasion has dropped the firewall between the various Democratic candidates' data.”

Stu Trevelyan, chief executive of DNC software vendor NGP VAN, acknowledged the breach in a statement but said his Washington-based company is not aware of any previous reported incidents of data being 'inappropriately available.” He called the breach a 'brief isolated issue” that was fixed and is now being reviewed.

Representatives for Sanders, Clinton and the DNC did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

A person familiar with the matter told CNN that Josh Uretsky, the Sanders campaign's national data director, was fired for accessing the voter data. Uretsky, who could not be reached immediately by Reuters for comment, told CNN he was not trying to take data from Clinton's operation but was trying to determine the vulnerability of his candidate's own campaign data.

'We knew there was a security breach in the data and we were just trying to understand it and what was happening,” Uretsky told CNN on Friday.

Trevelyan said that at the DNC's request, NGP VAN suspended the Sanders campaign's access to DNC files.

'Our team removed access to the affected data and determined that only one campaign took actions that could possibly have led to it retaining data to which it should not have had access,” he said.

The Washington Post, which first reported the data breach late on Thursday citing several party officials, said discovery of the breach ignited alarm at the DNC.

The breach comes ahead of the Democrats' televised debate in New Hampshire on Saturday as Sanders fights for the Democratic nomination against Clinton ahead of the November 2016 election. Sanders has been lagging behind Clinton, with 29 percent support to Clinton's 60 percent in recent Reuters/Ipsos polling.

His campaign told NBC none of the accessed data had been downloaded or printed.

CBS News cited a Democratic election source as saying the Sanders campaign will have to explain its actions and provide proof that the data obtained during the breach has been disposed of in order to regain access to DNC files.

'We are also looking at the option of an independent audit by a data security firm,” the source said.