Donald Trump’s Campaign Website Gets Hijacked By Cryptocurrency Scammers
Image via Joseph Sohm / Shutterstock.com
President Donald Trump’s campaign website was hacked on Tuesday afternoon in what appeared to be a scam for cryptocurrency.
Parts of the website had been taken over, showing a spoofed alert claiming to be from the FBI, stating, “This site has been seized.” It also included messages discrediting the president while promoting Monero, which is a cryptocurrency that is known to be difficult to track.
“The world has had enough of the fake-news spreaded daily by president donald j trump [sic],” the new description read. “It is time to allow the world to know truth [sic].”
The hijackers also claimed to hold confidential information regarding the “original of the coronavirus.” The unsuspecting infiltration was first noticed by KQED journalist Gabriel Lorenzo Greshler, who posted the screenshots on Twitter.
TechCrunch noted that the hackers might have obtained access to the website’s web server backend and placed a series of obfuscated JavaScript to present the fake FBI alert.
The group also inserted two addresses for visitors to click on. The first was for those who wanted “strictly classified information” to be leaked, while the other for those who preferred to keep it in secrecy.
The hackers stated that they would compare the contributions on each address, and follow through on whether the information would be released or not. A few minutes later, the website returned to normal.
The site seemed to be signed with a PGP public key linked to an email address with a non-existent domain called planet.gov.
The campaign’s director Tim Murtaugh clarified that the hack did not expose any sensitive data and that the team is working with law enforcement.
.@realDonaldTrump's campaign website has been hacked. Doing research for a climate change article and this is what pops up: pic.twitter.com/Kjc2ELSdAV
— Gabriel Lorenzo Greschler (@ggreschler) October 27, 2020
Earlier this evening, the Trump campaign website was defaced and we are working with law enforcement authorities to investigate the source of the attack. There was no exposure to sensitive data because none of it is actually stored on the site. The website has been restored.
— Tim Murtaugh (@TimMurtaugh) October 28, 2020
[via TechCrunch, cover image via Joseph Sohm / Shutterstock.com]
Also check out these recent news
