A former TOP cybersecurity official is warning both Democrats and Republicans that their campaigns and voters could face cyberattacks as serious as they were nearly 10 years ago in the coming months.
Chris Krebs, former director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, issued the warning just minutes after the Trump campaign claimed it had been hacked on Saturday.
3
3
Krebs, who served in former President Donald Trump’s administration between 2018 and 2020, urged voters to “fasten their seatbelts” ahead of November’s presidential election.
“Fasten your seatbelts. Confirmed hack and leak of confidential Trump campaign documents,” Kregs he wrote in X.
“Campaign’s initial response suggests foreign sources, coinciding with last week’s Microsoft alert and the previous week’s @ODNIgov alert.
“Someone is following the 2016 playbook, expects continued efforts to stoke fires in society and go after electoral systems – 95% voting on paper ballots is a strong measure of resilience, combined with audits.
“But chaos is the point,” he added.
On Saturday afternoon, Politico first reported that the Trump campaign was hacked, after receiving emails from an anonymous account that included campaign documents.
The campaign has since blamed Iran for the cyber attack, saying hackers “sent a spear phishing email in June to a high-ranking official on a presidential campaign.
Steven Cheung, a campaign spokesman, told the media outlet that the documents the hackers attempted to leak to the press were “illegally obtained from foreign sources” and “were intended to interfere” in the upcoming November elections.
The documents reportedly included information about Trump’s running mate, J.D. Vance, including his 271-page verification file that laid out Vance’s past criticisms of the former president.
The leaked documents also featured information about Florida Senator Marco Rubio, who was considered a potential choice for Trump’s running mate.
“I suggest you don’t get curious about where I got them from. Any answer to this question will compromise me and also legally restrict you from publishing them,” the hacker said, according to Politico.
The Trump campaign criticized Iran for the cyber attack, with Cheung saying: “Iranians know that President Trump will stop his reign of terror just as he did in his first four years in the White House.”
However, the Iranian government turned to X to deny responsibility.
“Urgent: representation at the United Nations”, the publish to read.
Come as…
“We deny allegations of hacking of presidential candidate Donald Trump’s election campaign.”
Despite the denial, Trump continued to blame the foreign nation.
“We have just been informed by Microsoft Corporation that one of our many websites has been hacked by the Iranian government – never a good thing to do,” Trump said. he wrote in a post on Truth Social.
“They were only able to obtain publicly available information, but even so, they were not supposed to do anything of this nature.”
What to know about the Trump campaign hack
News broke on August 10 that Donald Trump’s campaign was compromised. Here is everything you need to know about the hack,
- Trump campaign documents leaked to Politico allegedly through hacking by foreign officials.
- The news comes after Microsoft released a report in April citing four Iranian groups that attempted to influence the US election.
- Trump’s campaign said Iran was targeting the former president because of his policies against the country.
- Iranian leader Qasem Soleimani was killed in a US airstrike ordered by Trump’s 2020 campaign and national officials said the former president then became a target.
- The documents compromised in the hack reportedly included verification files from Trump’s running mate JD Vance and finalist Senator Marco Rubio.
- This is not the first time the Department of Justice has investigated foreign interference in US elections, following a hack into Hillary Clinton’s campaign in 2016.
- Trump was also reportedly the target of an Iranian assassination plot in July.
“Iran and others will stop at nothing, because our government is weak and ineffective, but it will not be that way for long,” added the former president.
“What Iran doesn’t realize is that I will make the world a better and safer place, and that’s good for them too!”
OTHER WARNINGS
Krebs is not alone in his warning that cyberattacks similar to those that occurred during the 2016 election could be imminent as Trump prepares to face Vice President Kamala Harris and her running mate, Tim Walz, in November.
Several former senior officials publicly warned at the DEF CON 2024 hacking conference on Saturday that the Trump campaign hack could be a symptom of a larger problem, according to Policy.
“The idea that hacks and leaks will happen in 2024 was predicted and today we have our first hack and leak from the Trump campaign,” said Nicole Tisdale, former director of the White House National Security Council between 2021 and 2022.
Jake Braun, who served as deputy national director for cybersecurity in the Biden administration, said he expects both campaigns to speak out against any hacking by the other.
“If they’re going into something more hack and dump in 2016, that’s obviously bad, and I hope…both campaigns are against hacking any campaign so we don’t have a repeat of 2016,” Braun said. .
This story originally appeared on The-sun.com read the full story
