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2016 Presidential Campaign Hacking Fast Facts

October 13, 2021/in Computer Security

CNN Editorial Research

Here’s a look at hacking incidents during the 2016 presidential race between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. For details about investigations into hacking and efforts to interfere with the election, see 2016 Presidential Election Investigation Fast Facts.

Timeline

September 2015 – The FBI contacts the Democratic National Committee’s help desk, cautioning the IT department that at least one computer has been compromised by Russian hackers. A technician scans the system and does not find anything suspicious.

November 2015 – The FBI reaches out to the DNC again, warning them that one of their computers is transmitting information back to Russia. DNC management later says that IT technicians failed to pass along the message that the system had been breached.

March 19, 2016 – Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman John Podesta receives a phishing email masked as an alert from Google that another user had tried to access his account. It contains a link to a page where Podesta can change his password. He shares the email with a staffer from the campaign’s help desk. The staffer replies with a typo – instead of typing “This is an illegitimate email,” the staffer types “This is a legitimate email.” Podesta follows the instructions and types a new password, allowing hackers to access his emails.

April 2016 – Hackers create a fake email account and use it to send spear-phishing emails to more than thirty Clinton staffers, according to investigators. In the emails, the hackers embed a link purporting to direct the recipient to a document titled “hillaryclinton-favorable-rating.xlsx.” The link directs the recipients’ computers to a website operated by the hackers. That same month, hackers use stolen credentials to access the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee computer network, stealing data with malware. They ultimately access 33 DNC computers and anonymously register a website called DC Leaks to publicize the release of documents.

May-June 2016 – The hackers steal thousands of emails from the DNC server and begin to conceal their efforts.

June 12, 2016 – During an interview on British…

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Ransomware is the latest threat to the 2020 election. Here are the facts

October 29, 2020/in Internet Security

Ransomware is a type of malicious software that locks up a victim’s computer and renders it unusable until the victim pays off the attacker, frequently in bitcoin. This type of cyberattack is worsening, and in recent years ransomware attacks have hit targets as varied as Baltimore’s city government, the website of an Illinois public health district and the University of California. This week, Microsoft announced it took down a major hacking network that had been used to spread ransomware, and the company said it could have been used to interfere with the election indirectly by freezing access to voter rolls or websites displaying election results.

There is no evidence that cyberattacks have compromised voting infrastructure in 2020. But the term ransomware understandably has many Americans on edge: It conjures up scary thoughts of widespread computer outages, chaos at critical entities like hospitals or banks, and shadowy hackers with a hidden agenda. Just how badly could ransomware disrupt the election, and how worried should we be?

Experts say that while it’s important to be alert and informed about the risk, it’s vital to keep the threat in perspective. Ransomware’s potential to disrupt the election is plausible, but it is “mainly a hypothetical threat right now,” said Lotem Finkelsteen, a threat analyst at digital security firm Check Point.

At a time of enormous uncertainty, ransomware may seem like an urgent and novel threat to the election. The reality is more complicated. Here’s what you need to know about ransomware going into the 2020 election.

How could ransomware affect the election?

The nightmare scenario is if ransomware suddenly locked down important parts of the voting infrastructure all around the country, said Jason Healey, a cybersecurity expert at Columbia University and a former White House director of cyber infrastructure protection.

“The concern at [the Department of Homeland Security] and the Pentagon will be that ransomware will hit at the county and state level to disable voting registers, vote tallying and reporting, and result reporting,” Healey said. “Election machines themselves should be harder [to compromise], as they’re less connected.”