Donald Trump’s campaign website was briefly ‘seized’ by hackers Tuesday who claimed to have evidence that ‘completely discredits’ him as a president and proves his ‘criminal involvement’ in the manipulation of the 2020 election.
A message reading, ‘this site was seized’ appeared briefly on the ‘About’ and ‘Events’ pages of DonaldJTrump.com, before the website was taken offline completely just after 7:20pm.
The message continued that the world ‘has had enough of fake news spreaded [sic] daily by the president … it is time to allow the world to know the truth.’
The hackers behind the stunt claimed to have compromised multiple of the president’s devices, giving them ‘full access’ to Trump and his relatives, along with access to confidential information.
‘Strictly classified information is exposed proving that the Trump gov is involved in the origin of the coronavirus,’ the post read.
‘We have evidence that completely discredits mr trump as a president, proving his criminal involvement and cooperation with foreign actors manipulating the 2020 elections. the US citizens have no choice.’
The post continued: ‘Today is the day – the whole world can decide if they want to known the truth or not’.
The hackers then included a link to two cryptocurrency wallets, associated with Monero, a ‘private, secure, and untraceable digital’ cryptocurrency.
They asked viewers of the page to make a donation to either one of the pages to ‘vote’ as to whether the hackers should either share the data they purport to have on the president, or not to share it.
They said whichever of the links raises the most money by the end of an unspecified deadline will determine their next step.
‘After the deadline we will compare the funds and execute the will of the world,’ the post read. ‘in both cases we will inform you.’
The page was signed with a encryption key corresponding to an email address at a the non-existent domain, ‘planet.gov’.
Trump’s website was back up and running by 7:45pm.
Trump 2020 Communications Director Tim Murtaugh later released a statement on the system breach, assuring that no sensitive data had been compromised.
‘Earlier this evening, the Trump campaign website was defaced and we are working with law enforcement authorities to investigate the source of the attack,’ Murtaugh wrote.
‘There was no exposure to sensitive date because no of it is actually store on the site. The website has been restored.’
Asking people to irreversibly send cryptocurrency to a mysterious address is a common type of online scam. Much like in this instance, the scams usually rely on brief appearances on highly visible platforms, such as celebrity Twitter accounts.
The hacking comes less than a week after a Dutch researcher allegedly gained access of Trump’s Twitter account after correctly guessing his password, ‘maga2020!’.
Victor Gevers, a security expert, said he was able to access Trump’s direct messages, could author tweets in his name and change the appearance of his profile.
Gevers – who previously managed to log into Trump’s account in 2016 – apparently gained access by guessing Trump’s password on only his fifth attempt.
‘I expected to be blocked after four failed attempts. Or at least would be asked to provide additional information,’ Gevers told De Volkskrant.
source: daily mail
