One week before the US election, President Donald Trump’s campaign website has been hacked. The so far unknown hackers have reworked the site, and have demanded a deposit of the crypto currency Monero.
According to a Forbes article, Donald Trump's election campaign website was hacked while the U.S. president was on a voter hunt in the swing state of Michigan. As soon as you clicked on the Events category on the website, you were taken to a page where you could see the following statement:
"This page has been seized. The world has had enough of the fake news spread daily by President Donald J. Trump".
This was followed by further unsubstantiated accusations against the American government, as well as against Trump himself.
Hackers demand crypto currency Monero
Among the accusations against the government and Trump was a "poll". The hackers titled the poll with the following words: "Today is the day - the whole world can decide whether they want to know the truth or not." However, it was not a classic vote, the hackers instead demanded the deposit of the crypto currency Monero (XMR), which made the incident look like a fraud. Those who wanted to take part in the vote had the option of sending the crypto currency to two different addresses:
- Address 1: Yes, share the data
- Address 2: No, do not share the Data
The hackers promised to compare the deposited funds of the two addresses after an undisclosed deadline and to execute the "will of the world" (option 1 or option 2).
The identity of who exactly is behind this hacker attack is still unclear. It is worth mentioning, however, that the notorious hacker group REvil recently announced that it had switched from Bitcoin to Monero as its primary payment method. Launched in 2014, the crypto-currency was developed with the aim of making anonymous transactions via the payment network. Compared to Bitcoin, Monero makes it more difficult, if not impossible, to trace payments back to their original source.
However, after about 30 minutes, the statements and accusations disappeared and the site was back to normal.
Access to sensitive data?
Although the perpetrators claimed to have accessed sensitive data through the website, a White House spokesperson denied these allegations:
"Early this evening, the Trump campaign website was defaced and we are working with law enforcement agencies to investigate the source of the attack. There was no exposure to sensitive data, as none of it is actually stored on the website. The website has been restored." - Tim Murtaugh, Trump's Director of Communications.
