As Kevin Poulsen tweeted, “Tired: Russia’s 2016 interference in the presidential election. Wired: Russia’s 2018 interference in the midterms.”
“Fancy Bear” hackers from Russia’s GRU intelligence agency that attacked the 2016 U.S. presidential elections are now targeting America’s 2018 midterms, Daily Beast reports.
Specifically, Russia’s GRU hackers have been cyber-attacking Sen. Claire McCaskill.
The attacks began as she began her 2018 re-election campaign “in earnest,” a Daily Beast forensic analysis showed, which makes the Missouri Democrat America’s first identified target in the Kremlin’s 2018 election interference campaign.
McCaskill replied to a reporter, “I’m not going to speak of it right now.”
McCaskill, who has been highly critical of Russia over the years, is widely considered to be among the most vulnerable Senate Democrats facing re-election this year as Republicans hope to hold their slim majority in the Senate. In 2016, President Donald Trump defeated Hillary Clinton by almost 20 points in the senator’s home state of Missouri.
There’s no evidence to suggest that this particular attack was successful. Asked about the hack attempt by Russia’s GRU intelligence agency, McCaskill told The Daily Beast on Thursday that she wasn’t yet prepared to discuss it.
“I’m not going to speak of it right now,” she said. “I think we’ll have something on it next week. I’m not going to speak about it right now. I can’t confirm or do anything about it right now.”
In August 2017, around the time of the hack attempt, Trump traveled to Missouri and chided McCaskill, telling the crowd to “vote her out of office.” Just this last week, however, Trump said, on Twitter, that he feared Russians would intervene in the 2018 midterm elections on behalf of Democrats.
How’d Russia do it?
The hackers sent forged notification emails to Senate targets claiming the target’s Microsoft Exchange password had expired, and instructing them to change it.
PHOTO: Senator Claire McCaskill (D-MO) [REUTERS]