Hackers briefly seized U.S. President Donald Trump's election campaign website - posting a message threatening to make public "proof" of the president's involvement in a crime in what experts say is a ploy to sway next week's presidential polls.
The typographical-riddled message read: "This site was seized," on donaldjtrump.com, which normally shows details of rallies and fundraising events. "The world has had enough of the fake-news spreaded daily by president donald j trump."
The hackers said they had accessed "multiple devices," giving them "full access to Trump and relatives." Based on reports, cryptocurrency scammers were behind the breach. They claim to have "classified information" about the Trump administration and the coronavirus' origins. Ransomware is a type of malware from cryptovirology that threatens to publish the victim's data or perpetually block access to it unless a ransom is paid.
Presidential campaign representative Tim Murtaugh said the website was "defaced" and it was working with cybersecurity and law enforcement to find who orchestrated the hacking, The Associated Press reported. "There was no exposure to sensitive data because none of it is actually stored on the site," AP added.
The message, posted late Tuesday U.S. time, said it had information that would "discredit" Trump and his family and that the hackers demanded cryptocurrency as a form of ransom. The group demanded digital money be sent to one address if senders wanted the information leaked and to another to keep it secret.
The hack appeared to be a scam with the objective of collecting hard-to-trace virtual currency Monero, TechCrunch reported.
The group, whose identity wasn't immediately known, hacked into the president's "About" page only. The rest of the website wasn't compromised.
The message ended by saying the hackers would complete the payment process linked with the Monero address that had received the most digital currency funds.
In July, hackers broke into several Twitter accounts including those of Trump rival Joe Biden and former U.S. President Barack Obama in another attempt to acquire cryptocurrency.
