President Donald Trump’s campaign website was hacked and defaced on Tuesday by hackers apparently seeking cryptocurrency payments, The New York Times reports.
The campaign website was taken down for about a half-hour on Tuesday.
Hackers posted a message criticizing Trump for spreading “fake news” and claimed to have accessed secret data linking Trump to the origins of the coronavirus.
The hackers posted links to two Monero cryptocurrency accounts, one that said “yes, share the data” and “no, do not share the data.”
Monero is a cryptocurrency application that allows users to receive funds anonymously.
Campaign denies data was stolen:
Trump campaign spokesman Tim Murtaugh denied that any data was accessed in the hack.
Murtaugh said the campaign is “working with law enforcement authorities to investigate the source of the attack.”
“There was no exposure to sensitive data because none of it is actually stored on the site. The website has been restored,” he said.
Hack believed to be scam:
The hack appears to be part of a common cryptocurrency scam but it comes after intelligence officials warned foreign operatives in countries like Iran and Russia were trying to influence the election.
The FBI said that Iran was behind threatening emails sent to Florida voters earlier this month.
Trump last week said that nobody actually gets hacked.
“Nobody gets hacked,” he said. “To get hacked you need somebody with 197 I.Q. and he needs about 15 percent of your password.”
