Hackers briefly swap out a page on the Trump campaign site

With less than a week to go before the US presidential election, election security is a hot-button topic, and hackers have already struck. TechCrunch and the New York Times report that the About page on DonaldJTrump.com was briefly replaced by an unknown party. Gabriel Lorenzo Greschler grabbed a screenshot and video of the hacked page.

Here's a video of it. This is when you click on the "coalitions" tab. pic.twitter.com/iqLgxNezsO

— Gabriel Lorenzo Greschler (@ggreschler) October 27, 2020

In a message, it threatened to “discredit” Trump as president and said the attackers would choose to share or keep secret their incriminating data based on which option received more votes in the form of cryptocurrency sent to their accounts, as well as a supposed encryption key to verify their identity. It’s unclear how they pulled off the attack, or the seriousness of the threat, but the page was apparently up for about thirty minutes.

Notably, Trump said last week during a campaign event that “Nobody gets hacked. To get hacked you need somebody with 197 I.Q. and he needs about 15 percent of your password.” Since then, a security researcher claimed they were able to access his Twitter account by guessing the password, and now the campaign website has been defaced. Tim Murtaugh, the director of communications for Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, tweeted that “Earlier this evening, the Trump campaign website was defaced and we are working with law enforcement authorities to investigate the source of the attack.”

"Nobody gets hacked. To get hacked you need somebody with 197 IQ and he needs about 15 percent of your password."pic.twitter.com/6aR8yU2MVg

— Martin 'Have you voted yet?' Shelton (@mshelton) October 19, 2020

Earlier this evening, the Trump campaign website was defaced and we are 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.

— Tim Murtaugh (@TimMurtaugh) October 28, 2020