As expected, the previous US election became the major target of cyber attacks which made a fatal blow on the standing of several US organization bodies and government officials. Here are two of the major cyber attacks that took place during the previous US election:
Private email of Democratic Party 2016 leaks
The Democratic National Committee (DNC) experienced a traumatic data breach as per private emails. The said email threads were publicized on the web via Wikileaks site on July 22, 2016.
Subjects of the emails appeared to highlight DNC being biased against presidential candidate Bernie Sanders and in favor of Hillary Clinton. DNC announced its formal apology to Sanders. In DNC’s statement, they said, “On behalf of everyone at the DNC, we want to offer a deep and sincere apology to Senator Sanders, his supporters, and the entire Democratic Party for the inexcusable remarks made over email,” and further said that the emails did not reflect the DNC’s “steadfast commitment to neutrality during the nominating process.” The leak incident was then followed by the forced resignation of DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz.
The cyber attack was thereafter claimed by a certain hacker called Guccifer. However, several US Government Officials believed that Russian intelligence groups had something to do with to the said cyber theft.
Regardless the allegations of the U.S. Intelligence groups and government officials, the EIC and founder of Wikileaks stated that there was no evidence on the claims regarding Russia’s involvement on the said data breach.
Trump-Clinton Websites DDoS Attack
The campaign sites of two of the most competitive US presidential candidates, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, did not escape the pressure of cyber attacks just days before the actual election.
Both sites appeared to have spiked with short traffic surges, which were claimed to be inorganic, due to the alleged malware unleashing called Mirai. The said malware is attributed to the launching of distributed denial of service (DDoS) which was akin to the previous attacks that slowed down the internet in the US East Coast in the recent months.
The alleged cyber hit of Trump and Clinton’s campaign sites was believed to have been merely a test by perpetrators to see whether or not it would cause a stoppage or breakdown to the said sites. Fortunately, the two campaign sites still remained unaltered without experiencing system outage after the said attack.
