Ahead of the US presidential elections on November 3, Republican candidate and current POTUS Donald Trump, became a target of crypto cyber attack. Trump’s campaign website, donaldjtrump.com got ‘defaced’ for a short while on Tuesday. The defacement appeared to be a scam to collect cryptocurrency.
The defacement seemed to take a dig at President Donald Trump as a message on the website read, “the world has had enough of the fake news spreaded daily by president donald j trump”. The message further said that the “world deserves to know the truth”. The takeover was titled in a typical FBI manner, that read “this site was seized”.
Tim Murtaugh, a Trump campaign spokesperson tweeted, “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.”
The message on the defaced website further went on to say that “multiple devices were compromised that gave full access to trump and relatives”. The message also accused the Trump government of being involved in the origin of the coronavirus after proofs from “most internal and secret conversations strictly classified information is exposed”.
The messages were supported by images of the FBI and the Department of justice seals to make it seem realistic. The message also contained two Monero addresses, urging people to send digital currency to an account, basically a cryptocurrency scam, which has become very normal these days. Monero is a cryptocurrency that is difficult to track but really easy to transfer.
The website, donaldjtrump.com, had been taken over by the hackers shortly before 4 PM PT. It lasted for only under an hour before access to the real website was regained. It is not known yet who carried out the defacement attempt and whether that person was able to retrieve any critical information such as donor data.
This is not the first time the President has been hacked for cryptocurrency scams. Recently, Trump’s Twitter account was hacked by a person who correctly guessed the password of the account. The website takeover should also not come as a surprise as the US elections are nearing on November 3.
