A top USA intelligence official says foreign hackers may be spying on 2016 presidential candidates, following a pattern that has persisted during the last two presidential election cycles.
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James Clapper, director of National Intelligence, testifies during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on Capitol Hill, on February 9, 2016.
According to AP, neither Republican frontrunner Donald Trump nor his likely rival Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, have replied to inquires asking if their campaigns have been affected.
They weren’t privy to any incidents of foreign hacking of the campaigns. In 2012, foreign and domestic hackers tried to gain access to the campaign networks of Obama and Mitt Romney (R). This means effectively making data stored or sent and received available to only those who should be able to access certain information, while denying anyone else from obtaining by default giving them no access to the info.
Just how much these attempts to hack presidential candidates influence elections can never really be known.
Hackers and spies have targeted campaigns since at least 2008. Earlier, Clapper said the USA intelligence community had “already had some indications” of hacking attempts against presidential campaigns.
The FBI is working with the campaigns to make their networks more secure.
Calling it #OpTrump the collective took down one of the candidate’s websites. Speaking during an event at the Bipartisan Policy Center, Clapper said intel officials have “already had some indications” that hackers are targeting presidential campaigns on both sides of the aisle.
“I believe we’ll see more cyber operations that will change or manipulate information”, Clapper said, as USA enemies work “to compromise its reliability” instead of deleting or simply stealing it.
With the campaigns under assault, the government has dispatched Federal Bureau of Investigation and Homeland Security cyber experts to help the campaigns protect themselves. They have the intelligence capabilities, obviously, and maybe even the desire to disrupt elections, Dickson said.
The Clinton and Trump campaigns didn’t respond to questions about cybersecurity.
Obama and Republican Senator John McCain were reportedly targeted by a massive Chinese cyber espionage effort while they were candidates in 2008.
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The move comes after constant efforts by overseas hackers to penetrate all manner of arms of the US government.
