Dem
51
GOP
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After Politico began receiving anonymous e-mails containing internal documents from the Trump campaign, the campaign admitted that it had been hacked. Based on a somewhat vague report from Microsoft, which said it believed foreign hackers might be trying to break into a presidential campaign's computers, the Trump campaign blamed the attack on Iran, although it had no evidence to back this up. Why Iran would want to sabotage Trump is not clear. Does it expect to get a better deal from Kamala Harris? Probably not much better. Maybe the Iranians are afraid that Trump would nuke them at the slightest provocation, just to prove how macho he is. Although actually, the likeliest explanation is that Iran expects Trump to be VERY Israel-friendly, and wants to forestall that. Also, they surely aren't over Trump's decision to have Qasem Soleimani killed. Anyhow, it certainly COULD be Iran behind all of this. But the hack, like the assassination attempt, could also be the work of a deranged loner.
The documents Politico received came in over the course of a few weeks from an AOL account owned by "Robert" (not likely to be the perpetrator's real name, especially if he is an Iranian). Too bad they weren't from someone with the alias Tronald Dump Jr. That might be a good clue. Campaign officials verified to Politico that the documents were genuine. One thing included was the 271-page preliminary vetting file on Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH). It included a section on his vulnerabilities. Politico didn't reveal whether Vance's hatred of cat ladies was mentioned. There was also a file on Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) and information from some of Trump's legal cases.
When Politico asked "Robert" how he came upon these documents, he replied: "I suggest you don't be curious about where I got them from. Any answer to this question, will compromise me and also legally restrict you from publishing them." The implication here is that some mole high up in the Trump campaign is trying to sabotage it, and if Politico were to know for sure that it possessed stolen documents, it could get into trouble for publishing them. It would be even hairier if the source were one of Trump's lawyers. As long as Politico can maintain the belief that it has received an intentional leak the campaign wanted published (which is very common in politics), that and the First Amendment probably provide it with enough cover.
In 2016, Hillary Clinton's campaign was hacked and embarrassing e-mails were published. One might think that knowing this, all high-level campaigns would hire the absolutely best security consultants out there to prevent this kind of stuff. At the very least, all documents should be encrypted with 256-bit keys with different keys for different categories of documents. Keys should be distributed very carefully on a need-to-know basis, only computers with the correct 48-bit unique MAC address built in to the network adapter should get access, and much more. But if one thought this, one would be wrong, especially since Trump is a cheapskate. (V)