Dem
51
GOP
49
Yesterday, we noted that some person or entity apparently hacked the Donald Trump campaign and stole some documents that Team Trump most certainly did not want to be made public. Yesterday, there were a few more bits of news about this story.
To start, a fair number of outlets utilized headlines that suggested the Iranian origins of the hack was confirmed. In particular, many used the phrase "suspected Iranian hackers." When you refer to "suspects" or "suspected," that's usually a term of art that refers to a judgment made by law enforcement. The current evidence of Iranian involvement comes from two sources, neither of them law enforcement. The first is the Trump campaign. The second is Microsoft, which sent out a report last week vaguely alluding to "a spear-phishing e-mail to a high-ranking official of a presidential campaign from a compromised e-mail account of a former senior advisor." Thus far, the FBI is refusing to confirm the Iranian origin of the attack. This being the case, we would prefer the phrasing "alleged Iranian hackers."
That said, the facts as described by Microsoft do align with what happened to the Trump campaign. The "former senior advisor" referred to appears to be Roger Stone. We cannot say we are surprised that the hackers took a long look at the people involved with the Trump campaign and decided that Stone was the weak link.
What the FBI definitely HAS confirmed is that the Trump campaign was not the only one targeted by hackers. The Harris campaign was also targeted, both when it was the Biden campaign and also after it became the Harris campaign. The Democrats, presumably keeping in mind the lessons of 2016, apparently have much better cybersecurity, so the hacks were not successful.
The fact that both major parties were targeted suggests that whoever was behind the attacks, whether Iran or someone else, was mostly interested in creating chaos, and not necessarily in hurting/helping a particular candidate. Obviously, it's possible that the two hacking attempts came from different sources, though the FBI thinks, due to similarities in methodology, that it was probably the same actor in both cases.
Readers will recall, incidentally, that back in 2016, Trump was a huge fan of the hackers who undermined the DNC and the Clinton campaign. As it turns out, he's not such a fan when it's his campaign that's the victim. And so it is that we write, for something like the third time in a week: If you live by the sword, be prepared to die by the sword. (Z)