WisGOP claims that scammers stole the money from the account they were using for the reelection campaign of President Donald Trump.
The Wisconsin Republican Party (WisGOP) has reportedly become the victim of a Business Email Compromise (BEC) attack. The scammer stole around $2.3million from the account intended to support the reelection campaign of US President Donald Trump.
According to the statement issued by the party chairman, Andrew Hitt, they noticed the suspicious activity on October 22 and informed the FBI on Friday, which is now investigating the incident.
However, the party’s spokeswoman Rebecca Ballweg confirmed that they haven’t yet reached the Wisconsin Department of Justice. Moreover, Hitt stated that attackers forged invoices and sent them to the party using authentic WisGOP vendors’ names.
“Cyber-criminals, using a sophisticated phishing attack, stole funds intended for the reelection of President Trump, altered invoices, and committed wire fraud. These criminals exhibited a level of familiarity with state party operations at the end of the campaign to commit this crime.”
“While a large sum of money was stolen, our operation is running at full capacity with all the resources deployed to ensure President Donald Trump carries Wisconsin on November 3,” said Hitt.
The hack was discovered roughly two weeks before Election Day, at a time when Trump and Biden are in the final phases of their election campaign to conquer the battleground state of Wisconsin that has 10 electoral votes. Trump won this state by a margin of 23,000 votes back in 2016.
FBI’s spokesperson Brett Banner stated that they could not issue any statement related to the investigation as per their policy.
The attack seems to be a classic BEC case, where cybercriminals hijack the inbox of a target using phishing scams and monitor emails sent and received using that account. They then use regular senders’ names to send spoofed emails with invoices to the organization and receive the payment in their own bank accounts.
Reports suggest that the vendor in question was roped in by the party to sell pro-Trump MAGA hats and similar items as handouts at rallies and via direct emails.
Trump campaign and cybersecurity
Although Trump has little knowledge of computers; one should expect some sort of resilience against cyberattacks from the Republican party. Just a couple of weeks ago, a cybersecurity researcher claimed to hack Trump’s Twitter account by simply guessing its password which was MAGA2020.
Just a few days ago, Trump’s official election campaign site was hacked and defaced by hackers who left website seized notice along with 2 cryptocurrency wallet IDs for visitors to send them donations.
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if I were president I’d pardon these hackers and give them the medal of freedom for these actions their victim deserved their crime.
Great Information. Thank you so much for sharing this.