Hillary Clinton's campaign is the latest victim of hackers targeting the political industry, according to a Reuters report. In addition, a second Democratic committee has admitted to being hacked as coping with cybersecurity threats appear to be the new normal in the industry.
Director of National Intelligence James Clapper in May warned that intel officials “already had some indications” that hackers were targeting presidential campaigns. Now, the Clinton camp appears to be the first presidential to suffer a breach of its computer network, according to Reuters.
A Clinton campaign spokesman on Friday said hackers did access a "data analytics program maintained by the DNC" as part of the earlier attack on the committee, but the campaign said they have no indication of an attack on their "internal systems."
The FBI also confirmed that it's investigating the potential hacking of "multiple political entities." It all comes at the end of a momentous week on the 2016 campaign trail, which saw Donald Trump encourage Russia to dig into Hillary Clinton's emails. The Republican nominee later claimed the suggestion was sarcasm.
The incident with the Clinton campaign, which has an in-house cyber security team, came the same day that the DCCC confirmed it was the victim of a hack that started as recently as June when a fake webpage was set up to direct donors to a phony site.
That breach may have given the hackers access "to everything from emails to strategy memos and opposition research prepared to support Democratic candidates in campaigns for the House," according to Reuters.
On Friday, a DCCC spokeswoman confirmed that the committee had been “the target of a cybersecurity incident.” The DCCC said it had hired CrowdStrike, the same cyber-security firm used by the DNC, to help it recover from the attack.
It’s increasingly clear that the threat to campaigns and committees from hackers isn't abating. While hackers behind the attacks targeting the DNC, DCCC and Clinton campaign appear to have ties to the Russian government, according to some reports, campaigns could also find themselves targeted by their rivals for a Watergate-style computer break-in.
But despite the rash of attacks this year, consultants say they still haven’t seen a budget shift into cyber security, yet.
“A lot of campaigns don’t have the resources,” said Revolution Messaging’s Keegan Goudiss, who worked for Sanders during the primary.
But committees and campaigns may soon find a way to carve out the resources given the political fallout from the DNC hack and the increased risk highlighted by the Clinton campaign and DCCC incidents.
“There’s an increased responsibility with [campaigns’ growing digitization] as well,” Betsy Hoover, a founding Partner with 270 Strategies, said Tuesday in Philadelphia. “We do need to be conscious of how to be responsible with that data, and have the proper privacy constraints in place.”
After the contents of the DNC emails became public, James Norton, a cybersecurity consultant at The Chertoff Group, said it should be a “wake-up call.”
“Campaigns across the country should immediately audit their cybersecurity and cyber hygiene,” he said.