Donald Trump’s campaign website was hacked Tuesday afternoon in an apparent cryptocurrency scam, according to The New York Times. “This site has been taken over,” the fake FBI statement said , before claiming without proof that it had gained access to Trump’s private communications containing evidence of wrongdoing. It then listed two cryptocurrency wallet addresses, asking visitors to send money and vote on whether or not to release those documents.
In a post shared on Twitter, Trump campaign communications director Tim Murtaugh confirmed the defacement of the site. He also stressed that no sensitive or confidential data and that the attack is being investigated in cooperation with law enforcement. According to TechCrunch, the site's original content was restored within minutes.
As reported by The New York Times, journalist Gabriel Lorenzo Greschler was among the first to discover the hack and posted screenshots on Twitter proving the defacement.
The announcement, published on the site in "broken" English, said it had evidence that the Trump administration was involved in the creation of COVID-19 and that the president has collaborated with foreign "actors" who aim to influence the upcoming US presidential election .
It also provided two Monero for visitors, encouraging them to send money and vote on whether or not the hackers should publish the data they have discovered. One wallet is labeled “Yes, share the data” and the other “No, don’t share the data.
The notice mentions a “deadline” after which the amount of money in the two addresses will be compared, but does not provide any information about when that deadline is. It also shows a PGP encryption key that TechCrunch reports corresponds to an email for planet.gov, a site that does not exist.
This isn't the only cryptocurrency scam to target a candidate's campaign this year. In July, Joe Biden was among the victims of a bitcoin that compromised several high-profile accounts. So far, there's no indication that anything else was affected along with the campaign site, and it remains unclear who is behind the defacement.
