Trump Campaign Website Defaced by Hackers

On October 28, 2020, unknown hackers breached the official website of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign (donaldjtrump[.]com). The attackers replaced the homepage with a “placeholder” message that mimicked a standard law enforcement domain seizure notice.

As shown in the screenshot above, the hackers’ message stated that “this site has been seized” because “the world has had enough of the fake news spread daily by President Donald Trump.” The hackers also claimed to have compromised several devices belonging to Trump and his associates, allegedly obtaining various confidential materials, including information about the origins of the coronavirus.

Additionally, the perpetrators published the addresses of two cryptocurrency wallets, inviting visitors to “vote” for or against the release of this information by donating Monero to one of the wallets. Most likely, this was simply a ploy to extract money from users.

The defacement remained on the site for about half an hour (until 11:30 PM UTC), after which the website returned to normal. Tim Murtaugh, an official spokesperson for Donald Trump’s campaign, issued a statement confirming that no confidential data was compromised during the attack and that law enforcement agencies are investigating the incident.