Report: Hackers Targeted GOP Rep. Dana Rohrabacher’s Democratic Challenger

Emails and forensic records obtained by Rolling Stone indicate that a Democratic challenger of Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) in California’s 48th District primary was the victim of a cyberattack, and the FBI is reportedly investigating the incident. Internal emails from the campaign of Dr. Hans Keirstead show that a phishing scheme tricked the candidate into revealing his work email password in August 2017, as he believed he was responding to an actual message from Microsoft. Keirstead reportedly realized his mistake shortly after, and took steps to secure his email account. In December 2017 and January 2018, the campaign’s website, hosting service, and Twitter account were subject to numerous hacking attempts, but none of them succeeded. The campaign told the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and the Federal Bureau of Investigation about the August incident. The FBI then “collected reams of forensic data about the attempted hacks,” but did not tell the campaign if they identified the source of the cyberattack. This comes after The Daily Beast reported that Rep. Claire McCaskill (D-MO) was also the victim of hacking attempts before the 2018 midterms.