Any election is all about the numbers. The system’s sanctity is maintained with a fair play of voting without any rigs. Hackers plan to rig these numbers to unethically favor a particular party. By the end of 2019, Tom Burt, Microsoft’s corporate Vice President for customer security and trust announced that a hacking group who were linked to the Iranian government have carried out a massive campaign against a US presidential candidate.
Microsoft called this group of hackers as “Phosphorus” who made over 2700 attempts to hack around email accounts over a period of one month between August and September. Although they did not end up gaining control of all those email accounts, they managed to hack about 241 accounts through password reset and account recovery features. These email accounts that were aimed to be hacked were those of the US presidential campaign, the current as well as former US government officials, journalists who cover global politics and also prominent Iranians who live outside Iran.
As of now, there are 19 Democrats seeking to be nominated for the elections to stand against Trump. In addition to this, there are 3 Republicans challenging the President.
By the end of the hacking spree, it was found that only four accounts were completely hacked and had to be compromised. The good news is that none of these four belonged to anyone associated with the campaign, nor current or former officials. To avoid the occurrence of such hacks ever again, Microsoft urged all of their users to set up two-step verification.
Furthermore, not just with the US, but there has been an overall increase in concern about foreign-sponsored election interference via hacking. It is essential to maintain high security protocols and systems to ensure that crucial information is not leaked and misused.
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