Just before the second US presidential debate of 2016, Wikileaks has dumped thousands of emails from Hillary Clinton campaign chair John Podesta, which includes apparent excerpts from Ms Clinton’s paid, closed-door speeches to Wall Street executives after leaving her position as Secretary of State. In the excerpts, flagged in a 25 January email, Ms Clinton apparently suggested that Wall Street insiders were best qualified to regulate the banking industry and also included her apparent admission of the need for money from banking executives for political fundraising.
“Earlier today, the US government removed any reasonable doubt that the Kremlin has weaponized WikiLeaks to meddle in our election and benefit Donald Trump’s candidacy,” said Clinton campaign spokesperson Glen Caplin. “We are not going to confirm the authenticity of stolen documents released by Julian Assange who has made no secret of his desire to damage Hillary Clinton.” Wikileaks had promised to continue publishing emails from a trove of more than 50,000 emails obtained from a hack of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) this year.
The leaks are starting to cause some serious damage.
According to Gizmodo, a design, technology and science fiction website, many of the leaked emails contained contact info, cell phone numbers, and account data, none of which was redacted by Wikileaks before being posted. With this information accessible to anyone with the time and energy to read through it all, users on 4chan’s /pol/ (politically incorrect) board were able to gain access to Podesta’s Twitter account, tweeting a message in support of Trump.
Imageboard posters also stumbled on an email containing Podesta’s Apple ID — and appear to have exploited it. ‘iPad/iPhone info and data wiped out,’ a post on Endchan claimed, show screenshots of what seems to be the hacker gaining access to Find My iPhone using Podesta’s credentials.
If Podesta’s Apple ID was compromised, it stands to reason that his iCloud account was similarly vulnerable. And sure enough, Redditor’s on r/The_Donald claim Podesta’s iCloud data was downloaded.
A hacker known as CyberZeist also appears to have uncovered the passwords to dozens of senators’ email addresses, as well as social security numbers and credit card info for many Democrats including Vice President Joe Biden, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, and acting Chair of the DNC Donna Brazile. The information was posted to pastebin.
