Merely a few hours after Donald Trump declared his stunning victory, a group of hackers that is widely believed to be Russian and was involved in the breach of the Democratic National Committee launched a wave of attacks against dozens of people working at universities, think tank tanks, NGOs, and even inside the US government.
Around 9 a.m. ET on Wednesday, the hackers sent a series of phishing emails trying to trick dozens of victims into opening booby-trapped attachments containing malware, and clicking on malicious links, according to security firm Volexity, which observed and reported the five attack waves. The targets work for organizations such as Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty, the Atlantic Council, the RAND Corporation, and the State Department, among others.
One of the phishing emails included a forwarded message appearing to be from the Clinton Foundation, apparently sent by a professor at Harvard. The email used the professor’s real address, and according to Volexity’s founder Steven Adair, it’s likely that the professor got hacked and the attackers then used his account to send out the phishing emails. (The professor did not respond to a request for comment.)
One of the targets, who shared the email she received with Motherboard, said she “almost fell for it.”
The victim, who used to work at an NGO, said she clicked on the ZIP file and opened it, and her anti-virus didn’t flag the malware. Then, luckily, she had second thoughts.
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