Chinese hackers were trying to execute remote commands on the computers of Joe Biden activists.
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B_A / Pixabay
The US elections arouse the greed of hackers.
In a blog post published this Friday and relayed by
The Verge
, Google claims to have spotted a computer attack targeting the campaign of the Democratic candidate for the US presidential election, Joe Biden.
According to the American giant, the hacking attempt was carried out by a Chinese group named APT 31 (“Advanced Persistent Threat”, “Cyberattaque Persistante”).
In emails sent to members of Joe Biden's campaign, the hackers pretended to be McAfee, the security company, including publisher of antivirus software.
Remote controls
Concretely, activists were invited to download a legitimate version of McAfee antivirus software.
The program was hosted on the GitHub platform, dedicated to development.
But by downloading the antivirus, other silent malware installations were happening simultaneously.
Once installed on the target computers, hackers had a free hand to execute remote commands or download files.
"Each malicious element of this attack was hosted on legitimate services, which made it more difficult to detect," said a threat analyst at Google.
A tense context
The American company claims to have "no proof" of the success of this hacking attempt.
In view of the electoral context, Google warned the Biden campaign team but also the FBI.
Last September, it was Microsoft that detected attacks from Russia and China, but they targeted the camp of the two opponents.
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Cyber attack
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China
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United States
High-Tech
US presidential election