With less than a week until the United States’ midterm elections conclude, concern continues to rage over a number of issues — including cybersecurity. West Virginia Democrat Joe Manchin, who’s fighting for re-election to the U.S. Senate, is among the latest to reveal that they’d been targeted online.
His office indicated Thursday hours before a debate against Republican opponent Patrick Morrisey that official social media accounts associated with the Senator had been hacked — but the social media presence in question was now secured and the Democrat’s team is cooperating with relevant authorities, they said.
There’s no apparent indication publicly available of who perpetrated the hack, or even precisely how it was discovered. The development hasn’t unfolded in a vacuum, though. In the lead-up to the midterms, a number of Congressional figures have been targeted by apparent foreign government associated hackers, including New Hampshire Democratic U.S. Senator Jeanne Shaheen and Missouri’s Democratic U.S. Senator Claire McCaskill, the latter of whom is running for re-election this year alongside Manchin.
Manchin is among those expected to win, while the outcome of McCaskill’s race remains much less certain. Polling has her neck-and-neck with Republican opponent Josh Hawley, although Democrats are expected to stage significant pickups elsewhere, like in the U.S. House.
Russians might have liked to carry on their influence campaign they started during the 2016 U.S. presidential election, but they’ve made less obvious headway this time around, although it’s not for lack of trying. Still, it’s not as though President Donald Trump has sought to shore up the United States democracy against foreign intrusion — but that’s old news at this point. It’s one of a number of issues weighing on the U.S. heading into the midterms.
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