Some 12 hours after WikiLeaks published emails stolen from the email account of Hillary Clinton campaign Chairman John Podesta, someone has hijacked the man’s Twitter account and tweeted out “I’ve switched teams. Vote Trump 2016. Hi pol.”
The “Hi pol” part of the message is a reference to the 4chan Politically Incorrect board, dedicated to the discussion of news, world events, political issues, and other related topics.”
The hijack of the Twitter account has been confirmed by Clinton’s press secretary Nick Merrill, who said that they are “working on fixing it.” They probably already did, as the aforementioned tweet has been deleted.
But Podesta now seemingly has bigger problems, as screenshots published online by unknown individuals point to Podesta’s Apple iCloud account having been accessed and his iPhone and iPad remotely wiped.
This development is still not confirmed by Clinton officials, and neither is the authenticity of the initially leaked emails.
But, if the emails are authentic, they might have been how attackers managed to get into Podesta’s iCloud account, as one of them contained the login credentials.
WikiLeaks says no, because they checked that the credentials had already been changed before publishing the emails.
Of course, it’s possible that Podesta changed the password to a similar one or to another one the attackers managed to guess, or they simply used the compromised Gmail account to get Apple to do a password reset.
In any case, it’s disappointing that Podesta didn’t get someone knowledgeable to advise him on how to secure his online accounts and devices, especially because he’s handling sensitive information, and because they claim Clinton’s campaign is being targeted by hackers backed by the Russian government.
Again, it is still unconfirmed that the email account compromise happened and the leaked emails are his, but the odds are high that they are since Clinton officials didn’t categorically deny their authenticity.