Hackers from China, Germany, and South Korea attempted to raid Hillary Clinton’s private email server which contained tens of thousands of emails — many of them classified — in 2013 and 2014.
According to congressional documents obtained by The Associated Press, the cyber attacks were blocked by threat monitoring software. But that software was only implemented into Clinton’s email network in October, 2013. The system was set up in June of that year, meaning that for more than three months Clinton’s server was vulnerable to attack.
Clinton has said numerous times that there is “no evidence” that her email system was breached.
Clinton’s system utilized threat monitoring software called SECNAP. In a letter to Victor Nappe, the company’s CEO, Wisconsin U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson asked for documents related to cyber attacks against Clinton’s server. Johnson is the chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee.
According to the AP, congressional documents include a February 2014 email from SECNAP reporting that malicious software originating from China “was found running an attack” on Clinton’s hardware. Chinese hackers were responsible for three attempts. One attack originated from Germany and another from South Korea.
Senate investigators have found reports of other attacks but detail was not provided in the report.
The attacks are different in nature than the one Clinton received in five emails in Aug. 2011. The newest batch of Clinton emails shows that she received five emails disguised as speeding tickets. Thousands of email users were targeted in the same phishing scheme which reportedly originated out of Russia. (RELATED: Emails Show Hackers With Ties To Russia Tried To Hack Hillary’s Account)
But the newly discovered attack didn’t just target Clinton’s email address — it was directed at her server. As secretary of state from January, 2009 through February, 2013, Clinton used the same server and housed it at her Chappaqua, N.Y. home. In June 2013, she hired Denver-based IT company Platte River Networks to manage the device. It was kept at a data center in New Jersey.
Platte River hired SECNAP in June 2013 to implement a product called a CloudJacket SMB. The company claims that the threat monitoring product can thwart “even the most determined attackers.”
The AP notes that it is still unclear how dangerous the attack on Clinton’s hardware was. It is also unclear whether Clinton was specifically chosen as the target.
Many computer experts have questioned Clinton’s use of the private system while in office.
Justin Harvey, the chief security officer of Fidelis Cybersecurity raised that same concern in an interview with the AP, saying that Clinton “essentially circumvented millions of dollars’ worth of cybersecurity investment that the federal government puts within the State Department.”
“She wouldn’t have had the infrastructure to detect or respond to cyber attacks from a nation-state,” he added. “Those attacks are incredibly sophisticated, and very hard to detect and contain. And if you have a private server, it’s very likely that you would be compromised.”