Connect with us

Hi, what are you looking for?

SecurityWeekSecurityWeek

Cybercrime

Utah Investigating Hacking of Candidate’s Virtual Event

The Utah Attorney General’s Office is investigating the hacking of a video call hosted by a gubernatorial candidate who saw the call hijacked by pornographic images and racial slurs on Thursday.

The Utah Attorney General’s Office is investigating the hacking of a video call hosted by a gubernatorial candidate who saw the call hijacked by pornographic images and racial slurs on Thursday.

Republican Aimee Winder Newton was about five minutes into the virtual event on the Zoom platform when the trouble began as all 130 state delegates on the call were unmuted, said Caroline Bena, a spokeswoman for the campaign.

The call was hosted on a Utah GOP account, but hacker disabled administrative control, so the moderators were unable to stop the images when they began flashing on the screen, Bena said in an email message.

Winder Newton and running mate John Dougall ended the call and switched to Facebook Live, where she completed the event.

Two investigators have been assigned to figuring out what happened and stopping it from happening again, said Rich Piatt, a spokesman for the Utah Attorney General’s office.

Like many schools, businesses and political campaigns, Winder Newton was using Zoom to connect with party delegates remotely since large gatherings have been prohibited in hopes of stopping the spread of the new coronavirus.

The company and state party did not immediately return messages seeking comment.

Advertisement. Scroll to continue reading.

Related: Microsoft Trials Election Security Solution in Wisconsin

Related: Key Senate Panel Approves $250 Million for Election Security

Related: Super Tuesday Marks First Major Security Test of 2020

Written By

Click to comment

Daily Briefing Newsletter

Subscribe to the SecurityWeek Email Briefing to stay informed on the latest threats, trends, and technology, along with insightful columns from industry experts.

SecurityWeek’s Threat Detection and Incident Response Summit brings together security practitioners from around the world to share war stories on breaches, APT attacks and threat intelligence.

Register

Securityweek’s CISO Forum will address issues and challenges that are top of mind for today’s security leaders and what the future looks like as chief defenders of the enterprise.

Register

Expert Insights

Related Content

Cybercrime

The changing nature of what we still generally call ransomware will continue through 2023, driven by three primary conditions.

Cybercrime

Luxury retailer Neiman Marcus Group informed some customers last week that their online accounts had been breached by hackers.

Cybercrime

As it evolves, web3 will contain and increase all the security issues of web2 – and perhaps add a few more.

Cybercrime

A recently disclosed vBulletin vulnerability, which had a zero-day status for roughly two days last week, was exploited in a hacker attack targeting the...

Cybercrime

Satellite TV giant Dish Network confirmed that a recent outage was the result of a cyberattack and admitted that data was stolen.

Cybercrime

Zendesk is informing customers about a data breach that started with an SMS phishing campaign targeting the company’s employees.

Artificial Intelligence

The release of OpenAI’s ChatGPT in late 2022 has demonstrated the potential of AI for both good and bad.

Artificial Intelligence

The degree of danger that may be introduced when adversaries start to use AI as an effective weapon of attack rather than a tool...