Hackers from China, South Korea, and Germany tried to infiltrate Hillary Clinton’s personal email server after she left her post as secretary of state in 2013, a congressional document indicates.
The Associated Press reported:
While the attempts were apparently blocked by a "threat monitoring" product that Clinton’s employees connected to her network in October 2013, there was a period of more than three months from June to October 2013 when that protection had not been installed, according to a letter from Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., chairman of the Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee. That means her server was possibly vulnerable to cyberattacks during that time.
Johnson penned the letter to Victor Nappe, who serves as CEO of the company that provided the "threat monitoring" for Clinton, SECNAP. The Republican lawmaker is requesting documents from the company having to do with its work on Clinton’s server. The Senate committee is currently probing Clinton’s personal email system.
Senate investigators have determined from emails sent from SECNAP that three cyber attack attempts originated in China, one in Germany, and one in South Korea.
If successful, the hackers could have gained access to the 55,000 pages of emails contained on Clinton’s personal system, hundreds of which released by the State Department have been determined to contain classified information. Thousands of the emails released have also been redacted for national security and other purposes.
Clinton campaign spokesman Brian Fallon refused to answer specific questions about the cyber attacks.
"Ron Johnson is ripping a page from the House Benghazi Committee’s playbook and mounting his own, taxpayer-funded sham of an investigation with the sole purpose of attacking Hillary Clinton politically," Fallon said. "The Justice Department is already conducting a review concerning the security of her server equipment, and Ron Johnson has no business interfering with it for his own partisan ends."
Last week, emails newly released by the State Department indicated that Russia-linked hackers tried to gain access to Clinton’s personal email at least five times during the time she worked in the Obama administration. Clinton campaign spokesman Nick Merrill said he was unsure if the hackers infiltrated Clinton’s email.
According to government officials, the newly-revealed cyber attacks are separate from those launched by Russia-link hackers.