Hackers failed to hack into DNC voter database, says security firm

The Democratic National Committee has prevented an attempt to hack into its database of tens of millions of voters.

CNN and the Associated Press reported on Wednesday, citing an unnamed party official, that the political organization was warned Tuesday of the attempt.

DNC officials reportedly contacted the FBI. When contacted, a spokesperson for the FBI declined to comment.

Lookout, a security firm, told TechCrunch that its staff detected a phishing page hosted on DigitalOcean, a cloud computing and hosting giant, which replicated a login page for NGP VAN, a technology provider for Democratic campaigns.

In the case of phishing attacks, hackers attempt to obtain the username and password for sensitive internal systems by tricking staff into entering their credentials on spoofed sites. Hackers can then reuse those credentials to log in themselves.

Jeremy Richards, principal engineer at the security firm, notified DigitalOcean of the phishing site, which was taken offline. Mike Murray, vice president of security intelligence, informed the DNC.

It’s not immediately known who was behind the attempted hack.

Bob Lord, DNC’s security chief, briefed Democratic officials on the incident in Chicago on Wednesday. Lord did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

It’s not uncommon for political parties to store vast amounts of information on voters. Political parties and national committees often use the data to target voters with political messaging.

In recent years, several voter databases have leaked or were exposed on unprotected servers for anyone to find.

Earlier this week, Microsoft said it thwarted an attempt by a Russian-backed advanced persistent threat group known as Fancy Bear (or APT28) to steal data from political organizations.