4Chan may have stalked John Podesta using a leaked Apple ID
An Apple ID and password found in the latest batch of leaked emails published by Wikileaks supposedly belonging to top democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton adviser John Podesta appears to have been leveraged by a 4Chan user to track the political operatives’ location and access his credit card information, iCloud, address book and work calendar.
Shortly thereafter, the hacker wiped the iPhone’s memory, according to screenshots posted to the controversial imageboard website.
The password on Podesta’s Gmail account was allegedly the same used to protect his Apple account. Podesta’s email account was reportedly first compromised through a phishing attack, allowing the hacker to gain access to internal conversations between members of Clinton’s inner circle.
The internet has been sifting through recently released documents published by Wikileaks, who launched a multipart series, Friday, offering Podesta’s private communications in a project dubbed the Podesta Papers.
Just hours before Wikileaks released its first cache of Podesta emails, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and Office of the Director of National Intelligence published its own groundbreaking statement: Russian intelligence was to blame for data breaches at numerous U.S. political organizations, including perhaps most notably the Democratic National Committee.
The legitimacy of the aforementioned 4Chan user’s claim remains unclear. CyberScoop has reached out to the Clinton campaign for comment on the matter.
On Thursday, Wikileaks denied reports that Podesta’s Apple ID login was indiscriminately published to its platform — instead, the group claims it carefully altered relevant credentials. If Wikileaks’ claim proves true then it would deviate from past incidents in which the whistleblowing website did not censor credit card and social security numbers in older publications.
