Bredesen Campaign Fears Hack

NASHVILLE, TN -- The Senate campaign of former Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen may have been hacked.

The campaign's attorney, former Tennessee Attorney General Bob Cooper, wrote the Federal Bureau of Investigation alerting the agency to a possible breach.

"The sender knew that the campaign was preparing to purchase air time for a TV commercial and knew the dates of the proposed media buy," he wrote. "These emails urged the campaign to wire funds to an international bank account."

Because the sender of the email wasn't just asking for money in a broad sense and was seemingly already aware of the campaign's media strategy, it sparked worry that hackers had gained access to the Bredesen campaign's internal computer network.

The FBI field office in Nashville said it is aware of the complaint but does not comment on investigations.

Cooper wrote that campaign staff recognized the illegitimacy of the emails and hired a cybersecurity firm, which tracked the addresses to an Arizona-based registrar.

On Thursday, Bredesen, a Democrat vying to replace retiring Republican Sen. Bob Corker, sent an alert to Tennessee media about the breach and other potential spoofing efforts.

On Wednesday afternoon (March 7) you may have received an email, coming from a spoofed email address, that appeared to come from me, asking you to click a link to view a shared document. Unfortunately, this email is part of an cyber intrusion into my extended campaign organization, including an unsuccessful attempt to divert campaign funds to offshore accounts. The FBI has been contacted and is involved.

PLEASE DELETE THE EMAIL WITHOUT CLICKING THE LINK.

If you have already clicked the link, out of caution you may want to run a virus scan on your computer and change appropriate passwords. The spoofed emails that I have personally seen have come from the domain “bredesens.com” (note the extra “s” at the end of my name) and not my own “bredesen.com”—it’s easy to mistake one for the other, the obvious purpose. Vendors to the campaign have been similarly spoofed with fake domain names looking similar to the real ones.
...

I’m sorry for this inconvenience; this sort of thing is rapidly becoming one of the unpleasant facts of life.

Phil

The campaign of Bredesen's likely Republican opponent, U.S. Rep. Marsha Blackburn, said, to its knowledge, it had not been hacked.

"Cyber security is a serious issue, and we must do more to prevent bad actors from being able to access private information," a campaign spokesperson said.

The potential breach comes as the 2018 primary season gets underway in earnest and as fears of Russian meddling and hacking efforts in the 2016 presidential election continue to swirl.

Photo by Rick Diamond/Getty Images for TJ Martell Foundation