Spy Chief: Foreign Hackers May Be Targeting Presidential Candidates (nbcnews.com)

An anonymous reader writes from a report via NBC News: Director of National Intelligence James Clapper warned Wednesday that foreign hackers may be targeting the campaigns of U.S. presidential candidates. The FBI and Homeland Security are working with the campaigns to tighten security and prevent cyber intruders from penetrating their defenses, said Clapper. "We have already had some indications of that, and a combination of DHS, FBI are doing what they can to educate both candidates of potential cyber threats," Clapper said, without specifying which candidates they were advising. "I anticipate as the campaigns intensify we will probably have more of it." A senior U.S. intelligence official told NBC News that they are "most worried about Trump, who has no experience with government computer systems or protocols." Foreign hacking against American political candidates is nothing new, Clapper said. Prior to the 2008 presidential election, Chinese cyber spies had targeted the presidential campaigns of then Sen. Obama and Sen. John McCain in order to read emails and policy papers. The hackers successfully compromised some emails, including private correspondence from McCain, NBC News reported. Also, both Obama's and GOP candidate Mitt Romney's campaigns were hit by Chinese cyber-attacks during the 2012 election. The Office of the DNI clarified Clapper's remarks tweeting: "We're aware that campaigns and related organizations and individuals are targeted by actors with a variety of motivations -- from philosophical differences to espionage -- and capabilities -- from defacements to intrusions. We defer to FBI for specific incidents."

Comments

Yes and no.

[DrYak]

However, I must admit that it's hard for me to imagine anybody specifically targeting me;

You in particular, as opposed to any other member of the human specie ?
Probably nobody is wasting the ressources, indeed.
(Though it's hard to be 100% sure).

On the other hand:
You, as in a member of a targeted group ?
(Say as:
- "an American who might be rich, so let's try to get as much personal data as possible, in order to try some identity theft/impersonation and see if we can empty their bank accounts"
- "a citizen, but there the 'one-in-a-million' chance that he might be an evil terrist, so let's siphon all on-line communication, to protect the interests of the gov^H^H^H democracy and freedom"
- "someone with a computer. maybe there's something of value stored on the computer, so let's encrypt everything and asks for bitcoin in exchange of the decryption key"
- "hey, there's a smartphone, syncing its photo database to the cloud! Let's try to break this and maybe we'll land on some pictures resellable to pornsites"
- "sniff, sniff,... do I smell badly protected credit card numbers in that database ?"
- "Hello dear Mr. Techno Vampire, I'm the son of the late King of Nigeria...."
- etc.)
You bet.
Happens probably way more time per day that you imagine.
Even if you don't have any classified information, you as an individual have several caracteristics which cause you to be lumped into the group targetted by various people in for the money.
Luckily for you not all of those semi-automated large-scale operation manage to succeed.
Unlucky for your those actually successful are most likely to go unnoticed - quickly swept under the rug - unless the target was a high profile (say: Sony's database got hacked yet again and millions of credicards numbers are up to grab on the darknet).

But yeah, you ARE definitely targetted, constantly. Just noboy sees you as a clear individual, more as a number on a long list of targets.
(Except maybe for the Nigerian Prince. This kind of scam tends to be a little bit more personal and targeted).