US Senate Staff Targeted By State-Backed Hackers, Senator Says (pbs.org)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from PBS NewsHour: Sen. Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat, said in a Wednesday letter to Senate leaders that his office discovered that "at least one major technology company" has warned an unspecified number of senators and aides that their personal email accounts were "targeted by foreign government hackers." Similar methods were employed by Russian military agents who leaked the contents of private email inboxes to influence the 2016 elections. Wyden did not specify the timing of the notifications, but a Senate staffer said they occurred "in the last few weeks or months." But the senator said the Office of the Sergeant at Arms, which oversees Senate security, informed legislators and staffers that it has no authority to help secure personal, rather than official, accounts. "This must change," Wyden wrote in the letter. "The November election grows ever closer, Russia continues its attacks on our democracy, and the Senate simply does not have the luxury of further delays."

Comments

Re:Well...duh.

[drinkypoo]

1) It's unsurprising that this was floated by a Democrat, whose party has been essentially asserting that the Russians stole the election by unspecified "hacking"

The FBI and CIA (you know, the "intelligence community"?) has been saying it, the Democrats have been repeating it.

2) Nevertheless ... the idea that Senate offices/staff may be the targets of nefarious hacking attempts (regardless of party affiliation) is really so obvious that it falls into the "don't run with scissors" category.

Yes, but the idea that it's coming from a specific nation and we're not doing anything about it falls into the "traitorous and incompetent" category.