Hackers purporting to support presidential hopeful Donald Trump have defaced Hillary Clinton’s Wikipedia page with pornographic images.
The incident happened on Thursday and Wikipedia has since fixed the problem.
On top of the images was apparently layered text denigrating Clinton and her husband, and claiming that if voters choose the former Secretary of State next month “nuclear war will be inevitable."
The incident happened as Clinton campaign chief John Podesta’s Twitter account was hacked and used to post pro-Trump rhetoric.
Screenshots circulating online also point to Podesta’s iCloud account being hacked and his phone wiped of all data.
It’s thought the perpetrators may have used log-in credentials leaked as part of a trove of private emails which ended up on WikiLeaks this week.
It emerged a few days ago that the FBI is investigating the hack as part of its wider inquiry into alleged Russian state-backed attempts to destabilise the upcoming presidential elections.
Centrify senior director, Corey Williams, claimed this is the first election where cybersecurity is a major theme.
“The message, mission and brand of the campaigns have clearly been impacted by time spent explaining and defending the latest cybersecurity failure. Cybersecurity has also taken focus from other issues of national importance and concern,” he added.
“CEOs and executives across all enterprises are being targeted in the exact same manner as our political leaders. If they are not proactive with cybersecurity they will find themselves at the centre of the next cyber-attack story. Instead of building customer relationships and brand goodwill, compromised enterprises will instead face huge barriers to regain trust and rebuild their brand.”
The incidents highlight the importance of using two-factor authentication to protect online accounts and make the case for service providers like Google and Twitter to switch it on by default in order to protect users’ accounts.