NRSC hack – financial data of donors were sent to a Russian domain

NRSC hack – A platform used by the National Republican Senatorial Committee for the donations was hacked and donors’ financial data have been exposed.

Other rumors around the Presidential Election, once again, it’s a hacking story in the headlines, the NRSC hack. Donations sent to the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) between March 16 and October 5, 2016 on a certain platform, have been compromised. The attackers used a malware that was specifically designed to steal credit card data and personal information.

People that made donations after October 6, 2016, haven’t been impacted because the NRSC once discovered the attack quickly solved the situation.

The malware-based attack was first discovered by the Dutch expert Willem de Groot.  According to de Groot who analyzed the traffic on the platform, hackers roughly accessed data related to 3,500 transactions per month.

“I do not know how many credit cards were stolen from the Republican store but I can make an educated guess. According to TrafficEstimates, the Republican store has received some 350K visits per month lately. A conservative conversion ratio of 1% yields 3500 stolen credit cards per month, or 21K stolen credits cards since March. Black market value per card is between $4 and $120, so I assume a modest $30 per card. The villains could have made roughly $600K on this store alone.” wrote Willem de Groot.

Below a video PoC of the NRSC hack:

At the time I was writing the there is no data breach notification of the official NRSC website.

[adrotate banner=”9″]

Pierluigi Paganini

(Security Affairs – NRSC hack, 2016 Political Election)