Lorenzo Francheschi-Bicchierai

Merely a few hours after Donald Trump declared his stunning victory, a group of hackers that is widely believed to be Russian and was involved in the breach of the Democratic National Committee launched a wave of attacks against dozens of people working at universities, think tank tanks, NGOs, and even inside the US government.

Around 9 a.m. ET on Nov 9, the hackers sent a series of phishing e-mails trying to trick dozens of victims into opening booby-trapped attachments containing malware, and clicking on malicious links, according to security firm Volexity, which observed and reported the five attack waves. The targets work for organizations such as Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty, the Atlantic Council, the RAND Corporation, and the State Department, among others. One of the phishing emails included a forwarded message appearing to be from the Clinton Foundation, apparently sent by a professor at Harvard. The e-mail used the professor’s real address, and according to Volexity’s founder Steven Adair, it’s likely that the professor got hacked and the attackers then used his account to send out the phishing e-mails.

Comparing Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump on cybersecurity is probably one of the toughest challenges for a journalist writing about the presidential race. Or, perhaps, it’s one of the easiest. Donald Trump has no mention whatsoever of cybersecurity in his official platform. In fact, he doesn’t even mention the word “Internet” once, although he has mentioned the word cyber. Clinton, on the other hand, has a whole section of her platform dedicated to innovation and technology. To be fair, she doesn’t have detailed proposals regarding cybersecurity, but at least she mentions it, saying she intends to promote it “at home and abroad,” and will protect “online privacy and security.” Clinton also specifically says she intends to safeguard “free flow of information between borders,” and update procedures that regulate the sharing of people’s data across borders—a key internet privacy issue.

Trump, for his part, has shown a remarkable ignorance toward cybersecurity even throughout the campaign. Recently, he said “the cyber is so big,” and explained the word cyber didn’t even exist until recently—showing how out of touch he is from anything that involves computers. He also called out Apple for fighting the FBI in the famous San Bernardino (CA) case and said he was going to boycott the tech company, and joked about the DNC hack, calling Russia to hack Clinton’s e-mails.