Experts: Trump Organization may have used private server to communicate with Russian bank

Donald Trump.
(Image credit: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

On the hunt for malware, a group of computer scientists say they stumbled upon a server registered to the Trump Organization in Manhattan that they believe secretly communicated almost exclusively with a bank in Moscow.

After it was reported that Russian hackers had gained access to the Democratic National Committee's servers, the computer scientists decided to look into whether other servers were also hit. "We wanted to preserve the integrity of the election," one participant, who asked to remain anonymous because of his line of work, told Slate. In July, a computer scientist with specialized knowledge of the domain name system (DNS) found what appeared to be malware coming from Russia, with "Trump" in its destination domain. After keeping track of the Trump server's DNS activity, he realized the server was communicating during office hours in New York with two servers registered to Alfa Bank in Moscow.

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Catherine Garcia, The Week US

Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.