Russia unsuccessfully tried to hack Sen. Claire McCaskill's office

Claire McCaskill.
(Image credit: Astrid Riecken / Getty Images)

Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) is the first known target of Russian interference in the 2018 midterm election, The Daily Beast reports.

In order to steal email passwords, Russia's GRU intelligence agency — the same agency behind the 2016 election cyber attacks — sent emails to Senate targets in August 2017, claiming their Microsoft Exchange password had expired, and they needed to make a new one, The Daily Beast says. Anyone who clicked on the link was brought to a replica of the U.S. Senate's Active Directory Federation Services login, used for email and other services.

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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.