California Democrat lost competitive race after being targeted by cyberattacks: FBI

A California Democrat lost his primary race earlier this year after being targeted by significant cyberattacks.

Rolling Stone reported that Democrat Bryan Caforio, who was running in the state's 25th Congressional District, was hacked so regularly that his campaign website crashed four times in a five-week timespan — including right before his biggest debate and a week before the primary election.

The FBI has now opened an investigation into who perpetrated the distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks.

"I’m glad the FBI has now launched an investigation into the hack,” Caforio told Rolling Stone in a statement. “These attacks put our democracy at risk, and they’ll keep happening until we take them seriously and start to punish those responsible."

The former candidate and consumer rights attorney said that the FBI contacted one of his campaign staffers in early October — a few weeks after Rolling Stone revealed that he was the third California congressional candidate to be hacked in 2018.

"The FBI has since spoken with several people who worked on the campaign," the report noted, "requested forensic data in connection with the attacks and tasked several specialists with investigating what happened, according to a source close to the campaign."

The bureau has not identified where the hacks came from.