According to a report from the Daily Beast, a close-mouthed FBI has admitted that they are "aware" of a website based in Russia that popped up last weekend and was posting private information about perceived enemies of Donald Trump including addresses, phone numbers and even pictures of their homes -- making them targets for domestic terrorism.
The report notes that the site, enemiesofthepeople.org and a sister website, enemiesofthepeople.us, were only online for a few days --but that was long enough to get the attention of the FBI due to the content.
According to the Daily Beast report, the site was doxxing officials including "Govs. Gretchen Whitmer (D-MI), Brian Kemp (R-GA), Doug Ducey (R-AZ), multiple people affiliated with the company Dominion Voting Systems, and Christopher Krebs, the former top federal cybersecurity official who was fired last month for publicly debunking many of the conspiracy theories floated by Trump and his legal team."
In an interview, Joe Slowik, a cybersecurity researcher at the firm Dragos, said it appears Russia is behind enemiesofthepeople.
“Current information available on registration patterns and ownership are indeterminate, with some observables strongly indicating a Russian or Eastern European nexus (hosting in Russia and Romania, use of Yandex emails, Slavic names) while others indicate a domestic US angle (registration address in Georgia, US phone number),” Slowik explained. “Further research and likely law enforcement action will be required to gather more information on the responsible parties.”
According to Kyle Ehmke, a threat intelligence researcher at ThreatConnect, the website might be an attempt by someone to put the blame on the Trump campaign.
“While I can’t assess the actor’s intent, I can’t help but wonder if that domain was intentionally created to get someone investigating this activity to erroneously point their finger at the Trump Campaign [or the] RNC,” he said before adding, “At this point, based on what we’ve seen, we don’t have enough information to assess who is behind this website at an individual or state level.”
You can read more here.