A federal investigation revealed that the computer systems of both the Obama and McCain campaigns were victims of a sophisticated cyber attack by an unknown “foreign entity”, which wanted to steal information that might be useful in future negotiations with the next U.S. president. After the attack, the FBI found that a large number of files related to the evolving policy positions of the two candidates were stolen.

At the Obama headquarters in July, technology experts detected what they initially thought was a computer virus, something like “phishing”, but both the FBI and the Secret Service warned Obama’s campaign representatives that they’re dealing with a problem bigger than they can understand. In addition, the Feds told Obama’s team in late August that the McCain campaign’s computer system had been similarly compromised.

FBI representatives told both sides that they have not been hacked by its political opponents. In order to stop the intrusion, the Obama campaign team hired a security firm to secure its computer system.

Furthermore, Obama’s victory has touched off a malware campaign targeting Windows users. Basically, they are asked to download Adobe Flash Player 9 in order to view Obama’s winning speech, but once they do, they download a malware file that hands over control to a remote hacker. In addition, a user’s PC can turn into a spam-spewing relay and it also grants hackers the access to personal data.

A statistics from MessageLabs showed that 82 percent of election-related spam on November the 4th involved Barack Obama and more than 77 percent came from the Srizbi botnet. Hacking for political reasons has emerged in the last few years as a companion to traditional espionage.

The Chinese government officials were accused of hacking government sites in the United States, France, Germany and the UK in 2007. Furthermore, Russian hackers were thought to be masterminding attacks on the government and social infrastructure sites during Russia’s conflict with Estonia and Georgia. As for the presidential candidates’ campaigns, the FBI and the Secret Service are investigating the incidents.