Dem House candidate claims Russians tried to hack campaign website

The Democrat challenging Rep. Martha Roby (R) for her Alabama House seat says that her campaign website faced more than 1,400 hacking attempts, most of them from Russia. 

Tabitha Isner told Business Insider that the attempts were first brought to her attention when the company that she uses to host her website advised her to upgrade her services because of a spike in traffic.

That’s when she had her web administrator examine the uptick, she told the news outlet.

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The web administrator, Kristopher Vilamaa, said that when he looked into it, he discovered that many Russian IP addresses had been blocked from the site.

“Many, if not most, of the visits from Russian IPs that got blocked were trying to access the login page that gets you into the backend of the website,” he told Business Insider.

Isner said that the hacking attempts were unsuccessful. But she also said that law enforcement and Democratic Party officials were of little help when she raised alarm over the alleged hacking attempts.

“I was disappointed in the lack of attention it was given,” she told Business Insider. She said she contacted the FBI field office in Mobile, Ala., on July 19, but has not heard back from the bureau since then.

A spokesman for the FBI office in Mobile would not confirm or deny to Business Insider whether there was an ongoing investigation into Isner’s allegations.

Isner’s claim comes amid warnings from top U.S. intelligence officials that Moscow is seeking to meddle in the 2018  midterm elections, similar to its interference efforts in the 2016 election.

Late last month, Facebook deleted a number of fake accounts that bore signs of Russia’s past efforts to meddle in foreign elections.