Florida Dem governor candidate hacked, campaign Twitter account turned into NFT page

A possible Democratic opponent to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis within the 2022 gubernatorial race was hacked in a phishing assault, together with her marketing campaign Twitter account was a back-alley web artwork market.

Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried, the one statewide elected Democrat within the Sunshine State, was reportedly hit by a phishing assault over the weekend that left her account hawking “Skulltoons” non-fungible tokens, or NFTs.

Fried is one among a number of Democrats making an attempt to grab their occasion’s nomination to tackle DeSantis this yr for the keys to Florida.

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“Skulltoons” is a sequence of fashionable NFTs that take the type of cartoon characters with skulls for faces in varied apparel and themes.

DeSantis’ marketing campaign weighed in on the hack, saying that whereas they had been pleased the Democrat’s account was restored, they hoped Fried was impressed to focus extra on her job than her marketing campaign.

“Nikki Fried is the Florida Commissioner of Agriculture and Shopper Companies, an elected official whose duty it’s to guard Floridians from fraud,” DeSantis marketing campaign press secretary Christina Pushaw instructed Fox Information Digital in a Monday assertion.

“Per her assertion, it appears like she fell for one of the vital frequent strategies of fraud, phishing (however her communications director spelled it ‘fishing’),” Pushaw continued. “We’re glad that her account was restored and hope that this expertise conjures up her to focus extra on doing her job for our state fairly than campaigning in opposition to Governor DeSantis all day.”

Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried speaks on the “Ridin’ with Biden” occasion on Oct. 7, 2020.
(Reuters)

Pushaw was referring to a press launch put out by the Fried group the place the time period “phishing” — a kind of social engineering hack — was misspelled as “fishing,” like the game.

“Phishing is a cybercrime wherein a goal or targets are contacted by e mail, phone or textual content message by somebody posing as a official establishment to lure people into offering delicate information resembling personally identifiable data, banking and bank card particulars, and passwords,” the anti-phishing group Phishing.org defines the cybercrime.

“The data is then used to entry essential accounts and may end up in identification theft and monetary loss,” the web site continues.

Pushaw additionally jabbed on-line that she “knew [Fried’s] fundraising numbers had been dangerous, however didn’t suppose she would get this determined.”

DeSantis’ marketing campaign wasn’t the one one to take purpose at Fried over the hack — one of many commissioner’s Democrat opponents, progressive Annette Taddeo, made a public service announcement about marketing campaign donations after the hack.

“PSA: I am not taking donations in crypto,” she quipped.

Fried’s Twitter hack got here the identical week that she cleaned home in her communications store as a part of a campaign-wide reset.

The hack noticed Fried’s Twitter account with over 200,000 followers flip right into a web page supposedly hawking the NFTs however probably opening up her followers to even be hacked.

Fried’s marketing campaign didn’t reply to Fox Information Digital’s request for touch upon the hack.