It's certainly not John Podesta's week. Both the Twitter and email account of Hillary Clinton's campaign chairman have been hacked just hours after WikiLeaks released a fifth batch of his emails.
Both accounts were apparently infiltrated by 4Chan users on Wednesday, with Podesta alerted to the Twitter hack when his account tweeted, “I’ve switched teams. Vote Trump 2016. Hi pol.” The tweet has since been deleted.
“Hi pol” is a 4chan reference to the website's Politically Incorrect thread.
"We can confirm that John's Twitter account was hacked, which would explain that message,” Clinton press secretary Nick Merrill said. “We are working on fixing it."
Podesta, who was Bill Clinton’s chief of staff and also counselor to Barack Obama, accused Russians of hacking his emails on Tuesday. He claimed Russia was interfering in the elections “on behalf of our opponent.”
READ MORE: Clinton camp calls WikiLeaks ‘Russian propaganda arm’ after damaging emails leak
Podesta’s iCloud login information was within the Wikileaks emails, and 4chan users are understood to have tried the passwords for Podesta’s Twitter and Outlook accounts.
Podesta was ridiculed for failing to change his passwords after Wikileaks began releasing his emails.
@abbydphillip his admin emailed him his password, which he apparently used for everything, and it was in the #wikileaks, proves authenticity
— Andrew Saturn (@andsat) October 13, 2016
The new email address allegedly contains an email talking about Colorado polls, according to screenshots taken from the now-archived 4chan thread.
“Trump has seen a slight surge in Colorado and 2 out of 5 internal polling actually has him ahead by 2 points,” one email appears to say.
“Our recent polling data is not looking good,” another email reads.
The hackers reportedly wiped Podesta’s iPad and iPhone, and sent the new emails to Wikileaks, although this has not been verified.
Redditors claim the hacker changed details in Podesta’s iTunes account, requested to have Mormons visit his house and tracked his location via his phone’s GPS.
The FBI are investigating the hacking of Podesta’s online accounts as part of its probe into hacks of the Democratic National Committee.
Dozens of flights have been canceled across the US on Christmas Eve due to Covid staff shortages with thousands of passengers stuck at the airports and others forced to cancel holidays altogether.
“The nationwide spike in Omicron cases this week has had a direct impact on our flight crews and the people who run our operation. As a result, we’ve unfortunately had to cancel some flights and are notifying impacted customers in advance of them coming to the airport,” Chicago-based United Airlines said in a statement.
United did not specify how many flights have been affected by Covid-related issues, but according to media reports, about 120 got canceled, with Delta saying that it has canceled 90.
The Atlanta-based Delta said that prior to this decision its teams “have exhausted all options and resources – including rerouting and substitutions of aircraft and crews to cover scheduled flying.”
This follows a call to US authorities by Delta CEO Ed Bastian, who asked to cut quarantine for fully vaccinated people to five days from the current 10. As a reason for his request, he cited Covid-related staff shortages. Earlier, JetBlue and the trade group Airlines for America addressed the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention with similar requests.
According to an American Automobile Association forecast, more than 109 million people – almost 34% more than in 2020 – “will travel 50 miles or more as they hit the road, board airplanes or take other transportation out of town” between December 23 and January 2. Out of these 109 million, 6.4 million are going to travel by air.
Passengers affected by delays and cancellations took to Twitter to express their frustration over the unfortunate start to the holidays.
“My international flight just got canceled 5 hours before I have to leave for the airport. Canceling my family Christmas reunification. The wait to speak to a cust serv rep is 3, 4 hours according to the machine. I need help now. Please,” wrote one of the users tagging Delta airlines.
