Trump's official campaign website briefly offline after hackers take control and claim they had 'full access to Trump and relatives'

• President Donald Trump's official campaign website was taken offline briefly Tuesday after hackers appeared to have accessed it, as earlier reported by the KQED reporter Gabriel Lorenzo Greschler.
• A message posted to the site claimed "multiple devices were compromised that gave full access to trump and relatives."
• The message teased damaging information on Trump while soliciting cryptocurrency, suggesting the possibility of a scam.
• A Trump campaign spokesman, Tim Murtaugh, said that the campaign was working with law enforcement to investigate the source of the message and that "there was no exposure to sensitive data."

The official campaign website for President Donald Trump was taken offline briefly Tuesday evening after hackers appeared to take control of it, as earlier reported by the KQED reporter Gabriel Lorenzo Greschler.

"The world has had enough of the fake-news spreaded daily by president donald j trump," a message posted on the site said. "It is time to allow the world to know truth."

The message claimed "multiple devices were compromised that gave full access to trump and relatives," purportedly giving hackers access to "classified information" showing that the Trump administration was involved in the "origin of the corona virus" and that the president had colluded with foreign actors to manipulate "the 2020 elections."

There is no evidence that any hackers have accessed such information.

Suggesting the possibility of a scam, the message also included addresses for two cryptocurrency wallets and urged visitors to the site to "vote" on whether the alleged damaging information should be released by sending money to one of the two wallets.

"Earlier this evening, the Trump campaign website was defaced and we are working with law enforcement authorities to investigate the source of the attack," the Trump campaign spokesman Tim Murtaugh tweeted. "There was no exposure to sensitive data because none of it is actually stored on the site. The website has been restored."

Last week, both the Trump campaign and Twitter denied that the president's Twitter account had been hacked after an ethical hacker told the Dutch media on Thursday he had accessed the account using the password "maga2020!" (An ethical hacker is one who seeks out and discloses digital vulnerabilities to improve security.)

Also last week, Trump told supporters at a campaign rally in Arizona, incorrectly: "Nobody gets hacked. To get hacked you need somebody with 197 IQ and he needs about 15% of your password." As the TechCrunch reporter Zack Whittaker noted, Trump's hotel chain was hacked twice, once from May 2014 to June 2015 and once from August 2016 to March 2017.

Trump has come under fire before for his lax cybersecurity practices, notoriously refusing to use a secure cellphone despite his staff's repeated warnings that using an unsecured device could expose him to foreign surveillance.

Read more: What's keeping Trump's Twitter from being hacked? A White House digital fortress — and perhaps some special help from Twitter

Reuters reported in September that earlier this summer attempted hacks against Trump's campaign and business websites reached record levels. Private cybersecurity firms and US intelligence agencies have repeatedly said foreign governments are actively seeking to interfere in the US presidential election, at times by targeting people and organizations affiliated with both Trump and his Democratic opponent, Joe Biden.