Hacker Attempt Exposes Possible Clinton Email Breach

New revelations are fueling fresh questions about Hillary Clinton's email scandal, indicating that hackers knew about her private account and targeted it.

Evidence shows the hackers, likely operating out of Russia, sent emails to Clinton's address, trying to gain access to the personal email server which she created to conduct government business while secretary of state.

It is unclear if Clinton clicked on any of the malicious email attachments they sent her, which would have given them access. But the hackers tried at least five times.

The news highlights the potential national security risk Clinton took when she chose not to use a government email account.

The security of Clinton's private email system, including the server in the basement of her home in Chappaqua, N.Y., has been an important question since Clinton admitted in March that she had used it for all official government business.

The fact that infected emails were delivered to Clinton, even if she didn't infect herself, suggests that security protections and email filters on her homebrew server were weak or missing.

And it's still a significant mystery how the hackers knew to send emails to Clinton's private server address that she used for State Department business, since in 2011 it was still a secret email address to most of the world.

Roughly two years later, the email account belonging to an informal adviser to Clinton, Sidney Blumenthal, was hacked by a Romanian named Marcel-Lehel "Guccifer" Lazar who is now serving a seven-year prison sentence.

Emails released from that hack in 2013 included the first public references to Clinton's private email address.

It's possible there were additional unwanted messages in Clinton's email account that she deleted before turning over work-related emails to the State Department.

The hackers designed these five messages to appear to be sent from a New York City government account, NYC.gov, so it's likely that Clinton mistakenly preserved them under the notion that these were government messages.