On July 19, 2018, Microsoft executive Tom Burt announced that Russian hackers had registered a fake website for use in a phishing campaign against three candidates in the 2018 U.S. midterm elections. The next week, on July 26, The Daily Beast reported that Democratic Senator Claire McCaskill of Missouri, who was at the time seeking reelection in a closely contested race, was one of the three targeted candidates. The Daily Beast identified Russian military intelligence agency (GRU)-connected hackers as the perpetrators of the August 2017 attack.