John Bolton, the one-time staple of U.S. national security who is now accused of mishandling classified information, first realized that Iranian hackers had broken into his AOL account on a Tuesday morning in the summer of 2021 — as he and his assistant noticed how emails in his message list went from bold to regular font before their very eyes.
They were reading his incoming emails in real time.
Making matters worse, whoever was on the other end seemed to have updated the two-factor authentication that would have stopped someone from accessing Bolton’s sensitive emails by sending him a coded text message before granting them access. The hacker added their email and phone number instead.