5 attempts to break into Hillary Clinton’s private email during her time as US secretary of state were disclosed and blamed on hackers apparently based in Russia. The malicious emails pretended to be New York City parking tickets and were found by the State Department amid growing concern that Hillary Clinton’s use of private email servers may have exposed secret information.

It is unclear whether this particular attempt was successful, but Clinton’s personal email address was a top secret. In other words, the very hacking attempt raises the question of whether she was specifically targeted. The emails included the instructions to print out the enclosed tickets and an attached file named “Ticket***.zip”, which in fact carried malicious software. The malware was found to direct an infected computer to transmit data to three other email addresses abroad, including one in Russia. As usual, there is no evidence that hacking attempts involved the Russian government.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation is now examining the server used by Hillary Clinton during her time as secretary of state to find out whether any secret information was contained in the emails she ever received. Clinton herself assured that she didn’t send or receive any classified emails, and the 5 suspicious emails were not necessarily proof of a targeted hacking attempt, as they could have been just a simple spam.

The industry watchers admit that criticism of Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server has heavily overshadowed her attempt to win the Democratic presidential nomination. This hacking attempt (if any) follows a number of recent breaches of State Department and White House computers. The latter have been blamed on the Chinese, though.