Discussion: John Podesta Reportedly Fell For Russian Phishing Attack Thanks To A Typo

TPM Article Topics
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John Podesta Reportedly Fell For Russian Phishing Attack Thanks To A Typo John Podesta Reportedly Fell For Russian Phishing Attack Thanks To A Typo Back to article
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Seems to me like it’s not too hard to figure out if a random phone call is coming from the FBI or not. Like maybe asking which office the Agent works from and telling them you’ll call back through the Agency. I mean, we’re talking about a person who is paid to provide IT security services.

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If they thought “Fancy Bear” was bad, just wait til they see “Huggy Bear”

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I can’t take this anymore. One click on an email brought us President Donald Trump?

Can we #SpiritCook Podesta?

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Everyone forgets about Podesta, the first one to start the shiny thing deflection. The phishing scam is a small part of Podesta as a collaborator. Wiki leaks docs show his cell phone user name to be jpodesta and his password to be (yup) password. And he also lost his phone once in a cab in NYC.

I don’t use the word ‘collaborator’ in the same sense as Fred Koch but the Podesta family has been in the political lobbying business for decades and has also had financial dealings in Russia. Even Podesta’s daughter was involved in a Russian company stock manipulation scam!

The beat goes on.

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I’ll bet it was the one that says:

“35 Russian Oligarchs Who Support Donald J. Trump. (You Won’t Believe #5!)”

I almost fell for that one, myself…

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“This is Sargent Stadanko with the Federal Bureau of Investigations, is your refrigerator running?”

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I’ve spent years either in IT or IT-adjacent. You would be stunned at the number of top level executives whose email password is - wait for it - “password”. Please don’t ask me how I happened upon this information…

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I suggest you take the red pill and read the whole article, Darcy.

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Well, don’t they have to change it every three months or so? Password1 password2 etc.? Much harder to crack.

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Wohw!

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Asshole! The Chinese hacked the Obama and McCain campaigns in the 2008 election so he knew this could happen. The incompetence would be astounding but for the fact that he and all his buddies are Washington insiders who never stepped foot in a Walmart and have no clue. I wish I had voted for Bernie. Sorry ,all!

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Alternately, if I’m a special agent for the FBI and someone patches me through to the help desk I leave a message for HMFIC to call me back as soon as possible.

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Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, John Podesta, reportedly clicked on a phishing email that led to the theft of tens of thousands of emails after an aide mistakenly wrote to him that it was a “legitimate”—rather than “illegitimate”—message.

So two little letters (i and l) possibly got Trump elected. I feel ill.

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Well, let’s not forget that the RNC was hacked, too. I wonder who else?

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Especially since there were several phone calls from the FBI. In fact, I am not sure why the person who wrote this article included the FBI on the list of those who made “costly mistakes” on this. You get several calls from the FBI saying your server has been compromised, and you ignore them? As you say, just ask the guy for his number, confirm it and get back to him. In fact your response after the 2nd call (if not the first) should be, “holy shit, let me check this out right away and see what temporary remedial measures I can make, please give me your number so I can call you back”.

Republicans will have a field day with this one.

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Because people who’ve stepped foot in Walmart are not vulnerable to a phishing exploit?

The article mentions the admins were busy dealing with the Sanders campaign accessing the Clinton campaign data. Funny we never saw Wikileaks publish emails from the Sanders campaign since they were on the same system. I guess the firewall separating the two was pretty good after all.

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So it is the DNC’s and Podesta’s fault? Not the Russians’?

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The “debate” between the FBI and the CIA is another non-issue. They both agree on the essential issue: The Russians made a strong, government-backed effort to interfere with the US electoral process. That is an act of war. Cyberwar, maybe, but war. Suggesting that there is a major debate between the two agencies is like saying that it was important, 75 years ago, to determine whether the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor because they wanted to capture the Hawaiian Islands and invade the West Coast, or only to damage the US so that Japan could conquer East Asia.

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Certain people were exempted from such odious rules.

I once did consulting for an organization where the rules surrounding network passwords - so not just email but full network access - were:

  1. The password had to be 8 characters long - no more, no less
  2. Only lower case letters allowed
  3. No special characters - only alpha numeric

A veritable enigma to crack…

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