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On March 19 of this year, Hillary Clinton's campaign chairman John Podesta received an alarming email that appeared to come from Google.
The email, however, didn't come from the internet giant. It was actually an attempt to hack into his personal account. In fact, the message came from a group of hackers that security researchers, as well as the US government, believe are spies working for the Russian government. At the time, however, Podesta didn't know any of this, and he clicked on the malicious link contained in the email, giving hackers access to his account.
Months later, on October 9, WikiLeaks began publishing thousands of Podesta's hacked emails. Almost everyone immediately pointed the finger at Russia, who is suspected of being behind a long and sophisticated hacking campaign that has the apparent goal of influencing the upcoming US elections. But there was no public evidence proving the same group that targeted the Democratic National Committee was behind the hack on Podesta—until now.
The data linking a group of Russian hackers—known as Fancy Bear, APT28, or Sofacy—to the hack on Podesta is also yet another piece in a growing heap of evidence pointing toward the Kremlin. And it also shows a clear thread between apparently separate and independent leaks that have appeared on a website called DC Leaks, such as that of Colin Powell's emails; and the Podesta leak, which was publicized on WikiLeaks.
All these hacks were done using the same tool: malicious short URLs hidden in fake Gmail messages. And those URLs, according to a security firm that's tracked them for a year, were created with Bitly account linked to a domain under the control of Fancy Bear.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 21 2016, @05:11PM
You mean, "idiot clicked links and got what he deserved"
Why do people still click on links in mails?
He clicked a link in a message he thought was from google that he was reading in gmail.
If there is one kind of phishing attack you'd think google would be good at filtering out it would be messages impersonating google on their own systems.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 23 2016, @04:45AM
This man is not your 90 year old grandma. He's in a position where he has played and continues to have a huge influence on a wide range of political issues including, for instance, encryption. A huge number of nation-states would have much to gain by hacking his devices and given he's the sort of person that clicks on links to a a Bitly site in an email and then let's all scripts run on some scammy looking .tk site - well it's a given that top secret discussions in the US are pretty much open mic night as any enemy regime's intelligence agency's are concerned.
If people in this sort of influence are this mind-bogglingly naive and ignorant then it's no wonder our country is in the shape it is. The country is being run by idiots.