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posted by martyb on Wednesday December 05 2018, @09:00AM   Printer-friendly
from the people-living-in-glass-houses dept.

The House GOP campaign arm suffered a major hack during the 2018 election, exposing thousands of sensitive emails to an outside intruder, according to three senior party officials.

The email accounts of four senior aides at the National Republican Congressional Committee were surveilled for several months, the party officials said. The intrusion was detected in April by an NRCC vendor, who alerted the committee and its cybersecurity contractor. An internal investigation was initiated and the FBI was alerted to the attack, said the officials, who requested anonymity to discuss the incident.

[...] The hack became a major source of consternation within the committee as the midterm election unfolded. The NRCC brought on the prominent Washington law firm Covington and Burling as well as Mercury Public Affairs to oversee the response to the hack. The NRCC paid the two firms hundreds of thousands of dollars to help respond to the intrusion. The committee’s chief legal counsel, Chris Winkelman, devoted hours of his time to dealing with matter.

[...] “The NRCC can confirm that it was the victim of a cyber intrusion by an unknown entity. The cybersecurity of the Committee’s data is paramount, and upon learning of the intrusion, the NRCC immediately launched an internal investigation and notified the FBI, which is now investigating the matter,” said Ian Prior, a vice president at Mercury.

[...] Yet the fact that the NRCC was hacked and withheld that information is likely to prove embarrassing at a time when Republicans are grappling with an election in which they lost 40 seats and control of the House. President Donald Trump has also claimed that Republicans are better than Democrats at cybersecurity, explaining why one party was hacked in 2016 but the other was not.

“The DNC should be ashamed of themselves for allowing themselves to be hacked. They had bad defenses, and they were able to be hacked,” Trump told CBS News in July. “I heard they were trying to hack the Republicans, too. But, and this may be wrong, but they had much stronger defenses.”

https://www.politico.com/story/2018/12/04/exclusive-emails-of-top-nrcc-officials-stolen-in-major-2018-hack-1043309


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  • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday December 05 2018, @06:12PM (9 children)

    by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday December 05 2018, @06:12PM (#770194) Journal

    Hacking a political party gets you - what, exactly? And, what can you use it for? Dems or repubs, if you're looking for intelligence - you ain't gonna find it.

    Politics, and intelligence. Think about that. If our politics were informed by intelligence, we would adopt most, if not all, of the Green party's policies. Instead of squabbling over global warming, we'd drop this idea of taxing people for doing anything, and instead, gently push to stop the pollution that supposedly creates global warming. If we were intelligent, there's a lot of things we could accomplish - like rebuilding infrastructure, and completing that infamous "last mile" of true broadband infrastructure.

    Hacking the DNC and/or the RNCC will only give you evidence that there is no intelligent life on earth. That would only have any value to illegal aliens from another stellar system.

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  • (Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday December 05 2018, @06:34PM (6 children)

    by DeathMonkey (1380) on Wednesday December 05 2018, @06:34PM (#770209) Journal

    If our politics were informed by intelligence, we would adopt most, if not all, of the Green party's policies.

    So why do you oppose all the Green party's policies, then?

    • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday December 05 2018, @06:36PM (5 children)

      by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday December 05 2018, @06:36PM (#770211) Journal

      *rolleyes*

      • (Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday December 05 2018, @06:40PM (4 children)

        by DeathMonkey (1380) on Wednesday December 05 2018, @06:40PM (#770215) Journal

        It's an honest question.

        You say we should stop arguing about global warming. But you're the one who's always arguing that it's not real.

        • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday December 05 2018, @06:53PM (3 children)

          by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday December 05 2018, @06:53PM (#770223) Journal

          Wellllll, let me explain some subtleties that seem to have escaped you.

          1. I acknowledge that global warming is real. Really for real. I posted an inane post about trying to get laid while living on land covered by a mile of ice somewhere. About 20,000 years ago it was much too cold to talk chicks out of their form-fitting saber-tooth hides.

          2. I think man-made global warming is pretty lame. Maybe we add some insignificant percentage to the warming that is happening already.

          3. Taxing people for using resources blamed for global warming is stupid, and dishonest.

          4. Polluting our homes is even stupider than the taxes I've just mentioned.

          5. Future generations deserve something a helluva lot cleaner than we are going to leave for them, we need to start cleaning it up.

          I really don't think that I'm in serious opposition to any group of people who want to clean up the world. I am in opposition to groups of alarmists who want to rape all of us for taxes.

          For examples of people and parties that I don't like, you can readily search the forums. Clinton, Progressives, American-style "liberals", SJW's, self-loathing white people - the list goes on.

          I was almost willing to vote for Jill Stein. I made a post here on election day 2016 explaining why I voted for Johnson, instead. No, Trump didn't get my vote, and Hillary damned sure wasn't getting it.

          • (Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday December 05 2018, @07:07PM (2 children)

            by DeathMonkey (1380) on Wednesday December 05 2018, @07:07PM (#770233) Journal

            Here is the most recent Green Party climate platform I could find. Quotes below are from this platform. [gp.org]

            I think man-made global warming is pretty lame.

            "Climate change is the most grave environmental, social and economic peril that humanity has ever met..."

            Taxing people for using resources blamed for global warming is stupid, and dishonest.

            "1. Establish carbon taxes on fossil fuels, to reflect the environmental cost of their extraction and use. Carbon taxes should be applied as far upstream as possible, preferably when possession of the carbon-bearing fuel passes from extraction (for example, coal mine; oil wellhead or tanker; gas wellhead) to the next entity in the supply chain (for example, coal shipper or utility; oil refiner or importer; natural gas pipeline). Offset potential regressivity for lower income individuals by cutting income taxes and/or other approaches. Carbon taxes are better than market-based policies because they lead to more predictable carbon pricing, are more transparent, take effect more quickly, and do not enable profiteering by the financial industry."

            • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday December 05 2018, @07:14PM (1 child)

              by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday December 05 2018, @07:14PM (#770236) Journal

              I did say something about "most, if not all" of the Green's policies. I can't be a Libertarian, because I don't buy into all of their policies. I can't be a Greenie, for the same reason. I will buy into much of their platform, but I'm not moving to their plantation.

              • (Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday December 05 2018, @09:33PM

                by DeathMonkey (1380) on Wednesday December 05 2018, @09:33PM (#770285) Journal

                So you don't like any of the green policies in the Green party. Climate change, stronger EPA, etc. That's a rather large chunk of their whole deal....

                So, what policies of theirs do you support? Socialized healthcare? Regulating the financial industry?

  • (Score: 2) by bob_super on Thursday December 06 2018, @02:25AM

    by bob_super (1357) on Thursday December 06 2018, @02:25AM (#770432)

    > Hacking a political party gets you - what, exactly?

    Proof of hypocrisy.
    Mistresses, abortions, backroom agreements, backstabs, corporate submission, voter suppression tactics ... Our politicians are stupid enough to put in writing stuff that definitely contradicts what they tell their voters about policies, and themselves.

    Though R voters don't really seem to give a shit about "the values" anymore, as illustrated by their presidential choice. So I guess the same level of filth would bizarrely hurt "live and let live" Ds more than "traditional values" Rs ...

  • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday December 06 2018, @03:04PM

    by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Thursday December 06 2018, @03:04PM (#770667) Journal

    I'm not pointing fingers at any political party with this statement.

    Hacking a political party means you have nothing to say and no ideas to offer in the public policy debate.

    --
    People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.