RobDownSouth
Virgin
- Joined
- Apr 13, 2002
- Posts
- 74,827
Good writeup here on Vox about the "hacking".
This was not a "hack", this was a rudimentary phishing attempt to get someone provide their password to the bad guy(s).
Classic "Phishing".
Far from a dedicated foreign government clandestinely attempting to infiltrate secure servers (the classic movie scenario showing "hackers"), this appears to have been a one-off attempt from someone who is in Iran (or may have a proxy in Iran) pumping out a shit-ton of spam emails each day to the least secure public email accounts on the planet (aol.com and hotmail.com....the stuff you set up for your parents in the 1990s).
This guy got lucky with technophobic septuagenarian Roger Stone, who has had the same email account on aol.com since 1997. Not sure if they used "suspicious activity on your debit card" or "hot girls in YOUR area want to have sex with you" as the bait but he took it.
The hacker downloaded all emails with attachments, bundled up the attachments into a zip file, and sent them to a large number of news organizations in an attempt to denigrate the convicted felon.
Side note: it appears someone (or "someones") in Russia did this to Hillary Clinton's team in 2016. The difference is that back then, right wing news organizations jumped on every scurrilous rumor and detail in the email trove, while this time news organizations are NOT publishing much of anything, realizing that this could be sensationalized garbage.
Nonetheless, convicted felon Donald J Trump continues to characterize this affair as "Iran hacking into one of our many websites" because it frightens the sheep and reinforces the idea that "erryone is against Trump".
Perpetual victimhood on display.
This was not a "hack", this was a rudimentary phishing attempt to get someone provide their password to the bad guy(s).
Classic "Phishing".
Far from a dedicated foreign government clandestinely attempting to infiltrate secure servers (the classic movie scenario showing "hackers"), this appears to have been a one-off attempt from someone who is in Iran (or may have a proxy in Iran) pumping out a shit-ton of spam emails each day to the least secure public email accounts on the planet (aol.com and hotmail.com....the stuff you set up for your parents in the 1990s).
This guy got lucky with technophobic septuagenarian Roger Stone, who has had the same email account on aol.com since 1997. Not sure if they used "suspicious activity on your debit card" or "hot girls in YOUR area want to have sex with you" as the bait but he took it.
The hacker downloaded all emails with attachments, bundled up the attachments into a zip file, and sent them to a large number of news organizations in an attempt to denigrate the convicted felon.
Side note: it appears someone (or "someones") in Russia did this to Hillary Clinton's team in 2016. The difference is that back then, right wing news organizations jumped on every scurrilous rumor and detail in the email trove, while this time news organizations are NOT publishing much of anything, realizing that this could be sensationalized garbage.
Nonetheless, convicted felon Donald J Trump continues to characterize this affair as "Iran hacking into one of our many websites" because it frightens the sheep and reinforces the idea that "erryone is against Trump".
Perpetual victimhood on display.
